Death Note
PostPosted:Tue Jul 20, 2004 3:37 am
<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I recently started following Death Note, which is the next series made by the guy who did Hikaru no Go. No word of an Anime yet but it seems to have some popularity so who knows. Anyway, the premise of Death Note is that in hell, the Deaths have been lazy and getting fat, so one bored Death decides to bring two copies of Death's Notebook to the mortal plane and see if anything fun happens. The first copy was picked up by Light Yagami, an incredibly handsome Japanese high school student (think the older Hikaru toward the end of HNG... heck, Hikaru means Light). Death's Notebook allows the owner to kill by anyone by writing down their name, time of death, and cause of death (if left blank they die due to heart attack). So, like what any normal kid would do with such power, Light besides he's going to become a God with this new power. So naturally lots of important people die over the course of a few weeks, and even the FBI can't find someone who only has to write down a person's name to kill them. So at last the world turned their hope to a legend only known as "L", who by the way reminds me a lot of Akira Toya, except the looks (he is certainly not handsome), to capture this new serial killer that has been dubbed 'Kira'. Despite Kira obviously has no evidence from all the killings (he never needs to leave his house to kill anyone), L quickly deduced the limits of Kira's powers. He realized that Kira needs someone's name as well as a face to kill them (need face to deal with duplicate names) and narrowed the suspects down. Light, of course, becomes one of the suspects, but without conclusive evidence, L can't arrest him. So thus begins a Spy vs Spy thing where L is looking for evidence that Light is the murderer, and Light is trying to find L's true name so he can kill him, since he's like the only person in this world left that can threaten him (no one else even suspected him).
The direction of this series is pretty obvious, only instead of searching for the Hand of God you've two people trying to find the 'truth' first (Kira's identity or L's name). There's even a Sei (Death sticks around with Light since it was his goal to see if anything interesting happens, but he doesn't side with anyone). Like HNG, though, it seems to be riddled with the problem of a dumb rivalry. Just as Hikaru vs Akira was never a convincing rivalry (Hikaru never came close to beating Akira without Sei's help), L versus Kira was a poor mismatch. L has to find someone who can commit the perfect crime at will, while the only 'challenge' for Kira was to find L's name. Earlier, before L arrived in Japan, even L's apprentice whom L sent to Japan before he got there almost discovered Kira's true identity (L's apprentices are all super agents too obviously). L has revealed his identity (no one even knew who is L before this incident) to Kira quite early because he wanted to observe how the suspects will act if they know he is L, and every attempt Kira tries to make himself appear innocent only increases L's suspicion. This reminds me of how Hikaru establishes himself as the one who finds the Hand of God by repeatedly losing to Akira Toya (or anyone else who matters). The particularly bad one is when L sent his first batch of FBI agents (fodder materal obviously) Kira actually tried to hold one up, i.e. "I am Kira and tell me what other agents are operating in Japan and I'll let you live"). This is after L has warned the agents that Kira can kill anyone, anywhere by just knowing their name and face, and of course that agent told Kira what he wants to know and died like 3 seconds later (duh). The series is ongoing, but the last arc Kira just enlisted the help of Death #2 (there are 2 Death's Notebooks after all) to take care of L, and Death #2 can kill anyone by just having a face (since that's what they do). Now there are no photographs or recordings of L anywhere, so Death #2 has to see L in person first, but presumably it's not too hard for Death to kill any one person in this world. It is not clear how this will end, but I really don't think anything good can possibly come from this kind of braindead solution. It reminds me of Sei vs Toya Koyo, which is certainly the climax of HNG but nothing good can come from it as well.</div>
The direction of this series is pretty obvious, only instead of searching for the Hand of God you've two people trying to find the 'truth' first (Kira's identity or L's name). There's even a Sei (Death sticks around with Light since it was his goal to see if anything interesting happens, but he doesn't side with anyone). Like HNG, though, it seems to be riddled with the problem of a dumb rivalry. Just as Hikaru vs Akira was never a convincing rivalry (Hikaru never came close to beating Akira without Sei's help), L versus Kira was a poor mismatch. L has to find someone who can commit the perfect crime at will, while the only 'challenge' for Kira was to find L's name. Earlier, before L arrived in Japan, even L's apprentice whom L sent to Japan before he got there almost discovered Kira's true identity (L's apprentices are all super agents too obviously). L has revealed his identity (no one even knew who is L before this incident) to Kira quite early because he wanted to observe how the suspects will act if they know he is L, and every attempt Kira tries to make himself appear innocent only increases L's suspicion. This reminds me of how Hikaru establishes himself as the one who finds the Hand of God by repeatedly losing to Akira Toya (or anyone else who matters). The particularly bad one is when L sent his first batch of FBI agents (fodder materal obviously) Kira actually tried to hold one up, i.e. "I am Kira and tell me what other agents are operating in Japan and I'll let you live"). This is after L has warned the agents that Kira can kill anyone, anywhere by just knowing their name and face, and of course that agent told Kira what he wants to know and died like 3 seconds later (duh). The series is ongoing, but the last arc Kira just enlisted the help of Death #2 (there are 2 Death's Notebooks after all) to take care of L, and Death #2 can kill anyone by just having a face (since that's what they do). Now there are no photographs or recordings of L anywhere, so Death #2 has to see L in person first, but presumably it's not too hard for Death to kill any one person in this world. It is not clear how this will end, but I really don't think anything good can possibly come from this kind of braindead solution. It reminds me of Sei vs Toya Koyo, which is certainly the climax of HNG but nothing good can come from it as well.</div>