How Death Note Got Bad | Big Joel

hey everybody today we're gonna talk about Death Note the title of this video how Death Note got bad is pretty incendiary and maybe not the perfect way to describe my complicated and nuanced feelings about the show I've seen Death Note like five times I love it a lot and I would easily call it one of my favorite TV shows but across its runtime I loved it in very different ways starting up the show no matter how many times I've seen it I'm always blown away by how great and well-written it is but after that fairly quickly after that as we're gonna see it becomes fun useless garbage I love Death Note I love warm trash TV but when I look at the show I can't help but see a lot of wasted potential and in this video I want to explore when and how that potential was wasted it should be fun I think I'm excited for this fun chill video part one why Death Note slaps I've actually already made a video a pretty long time ago where I talked about why I like Death Note and while I still agree with some of the points I made there that video is kind of vague and just not good most games are defined by a predictable set of mechanics that the player comes to understand over the course of play when you play Mario you are offered a set of inputs and obstacles besides I think it's necessary to this video to explain in some depth why I love the early episodes of Death Note so much so to do that let's start by looking at one of the most iconic scenes in the show we're Light Yagami and L play tennis let me set the stakes Light Yagami is a sexy hot boy genius who gets a notebook from a god of death a Shinigami that allows him to kill people if he writes their name in it so he decides he's gonna kill all the criminals and become the god of this new world I will become the god of this new L is the hot sexy detective trying to track down Kira the person committing these murders and in this scene one of the first times the two characters meet they decide to play some tennis but when you first invited me to play and you know how good I was yes I'll be fine though it's been a while but at one time I wasn't actually the British junior champion l already suspects that light might be Kira but of course he's not sure and as we watched the scene we entered the internal monologue of light as he deliberates over the meaning of this game if he wins will L suspect him more what if he lets himself lose is he's going to think that I'm kid if I go for the win I suppose I could just lose on purpose but if I do it could work against me since he'd expect you to want to win he might also expect me to throw the match to avoid suspicion but toward the middle of this scene light realizes Elle's not gonna be able to deduce anything from this him winning or losing will at the end of the day be meaningless I don't see any way that he can profile me based on a tennis match so I have to assume he has some other goal in mind so looking at this we might have a question if these lines don't move the plot forward don't tell us anything of importance then why are we listening to them what's the point and the answer to that question from my perspective is simple the point is it's a tennis game sure we might understand in retrospect that this is a dead end but we can't know that until we think it through and in this way death note says something kind of profound that within its logic objects do not merely exist as a way to keep the narrative flowing to get the characters where they need to go rather they just are what they are and the characters have to deal with them we are playing a game of tennis what does tennis mean we can see this philosophy pervade the early episodes of death note this sense that objects have an existence of their own what if light gets a call at an extremely inopportune moment how can he prevent that Oh No what if my father calls back now I already promised her that I'd let her talk to him if he did this phone rings it's all over for me what am I gonna do well obviously he just has to turn his phone off this is crazy all I have to do is turn my cell phone off this isn't difficult or complicated and if light simply had never gotten a call most people in the audience would never have noticed but nevertheless we're directed to think about this phone for the simple reason that it exists and might go off it's just that simple what if someone in lights family just happened upon the death note while they were in his room well that's not something I ever expected to happen and if no character had brought it up I wouldn't give it a second thought but we do think about it in fact a substantial part of an episode is devoted to light figuring out the best and most elaborate way to hide the thing but that's not all even if someone figures out that there's a fake bass I've set things up so that there's no way they could get their hands on the notebook you see once the ink reservoir is inserted it acts as an insulator preventing the flow of electricity around the circuit this never comes up again it doesn't go anywhere but we hear about it anyway because it's something that light would have to think about can the Death Note make people do impossible stuff before they die well no it can't do that and obviously it can't if light could just give people superpowers with the Death Note the entire show would be over in like two episodes and yet we still have to go through the process of learning how this object works what it can and can't do it's impossible to make someone write what they don't already know or at the very least it has to be the kind of thing that they could come up with on their own basically even the Death Note can do the impossible and through this Sensibility this constant attention to the functioning of objects the show produces a sense of genuine wonder and intrigue look Death Note is a work of fiction and as such we know on some level that what's going to happen whether light will win or not is mostly a matter of what will serve the plot what the writers wanted to see happen but in these moment it's where we learn random useless information it doesn't feel like it's just a story like it's events are just beats in a big narrative rather the world of Death Note feels real not because it's down to earth or subdued it's not those things but because we are constantly forced to observe it with the knowledge that anything could be meaningful light could lose because his sister found the Death Note because he didn't experiment enough with how the notebook works because his phone rang because he didn't think through a game of tennis it's all important it's all on the table and I just wish it could have stayed that way part 2 Misa Amane ok let's put a pin in all this stuff we'll come back to it later but for now I want to introduce you to probably the most infamous character in Death Note Misa Amane in the tenth episode of Death Note Misa Amane enters the picture through a strange coincidence that we won't get into here she comes into the ownership of another Death Note from a Shinigami named REM she's a huge Kira supporter so she decides to use her power to track him down and when she meets him meets light she immediately falls in love it's crazy so just on a very visceral gut level I think Misa is one of the most horrendously annoying characters I've ever seen and I hate her with my full throbbing ass there are only three facts that are really important or true about mises character first she's a total simp for light easily manipulated by him willing to do whatever he says and totally defined through her relationship to him I can't be your boyfriend I can act like it thank you so much second she's unbearably annoying in every scene she's in constantly shouting never understanding what's going on etc okay third as the show likes to remind us she's a hot and sexy woman come on fellas Death Note says I bet you wouldn't mind having a little bit of Misa Amane in your life not bad at all there's really nothing else to her besides these three things in general the show makes sure to make her depiction as pandering fanservice II and vapid as possible and I find watching her to be a chore you can disagree with that of course but I won't understand you or how that's even possible honestly but more than just me not liking Misa what I find troublesome about her character is the way she changes the structure of Death Note to put it simply Misa represents an enormous bomb to the plot of the show what she lacks in character depth or interest she makes up for with the number of elements she adds to the story Misa is a reckless idiot so she's at far greater risk than light is for being caught for something trivial Misa has the ability to kill people without knowing their name and since she's endlessly devoted to light he can use her to achieve his ends Misa Shinigami REM is in turn endlessly devoted to her we'll kill light if Misa dies if you do anything that results in this girl's death the first thing I'll do is write your name in my Death Note I will is fully willing to kill herself if it would help her so in every way Misa adds complexity and unpredictability to the plot of death note the feeling that we legitimately don't know what's gonna happen next because this character has screwed up everything for everyone and while that choice could totally work for a different story I don't think it does for this one and that's because Death Note thrives off a sense of simplicity and intimacy looking back at the tennis scene i already talked about we can see how comprehensive all the stakes are here l suspects that light's Kira Light wants to figure out what else thinking and that's it everything that's happening everything that's gonna move the plot forward is right here on the tennis court in this interaction between these two minds and because of that the show is forced to engage with every bit of information it can is there a way for L to figure out lights Kira based on this game how could he do that what's the point of this while it's true the Tina hates losing it's also true that most people would rather win than lose it's human nature we have to look at these things for the simple reason that there is nothing else to look at no other way for L or light to get the upper hand and in some sense then we can understand Misa Amane as an escape hatch the embodied desire to break the stalemate between L and light Misa is a big annoying disruption and we can't depend on her acting rationally and there are a million things about her that could change the tide of this conflict Misa Amane rips the show away from comfortable stability and forces its characters to make big moves and play to win and as it turns out through that process the show loses a lot of the intimacy specificity and tension that made it great part 3 how Death Note stopped slapping so far in this video I've stayed pretty general and haven't talked that much about the plot but for obvious reasons I have to get into that stuff so what I'm gonna do now is a quick and dirty recap taking us to episode 25 of the show god help me I hate summarizing things so much also if you haven't seen Death Note now might be a good time to stop if you want to watch the show I haven't spoiled much of anything so far and I'm about to spoil everything so without further ado in the 15th episode of the show Misa Amane is apprehended by l and the police for being involved in the Kira crimes we've taken her into custody under suspicion of being the second Kira this happens because she literally leaves fingerprints on some Kira tape she sent in it's really dumb and random but whatever that's not important after that L says that light is now the primary suspect in the Kira investigation so light has to act fast and hatch a big complicated scheme first he goes into prison under constant surveillance by L from there he relinquishes his ownership of the Death Note over to REM thereby removing all his memories of being Kira just hear me out I swear to you I'm not lying you have to believe me now REM gives the notebook to a greedy businessman Higuchi who will continue killing wal light is in prison this helps to exonerate him with no evidence to go on L is forced to release the memoryless light and they tracked down this new Kira together while both light and Misa continue to be under constant surveillance this leads to some pretty wacky situations even if I leave you two alone I'm still gonna be watching on surveillance cameras so it wouldn't make any difference perfect catching this new Kira takes seven full episodes but once they finally do that light touches the notebook again restoring his memory and to add insult to injury while light was in detention he had a Shinigami Ryu right a bunch of fake rules the most important of which is that if you don't write a name in the notebook for 13 consecutive days you die if this rule were true it would be impossible for life to be Hira since he was in jail for far longer than 13 days light and Misa were detained for more than 50 days and are still under surveillance if either of them had been Kira there's no way they would still be alive by now so L let's Misa Monaco and takes the Han cuffs off of light now all the pieces are in place Misa goes off to the woods to touch the notebook and since she once saw Elle's name she can write it but wait that doesn't work after so long Misa forgot Elle's real name but as it turns out that's that's fine that's alright because before al can figure out that the 13 day rule is fake light gets Misa Shinigami REM to kill L for him she does this because now that Mesa is committing murder with the notebook again l would be sure to catch her and as I already said REM just loves Misa Amane so hard also this causes REM to die because the way a Shinigami dies is by extending the life of a human they love so that's it that's how L dies and honestly saying it all together like that it sounds pretty cool all these intricate complicated rules working together to make for a grand strategy it sounds like Death Note and I can't deny that the first times I saw the show I thought it was pretty rad when everything came together and light got the win exactly as planned but what I want to explain to you here is why I think all of this kind of sucks actually and doesn't really work first of all the way L act here is completely illogical isn't it he knows like actually knows that Misa Amane was involved in the kira crimes he says so himself a male will remain under surveillance until Kira is apprehended although she insists the tapes we found were just occult videos the physical evidence we have plus our confession suggests otherwise he suspected all along that once they caught this new Kira the power he was using would return to light music he still believes that I'm Kira even if that power had been passed to someone else he thinks that I would have planned to have it returned to me once I'm safe from suspicion what's more having now touched the note Elle has the ability to understand exactly how light would have transferred his powers this way because of this Elle immediately suspects that the 13 day rule is false and is prepared to test it out we're very close if we work this out the entire case will be seen and yet even with all of these deductions all of this information L is just like you're free to go Misa have fun go to the weird forest with the other Death Note light you don't need to be handcuffed to me anymore just have fun you're finally free to leave headquarters on your own but it seems like you never go out why why does he allow this situation to happen why doesn't he continue to surveil both of them constantly and look I know this looks like a cinemasins ding-ding moment and yeah it actually is one but Death Note is a show that's particularly averse to having problems like this l is supposed to be a genius right so watching him make this obviously thil mistake one that has given no justification by the plot whatsoever brings us out of the fiction of Death Note but the problem here runs way deeper than just the show breaking its sense of immersion with a plot hole and to explain why that is let's go back a little bit earlier in the show the first time light and Mesa meet the 14th episode Light asks REM if she'll just kill al for him could you ask REM to kill el REM said that your happiness was important but what do you think would happen if L caught one of us it means our happiness would be ruined and shockingly REM says yes fine as you wish Light Yagami but I do not like you this is a strange scene I think because it forces us to ask a question what would we think if that moment was essentially the end of the show after this conversation Ren just goes off finds el and kills him light winds would we be happy with that conclusion well obviously not that would be completely arbitrary as an ending a cop-out plain and simple totally unimaginative and unimpressive but here's the thing that's almost exactly what happens the reason why REM doesn't end up killing el soon after this conversation is that l narrowly avoids it tells light that if he should die in the next few days he's instructed the police to assume that light is Kira in the unlikely event that I die in the next few days I've instructed your father and everyone at headquarters to assume that you are Kira and then moments later Misa is apprehended by the cops and the whole big scheme we've already talked about sets in but when we come to the end of this scheme when light finally does get REM to kill el what's actually changed at this point el has all the reason in the world to say that if he dies soon el and light are both Kira's in fact he has more reason than he did the first time since he now knows how the Death Note works and immediately comes to the conclusion that the 13 day rule is [ __ ] see for all of the complexity of lights plan it's just not a very good plan for all intents and purposes it ends exactly where it begins with light and l in the same situation so we have to ask why have this plan at all then what does it actually accomplish and the only answer I can give here is that it creates a situation where light getting a literal god of death to kill L looks like a substantial ending if we add enough little complexities and weird mechanics to the show if we spend seven whole boring episodes focusing on catching this random idiot then maybe the audience will believe us when we say this ending has been earned it's very cool that light was able to pull this off but it's not cool it doesn't take a genius to ask a god of death to kill somebody it's not impressive the first time and it's not impressive 10 episodes later and looking at all of this I can't help but feel like it's the exact opposite of what made Death Note great in the first place as I said earlier what made Death Note work so well was its feeling of substance this contract between the show and the audience that things matter the phone in lights pocket the rules of the Death Note the tennis game he plays but now by the time L dies nothing matters at all the show is just an endless parade of big bells and whistles what's Misa Amane up to how can we use her and her Shinigami to put an end to this plot isn't this plan extremely extra and convoluted that must mean that it's super smart somehow in a very real sense the early episodes of Death Note were about paying attention to everything and every episode between mises first meeting with light & L's death are about ignoring as much as possible part 4 conclusion so there are episodes after L dies I mean there are 12 of them it's a pretty substantial part of Death Note but honestly I'm pretty apathetic I could talk about how near elves mean successor kind of sucks and bores me or I could talk about how it annoys me how invested the show becomes in watching light manipulate women like when it's just me say it's tolerable but once lights also manipulating Kiyomi Takada eventually forcing her to die in a way that's clearly meant to be erotic for the audience it becomes clear that the show just has an unquenchable woman problem I could also talk about how I like Tara Mika me I think he's a fun weirdo he's my take about Tarrou but in the end I don't think it's worth the time to get too into any of those things the fact is the beating heart of Death Note is the relationship and conflict between light and L and after the show fails so spectacularly I creating a satisfying resolution to that plot I just can't bring myself to be invested in what happens next we'll near win will light take the day who's to say but also I don't really care and you know maybe that's the right way to think about Death Note in general both before and after L dies Death Note is a trashy show after all from minute once a minute done it's about a little edge Lord baby who talks about being a god a lot it's so incredibly self-serious with its constant references to the Bible Ryu cuz a cute little earring so everyone can tell that he's a goth GF and he doesn't give a [ __ ] what you think about him he just loves his man and like death and stuff so yeah maybe I'm taking all of this a bit too seriously and I can say that and think there's truth in it but I can't force myself to feel that way I know it might sound silly but the best parts of Death Note are so great so precise and clever and grounded it just scratches this very particular itch that makes it feel like if I want to see something like Death Note I just have to watch Death Note again the last time I watched the show it was with my own Golf gf who hadn't seen it and honestly I did enjoy the whole thing like I enjoy comfort food and I liked watching it through another person's eyes but I will say this as we were watching the early episodes of the show it wasn't uncommon at all for me to audibly gasped at how cool it was I'd even rewind pretty frequently so we could re watch scenes I'm very annoying to watch TV with if you couldn't tell but after those first 10 or so episodes I wasn't gasping any so that's the video did you like it did you agree with it did you think I gave death no to fair shaker do you think that I was being unfair in that death no it's actually better than I was saying well be sure to leave your opinion down in the comment section below say big Joel you made a great video just then a hell yeah Death Note gets a lot worse or say no big Joel you don't understand at all big Joel big Joel uh okay be sure to LIKE comment subscribe give me money on patreon if you want to and now it's time for my patreon question of the video Erica asks who are some of your favorite directors I'll just name a few directors that come to mind right now hi uh Miyazaki's got to be one of my favorite directors ever and with that I've actually been getting way more into esau Takahata lately like i don't know what it is he manages to rival miyazaki in terms of quality while making movies that are just way worse it's it's interesting maybe I'm just on a high from watching Princess Kaguya honestly then of course I love Akira Kurosawa Martin Scorsese I think that taxi driver Raging Bull or some of the best movies ever made as well as mean streets and then um you know Donna Hertzfeld his masterpiece it's such a beautiful day might be like easily topped by a favorite movies I've ever seen so that's some of my favorite directors cool that's the end of the video now for real this time bye

Channel: Big Joel

Views: 316,130

Rating: 4.7593193 out of 5

Keywords: 4-13-20

Id: oupFT0Tsbzw

Length: 26min 53sec (1613 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020

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[u/HanginGuitar]

big joel is pretty fuckin cool

[u/TomPynch]

Big Joel is a fantastic creator.