Mar
11
Is Death Note on its way downhill?
March 11, 2007 |
Warning: This post contains Death Note anime spoilers (up to ep 20)
Under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn’t write a half-way-through “review” (and this isn’t a review, since I’m purposely keeping it too informal for it to be labeled such) about a currently-airing anime such as this. But I know I can get away with it on this occasion since there’s almost certainly going to be no shortage of staff members wanting to review this series once it’s over. Generally I’ll post thoughts about a given series I’m following after each episodes on forums and I browse through these comments after the series is over to collect and organize them into something that resembles a review, but I haven’t really been doing that with Death Note for various reasons. But, since I have almost no intention of reviewing it, I figured this was as good a place as any for me to voice my opinion of it.
Death Note’s strong point for the first 15 or so episodes were the logical intricacies of the plot, from Light’s evasion of the law, his manipulation of his victims, and the way he used his Death Note to achieve both, to L’s carefully laid traps, and analysis and deduction of the situation. The mental cat-and-mouse game these two found themselves in was what made the series so interesting to follow, and even though there were the occasional convenient plot point that allowed Light to stay one step ahead of L (usually in the form of a rule that Ryuk either didn’t know about, or “forgot” to tell Light), the chase still had all the elements of a good thriller (which includes the atmosphere, but this is a Madhouse Studios anime we’re talking about, so that almost goes without saying). It also helped that the two rival lead characters shared a lot of chemistry. And I suppose it also helped that we knew the identity of all involved, which allowed the anime to give us lots of introspective analyses of both characters in different situations.
Misa’s introduction was one of the first places where this anime started going downhill (though I didn’t realize it at the time). I realize now that she was probably an unnecessary complication for Light’s plans and, when you think about it, she was the only reason why he was eventually caught. The reason why she was eventually caught was trite enough, since it was a case more of Kira stuffing up than L outsmarting Kira, but the whole sudden introduction of the new “give up the DN and you lose all your memories of it” rule was really weak writing, IMO. That’s a convenient cop out if I’ve ever seen one.
The more recent episodes, in which Kira has now become a member of the Yotsoba group have lacked the tension and atmosphere of the earlier episodes where the focus was L and Light’s battle-of-wits. As we’ve seen, the Kira in the Yotsoba group doesn’t have Light’s ability to evade and outsmart L and L has already come this close, quite easily (with Light’s help, of course) to catching Yotsoba’s Kira. It also hurts that, since this Kira’s identity is unknown, we aren’t given the opportunity to see into his psyche the way we could when Light was Kira. I’d also argue that Misa’s presence hurts the atmosphere in this series, since her personality is rather out of place in an anime like this where a serious atmosphere should dominate almost every scene. I’d almost say the same thing about Matsuda as well, who’s almost been reduced to a comic relief character (which, I’d strongly argue isn’t appropriate in a series like this). And, to be excessively nitpicky, the animation seems to have taken a small dive in the most recent episodes as well.
That’s not to say that Death Note isn’t a good anime anymore, but I argue strongly that it’s not anywhere near as gripping or clever as it was earlier on in the season. Here’s hoping that it will pick up, but something tells me that I shouldn’t put money on it that it will.
Comments
4 Comments so far
It will get worse. From what I’ve read, they’re following what the manga did like a bible, and it’s likely they’ll do that right to the end, since they’re not changing the parts that plagues the anime version. Like its anime counterpart, death note manga started with a bang. But it started to go downhill at some point, until the lame ass resultion to the final conflict between Light and L. And the story continues in even more lame fashion, more repetitive, new dry and boring main character that makes the battle of wits even drier and drier, upto the epic finale of lose and fail. It was more or less pre-determined that the anime version will slowly go downhill and my prediction is coming to fruition.
I guess I am one of the few people who enjoyed all of Death Note (the manga).
I realized after the *SPOILER* death of L *SPOILER* that the story was turning into the story of the Rise and Fall of Kira. If you think about it, the first part of Death Note is full of glorious moments by Light. In the middle, he starts to slip up and lose. He meets a girl, whom he necessarily doesn’t love, this girl will eventually bring his down fall (and people wonder why there are so many apples in DN). The end of Death Note is the absolute downfall of Light. That’s how I saw it at least.
Misa is just a little puppet that happened to be under L’s control, a retarded girl without a mind and a soul, devoting everything she has to help the one who doesn’t care much for. As such, having very little significance in the story other than as a plot device, she was not the cause of Light’s downfall. Light’s downfall results from combination of the new character’s composure and his brother’s innovation (and if you want to over-analyze a bit, L’s evil ways losing against the new guy’s sense of justice, the whole symbolic struggle between evil and good blablabla). And I think everyone who has read DN can at least see when Light had it going, and when he started falling. The issue most of us has is the lame and boring process of his downfall during his fight against ‘N’ and rather stupid ending.
SPOILER ALERT
To me, Death Note was all about the battle of wits between L and Light. Even though the series focused on Light, L in my opinion was the true protagonist. To have him die was probably meant to be a shocking twist that would enthrall viewers (OMG what’s going to happen next!) but it completely ruined all that the series had going for it. The introduction of the other two super-genius detectives was the largest cop-out of the series. L is touted as being THE go-to genius detective, and then all of a sudden two more crop up out of nowhere, simply because the creators realized “crap, we killed off L! Who’s going to battle Light now?!” Their existence is way too convenient and subsequent battles with Light lacked the intriguing chemistry in their mind-play.
So, in the end, there is no way for the anime to keep from going downhill unless it completely re-writes the last half of the manga. I doubt they will, so this anime will end up failing much like the manga did. It’s a horrible waste of potential, but unavoidable if they mean to be true to the manga.