rionaleonhart | You Really Should Kneel.

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You Really Should Kneel.

On an odd whim, I started rewatching Death Note. I'd forgotten how engaging it is! I remember the details pretty well - I've seen the anime before and read (half of) the manga a couple of times - so none of it actually takes me by surprise, but it's still a great story.

Or half of it is, at least. I'll probably just watch up to the point where I usually lose interest and then skip ahead to the last couple of episodes.

There are so many stories I love where people discover new aspects of themselves through being thrown into bizarre, extreme situations. Death Note is another of those, now that I think about it. It's just that the aspect of Light that's exposed by his situation, rather than 'unexpected leadership skills' or 'hidden depths of loyalty and bravery' or 'surprisingly good at detective work when everyone's lives depend on it', is 'cunning and dedicated murderer'.

I disagree completely with Light's actions, goals and philosophy. He's the worst! But he is still easily (and perhaps predictably) my favourite character in Death Note, and I still ship him passionately and exclusively with himself. Nobody else could ever meet his standards.

Light's pride is his defining quality. He's a smart kid, he does extremely well in exams, and he knows it. He underestimates L in their first showdown because of his contempt for other people; he always thinks he's the smartest person in the room. This is why he's the only one qualified to reshape the world and become its god. It's not just his desire for power at play, but his genuine belief that he's the best person around. Obviously he's entitled to set the rules people live by; who's more intelligent and qualified than him?

What a dick. He's great.

One of my favourite early points is Light asking Ryuk, 'Why did you give me the Death Note?' He's obviously hoping to hear that Ryuk has been watching him and decided that of course Light Yagami, with his impeccable morals and unparalleled intelligence, is the one to be entrusted with power over life and death. And Ryuk just goes 'lol, I didn't choose you; I just dropped it. I had no idea who'd pick it up. Why would I write the instructions in English if I'd been planning to give it to a specific Japanese kid?' Get wrecked, Light.

Why must I be cursed to love such terrible characters? I don't care; I'm enjoying myself.

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Or half of it is, at least. I'll probably just watch up to the point where I usually lose interest and then skip ahead to the last couple of episodes.

I guess this point is somewhere around L's death? That's a very common jumping off point for people, I've found! His replacements aren't very well-liked, which I think is a shame.

Re-ups paid just to use this icon.

That is indeed the point! I felt the story lost its focus a bit afterwards. I don't hate Mello and Near, but their dynamics with Light aren't as interesting. I think it'd probably be possible to create a version of Death Note where L dies halfway through and the story holds my interest - after all, Light's my favourite character, rather than L - but unfortunately the version we canonically got isn't it.

An excellent cause! (also wait when did you change your username, it took me a moment to work out who you were there)

A few days ago! I never got around to making an entry this week to clarify it; so don't worry that you missed anything. I'll have to figure out how to be more recognisable, though. A true conundrum.

I too was really captivated by Death Note until that exact halfway point! It felt oddly like a cop-out. I didn't hate Near and Mello either, but I was consistently kind of bored by them. Consequently I don't remember much about the latter half of the series - at least, until the very last episode.

I'm not sure I have a favourite character. It's possible my favourite character is the several meta levels of sexual tension between L and Light as they out-out-out-out-outmanoeuvre each other. Or possibly how very much and tragically Rem is in love with Misa.

It's equally possible my favourite character is just Ryuk for his sheer delight at watching everything go to hell in a handbasket, actually.

The cat-and-mouse (or possibly cat-and-cat) game between Light and L was such a strong focus for the story, and it really felt like it lost its direction after that was gone. Like you, I don't remember much between L's death and the final episode; my memory kicks back in when Light starts laughing.

All of your favourite characters/'characters' are extremely solid choices! I'm just compelled to go straight for the character who makes the worst decisions.

Oh wow, that brought back memories! I'm not much of an anime fan in general, but the animation style of Death Note is visceral and breathtaking. I watched the English dub, but even the visuals leave a lasting impression - they, at least, didn't falter after L was gone. I wonder how much more the narrative could have sustained my interest if he'd either stayed alive, or started to haunt Light's dreams (or waking hours) or something.

Light is a great character! I'm definitely fascinated by your Light/himself ship - parallel dimensions? fantasies? dreams that bleed into reality? So many ways it could go so ~~wrong~~ right. I think I've also seen some great unrequited Mikami->Light thoughts over at fail_fandomanon.

Death Note really does have a striking visual style, even if its efforts to make writing in a notebook look DRAMATIC crack me up sometimes. I've always loved the strange, symbolism-filled opening and ending sequence. (No obligation to watch; I'm just linking to clarify which sequences I mean. Honestly, that might be part of the reason I like it a lot less after L's death; they changed the opening and ending, and the replacements weren't as good!)

or started to haunt Light's dreams (or waking hours)

This sounds INCREDIBLE and I'm now sad that this isn't the story we got.

I'm definitely fascinated by your Light/himself ship - parallel dimensions? fantasies? dreams that bleed into reality?

ALL GOOD. Also on the table: the 'innocent' Light who's lost his memory of the Death Note meets the Kira Light somehow, whether through hallucinations or time travel. Failing all that, Light just masturbates while thinking about how great he is.

Agreed wholeheartedly that the original intro and ending sequences are far better than what replaced them! Also about the Dramatic Writing-In-A-Notebook scenes, and of course there's "I'll take a potato chip...AND EAT IT!", lol. The sheer Drama™ adds to the feel of it all, I guess, since Light and L themselves are deeply dramatic people - the rooftop confrontations in their heads are so completely over the (roof)top, but it just works.

This sounds INCREDIBLE and I'm now sad that this isn't the story we got.

Light gradually losing his mind more and more talking to an L who isn't there, trying to outwit an L who is either a ghost or a figment of his own imagination! Possibly fucking this L, half thinking that'll get rid of him/that'll show him he, Light, has the upper hand after all, and half thinking he is a figment of his own imagination and therefore a manifestation of his, Light's, own awesome self!

Failing all that, Light just masturbates while thinking about how great he is.

This is such absolute perfection that I refuse to believe it's not actual canon. :'D

I haven't seen the anime, but I've read the manga several times! I keep looking for it at the library so I can read it again. Sadly, every time I've looked they haven't had the first couple of issues in. I really should just buy the manga, it's pretty great.

The manga is very good! The anime is a very close, faithful adaptation, so they're similar experiences, although the anime does have more hilariously dramatic writing montages. (Or at least the anime is a very close, faithful adaptation of the first half; I've seen the entire anime, but I've only read half of the manga, so it's possible that there's more divergence later on.)

I disagree completely with Light's actions, goals and philosophy. He's the worst! But he is still easily (and perhaps predictably) my favourite character in Death Note, and I still ship him passionately and exclusively with himself. Nobody else could ever meet his standards.

Yes! He is an awful person and an excellent and fascinating fictional character! I like Light/L, because they could have weird, tense, mind game-filled sex, but I can see why you'd exclusively go for Light/himself.

One of my favourite early points is Light asking Ryuk, 'Why did you give me the Death Note?' He's obviously hoping to hear that Ryuk has been watching him and decided that of course Light Yagami, with his impeccable morals and unparalleled intelligence, is the one to be entrusted with power over life and death. And Ryuk just goes 'lol, I didn't choose you; I just dropped it. I had no idea who'd pick it up. Why would I write the instructions in English if I'd been planning to give it to a specific Japanese kid?' Get wrecked, Light.

That was wonderful!

Also, similar drop-off after L's death. I thought Near and Mello had interesting potential, but they didn't work as well in terms of opposition to Light as L did. (Did you see the live-action Japanese movies? I have also seen those.)

I think I went into Death Note expecting to ship Light/L and was slightly confused when I instead came out with Light/Light as my OTP, but I would still absolutely read Light and L having weird, tense, mind game-filled sex. I can picture Light very calculatedly going 'okay, L has propositioned me; is it more suspicious to accept or refuse?' without the question of attraction coming into it at all, which could be really interesting.

Wow, I really do want to read this now.

(I haven't seen any of the live-action films, no!)

I want to read that, too! Light trying to calculate if the added intimacy of sex ups the odds of L discovering a clue, or will bias L in Light's favor making him less likely to suspect Light! Light torn between trying to seem like a bright-but-normal student and his ego's demands that if he's going to have sex with someone else, he has to awe them with his awesome sex genius! Light getting an orgasm and being annoyed because if L made Light come first, L is winning at sex!

(The Japanese ones are interesting! Very different. Some bad CGI, but the actor playing L is astonishingly good at the role.)

Light getting an orgasm and being annoyed because if L made Light come first, L is winning at sex!

I snorted with laughter at this. I don't know if you have any inclination to write this yourself, but, if you do, I would love to read it!

I'll think about it. I haven't read Death Note in a while, but it is a fun idea. (Anyone else reading this is free to write this concept as well, of course.)

Oh, Death Note. I'm so fond of it - Light and L are both very compelling, but particularly Light. It's fascinating to watch this person who begins as an idealised person, very clever, handsome, polite, get corrupted by his own power in such a short spate of time, and the cat and mouse chase is great.

Death Note was also the first manga I ever bought - I think I pictured it to be more like a comic book (think the Beano) rather than actually smaller and more like an actual book! While the first half of the story is unmistakably the strongest, I do think the manga version of the second half is better in that the show knows which part people are most interested in and condenses it down a lot, which is understandable but doesn't always help. Even in the earlier parts, the anime cuts some of my favourite comments - a big one is L (at Soichirou's bedside) suggesting that Light's profile of Kira clearly suggests a specific person of being the culprit: his sister, Sayu! Still, I have a large fondness for the anime - in both English and Japanese the voice acting is great, it embraces the mundane scenes (like the name writing itself) by spicing them up, the music is awesome (I particularly love the opening song - the first one, obviously!).

I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised by the second half of the anime/manga this time - at least your expectations will be tempered! I remember at the time seeing a lot of people thinking that Death Note should only consist of its first half, but I think it needed to end the way it did - there was only ever one thing that would stop Light. I also think Light finally truly unravelling at the end is fascinating and so I'll take the rest of the series for that.

It's just that the aspect of Light that's exposed by his situation, rather than 'unexpected leadership skills' or 'hidden depths of loyalty and bravery' or 'surprisingly good at detective work when everyone's lives depend on it', is 'cunning and dedicated murderer'.

For me, another part of this is that it starts with a thought that perhaps many people have had: Some people have done heinous things. Do those people deserve to live, or die to pay for their crimes? Look at how many supporters of the death penalty there are - Light's viewpoint isn't necessarily particularly uncommon. It's that examination of where this line of thought can lead, and that being judge, jury and executioner can lead to further issues. (RYUK (paraphrasing!): Then you'd be the only bad guy left.)

Death Note is also another one of those series that can be hard to discuss because, spoilers aside, it's where the people who can't divorce the idea of liking the concept of a character, or even that character themself, does not necessarily mean condoning their actions or thinking that they are right can get a bit scathing. (Although there are genuinely people out there who believe that Light did nothing wrong, but that's not quite what I'm referring to!).

I wrote Death Note fic back in the day! Did I write fic about the cat and mouse chase everyone was interested in? Of course not, I wrote a character study of Light in Ryuk's view point. Why would you write anything else?!

-

I've also recently finished Exit/Corners (http://exitcorners.com/), another free death game which, unlike Your Turn to Die, is finished. It consists of 29 episodes, but they're considerably shorter than Your Turn to Die episodes as you might expect deom the number. I can't even find a finished LP anywhere or anywhere to discuss it, which sucks! I enjoyed the majority of the puzzles, except the one type I've always been terrible at! I recommend you play it - not just for the selfish reason that I'd be able to discuss it; you'd genuinely enjoy it!

-timydamonkey, the wordy

Light and L are both very compelling, but particularly Light. It's fascinating to watch this person who begins as an idealised person, very clever, handsome, polite, get corrupted by his own power in such a short spate of time

I love this description of Light! What an awful person. What a great character.

I haven't seen much of the Death Note fandom, but I had indeed got the impression that there are fans who like Light as a character and fans who think Light was right, and people aren't always great at telling the two apart. I think that's why I felt the need to be very clear on my stance in this entry!

Of course not, I wrote a character study of Light in Ryuk's view point. Why would you write anything else?!

Bless you and your determination to go against the mainstream fanfiction market. Do you have a link to hand?

I've actually had Exit/Corners sitting in my bookmarks for a few days, waiting for me to check it out! It definitely looks like it might be up my street, and I'm pleased to have your assurance that it is, in fact, up my street. I'm definitely planning to take a look!

Bless you and your determination to go against the mainstream fanfiction market. Do you have a link to hand?

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6308561/1/Marionettes Not sure how good it is since it's a decade old, but there you go!

Post an entry when you finish up Exit/Corners if it hooks you! Would be nice to have a chat. The episodes start with recaps (in fact you can't disable them in the first few episodes, though you can skip them later), so if you don't want to binge it like I did* then it's also good for playing when you have little chunks of time.

*Everyone laughs at the idea that I may ever consume media in a way that isn't all at once, due to my interests always becoming all-consuming obsession level.

This is a great little piece! I love the 'tapdancing on the moon' line, and 'He doesn't say "see you later", but he knows he will anyway', and seeing the amnesiac Light being controlled by the strings he's tied to himself. Ryuk's odd almost-fondness for Light is delightful. Thank you for the link!

Loved Death Note, although I too became bored and confused after L died. I only watched the anime (dubbed, because I love Brian Drummond's Ryuuk, although everyone did a great job) and felt the first half was one of the strongest things I've seen in television (again, owing to that L/Light cat-and-mouse dynamic). Matsuda was also my Fave with a capital F. <3

(I also randomly shipped L/Naomi after reading the spin-off novel. I wish Naomi hadn't died; she definitely deserved a larger role in the story as originally intended.)

Naomi is great! It's remarkable how memorable a character she managed to be, given how little screentime she had.

My main recollection of the novel is the fact that it included characters called Beyond Birthday, Quarter Queen and Backyard Bottomslash. I know there's a degree of 'don't use realistic names in your story about killing people by writing their names' superstition here, but Raye Penber was a reasonable degree of unrealistic; there was no need to go as far as Backyard Bottomslash!

I know there's a degree of 'don't use realistic names in your story about killing people by writing their names' superstition here— Oh my gosh, was that why they did that? *returned of shocked Matsuda* I just thought it was the Japanese equivalent of Americans trying to invent "cool" Asian-sounding names by stringing random syllables together.

Aaand as I'm writing this comment I looked it up further and not even the Japanese names are realistic, apparently. That is an odd bit of genius right there. (I'm still going to balk at a name like Bluesharp Babysplit.)

Is Death Note suitable for a 12 year old? (She watches Dangan Ronpa.)

It's very dark, but I think a kid who likes Dangan Ronpa might well enjoy Death Note! Netflix rates it a 12, although, to be honest, I'd have expected a 15. You could try her out with the first volume of the manga, which is a bit less graphic than the anime; it looks like you can get used copies for under three pounds on Amazon. (I don't know if she's experienced with manga already; if she's not, she might need to be told that it's read from right to left.)

The concept, if that helps: a teenage boy, Light, obtains a notebook that can kill anyone whose name is written in it. He starts using it to kill huge numbers of criminals, with the goal of creating a 'perfect' world without crime. The story deals with Light's efforts to avoid being caught by the police while they try to track down this mysterious supernatural murderer.

Most of the deaths are bloodless heart attacks, but there are occasionally more graphic deaths. This early scene where a lorry hits a motorbike is on the upper end; pages/panels/text bubbles read from right to left. There's also at least one forced suicide, which doesn't take place on-screen/on-page; we see a woman walk away and we know that she'll die by suicide, because that's the instruction that Light wrote in the Death Note. (The anime shows a symbolic shot of her walking onto a gallows, but it doesn't show her death; the manga just shows her walking away down the street.)

The lorry crash scene takes place in the first episode of the anime, and also includes an attempted sexual assault that is not in the manga, which is part of the reason I think the manga might be better for a twelve-year-old. (The anime version of the scene is here, if you're curious; as stated, it contains attempted sexual assault. In the manga, the motorcyclists surround the woman to ask her out, and she's obviously uncomfortable, but they don't touch or attack her.) This is probably the most 'mature' the anime gets; if she's okay with the first episode, she'll probably be okay with the rest of it.

I hope all this is helpful! My first response was 'oh, yeah, a Dangan Ronpa fan, she'll like Death Note!', but I didn't want that instinct to override responsibility, so I thought I'd better give a detailed response and let you use your own judgement. Both Dangan Ronpa and Death Note involve a lot of murder, but the violence in Death Note is less cartoony and the tone is more serious.

It sounds a bit more ... socially responsible than DR? Which basically seems like a story of sadism and depression, with no prospect of a happy ending.

This is an interesting question! I'd actually say Dangan Ronpa has more prospect of a happy ending, because it's clearer what sort of ending would count as 'happy'. The kids in Dangan Ronpa are victims, and it's a happy ending if they manage to band together, defeat their imprisoner and escape, although some of them may be lost along the way. Light is a mass-murderer with delusions of righteousness, but he's also the protagonist, so the possible endings are 'the character we've been following all this time is defeated', which may be the best outcome but doesn't necessarily feel happy, and 'Light succeeds in creating a new world where he dictates who lives and who dies'.

It's true that Dangan Ronpa has more outright sadism, though, whereas Death Note is about a clash of sides that both believe themselves to be in the right.

I didn't realise there was any prospect of defeating the horrible bears in DR.

There is! The games have a handful of survivors, and there are general themes of continuing to fight and to hold on to faith in people even when the situation seems hopeless. It's pretty dark, but it's not unbearably cynical.

There are so many stories I love where people discover new aspects of themselves through being thrown into bizarre, extreme situations. Death Note is another of those, now that I think about it. It's just that the aspect of Light that's exposed by his situation, rather than 'unexpected leadership skills' or 'hidden depths of loyalty and bravery' or 'surprisingly good at detective work when everyone's lives depend on it', is 'cunning and dedicated murderer'.

Hahaha yep, totally!

Light's such a great character. And yeah LOLLLLL Ryuk just 'ur not special.' I love earnest teenagers who're full of themselves but trying hard SO MUCH, including when they're chilling murderers.

I love earnest teenagers who're full of themselves but trying hard SO MUCH, including when they're chilling murderers.

It's such a good combination! This kid is great and I love him, and by 'he's great' I mean 'he's absolutely terrible', and by 'I love him' I mean 'I love him'.

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You Really Should Kneel.

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