Death Note: A Retrospective

foreign I think for people who have been watching anime or reading manga for a long time the series Death Note might not be the first thing that pops into their head when you ask them to list a famous anime but for anyone who has experienced its story I find it hard to imagine that it wouldn't make their list somewhere this goes specifically to anyone who joined the anime fandom in the mid to late 2000s because at that time the chances of missing out on Death Note was very slim if you didn't hear about it because it was directly recommended to you then chances are it was recommended alongside something else you watched like Code Geass whose protagonist not only shares personality traits with that of death note's lead but also a voice actor shout out to Mama rumiano for always being a win my memory of the time might be faulty but I feel like death note headlined most people's lists of recommended anime because as a series it did a lot of things many people hadn't witnessed before like not just in anime but in media in general and by people I am of course referring to death notes demographic of edgy teens and nihilistic young adults of which I was included in I'm sure people who read Thriller novels for a living or were old enough to watch like old episodes of Colombo while it was airing didn't find this to be anywhere near as entertaining as some fresh kid getting their mind blown because one thing that I have found consistent anytime someone in the west gets into the anime fandom regardless of when is that it happens because they watch a series that breaks their expectations of what an animated series can offer as far as it's storytelling or themes when a series treats you with a level of respect using hard-hitting subject matter without being an adult comedy it does stick in your head and for those of us in the aforementioned demographic it helped us head down the rabbit hole of enjoyable anime for decades to come like a freshly opened bag of chips you can never eat just one and yes in case it wasn't clear that was my obligatory chip joke for the video don't expect another one the premise of Death Note is fairly straightforward a young Japanese teenager from the show's own Target demographic Light Yagami is granted ownership of a magic notebook from an Apple loving death God this notebook will kill anyone whose name is written in it as long as the writer is also picturing the person's face while writing there are also like 50 other rules and guidelines but the show never bothers to lay them all out from the start because that would ruin half the fun and by fun I mean the entire story because if you knew everything that the node could do the narrative you know just couldn't pull new rules out of The Ether to save our protagonist from the latest box that he's trapped himself in while screaming out to the audience that no this was part of the plan all along actually the appeal of the series at least on the surface is that its protagonist chose to use the notebook against those he considered to be unworthy enough to live he's like a bullied kid who got you know one too many knuckle sandwiches in the school's locker room and then swore Venge against the jocks who served them to him only to never actually act on that because they always won with bigger muscle diplomacy it is quite satisfying to see those who you despise getting their Just Desserts and at the start that's all it was light had a moral compass and decided to use that Compass to pass judgment against those who would otherwise have roamed free under the imperfect Justice systems of man but his problems start when he begins to drink his own Kool-Aid and also when he attracts the attention of a god mode detective a detective who sees through virtually all of his Bluffs and and is only delayed in his own Justice by understandably not accounting for the giant plot McGuffin that is the namesake of the whole show their battles with one another make up the majority of the narrative's appeal our protagonist is essentially the villain of the story but is placed in the Spotlight by virtue of being the protagonist and he is instantly haunted by those with greater virtues than himself it is a perspective that we don't often see in media sure there are plenty of anti-heroes that exist even within anime but it's far more rare for the protagonist of the story to be a straight up villain one whose compelling narratives will still have people claiming that he was in the right all along even after 20 years okay well technically 19 years but I didn't want to delay releasing this video by even longer than it has been just for that Milestone I've been working on this video for almost a year fun fact with luck I'll have some video footage proof of like when I first started editing the Google Doc to prove that though if you did find this video on or after December of 2023 thanks for stopping by happy 20 years of death note so today whenever that day happens to be when you watch this video I wanted to take a look back at Death Note one of the first truly gripping shows that I got into when I started watching anime May seriously back in the day and heck even one of the first shows that I covered on my channel over a decade ago because despite how long it's been I feel like this is still a series that is worth experiencing And discussing welcome to Glass Reflections Death Note retrospective Let's Jam [Music] this place to start of course is the beginning because if you thought that the origin story for a writer of such a series would be cut and dry you would be wrong dead wrong when you write a manga about a character getting the ability to kill a person as long as they know their face and name it's not surprising that in this case both facts about the author have been wiped from pretty much all public records assuming they were ever recorded in the first place it is known that mangakatsugumi Oba is more likely than not a pen name one first used when Death Note was published in 2003. it is also believed that the real person behind the name has some may be connection to the name hiroshigama another manga writer who's been credited on various projects since 1986. the most famous of which being told lucky man which was released in Jump Comics back in the mid 90s this connection is because death notes like Yagami is seen to have attended a Gamo seminar and in oba's manga series following Death Note Bakuman there is an in-universe Gog manga called superhero legend that seems to be a parody of gamo's lakiman its circumstantial evidence of course but still worth mentioning finally though when Oba released storyboards for his manga the art style could be seen to resemble that of the Elder mangaka hence the supposed connection between them however does this mean that Gamo is their actual name and Oba is the pen name could it be the other way around are they both pen names are they even the same person nothing has ever been officially confirmed and I'd doubt it ever will be in fact the name tsukumi Oba is one of the few things that we actually know about the author for absolute certain even if it's not their birth name because we don't know where they were born how old they really are even their gender has only been alluded to over the years they've participated in only a handful of written interviews usually in promotion for the few works that their name is associated with and those interviews have given the information that Oba has been inspired by various gag manga artists throughout the decades and that they enjoy collecting teacups and perching themselves on a chair in a pose made famous by one of their own characters it is highly likely that the name Oba is a pen name at the very least writers for Shonen Jump usually don't make the cut on their first outing to be published especially not without any kind of awards or accreditations under their belt Death Note was the first work under oba's name considering that and also that the quality of the work itself is higher than what one would expect from a rookie writer lens itself off to the idea that Oba has been around the block for a time not only that and I don't know how true this is but it's a good story story goes that the pen name itself is a play on common terminology at the jump offices see in any release of Shonen Jump manga are presented in order of popularity the first story being at the start and the least favorable being at the back apparently there is an internal term for the last few sections of any jump release batsugumi or X group these are manga that haven't performed well enough to be in earlier sections of the release and are more than likely on the path to being cut for some new blood so the name obatsugumi if ordered by first to last name and then spaced out could read obatsugumi either hinting at what the writer thought their chances for Death Note doing well actually was or an acknowledgment of where they might have historically been placed in Jam lineup for a long time that was kind of all we knew with Death Note being their only credit both when the manga was released and even when the anime started you know Making Waves worldwide the real face behind the name Oba kept their head down only resurfacing in 2008 when they released a new series Bakuman and then again in 2015 with their most recent work Platinum end manga writers having pen names is actually nothing new it's a pretty common practice but at the same time even if an author's name such as I don't know masumune Shiro is a pen name we eventually get a face and even in some cases their legal name as the years go by not here though but even if the writer is a big old question mark death notes illustrator is thankfully a bit easier to get a beat on Takashi obata is a manga illustrator that's been in the business since at least 1985 being a lifelong fan of the medium since child Hood his first major Spotlight occurred that same year when he took home the tezica award for his One-Shot manga 500 konen no shinwa shortly afterwards joining the staff of the famous aforementioned publication weekly Shonen Jump while he eventually started his manga publishing career solo releasing cyborg jichon ji in 1989 he would later instead begin to collaborate with other writers his most famous collaboration in the 90s was with the series Hikaru no Go in 1999 with writer Yumi hota Hikaru no Go would also be the first series obata worked on that would see an anime adaptation which was released in 2001 produced by Studio pariet obata by looking at his previous work was an in interesting and also smart choice to pair with the story that oboe was writing Yumi hota's Hikaru no Go is essentially a sports manga but without any of the high impact action scenes that could be drawn to increase excitement so at the time obato was tasked and succeeded at making the game go where players are sat around a table with little colored stones look just as exciting and interesting to read about as say Prince of Tennis that during that same year was only a few pages away also being published in jump so an illustrator who made a great showing at making a strategy game interesting and a story that could be essentially described by some as chess without the physical game board now that is the beginning of a great manga however for the sake of this video that's where we're going to stop discussing this series as purely a manga since this video you know does rely on a visual aspect from here on out we are going to be focusing on the anime adaptation to discuss most of the story's narrative and character arcs rest assured however that in the case of Death Note the anime adaptation is considered extremely faithful and in some cases depending on who you ask even better than the original in some respects and it does not diverge largely from The Source material For Better or For Worse so just shy of three years from when the manga was first published in Shonen Jump Death Note was adapted into an anime that started airing in October of 2006. the anime was handled by Production Studio madhouse who was still in the middle of their adaptation of Nana and fresh off the adaptation of season 1 for Black Lagoon yeah you got historically mad house has been a studio that handled a lot of properties with a particular kind of edge to them their adaptations of Satoshi Khan's Paranoia Agent and naoki urasawa's monster are of particular note today due to their focus on unique character deaths alongside a brief touch of the supernatural in regards to their antagonists many of the projects that they handled also had heavy emphasis on character drama something Death Note had in Spades so as far as whether they could handle the material as a studio they had the resume to back it up the interesting thing about their staff list for this project however is that despite the Studio's large amount of experience the Death Note adaptation was handed down to a fresh series director who at that point had only cut their teeth in the unit and episode director chairs for projects like Galaxy Angel and gun grave Death Note however would be the proper directorial debut of one tetsuro at okay well technically if we're being pedantic technically Iraq is director of Debut was for an OVA called fairy Musketeers Little Red Riding Hood but you know that's far less of a dramatic introduction for the man so I'm just adding this in now to be a bit more accurate and now we can continue araki would later gain even more recognition internationally for his work on the anime adaptation of Attack on Titan but that was still a good seven years away for him at this point however I could write a whole video on araki's directing style over the years and still might do if I get drunk enough and the video was in podcast format but for the sake of this video it is safe to say that his style is best described as the opposite of subtle he likes to take moments and add intensity where there might not otherwise have been and if you want to make something far more over dramatic than you need to he's the man for the job though interestingly enough this adaptation and the series as a whole does not begin with high paced action or an overly dramatic rendition of a mundane activity no instead this series begins with [Music] the first episode of the anime is titled rebirth now I've never been one to dig too deeply into the meaning of any episode's title this goes for any show because like the few times I feel an episode's title has held great meaning is when it's so on the nose that the title card doesn't even show up until halfway through the episode like that one time an episode of gungrave was titled die try and guess what happens right before that title card is revealed to the audience in this case however I think the titling of rebirth is an interesting contrast to how the manga titled chapters one can infer that rebirth is signaling the start of our protagonist Light Yagami and his new life as the killer Kira this is where it started this is where he was reborn it has a particular epic quality to it that lends itself to being a bit more grandiose than its manga counterpart it's probably thanks to tetsuo oraki the manga however started off with its first chapter being titled killed boredom somewhat encapsulating the mood behind the first two key characters of the story here both light and the Shinigami uriuk begin walking down the path of the narrative not necessarily for some great glorious purpose like Light May later claim but because they were both bored ryuk has in almost every adaptation of his character being a creature that gets bored easily and enjoys seeing what happens if he nudges things in particular directions most of death note's entire story only exists because ryuk himself was bored out of his mind and dips into the human world for kicks light on the other hand is no different he's been portrayed as a typical valedictorian Japanese school student but to the point where his classes are almost unnecessary for him he's too smart he's too good he spends his school days daydreaming about life and his place in it and like the god of death he meets he is immensely bored so board that seeing a black notebook fall from the sky is enough to pique his interest he is so bored with life that he has no existing attachments to the world that would keep him from exploring what this notebook has to offer no extracurricular activities at least none shown no real social life to speak of Light Yagami is a character that has been given so much intelligence and mental skills that everything about a typical life feels dull so he doesn't engage with it but it also makes him a near-perfect avatar for the events that follow who better to change the world than someone who doesn't much care for how it currently is someone who wouldn't be sad to see any part of the old world die so light receives the notebook and then spends the next several days experimenting with it and marveling at the powers now granted to him but this is also arguably where his story starts to end while we've barely begun it's in these initial chapters where light still unused to the powers that his disposal and unsure exactly of what might be used against him makes some of his most critical mistakes namely acting out when first challenged by the mysterious detective L via television after spending several days using the Death Note 2 great effect starting his plan for a new world free of criminals he begins to draw interest from worldwide entities wondering how exactly all these people are dying from heart attacks specifically he grabs the attention of L an international detective who in an attempt to gather more information about the relationship between television broadcasts and the Kira killings sets up a live press conference to address the situation the conference was presented by a man with the nameplate Lind L Taylor giving off the air that L himself was in front of the camera light then uses the death note to kill Lind L Taylor live on air believing to be making a worldwide statement that Kira should not be challenged only to be caught in Elle's trap L's broadcast was not worldwide but did in fact start in Japan and was localized to the area where light lived not only did this mean that his statement was Stamped Out cold by not being shown to a worldwide audience but it also signaled to those watching that Elle was not a detective to be trifled with as he has now narrowed down Kira's location from the entire world to just a few districts within Japan and he was closing in Beyond this point is where light begins to further double down on his delusions let's say on not only how smart he is but on his mission to change the world what this means is that any mistake he makes suddenly becomes the plan all along actually while this is commendable as it helps him get out of situations that he's boxed himself into ideally he shouldn't have put himself in those situations to begin with L now knows his relative location and we are only three chapters or two episodes into the narrative and and he continues to make progress light starts to use his father's connections as chief of the Japanese task force against Kira to learn the Authority's movements and strategies against him which is smart in theory until Elle soon realizes that there is a leak in the police force which helps him narrow down the search even further but remember light has doubled down this is not a setback Oh No in fact this was all according to keikaku because now L an individual without a face or a name currently immune to the Killer's tactics will begin to investigate the police force who are already in the dangerous positions of having their identities made public and at risk of Retribution from Kira it's Kira's gamble that this will cause resentment within the police force and that they will be encouraged to reveal Elle's own face and name so that he is at just as much risk as they are and at which point it's Checkmate unless L foresees the strategy and plans around it which is largely what the next handful of chapters are about one could easily describe Death Note the core entertaining part of Death Note as an intense game of Uno where the main characters just keep using the reverse card against one another over and over and over again each time thinking that they now have the upper hand oh but in fact it was just all part of the other's plan it should also be said that this early section does clearly showcase personal opinion which of the two minds is superior I know that many discussions have been held over the decades since the story was released as to which of the two characters is intellectually superior but really I never saw that comparison as Fair the board in which the characters play this intellectual game of chess was rigged from the start by the narrative's own namesake the death note without which it's unlikely that light would have ever been able to commit any atrocities similar to what he does without first being tracked down and captured far sooner most of the times that he evades or eludes capture is because of oh ah ah I'm fine most of the times that he evades or eludes capture is because of the note itself the rules are only known to him and him alone in this game which gives him a distinct Advantage one so big it's almost laughable that a character touted as one of the biggest masterminds in anime history could still find himself boxed in at all the notebook is his cheat code without which this story seizes to both function and be interesting how the notebook works is again arguably half the fun of the narrative in both the original and the adaptation a concrete list of rules are presented to the reader slash Watcher in the form of either chapter breaks or episode eye catches the big important ones are explained in Universe of course the human whose name is written in the note shall die if the cause of death is not specified the person will simply die of a heart attack yada yada yada but how light as a character can discover new rules and bend the ones already known is what makes the aggression of the narrative thrilling for example how can light not only kill those who stand in his way but also use those people to further his own ends [Music] this brings us to the arc involving detective Ray Pember for many people this section of the story is the best that Death Note has to offer and at the very least this section is what sold the series to a lot of people and it's not hard to see why in brief terms it is here where death note shows not only how much different it is from traditional detective stories and the like but also at the same time how much it is influenced and inspired by those same types of narratives through some of his more impulsive actions as Kira light finds himself on a short list of potential subjects for the authorities this list was written based on criteria that L has come up with and light hasn't been singled out yet but he has some heat this leads him to being tailed by American FBI agent Ray Pember so that the authorities can either rule him out or focus on him a bit harder unfortunately while using the note is inconspicuous enough and we haven't yet reached the point where the police understand that it exists and how it works it would still be Midas suspicious if the only people who end up being killed by Kira are also those that Light Yagami happens to hear about in his daily life what's great about this section is how Rey works and operates specifically how traditional and normal his methods are for lack of a better description the authorities are still treating this like any other investigation and while L might have his suspicions of Supernatural elements to the Kira murders the authorities are still fully unaware of just how Supernatural their foe is and it's fascinating to see oh I'll just tail the target all on my own shamey didn't count on a literal god of death sussing you out Ray it is important to note that light is not the one noticing Pember here and it's possible that he might never have and that narrative might have gone a completely different way but because ryuk is once again bored and likes to give things a nudge to see what happens he informs light one evening that they are being tailed by someone which sets light on edge the interesting addition to this section is what the audience learns about Pember that light never does penber had been tracking light for quite some time by this point having been called into Japan by L several days before he was in fact about to end his surveillance on light thinking him to be nothing more than your average Japanese student but then ryuk gives his nudge and light begins to focus on Pember for his own ends without realizing just how close to being cleared he actually was but of course this all became just as planned it was not a mistake and of course light had always planned to be a suspect or so he would tell people he manipulates Pember into revealing his identity blackmails him by threatening those close to him and then uses that in combination with the abilities of the death note to bring penber onto a train and fill in the blanks on some harmless pieces of paper with the names of his bosses and all of his associates lights Master stroke with dealing with Pember is not just how he is able to determine pember's full name but also how he was able to manipulate Pember into killing off the entire FBI Force by unknowingly using the Death Note while some Supernatural trickery is involved the light still ends up using common tricks that anyone can do like charismatically moving a conversation with Pember so that he reveals things that light only assumes but doesn't know only to then use that information against him the note is an advantage certainly but this is where light shows that he doesn't always need the note to get what he wants only that he will absolutely smoothly use the note when it benefits him getting Pember to use the Death Note by all accounts is a brilliant move no one yet knows that the note exists or how it works so convincing this FBI agent to kill his fellow agents is dastardly it's also one of the first real wins that Kira has in the series because being able to continually kill as he does near indiscriminately is not a real win and since Elle's arrival Kira has had nothing but setbacks and being constantly forced onto his back foot but being able to strike back at those hunting him is a real blow to them and a massive bolster to his ego it's only a shame that this Turning Point becomes one of the few real wins that he ever gets now moving constantly back into Corners by the ever Vigilant l a couple of things could have stopped or at least delayed Kira at this point but we can forgive most of that with the phrase The Show Must Go On Ray Pember while his methods were or more traditional which is a wonderful contrast to the more Supernatural elements of the series were sloppy he shouldn't have been tailing light solo without any backup as there would have been plenty of times that he could have either been identified or left light alone without supervision to commit his crimes since I doubt he was telling him 24 7. he also shouldn't have revealed his identity it was already known by this point that Kira only kills Those whom he knows the identity of so revealing that to his suspect even if he personally thought light innocent at that point was extremely Reckless lastly his incompetence was brought to a head when after he had revealed his identity to a suspect he never informed his superiors that it had happened sure it would have made him look real bad given the situation on the bus that light had put him in as you know the FBI were not in Japan in any official capacity but to not have somehow let those who authorized his actions namely L know of the true circumstances on the bus seems like a massive mistake on his part while light could have with other methods he later uses gotten out of any tight spot that Pender's info would have put him in the authorities and L could have zeroed in on light far quicker had they been informed that penber was compromised but he didn't tell them these could have been things that happened but alas The show must go on and so with Pember out of the way Kira feels emboldened but because of his actions further suspicions have been drawn onto Light Yagami the student spender was investigating light after all and his actions before the death of his entire team were the most suspicious which brings us to one of the most infamous moments in the entire narrative Kira now has eyes on him more than ever before literal eyes in the form of his bedroom being bugged by the police thankfully it's Kira's own paranoia that allows him to realize he's being watched unlike before where ryukat to tell him however he still used ryuk to cover where all the cameras were with the promise of apples ryuk's favorite food knowing where the cameras are means he also knows where the blind spots are in his room and while those are few it leads to Kira coming up with an insane plan to commit murders while at the same time visually appearing completely innocent and ignorant of events to anyone spying on him he secretly places a portable television in a bag of chips and uses that TV to discover new names and faces of criminals to kill and then using a small piece of the note also attached to the inside of the chip bag he writes their names down and Kira's killing continues all the while Light Yagami was simply doing homework quietly in his room leaving the police and L none the wiser how could light be doing any of this he did nothing wrong all he did was take a potato chip and eat it this moment is so beloved not just because of how ridiculous it is but because because of how it has been portrayed if you recall death note's artist obata was brought in because he previously was able to make mundane scenes interesting in Hikaru no Go and this is precisely the moment that it should have been clear as to why all Kira does here is eat a potato chip something so simple so innocuous but because of how obata drew it and because of how the animators at mad house later animated it it is so thrilling so overly dramatic that despite just how stupid of a concept the scene is on paper it works so well so well that it has been parodied to death and back by literally everyone myself included this plan of kiras does seem to have an effect while it's very difficult to swing Elle's attention one way or another it is quite a bit easier to swing the views of those around him the regular humans of the task force if they were in charge Kira would have controlled the world long ago but here we are very few regular humans could have done much against Kidder on their own without L with the exception of one of course the next section of the story is interesting because it focuses heavily on really the only feminine portion of this side of the narrative this is because of the introductions of both Naomi masora and the idol Misa Misa Naomi masora is the fiance of Ray Pember who traveled with him to her home country of Japan to be with him during his mission Naomi is a former detective who prior to the start of this narrative once participated in an investigation with Elle himself and while she takes little interest in her fiance's work at the start that all changes with his death though she has little to go on she's not part of the investigative team and Rey told her very little about his work but the one thing that he should have told others he did tell her namely that he had to show his ID to someone while on duty this leads Naomi to correctly deduce the Kira was on the bus with him that day and it led to his death this is something that we the audience know to be true she attempts to contact to the investigation team but you know being an ordinary citizen one who officially is from the United States no less she has no clear and easy way to get in touch with L to inform him of what she knows unfortunately for her while attempting to speak with the police she runs into Kira instead who shortly afterwards realizes who she is and works quickly to rid himself of this sudden and massive threat if Naomi is able to contact L then she can inform L of the things that Rey told her before he died which would paint the crosshairs of the investigation squarely on lights back so despite the fact that in Kira's mind he had planned to be a suspect all along actually and that it shouldn't be an issue well she needs to be dealt with in a similar fashion to how he convinced Rey to eliminate the FBI agents investigating Kira he slowly convinces Naomi that as the son of the police chief he is actually working with the task force and that she too join but first he would need to see proof of her identity to verify who she is he wants a face and a name and she gives it to him I both love and absolutely hate this scene and what it means for the narrative on the one hand it is wonderfully written to the point where the moment of Kira's reveal has so much more impact to it than it did previously when he revealed himself to Rey earlier in the series because Kira only admits his identity to someone when he knows it doesn't matter and for Naomi to realize all of that mere moments before the effects of the note take hold are chilling I hate these scenes and this twist because I've always thought of it to be a massive waste of her character in the little time we have with her she shows her prowess as an investigator being someone who once worked directly alongside L someone who L will later remember fondly which is a rarity for him she could have been a far longer term antagonist to Kira as the story progressed being driven solely by the loss of her fiance by his hands but all of that ability is cut off extremely quickly but before it ever really had a chance to become anything worthwhile the positive of that I suppose if we want to look at it this way is that it begins to show just how different Death Note is to other similar narratives in another story Naomi would have become a major reoccurring character who light has to hold at Bay while continuing his battle against L but death note doesn't do that it doesn't give us that satisfaction and just says to us yeah that might be how some other narratives would handle her for we don't need that so off she goes now according to Oba Naomi fits the bill as a cool female character that they had wanted in the story for some time in fact the only female characters to appear in the story before Naomi was light's mother and sister who barely get any scream time at all Oba did have a problem with writing Naomi though originally from what we can tell she was in fact originally designed to be a longer term Foe for Kira allowing the story to take breaks from the main conflict between light and L and provide new different challenges for Kira to face but during development Oba concluded that her abilities were a bit too good and decided instead to remove her before she became a greater complication to the narrative as a whole which it makes sense really as much as I don't like it because I would have loved to have seen Maura for character I do understand for all intents and purposes Naomi's name and face are available knowledge for a character like light who has access to police records so keeping her identity a secret while she investigates Kira on her own without any backup or resources would have eventually become a real issue for Oba as a writer both that and she really has little reason not to immediately join up with L at her earliest convenience than making it difficult to use her as a break in the narrative because she would now be intrinsically involved with L from an investigative standpoint it's one of those things where when you really think about it it makes a lot of sense like her existence would have eventually had Oba being written into a corner one that they could not simply add a new rule to the death note their way out of I'm thankful that she got a bit more fleshed out in the prequel novel published in 2006 Death Note another note the Los Angeles BB murder cases this novel was written by Nissi oishin of monigate Fame whose name I probably just butchered and it covers the story of one of Elle's former cases the very one where he collaborated with Naomi order to catch the killer known as Beyond birthday in Los Angeles it's a story that was brilliantly written even if Obed themselves didn't have a direct hand in it I do wish that another note was able to get an anime adaptation like petitions have existed since at least 2010 but nothing is ever materialized and it's unlikely that anything will at this point it's just been this wonderful little bit of background for those interested enough to seek it out hint and nudge nudge go read it I suppose the other reason why I am so disappointed in Naomi's Arc is the character is because Death Note as a whole doesn't really leave a lot of room for any female character to have a meaningful impact on the story and largely they all seem to exist because it would be extremely odd to have a story that works on this scale have zero female characters which brings us to Misa Misa is also a character who I honestly feel like is another example of wasted potential her impact on the story is less about what she personally brings to the table and more about what comes to the table with her as a package deal namely REM Misa is introduced as the second Kira she is an individual who gains access to another death note and is a worshiper and follower of the first Kira as such she dutifully follows what she believes to be his path to a new world she also slowly begins to try and find the Uriel Kira so that she can marry him and live happily ever after with him in their new world at least that's the delusion that exists within her head and her head alone Kira on the other hand has very little interest in Misa as a person as a woman and as a potential partner in his quest to godhood he is only interested in her as a tool because Beyond a second notebook she possesses something that he does not namely the eyes of the Shinigami now this is something that actually appears in the narrative much earlier than this but since it really only becomes far more important with misa's introduction I left talking about it until now ryuk explains early on that owners of the out can make a deal with the Shinigami that gave them said note that deal being in exchange for half of their lifespan at the time of the deal the user gains Shinigami eyes These Eyes allow them to At a Glance see the true name and remaining time of any human in front of them it's an ability that would be insanely useful to Kira but he foregoes the deal because he believes the cost to be too high giving up half of the time that he could be spending as God of the new world is not worth the advantage that it would give him but if another person made the deal instead Misa due to her Devotion to Kira makes the deal with her Shinigami RAM and gains the eyes for her use this makes identifying her as Kira much harder as she does not have the same limitations that light does for her own killings she can obtain the names of targets much faster and through a completely unknown method to L in the investigative team the problem however is that her devotion is so high that once she identifies light as Kira due to the fact that she can't see his lifespan as an owner of the note she latches on near instantly and wouldn't you know it l takes notice of the fact that socially inept Light Yagami who is already pretty high on his list suddenly got a new relationship out of nowhere with someone he previously had no contact with or connection to right around the time that he suspected the second Kira to have made contact with Kira number one fascinating needless to say that throughout the entire narrative however misa's eyes have had very little use while she does end up in the presence of L and could theoretically see his name and kill him she also gets locked away and nerfed fairly quickly not only that but her personality could best be described as an air-headed Zealot while she has an unwavering Devotion to Kira she herself is not exactly the smartest tool in the shed far more often she ends up being a liability to Kira rather than a benefit but I could not describe her as useless to the show's narrative as she does come with a singular Advantage without which the final showdown would go very differently before we get to that I want to take a bit of a tangent and talk about something that I briefly very briefly touched on in the intro something that I think is a perfect example of not only Elle's detective style in general but also how the mystery of this narrative is told because unlike most Mysteries definitely is not a whodunit we don't need to figure out who did the killings he's our POV character now instead Death Note is an inverted detective story a how catch him and explain that well I get to talk about Colombo [Music] now I'm not going to assume that everybody watching this video knows about the character of Columbo and who he is especially since he's not even anime adjacent but to simplify Columbo was a live-action detective crime series starring actor Peter Falk that aired on U.S television starting in the late 1960s and throughout most of the 70s Colombo as a character is relevant to our discussion today not just because of his style of detective work but how that style is presented to a viewing audience the main thing that Columbo and Elle share as detectives is that neither of them spend a lot of their time trying to solve a case necessarily episodes of Colombo historically start from the perspective of that story's villain usually committing their crimes and directly showing the viewer how they attempt to cover everything up before the police and specifically Columbo arrive Colombo then enters the room and always gives off the air that he knows exactly the same things that the odd audience does he's essentially solved the mystery within just a few minutes but the tricky part the real meat of the story in this case is not the mystery of who did a thing but rather how they did it and how Colombo can prove it all right Lieutenant you claim that I planted these paintings suppose you prove it can we yeah yeah with fingerprints ah sorry to disappoint you lieutenant fingerprints won't help you at all my fingerprints are all over those paintings no we're not looking for your prince what do you remember the time that I was in your apartment and you came in with some paintings and remember I wanted to see him and you wouldn't let me and I even touched them you touched yes my fingerprints are on those paintings now if Mrs Matthews is guilty How Could my fingerprints get on paintings that she stole it's a setup that's all you you you you you put your prints on those paintings while you were bent over watching them when they were working on it he touched them you thought you [Music] this is essentially l in how he attempts to solve the mystery of Kira he never really spends any time trying to determine who Kira is he's had a solid beat on that since before he and light ever met what ends up befuddling him what stops him from just ending the case immediately as solved is that while he is 99 certain that light is Kira he is far less certain about how the murders are accomplished and how he can prove to a Layman that light actually committed any crimes this becomes the cat and mouse game that the series is most famous for both of our protagonists know who each other is essentially but the entertainment throughout the narrative is in just how close Elle can get to figuring out the secrets of the Death Note itself and how Kira can either deflect or confuse the situation Kira's biggest advantage of course is that at the start L lives in a reality that we are very familiar with that reality is one where death gods and what are essentially magic notebooks are not things that exist nor are they things that he has faced prior to this case and it is easy to a degree for Kira to steer him and the investigation away from the truth simply because the truth itself would be difficult to believe of course Kira's level of confidence because of that basically screws him to a degree for example early on KIRO uses his victims to directly taunt L and just calmly tells Elle about the existence of death gods and their love or at least ryuk's love for apples but L is not a stupid character far from it and he rightly gets stuck on that one taunt to the degree that he starts to believe it as an actual factual statement because once you start to believe that death gods exist the idea that someone could just kill someone else with what is essentially magic becomes a lot more plausible but how do you prove that to the public how do you prove that to a court or really anyone that this kind of magic exists that's Elle's dilemma and he gets close he gets very close but just when he does it's time for the game to change once again which brings us to whiteout foreign out is the manga chapter with the anime being titled decision this is where the main battle between Kira and L hits its second stage L has zeroed in on light so hard and so heavily that he is literally boxed in near completely despite the advantages in his situation and his killing methods L has him in check and without any other change to the situation it is essentially Checkmate but light has one last play and that is to flip the board and walk away we get reminded of a seemingly throwaway line from very early on in the series a new to the audience feature about the death note and its relationship with the death gods that grant them and owner of the Death Note can relinquish their ownership of the note doing so removes their memories of ever owning or using the note but it doesn't change the past or anything like that their actions still happened they just lose their memories of it and gain an amnesia about the whole thing so Kiera concocts a plan where he relinquishes his ownership of the note and with it his memories of being Kira essentially killing Kira himself before Elle gets the chance to and in his place he leaves Light Yagami the boy who was once a student the boy who has no knowledge of death gods or magic notebooks but who is still nonetheless extremely intelligent and a massive Ally to L and the investigation L is now in an even bigger quandary this light is not Kira but he doesn't know why once again he is pitted not against the question of who but why and how light may have once been Kira of which L is certain but how this change occurred and who now holds the title of Kira becomes much more important in Broad strokes this is another change in the narrative a new arc so to speak REM under the original Kira's guidance before losing his memories of course takes the death note to a new owner who will use it for his own gains and becomes a new Kira L the investigation team and now this new and completely innocent Light Yagami have to solve the Kira mystery from a new angle that angle of course being the fact that for the first time who is actually a question mark even the audience doesn't even know at the start this is why I think that I don't usually talk about like the knowledge game between the characters and the audience as as being what has defined death note and what makes it interesting to watch because I don't think that's it just because we know who Kira is at the start is not the sole reason that the narrative is interesting because plain and simple now we don't know who Kira is nothing's really changed the next handful of chapters and episodes follow the investigation of the third Kira and while the arc focused Narrative of determining who this new Kira is and catching him is extremely riveting entertainment the larger character arcs between our protagonists are almost the far more interesting thing here now we get the chance to see who Light Yagami was as a person uncorrupted by the power of the Note One whose ideas about Justice and the law far more align with that of the traditional police and of course L himself this light is far brighter I think would be a good description or lighter if you want to sound cute about it Kira light has always spent his time in this kind of weird Mastermind mode where the face of Light Yagami the diligent and dutiful son of a well-regarded police officer was nothing more than a mask to hide his intentions to become God of his new world but here this light is not a mask it's an actual person with his own wants desires and motivations this is a person who can develop meaningful relationships with the other characters and where for a brief time a true friendship can develop between himself and L this is also the time where we start to dip a bit deeper into Elle's personality his past and to a certain extent his loneliness it's not an uncommon Trope in narratives to have highly intelligent characters sectioned off and separated from other people because they they don't fit in well Elle's eccentric personality and actions don't really make him a social butterfly and finding someone who can actually stimulate him on an intellectual level would be quite hard to do most of his relationships with people are more like just business acquaintances rather than real true friends he grew attached to some of them of course his fondness for working for Naomi masoda is what helped him to zero in more heavily on light as a suspect but prior to this investigation he's never shown to really have a true friend that was near his level and then this version of light walks in this light is nice innocent and most important of all he can think like Kira because he was Kira but this light views Kira as a separate entity which is extremely useful to L and the investigation not only that but this entire Series has been pitting these two people against one another and while Kira has only really had the upper hand because he had all the cards so to speak the non-kira light clearly shows that this person has a level of intelligence that El Ed Myers light is someone who he feels intellectually close to which bothers him so much because he could never truly shake his suspicions of him going so far as to chain them both together so that light could always be under surveillance by him personally light becomes one of if not the only friend that L has in his life wazuri is more like a parental figure and the task force Naomi and the FBI more like work friends at best or just acquaintances at worst he has never shown to have a true friendship with anyone always locked up in his work and the Very nature of the Kira case made opening up to anyone extremely dangerous for him so we never really got to see that side of him except briefly here with this completely innocent light yakumi which was nice unlike a big chunk of this next Arc because Beyond its slow development of light and Elle's relationship and how it finally introduces Shinigami to the task force the only real development of note is that of REM now REM is a Shinigami who's been in the story since Misa arrived Ram is to me so like ryuk is too light except not REM is not here for kicks or entertainment like ryuk is REM is here specifically for Misa this is because REM was good friends shall we say with another death God by the name of jelly suit jelly Sue himself was infatuated with a human girl called Misa and he performed a cardinal sin of all Shinigami by using his death note to avert misa's destined end he kills the human that was supposed to murder her and since doing so is not allowed jelly suit turns to dust leaving his death note behind and REM feels it prudent to give it to her thus starting misa's side of the story for REM though she starts as a casual Observer of the narrative but over time develops true feelings for Misa and becomes protective of her despite the dangers that such feelings pose she doesn't want anything bad to happen to Misa and Kiera utilizes this for his own ends foreign [Music] the third Kira higuchi is captured by the Japanese task force and the notebook ends up in their custody touching the notebook reveals to them all the current Shinigami associated with it REM and the book gets passed along to L so that he can witness this though in doing so he makes probably his only true mistake of the entire series he loses focus at the Revelation that death gods are real and as his mind starts to quickly snap together a bunch of former puzzle pieces he doesn't immediately notice light taking the Death Note from him and becoming Kira once more just as planned [Music] foreign Kira has some flashback scenes where he reveals everything to have been his plan all along actually as per usual and then he returns to the task force HQ with everyone else after sneakily killing higuchi with a piece of the note that he had attached to his watch giving him ownership of the note once more the task force is now left with a problem before passing the note to higuchi Kira and ryuk wrote on the back cover two additional rules one that states that anyone who uses the note must continue to use it else they die after 13 days and also a rule that states that if the note is destroyed anyone who has touched it will die making it so that not only will no one attempt to destroy the Death Note which would have had Kira then become regular old like Yagami again but it also locks into their minds that this 13-day rule exists and in effect clears both himself and Misa of becoming Kira at all since it's been past 13 days since either of them have been in contact with The Notebook but L as usual is not an idiot and he sets up a plan to prove conclusively that not only does this notebook do what it says it does allowing Kira to kill people but also that this mysterious 13-day rule is not actually a thing if he was able to complete this plan light and Misa would not in fact be cleared and instead be under even more suspicion once again something that Kira knows perfectly well and is not at all worried about because he knows that Misa is now at risk too and REM doesn't like that Kira has put REM in a black mouse type situation where if she does nothing Misa could be discovered as the second Kira and killed or she could intervene and stop the investigation right here which is what she decides to do [Music] REM kills watari and L breaking the same rule that jelly Sue did way back when and ultimately REM turns to dust leaving nothing but her death note behind for light to acquire but after so long this was it Elle received a heart attack and died in kiro's arms all the while looking up at the smug face of the man who bested him now I have problems with this but it mostly just comes down to Kira being a real dick I don't see this as a win for Kira in the traditional sense some people would probably claim that Kira has been playing L like a fiddle since he gave up his memories way back when and that everything has been according to his plans which while somewhat true speaks volumes more about how weak kitta really was in this game I view the end of their chess game not as Checkmate in kida's favor but as check in Elle's favor elk just never anticipate that Kilda would blackmail an audience member into killing his opponent for him because that is essentially what this feels like L using his wits and intellect has proven multiple times that on even terms he would wipe the floor with Kira but he is only delayed in doing so because Kira keeps changing the rules of the game like a playground kid who challenges him to rock paper scissors and then insists that they make it best out of three and then best out of five and so on until someone else comes along and ends their game for him he doesn't win fairly but he technically never needed to and that's the point this entire story started off in some ways as a critique of the Justice systems that exist in the world these systems are corrupt and if only someone who understood True Justice could fix things then it would all be better except in this case that someone doesn't understand True Justice there is nothing different between Kira using the rules or changing the rules of the game to his advantage and any criminal who knows the justice system inside and out and uses that to avoid conviction if you know the rules and always win compared to those who don't know the rules Is that real Justice and I feel like death note as a whole showcases this problem even if it's not blunt about it but what is real Justice I feel like that's another big part of what of what the story of Death Note tries to tell one that it doesn't really know the answer to itself which is probably why so many people can experience this series and walk away with different understandings of the narrative and it's also why I feel like this narrative is still worth talking about all these years later because of how relevant and prevalent these themes still are you could take the story and all of its important bits and tell it in so many different ways and still be relevant to a modern audience heck there are so many different versions of Death Note itself that do things differently so let's talk about that [Music] now of course the popularity of this series was huge before the anime adaptation got to this point which brings us to a slightly different adaptation of the same material Death Note 2006 and Death Note the last name are two theatrical live-action films produced and released in 2006 that covers the story of Death Note from its initial chapters all the way until this point in the story by all accounts it's a a decent adaptation of the material but more so it's a very good example of what live-action films produced outside of Hollywood are like which is to say [Laughter] pineapple man [Music] even keeping in mind that this was 2006 the CGI ryuk and REM were a bit much and even watching this in modern day it's a little hard to witness without being completely thrown out of the narrative that said this series of films does make some notable changes in some cases those changes are for time the films collapse the entire narrative into only two films that kind of require changes by necessity so for example instead of Naomi learning about the death of her fiance after the fact she conveniently tracked him down and is there on the subway platform as he dies giving us a surprisingly earned emotional beat but the biggest change however is how the films end how the films showcase L dying and how kiddo wraps up his victory because here something entirely different happens L utilizing all of the notes rules and doing the thing the series is known for by pulling out a move at the end writes his own name in the death note keeping in mind how long the note takes effect for and what happens if two notes write the same name by doing this yes L will die but he locks in his own death a whole month away making him immune to the death note if some death God were to write his name in it and then he pretends to die to get the Arrogant Kira to drop his guard and gloat and gloat he does best of all it actually keeps the manga ending related to the Akira's eventual demise but we haven't got to that part yet so we'll save that footage for later the last thing about the Japanese live-action films that I really enjoyed is actually the third film oh yeah the first two cleverly cover the events of Death Note but the third film takes place after this one is called L change the world and it follows the story of Elle's final 20 days on Earth and what he chooses to do to solve some difficult crimes the biggest of those crimes of course being the most interesting and the Crux of the narrative as it still somehow ties in the abilities from the note to be relevant even if the note itself is never used and Kira is already dead in this timeline considering how little time is spent on l in any semblance of a protagonist rule essentially being the antagonist in the main story despite you know being the hero it was great to see him tackle not only one job in a way that puts him Center Stage but also in a way that is outside of the original narrative while staying true to his character it is a fantastic film and while for many reasons I don't recommend the first two death notes except the ending of movie two this third film I think is worth the watch there was yeah there was also another live-action drama series but you know there comes a point where little about it is worth discussing yes I could go over this adaptation and how it is yet another take on the story separate from the last film separate from the anime and separate from the manga despite being based on it as it makes larger changes than any of those but really that's all you need to know about it like what do you want me to go over the DS games too all right all right all right all right all right there are a few more official Works worth covering starting with foreign [Music] I'm sure anything written by the original author counts as something worth paying attention to right now this book short stories contains several things but for our purposes today we're just going to briefly mention one and focus a bit more on another the first of notes oh God did I actually write that in the script okay the first of note is episode zero the Taro kagami story we didn't cover this earlier in the video when it probably should have been chronologically as this was a prequel one shot written and illustrated by the original creators and also published in Jump several months before the story that we all know and love came out it's not really considered Canon anymore as several aspects to it have been retconned by the series but in short it covers the actions of one Taro kagami who finds a death note on his way home from school and since he hasn't learned enough English to know what Dev means he decides to use it as a diary and writes in it about his day and house several boys from his school bullied him to his surprise all the boys that he writes about die that night of heart attacks the one shot is fairly short and according to OVA took quite a long time to write as the page limitation made telling an introductory story interesting for him Taro as a character doesn't take to the note in the same way that light does and in fact is deathly afraid of the note he's even killed by it though the biggest retcon from the one shot was the death eraser it's a simple eraser that ryuk gives out that if used on names written in the Death Note would bring them back to life unless their bodies have been cremated for whatever reason that's actually specified so the main series of Death Note instead spends a decent amount of time swapping that out with moo the idea of nothingness and how everyone must die and how after death there is nothing which makes coming back from nothing quite difficult though that eraser would have been one hell of a trump card if it existed in the main continuity the other short story of note is that of a Kira a dash Kira a user of the Death Note who chooses to change the world while thwarting near and the remainder of the old Kira investigative team we haven't introduced near yet in this video but that's not the point here we'll get to him Akira's story is a fascinating take on the narrative using the world for a tale that doesn't revolve around death but instead a race to the Bottom by auctioning off the death note to the highest bidder fun Story the main series of Death Note never actually talks about the God of shinigami's the being who created the notes in the first place even though Kira himself constantly thought himself as one and it would have been interesting if he ever came into conflict with the Shinigami God in some way but Akira actually manages that somewhat as through his actions a brand new official rule gets added to the death note about buying or selling the thing nothing Kira did was bad enough to Warrant actually changing the official Shinigami rules but Akira comes along and the Shinigami God is like oh yeah we can't have that happening anymore brilliant the whole short story is actually one of my favorite entries in the entire franchise so I highly encourage that you check it out for yourself it's worth buying the short stories collection for that one story alone honestly but then we come to this foreign [Music] Death Note story created without the help of the original authors and it is only Loosely based on the original material Netflix's death note and I know I normally differentiate media by the year that they came out in many cases but since this came out in like 2017 and the Death Note dramas had a sequel film come out around then it makes sense for me to just call it Netflix Death Note because if I say it like that everybody knows what I'm talking about so that's what we're going to go with the Netflix adaptation of Death Note takes place in America with ryuk voiced by the legendary William Defoe this ryuk gives the death note to an American boy named light Turner now Turner follows aloof's path to becoming a god like his Japanese predecessor but and I think most people will agree comparing the two lights to one another does a massive disservice to the original article though I am being unfair Turner is not a bad protagonist on his own he makes interesting decisions and the cast surrounding him does help to make an entertaining story considering that the film isn't even two hours long there is both an l and a Misa in this take but Misa is a far cry from her bubbly and scatter-brained Japanese counterpart American Misa is actually the far more manipulative to the point where I actually thought that this film was going to turn the tables and have her kill Turner and become the proper Hero by the end of the film plus again William Defoe as ryuk just makes the whole film worth watching for that alone it's pronounced ryuk Luke oh hi well I feel like the Netflix Death Note film is a decent film I think less of it as a Death Note film there are many adaptations of things that are like this where some writers take a brand and some loose elements from said brand and then just go and write their own tale and I honestly think that this film would have done far better and been far better received if the character wasn't named light you could have ryuk show up in America and give the notebook to some random American kid because hey he got a good kick out of handing it to two previous Japanese know-it-alls after both the OG and a kid has got done with the thing so why not roll the die again and see what happens that's even assuming you want to keep it with incontinuity get rid of everything except for uke and the note itself and have your own story have fun with it I think people would have been far less harsh against it if it honestly tried to do its own thing but the constant reminders and comparisons that anchor it to the original material in my mind only served as more of a noose at the end because nothing they could have wrote would have lived up to Fan expectations and it's much harder to look at light Turner and say that he shouldn't be compared to Yagami when they went out of their way to give him the same name I will say as one last thing about the Netflix adaptation and that is that I enjoyed how they decided to end it I like how it was handled and even how the original chess game between light and L wasn't really a focus in this adaptation since both of them live at the end which is not something that happens in the original at all oh yeah speaking of endings I mean the original series ended two didn't it Beyond L's death all right enough beating around the bush time to get to the real ending of Death Note not an alternate ending of some live-action film not some Western imagining of how the series ends from a different angle the actual ant in a section I'd like to call [Music] I've put off talking about the final third of the original series for two reasons the first being well it's best to talk about it at the end right but also a feeling that I had when I first witnessed this story and I doubt that I'm the only one is that the story was already over before this point so much of Death Note was the interactions between Kira and L their dance their game their battle to the death and Kira one eldide and Kira got time to reign supreme and continue living and killing without interference from the world's greatest detective and that's where it probably should have ended but if you have actually read or watched the ending of the series which you should have then you know that L's death is not the actual end now before we go over and discuss this final Arc I can't help but first bring up why I honestly believe that despite what good writing or twists this final Arc has in store from an anticipation perspective the whole thing feels pointless this Series has never been shy about random ass pulls right with both Kira and L pulling out yet another Uno reverse card to one of the other throughout their battles we the audience have accepted this but I would posit that one of the reasons why it was so gripping to watch was because they're always felt like an equal chance for either of them to win right most narratives give their protagonists some semblance of plot armor in stories of this type where the main character usually the hero will either survive to the end no matter what or die in some kind of tragic sacrifice in the final moments of the narrative since neither Kira or L had much of a reason to do said Noble sacrifice the only real ending available that would be believable is that only one of them dies or both of them do you know unless the slash shippers were right and Kira and I'll just confess their love to one another and ryuk just kills them both Romeo and Juliet style I doubt that type of ending would have worked out all that well so one of them had to go it just was always a question of who and so we kept coming back to each new chapter or episode to see what happens next the final Arc doesn't have that pull anymore while you could experience all of this with the Hope or expectation that kiddo will prevail The Meta surrounding the story would still bother you because if Oba had intended for Kira to win for Kira to become the god of this this new world then why bother at all Beyond this point he won Let It Fade to Black unless he is signaling from this point on that Kira isn't actually going to win which leads us to a new conclusion he is going to die it's just all a matter of the how and the why the answer to both of those questions is ultimately what makes you either enjoy this ending or pretend it doesn't exist so on to the ending itself with L's death Kira convinces the remaining members of the task force to continue on in his stead and resume their investigation against Kira with them blissfully unaware of the mental battle that has already occurred speaking of being blissfully unaware Kira does not know that locked away in that apartment we saw L chilling in at the beginning of the series is his old computer rigged to send out a message to someone assumingly if L himself does not get around to tell it not to which he can't because he's dead the message is sent to his former orphanage informing them of his death and making two other children from there near and mellow his successors but like disgruntled siblings they hate one another and since Elle didn't actually choose between them which was his true successor they go their separate ways with their own methods to capture Kira a lot of time is spent introducing these new characters understandable considering that it is the Final Act of the narrative and they only just showed up now how the narrative tries to paint the two of them is that near being the one who physically acts the most like L is The Logical half of Elle's succession he is as sharp as L and as thorough as L he even plays with toys like Elle would eat sweets speaking of sweets though then there's Mello he is portrayed as the emotional successor to L which is a bit difficult to wrap our minds around since Elle very rarely showed his emotions to anyone mellow compared to both L and near is a variatable loose cannon which makes it difficult for both near and Kira to handle him the two of them combined make one L essentially turning the original L into this kind of detective Hydra cut off his head and to take his place not looking good for our protagonist throughout the final Arc near fills in the narrative hole left behind by L proper taking command of a western task force with intention of capturing Kira and sidelining the entire Japanese task force due to his almost instant pegging of Light Yagami as Kira In fairness it wasn't instant though because there's a Time skip a three-year time skip I hate time skips because you know there's not much of a narrative reason for this time skip Beyond giving cover as to how or why near and mellow know as much about the plot as they do when this Arc gets going they both suspect that Kyoto took the place of Al officially in Japan and all of their reasoning is locked away behind whatever it was they were investigating in those interim three years Kira meanwhile has been relaxed during this time skip the death of L must have really set him at ease because he hasn't really made any major moves to take over the world in this span of time despite the speed in which he moved when Elle was still alive he still pretends to command the task force despite seemingly giving them nothing new to work on for three years which makes me wonder why any of the members think that they are making any semblance of progress and up until near decides to give him a phone call and tell him what's up it's almost like he doesn't really have a drive or motivation to continue with his original plans he's like the Joker if he finally got around to killing Batman he's bored now but not boring enough for you to kill him this is step one of Kira's multiple step program to failure as the arc progresses we find that the tables are turned slightly from the previous arcs remember early on when Kira wanted the investigative team to become disgruntled and uncover Elle's face and name for him well now near sows the seeds of mistrust and attempts to convince the remaining task force members that no light is Kira actually you see all of these things that conveniently make him look innocent he could have put them there don't trust him Kira's response to this is well to do nothing actually he doesn't seem to care that the task force distrusts him it's almost like they are completely unnecessary and he keeps them around for kicks there is virtually no reason why he keeps them around it's not like their organization reports to anyone that would be a threat to him the only thing really keeping him from just killing them all is his dad but even then he still keeps them around after his dad dies oh yeah his dad dies the death of Yagami senior is a plot point that always bothered me mostly because two things could have been done with this plot point to affect the remainder of the story and yet I very much feel like nothing about this portion of the plot had any effect whatsoever mellow kidnaps lights sister and demands one of the notebooks in exchange for her life Mello apparently knows about the notebooks because some police officer overheard something about it when they were arresting higuchi maybe you know what it doesn't matter it was a throwaway line and both near and mellow now know about the Death Note okay okay makes everything much simpler anyways he does the kidnapping and then they make the swap what's interesting though is that Kira is given the chance to not give up the notebook here all he has to do is kill his sister but he doesn't he hesitates something I thought was supremely interesting about this character who usually wants to win no matter what I thought that there was going to be development here but no shortly afterwards they gain information about melo's Hideout because the mafia members that he's working with are in some database somewhere and Misa can identify Who currently has the note because she can't see his lifespan from his photo so the police raid the location and Yagami senior Barrels in with the goal of killing mellow before he can do massive damage with the death note that he has the kicker though is that senior also makes the lifespan deal with ryuk for the Shinigami eyes so that he can kill mellow on site but when given the chance like light before him he hesitates and gets mortally injured as he lies on his deathbed in the hospital he ends up dying a happy man because he can clearly see light's lifespan thus according to the rules that they know of he is not he just of course doesn't know that light is not a current owner of the death note so his lifespan is freely available to see but this should have been a massive point in Kira's favor Yagami senior has been nothing this entire series but a pinnacle of morality and Justice and the task members that follow him trust him implicitly it should have been a big deal for them that light was cleared in this way but it's not long after this moment that the story goes back to trying to make the task force suspect him again because none of that actually mattered ultimately then there was little point in this tangent light is still under suspicion of being Kira by pretty much everyone and his hesitation at killing his sister was never Revisited it's just padding to reach the end of the arc where we find out whether or not Kira lives or dies but again if he was going to survive why did the series just not end with Elle's death the final showdown does exactly what should have been expected honestly I think that's what's disappointing about this whole thing near has virtually all of his bases covered he identifies the individual named mikami who Kira gave another notebook to and has been killing in Kira's dad near went ahead and replaced that guy's note with a fake one but reverso Kira predicted that mikami would be identified and had him use a fake note to throw off near that way if near tried to replace the note with a fake they would know about it near calls light and the entire Japanese task force to an abandoned warehouse where he knows mikami will also be as Kira will call him over to kill them all with his Shinigami eyes Kiana spends the entire time being smug because he knows that mikami has a real death note and not the fake one that near replaced so now in this abandoned warehouse mikami arrives writes everyone's name down excluding kiddos and then nobody dies reverso mikami apparently went entirely out of character and accidentally revealed to near's team beforehand that the real note was hidden in a bank vault so near had that one replaced too now the American task force has a convenient piece of paper with everyone's name except for light proving to everyone in the room once and for all that light is definitely Kira this is the moment that Kira loses his goddamn mind which leads to the greatest Death Note meme to ever grace the internet this scene of the anime like all of the other overly dramatic moments is Peak drama so much so that one of my favorite takes on this is simply titled swimming lessons where Kira's over-dramatic gestures are changed in the subtitles to describe light giving swimming lessons to matsuda the even more hilarious thing about this meme is that there is actually a Japanese Olympic swimmer with the last name matsuda and for fortunately never took home the gold but regardless has several medals to his name I'm sure lights advice helped in that regard and so the great Kira is defeated he gets shot at escapes and eventually collapses on a nearby stairwell leaving the last moments of the series with ryuk explaining what he said at the start that in the end when light's time has come he would use his own death note and write light's name leaving Kira to die of a heart attack obviously this is a much less satisfying ending than back when L died even if you dislike Kira as the character the circumstances do feel a little bit contrived but at the same time it was almost assuredly going to end up this way from the start when you have characters whose main defining trait is being able to come up with increasingly ways to get out of complex situations there's nothing left to do at the end then for them to just miss that one last piece of and in this case it was mikami's Independence I call mikami's actions in the Final Act odd because he was chosen specifically because of how devoted and meticulous he was sure several times in the past he acted without Direction and was even praised once for it but he made choices that always worked within the instructions he was given early on when he kills the TV presenters claiming to be the voice of Kira he does so because he honestly felt that it was something that his God would have wanted him to do and was never told not to do that but then this one misstep this one change in his entire routine was doing something that he thought was the right move even though he was specifically told by his God not to do anything but alas The Show Must Go On it was an out of character move and you could argue of course that such a thing would be the only thing that could eventually trip Kira up and I would agree but it doesn't stop it from feeling crummy like the hype and investment that we put into experiencing the series just kind of fell apart at the end because as a half decent anime reviewer once said the ending is Paramount and I largely think that that's why a lot of Death Note fans still talk about this series we just placed the ending of it at Elle's death and leave it there unless of course you read the Manga when I first wrote those words in the script I actually hadn't finished reading the manga and I had hoped that I would be able to like with a lot of other adaptations point to the original material and Shout hey they changed things it was better in the original and while technically that is correct it wasn't correct in the way that I was hoping I was hoping for circumstances to change methods to be different hell if I could have been shown that the anime had an original ending that would have been great but no the original manga is only a better version due to the format the manga in written form is much better at giving us the internal thoughts of all of the characters which for a series where everyone thinks to themselves more than they speak out loud you can imagine how much of an advantage that is beyond that the anime while slightly truncated keeps all of the major beats it was odd to me that the manga contains 12 volumes and L dies in volume seven yet not much felt missing from the adaptation considering it's missing bits and pieces here and there sure but nothing major the adaptation remains faithful although if these final chapters of the manga did anything right and different from the anime adaptation it was this the death of Kira now remember in the anime after being shot by Mount sudokira makes his Escape outside and runs through the warehouse area before finally collapsing on a stairwell presumably of blood loss ryuk wax is poetic about the time they shared before writing light's name down in his own notebook well perched up in the sky and Kira dies this is a rather light and melancholic way to end things compared to the original in the manga A desperate Kira crawls to ryuk in front of everyone and begs him to Kill Them All to write names in his death note and end it to which he says sure I'll get right on that let's start with yours not only letting light watch helplessly as he writes his name down but then the entire group Waits and watches us the seconds tick by and inevitably light dies of the very thing he caused so many others to die of there's one major reason why I actually prefer this version of events it reinforces something about Kira and gives us a gentle reminder that throughout this entire story Kira has never been the superior mind for Kira to win the game of Death Note he needed to kill L and his successors under his own power sure he had the massive cheat code that was the note itself to help but in the end he always had to rely on others to do the killing for him he couldn't kill L on his own power even with the note's abilities he had to have REM do it he couldn't figure out a way to ensure mellow's death Mello went into his own kidnapping scheme with full knowledge that he was going to die and still chose to go and in the end all of Kira's plans failed to kill near and he attempted to lean on ryuk to do the job for him but as ryuk showcases that's just a bit boring and honestly how the manga does it was just a much cooler way to end things compared to the anime adaptation Kira always had to die and even from the very start that was hinted at ryuk would be the one to do it so it's just a bit more satisfying to see it depicted in that way others I'm sure would disagree that he had to die at all and actually I guess we should take a minute to talk about that [Music] one of the things that became very popular with fans of this series was to view Kira as a 100 percent completely Justified protagonist the SE are the fans who believe from the bottom of their hearts that Kira is just and that if the Death Note actually existed that the world would be a better place with him in it which I mean if you listen to Kira's own rhetoric on the issue I can see how you'd be led to that conclusion however you'd have to also completely ignore all of Kira's actions throughout this narrative that run counter to his stated goals Kira says from the start that he only wants to Target criminals and bring Justice to those who the law and our existing Society has not and on the one hand this perspective is a noble goal because yes there are flaws in any system developed by flawed people and one could believe this to be a solution to that problem however even as soon as episode 2 of this series kid approves himself The Narcissist hypocrite with the death of Lindell Taylor who Kira did not know was an actual criminal before writing his name in the note it showcased that Kira believed anyone opposing him to be just as guilty as those who break the law same thing with Naomi masora who is not a Criminal by any definition and was arguably the first innocent person that Kira murders without any remorse Kira doesn't care about Justice he only cares about power and keeping it displaying his superiority to the world and being worshiped as a god any talk he gives about only punishing criminals like going out of his way to explain that the guy he randomly kills in front of Ray Pember was actually charged multiple times with sexual assault going out of his way to do things like that because he wants to keep up this delusion that he only targets criminals who Society despises already like come on now this is all without even conceiving that he himself is continually breaking the law that he is trying to protect and reinforce through his actions do as I say not as I do if some random guy kills people then he deserves a heart attack but if Kira does it well then it's all in the name of justice and is understandable and forgivable and that's just No Death Note I would say is a cautionary tale however considering the likelihood of a Death Note or similar artifact existing perhaps instead it is more of a parable a roundabout and highly entertaining way to Showcase a familiar adage absolute power corrupts absolutely Light Yagami was not an evil individual the whole Arc where his memories of the death note are lost showcases that quite clearly he within himself has the capacity for good as well as ill as all of us do but it's the situations that happen to us our experiences through life that ultimately shape who we are and what we become death note shows us what happens when that corruption both wins and loses it allows us to then decide for ourselves what we hold dear and what we find acceptable within our society all of that Through The Eyes Of The Once innocent Light Yagami Whose actions led to his corruption and demise now I know I just spent like all of this time this entire video talking about death note and what we end off on is kid is a dick actually not really how I actually thought this video was going to end so what else could we talk about oh yeah did you know there's a Death Note Musical hey there our care finally done editing this video because my god I've been working on this far too long I bet I could still keep working on it for a couple of months if I really wanted to so much to talk about and discuss that I didn't even get around to covering and no I'm not just talking about the DS game though that was mainly a joke but here at the end of the video I wanted to give special thanks of course to my patrons whose names have been scrolling here for a little bit but a super special thanks to patrons Ross Emerson Hector montemayor City yamaka Rife and Bonaparte sailor arashi and Omar showman thank you all for supporting me as I have been working on this Beast of a video or at least a beast of a video by my standards if you like this sort of video and want to see more either about other popular anime franchises or maybe some lesser known anime franchises perhaps let me know down in the comments and with that I'm going to sleep I've been working on this for far too long and now I just hope that the video exports and uploads safely so until next time watch more anime and stay for Frosty [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Glass Reflection

Views: 401,870

Keywords: Death Note, Kira, Light, Netflix

Id: 2Y301bRg1tc

Length: 97min 36sec (5856 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023