Death Note

The French Biscuit · Post by **The French Biscuit** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 10:49 am

'cause WM asked about it, and I aim to deliver.

Death Note

Death Note is a manga by Tsugumi Oba and Takashi Obata. It follows the life of Light Yagami after he finds a mysterious notebook with the words "Death Note" written on it.

The Death Note is a tool for the shinnigamis, specifically Ryuuk who owns the Death Note that Light finds. When a person or shinnigami writes a person's name in the Death Note, that person will die. Either by a heart attack in (I think) a half hour if the cause of death is not specified or by any means that the writer puts down in the Death Note. There are a bunch of rules to the Death Note but I won't go over them here.

Light himself is a good kid. He's a straight A student and has a good heart.

Or does he?

*Spoiler Free*

The manga and anime are both very very good. The best parts are the drama and character development as the story progresses. It keeps you watching/reading it from beginning to end with no lags.

Pretty Pictures

Light(in front) with Ryuuk

Misa Amane - quite possibly the most annoying creature in anime/manga

L - you will love L, or I will hurt you.

~Fin

Stocky Boy · Post by **Stocky Boy** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 12:13 pm

I have bought volume 1 upon Meek's recommendation.

Does it miff you to know I've bought the first volume on Meek's recommendation rather than yours?

The French Biscuit · Post by **The French Biscuit** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 6:48 pm

Nay, I only got into it on Meek's recommendations so in that regard we are even.

William McDert · Post by **William McDert** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 2:39 am

Is it ongoing or all wrapped up by now?

The French Biscuit · Post by **The French Biscuit** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 10:42 am

William McDert wrote:Is it ongoing or all wrapped up by now?

Wrapped up. It's not a terribly long series, not compared to 200+ episodes of Bleach.

Stocky Boy · Post by **Stocky Boy** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 12:00 pm

Looks like it's only 13 volumes long.

Just finished volume 1. Un-fucking-believably awesome!

It's a mystery detection genre with supernatural, mythical elements to it. It's brilliant! I'm going to buy the box set soon.

Stocky Boy · Post by **Stocky Boy** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:23 am

Volume 1 was brilliant.

I shall be buying volume 1 again in the big 13 volume boxset, which will be cheaper than buying the rest of the 12 volumes.

Like Biscy said, there are Death Gods and they have these Death Notes. If they write person's name in the death note that person will die. You can be very specific about how and when the person dies.
What's revealed to us at the start is that Death Gods, or atleast the ones Ryuk hangs around with ar pretty bored and are passing the time away playing pretty dull games. Ryuk, who is apparantly motivated by boredom to do the following decides to drop his death note into the human world and let a random human use it.
The death note is picked up by straight A student Light Yagami and one of the other rules about death notes that is immediately revealed to us is that whoever touches a death note will be able to see and hear the death god to whom the death note belongs to.
Enjoyment of this books comes principally from watching Light explore how the death note works, deciding how he can use it for good and watching Ryuk chill out with Light and getting his entertainment by how Light uses his death note. As you get further and further into the story more details about the rules to using a death note are revealed and the specifics of how you can use it, the ingenuity of Light all become apparant. Developing alongside Light's growing use of the book is a police investigation into some 'suspicious' deaths that have been going on and with every extra revelation of the rules, we have to call into question both Ryuk's motivation for dropping his death note into the human world and exactly how clever and good hearted Light is.

Fucking brilliant book!

Incidently, Light is the man and L should just hand over his name and let Light Kobiyashi Mari the guy.

William McDert · Post by **William McDert** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:40 am

Read the whole thing all the way through. Spoilers ahead. I love it whole heartedly but the Misa factor really did kill alot of it. Plus, once L loses his abilities it kind of sucked until he gets them back and WOW you realize what a freaking genius he is.

But after the chief inspector died I found it to lack meat. Yes, Light's eventual fall was good but it never felt the same after L died

Stocky Boy · Post by **Stocky Boy** » Mon May 04, 2009 8:49 am

Yeah that key moment was very much the end of 'season 1' and 'season 2' was a slightly different beast.

I really loved the series though!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

I was mostly with Light all the way, except for actually going through with the indirect killing. The concept and method of executing his plan was something I agreed with, but actually executing the plan was something I had trouble agreeing with. Obviously, he himself wasn't always following his own decree and allowing acceptable losses, having set in motion the elimination of a few innocent pawns.

Misa at times came across as unsuitable for the tone of the book. I get that she's basically an airhead, but the artistic, sometimes cartoonish renditions of her jarred with the rest of the book.

Near and Mello both looked like little girls. What is with Manga??

I expected there to be a much more favourable end for Kira's way, but the ending we got on the final pages suited me fine. Obviously the method was inexcusable, but it evidently got very positive results that benefitted society. A justice system that brought more justice through it's direct, criminal way than our current justice system brings through it's contradictionary means of pursuing justice through it's established legal system- and that is why Kira should post humously win the humanitarian of the century award.