What's in an OP? - Death Note's Heavy Christian Symbolism

I'll be honest I was a bit worried when back in March my patron Arthur D Gonzales Martin suggested I cover the Death Note openings and all of you voted for them I didn't really want to do it which is why it's taken me so long to get around to this next patron request video I mean don't get me wrong they're very good openings with a lot to the sect but I remember watching Death Note when I was younger and being phenomenally disappointed with how the story panned out for a long time until Sao came along it was my benchmark for biggest disappointments in anime and I wasn't looking forward to rewatching it at all which is my way of saying that even I can be dumb and wrong sometimes just because I'm the anime Pope doesn't make me infallible Death Note is [ __ ] great a well-written impeccably directed thriller built on great animation and phenomenal acting in both Japanese and English it's not perfect near and Mello feel kind of like eleventh-hour [ __ ] and the pacing of the story after their introduction is atrocious but even when it's bad it's a very fun can't be kind of bad that's highly entertaining in its own right and the good parts are really good and stay good throughout the series two of the best parts are the openings which are densely packed with symbolism and feature great animation music without further ado let's talk about the first one we'll definitely be getting to the second one at a later date but first some context the first death no dopey the world is an homage to Renaissance era Christian artwork there are several direct references but outside of those the shot composition and symbolic concepts all draw from those sources it's also an immaculately shot and cut music video wherein every frame matches perfectly with the music which is something that I don't want to get lost in all of the symbolism and analysis the way that this LP builds up to a crescendo in order to get you hyped is profoundly impressive in its own right that said let's get into the nitty-gritty we open on a thoroughly unconventional shot of Light Yagami 's eyes shooting open almost as though he's waking up what makes the shot odd is that the following shots create the pression that light is lying down yet here he is looking straight downward it's a very godly perspective to start from almost like light is painted on the ceiling of a chapel and a not exactly subtle way of alluding to the godlike position to which he aspires the red in his eyes is an equally unsubtle reference to the killing intent that he develops after finding the death note something that carries over to the main show as well something that come Alito Ito borrowed for erased from here we flashback to react looking skyward in a washed-out cityscape the clouds in the sky rush by as though in time-lapse this is Rio for the events of the show idling away year after year bored out of his mind in the Shinigami world we then see a grim face light walking across broken tiles and then an image of Rio chato looming over him as he lies on the ground this is meant to contrast with the more godly image of him lying on the ceiling and can be taken to allude to his position both in the beginning and end of the series lying in the dirt puts light as far from godhood as he can get and the looming shadow of rehook can be taken to represent either his corruption due to using the Death Note or the inevitability that he will die at Rios hands this is followed by the most blatant illusion in the entire opie a parody of Michelangelo's the Creation of Adam from the roof of the Sistine Chapel the painting depicts rheic descending from the Shinigami realm to give light an apple the death note itself as we see at the end of the opie the apple is also of course a very prominent symbol in christian mythology representing temptation in the original sin a fitting metaphor given how the Death Note seems to a road light soul over time interestingly light is wearing the manacle that chains him to L in this image indicating that perhaps this is meant to be the moment when he reclaims the death note after giving it up to divert suspicion from himself and Misa the last thing that we see before the title is this impressive rotating shot of light staring down L atop some sort of platform high above the city we see light standing on skyscrapers several times throughout the lp skyscrapers are a symbol of the modern world and thus I think this imagery is a literal reflection of lights ambition to be the god of the new world the inherent meaning of the shot their showdown is pretty obvious but the craft that went into it is commendable regardless the rotation around L and light is incredibly smooth and well composited it really looks as though they're rooted to these CGI objects which is impressive considering that a show made six years later couldn't even manage that on top of that though the models are also impressively detailed it's relatively easy to do something like this if you're working like masaaki yuasa with simplified styles but doing it with line work and shading this complex is something else entirely it's so detailed that you can see the reflection of L in lights I in Elle's eye we see lights reflection as well imposed against an image of a wilting rose now in Renaissance art the rose symbolizes basically everything related to Jesus and a lot of stuff besides that from his blood to his mom but the emphasis on the thorny vines and lights head brings to mind specifically the crown of thorns and a sense of martyrdom so this could show Al's perception of Kira's god complex but it could also symbolize the fragility of lights pride or possibly his loss of innocence after the title card plays we see an apple again representing the Death Note falling from the sky as the drum kicks light catches it despite walking on a precarious high beam suspended above the city even before using the Death Note light put himself above the rest of the world the high beam on which he's walking as he considers using it is a fairly direct representation of the mental balancing act that he's performing and the danger of falling into madness which of course he does you can tell that the struggle is metaphorical because it's reflected within the Apple that he's holding and staring at intently here we can see another biblical symbol a flock of doves projected onto the wall behind like like the Rose the Dove is a symbol of lots of things but here I think it represents the purity and virtue that light seasoned himself whereas the crimson shadow that he casts belies his true nature dubs can also be interpreted as messengers of God so this could also represent that Kira sees the Death Note as a sign either way the important thing here is that the image is projected not real next we see Misa for the first time lying splayed out on the ground seemingly devoid of energy this is probably her experiencing depression at the news that her parents killer would walk free but we can see in her eye a reflection of something in front of the moon as we tilt up we see that this is light atop yet another skyscraper giving in to temptation and taking his first bite of the Apple making his first kill with the Death Note his killing spree as Kira is of course what saves Misa from her depression and gives her a sense of purpose the actual moment where light takes this first bite is built up to perfectly and has an incredible impact thanks to the music as we cut to the building the drummer starts tapping on the cymbals counting down to the inevitable moment of truth which is punctuated by a heavy drum kick then the tempo picks up as we pan across shots of the various pawns and observers of Kira and Elle's game the investigation team watery nami miss hora and rape Enver and a cadre of Shinigami the Shinigami serves an interesting point of contrast to the investigation team everyone on the team is looking off in a different direction visibly flustered and confused as they try to pin down Kira except for souichirou Yagami who looks straight forward sternly the Shinigami meanwhile are all leaning in with smiles on their faces as though watching a show the image of nami holding Rey's body is also interesting because this pose is a take on the classic Christian art subject of the pietá or lamentation Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus this particular pose most closely resembles Michelangelo's famous take on the subject it's hard to draw precise parallels between now me and the Virgin Mary but she does handle the death of her fiance with an unusual serenity and grace under pressure much like Michelangelo's take on Mary as the music builds to a crescendo we see light feverishly writing names in the death note as prisoners around the world begin dropping dead within his mind a glass effigy of himself drops and shatters looks like he couldn't hold his balance after all the implication of this is that using the Death Note has obliterated light leaving only Kira it's also possibly an allusion to the scene where he tells rehook that he wants to give up the Death Note and loses his memories which would make sense of the next shot the music kicks up and a grinning Ryu takes off into the night sky revealing that he was standing in a cemetery representing the world of the Shinigami a door opens in front of Kira bathing him in light and blasting him back with wind as he struggles to step forward once again we see light and Kira staring each other down this time in an underground hallway the transition from one perspective of the standoff to another through the reflection in light sigh is really something but this time Elle's eyes aren't on him they're on Misa Misa wanders in a haze through the pouring rain clearly Haggard and exhausted but then she stops and looks up expectantly to see Kira her salvation standing in the light in front of her he reaches out his hand beckoning her and she limply extends her arm in turn if I had to guess what part of the series this represents I'd have to say it's the part where she's stuck underground being interrogated by L and light has to come save her it seems like an act of mercy but light space is shrouded in ominous shadow and his expression seems smug and self-satisfied not full of the warmth that you'd want from your Savior this shot transitions into a shot of light standing in front of an angel painted in Renaissance style with a contemptuous smirk on his face it really doesn't get much more arrogant than this the painting behind him doesn't appear to be any specific painting from the Renaissance era in fact it would be odd if it was because I'm fairly certain that the angel it's depicting is meant to be Lucifer rebelling against and falling from grace you wouldn't expect Renaissance artists to depict this moment so triumphantly the angel's wings appear to be turning black as feathers fall off them and behind them we see the Sun set against the night sky this brings to mind mourning and Lucifer's name literally means dawn bringer or Morningstar in more literal Latin the name means light bringer and I don't think I need to explain the connection between that and death notes protagonists this connection also fits lights image as a good man who has fallen to evil as the new day dawns the last thing that we see is the Apple cotton the sun's rays on light's desk which then fades into the Death Note which both makes for a great secondary title card and cements the connection between the two objects in case you were still wondering death notes first Opie is pretty much everything that I want from an opening it's layered with meaning the animation is impressive and the music rocks and the show attached to it is pretty damn good too a damn sight better than most of the other ones that I watched when I was young if you want to take a look at another good show from my youth check out my video running down all of the Opie's from Full Metal Alchemist and FMA Brotherhood and if you like this sort of bold directing style I recommend watching my analysis of a race from director tomohiko Ito a student of Death Note director Tetsuro Araki and if you enjoy any of these videos be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications to catch every video I put out from here on and follow me on twitter @ g 0 FF thew if you want the nitty gritty on what I'm working on and what kind of nonsense I'm up to when I'm not working special thanks go out to my patrons for suggesting this and making it possible for me to do videos for a living in the first place when I become the god of the new world you will all be spared as always this is Jeff thew professional [ __ ] signing out from my mother's basement

Channel: Mother's Basement

Views: 992,092

Rating: 4.9200244 out of 5

Keywords: Death Note, Madhouse, Shounen Jump, OP, What's in an OP?, Mother's Basement, Analysis, Criticism, Critique, Theme, Song, The World, Nightmare, Takeshi Obata, Tsugumi Ohba, Light Yagami, Renaissance, Art, Painting, Sculpture, Symbolism, Christian Symbolism, Christian Symbolism Death Note, Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, Pieta

Id: _THHWWbs-70

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Blitzilla]

He's so good at picking out symbolism and connecting vague scenes. I saw Deathnote no less than 4 times and feel ashamed that most of these points were lost on me, Truly impressive.

[u/oyooy]

I find myself agreeing with Geoff much more than any other reviewer and him realising how great Death Note is gets a big thumbs up from me. The analysis of this opening is also great, so much stuff I would never spot on my own. I don't expect him to be able to get as much out of the second OP though unless he can find more lots of meaning behind character shots and Ryuk dancing with apples.

[u/ErebosGR]

Geoff forgot to mention that Light's red hair and L's blue hair in that orbital shot are a Red Oni/Blue Oni reference.

[u/Shits-McNeil]

I forgot that netflix is doing a Death Note movie with Western names and black L.

That should be...interesting.

[u/BP_Ray]

Amazing analysis once again. I didn't expect the Death Note OP to be so densely packed with with symbolism like that. This is why I love these videos, even when I am looking for stuff like this in openings I just can't find it myself. Yet everything Geoff says sounds not only plausible, but is probably what the director intended.

[u/RevyMarcus]

I actually wrote a full report on this in my senior thesis for highschool. They were offering up a prize in cash for the best presented one, and ended up in the top 5. I think I got $100 for it.

[u/godstriker8]

With this and the upcoming Netflix series, I feel like rewatching the show.

[u/Saikimo]

I also made an analysis of the first OP of Death Note in the rewatch:

Link to the comment in the rewatch thread

So first I wanna start with saying that I'm a huge fan of the series "What's in an OP" by /u/G-0ff (aka Mother's Basement on Youtube). So for this rewatch I plan to do something of that sort with the first opening of Death Note. First I want to say I'm not a writer, and I'm really not used to do these kind of analyses and interpretations, I even hated to do these things in school, but I had fun doing it for something I'm interested in. Also I'm not a native English speaker so if you find major errors in either grammar or spelling, please point them out to me politely. Also everything I will talk about is about past events, so when I say "he never does X or that", I'm just talking about things we've seen so far, I will try to not spoil anything about future events in here. So without further ado my analysis or "What's in an OP?" for Death Notes first opening "the WORLD " by Nightmare.

So some things I want to adress first, I will differentiate between Kira and Light here, whenever I think what site of Light is showing in the moment, because we know that Kira is a corrupted Light more or less. We see that when Light lost all his memories of the Death Note that he is actually a sincere and just person with a good heart instead of a manipulating mastermind who wants to eradicate everything that opposes him.

The first we see in this opening is Kiras face and opening his eye in a black background, I assume it is Kira, because everytime Light is doing something evil or when he's influenced by the Death Note his eyes get red. So Kiras face dominates the picture (not like there's something else there), and the whole picture reminds me a lot of the [Spoiler Warning I guess]End of Evangelion movie poster, just that everything except the face is the opposite, Kiras face is looking down and it's in the foreground, and there are no people except him. But I digress... So I interpret this opening moment of the opening as the awakening of the god Kira looking down on earth/humanity with his ever watching eye, but he is born in darkness, because either him or the world (I'm not sure) is evil and tainted.
After that we cut to Kira lying in front of what looks like stained glass, and the design of the glass looks like it's from a church window, also there's so much light coming through these windows that the front of Kiras body is full of shadows, we can't even see his face, so I can't be sure if it is still Kira or Light who is lying down there. The church symbolism is there to confirm the picture of holiness that Kira thinks of himself, but the shadows on his body tell a different story, he is a creature of the darkness that only pretends that it is something good and bright. The opening likes to show the site that Kira sees in himself and the site that L and the others who oppose Kira see in him, and it let's us decide what site we're on.
The next picture is Kira looking directly into the camera, this just shows again what the first picture told us, only that it also involves the viewer, it means that even the viewer can't escape Kiras judgement, he sees everything.
The last of the four fast cut opening pictures is Kira being in front of very bright lights, that look like spotlights, only his arm and his head are visible, almost like he tries to escape the picture. These spotlights could represent the police that is chasing him, and L who's suspecting Light of being Kira but he just doesn't has enough evidence to convict him. Also it could be that these are the lights that shined through the stained glass earlier making the light source an artificial one instead of the sun, revealing that he is nothing more that a fake god who only uses powers borrowed from a real god.

So now we're seeing Ryuk with a big smile and red glowing eyes in front a yellow cloudy sky and a city skyline with skyscrapers, we see Ryuk and that background from a low angle shot (little fun fact that perspective is called frog perspective in German). Not much to talk about here for me here... Because I can't see anything in this shot except Ryuk enjoying the show he get's to see. Maybe the yellow cloudy sky is representing how sick the world and humanity (represented by the skyscrapers) has become (because let's be real yellow clouds especially with such green tint really look not natural and almost like a fallout)

The next shot is more interesting though Kira looking away from the camera, almost ashamed and his hair is blue. This is interesting because the opening likes to change the hair color in some of the more stylised scenes. I originally thought that blue colours in the OP are the opposing colours of Kira, because of his eyes and everything else with associated with the Shinigami powers is represented with the colour red. So I initially interpreted it with that this means that Light has regrets for his actions and that he thinks that killing is wrong, so it's opposing everything Kira stands for, but never in this show we see Kira/Light having any sort of regrets and that's why I'm not sure what to say about this picture.

The next shot is a bit clearer to me, Light inside the red shadow of Ryuk lying on the ground. I think it just means that Light is more and more absorbed by the power the Death Note and Ryuk is giving him. Almost being some sort of god but never truly, only a shadow of a god.

And now onto my favourite picture in this opening, Death Notes version of Michelangelos famous fresco "The Creation of Adam". Here is a link to the original picture for comparision. One of the biggest differences there's an apple in the center of the picture instead of two fingers trying to touch each other. Also Light is giving the apple away while Adam is getting the spark of life from god. The apple in my opinion is a metaphor for the powers of the Death Note, because the apple is often considered the fruit of temptation. Also the powers of the Death Note are the exact opposite of the spark of life. What is also interesting Light wears the long handcuffs he's wearing at the moment in the series. This whole picture is just showing the whole part of the show where Kira is giving away his powers and goes into imprisonment to prove his innocence. He is giving away his powers to Ryuk represented by the apple, he is losing what looks like his wings, so he also loses his divineness and he gets chained down on earth again after being very close to the heavens. Also light and darkness are fighting each other in this picture from the left hand side bright sunrays while on the right hand side, Ryuks side, only darkness and death. With giving away his powers Kira becomes literally Light again.

The next scene in this opening is the camera zooming out from Kiras eye and doing a 180° spin and zooming back into Ls eye. They both stand one two different plattforms, of same height. The height of the plattforms is showing that both are one the same intellectual level. They're looking each other in the eye because they know about each other L knows that Light is Kira and Light knows Ls face. But the gap between those two plattforms is too big to reach each other meaning that they just don't have enough information or evidence to reach the other and put each other down.

Next we get to see the title card and damn this thing looks gothic as fuck, I always love the way anime are overdesigning their title cards.

While the titlecard is fading we see an apple falling down into Lights hand. Again my theory of the apple representing the powers of the Death Note gets supported, because the apple is delivered the same way as the Death Note, by falling from the sky. Also I love how Light is catching the apple in the rhythm of the drum.

Moving onto the next scene, we see Light walking on a narrow plank, the plank is above the skyline of the city, he still holds the apple in his hand (even though we can't see it because of the camera perspective). This whole scene shows how Light is doing a balancing act of hiding his powers (=the apple) from his family and the police, and if he should fail his fall will be deep and deadly.

For the next scenes I have nothing, really totally nothing... Don't know how to connect anything here with what is happening in the show, or the character. So enjoy some moments of birds and zooming out of apples

After all that we see Misa with blue hair and yellow eyes lying on the ground, looking up into the camera also in my opinion she looks a bit scared, but of what? Also she is wearing a necklace with a cross. Well she likes to look very gothic, so that isn't very unusual of her. But the cross is lying aside from her and it could mean that her old beliefs are tossed aside because she just saw the powers of a shinigami, but I'm really unsure about that one. Also I think she's blue (the Kira opposing colour) in the opening because she really is useless to Kira until now, because of her L managed to have both Kira and her confined. Only because of Lights ridiculous plan to give away their Death Notes and losing their memories managed to save them, but this was more of an emergency plan.

The next scene is a pan shot to the top of a scyscraper, on the roof there's Light with the apple in front of a big yellow glowing moon, and he takes a bite from the apple, so he gets a taste of the power of the Death Note figuratively and literally by biting into the apple.

Continued next comment....

[u/Takashira]

I didn't watch the English dub if this show. Did they pronounce Ryuku's name as "Ree-yook" in the English version?