Death Note and Another Note
I finished Death Note, or rather finished all that I wanted to watch, namely the anime series plus three live-action films. First, the anime. I would divide the anime into three parts. The first part was great and makes for one of the best animes I've seen. The last two thirds on the other hand is where it kind of goes downhill. I'm going to briefly describe plot details, which will contain spoilers if you haven't already seen Death Note. Light finds the Death Note, which allows him to kill anyone he likes as long as he has their name and face. There are other complicated rules to the Death Note too, and he gets a Death God following him around named Ryuk who is an entertaining character in his own right with an unabashed love of apples. Light plans to use the Death Note to kill all the bad guys, enabling him to be the ruler of the world basically. You learn early on that Light is actually an arrogant prick, using the Death Note and his self-righteousness to justify his power trip. Light never sees himself as being in the wrong. He thinks he's doing something right for the world, but really he's just selfish and loves the power the Death Note gives him. Then we have L come in, an eccentric private investigator whom I view as being on the autistic spectrum ready to find the Kira (Light Yagami) and take him down. This kicks off a game of cat-and-mouse between the two as they try to stay one step ahead of each other. It's very entertaining to watch because they're both pretty evenly matched in intelligence. Both are very smart. This goes on a while until L and Light finally meet and shortly after this is when it kind of starts to go downhill because Light surrenders the Death Note and then forgets everything about it and everything he did with it.
L and Light start working together to find the Kira, who is of course Light himself and Misa is a second Kira, but I'm not going to talk about her much even though she's important too. Light has become a force for good, but I like the evil Light more and I was just waiting for him to return to that. The anime is still interesting to watch during this section, but it's not as good. Of course Light does get the Death Note back, but then here's where I think the anime falters. L dies, and is replaced by his two successors, M and N (Near). Near has a more significant role and he just isn't as impressive as L was and figures out that Light is Kira pretty quickly. Despite not caring for this final section, I would say the last two episodes were excellent. Light doesn't win. He's finally beaten, but I couldn't imagine it happening any other way. I'd say the anime was worth watching, I just wished it was more consistent in its quality and they didn't kill off basically the best character.
Now I'm going to talk about the movies. All three of the movies were good. The first two are just a remake of the anime, however they diverge from the anime quite a bit. Maybe they're closer to the manga, but I have no idea since I haven't read the manga. There were certain things the films did that I actually preferred over the anime, namely not killing off L, at least not right away. Instead of having N and Light face-off in the end, it's L vs. Light, like it should be. I also liked how the ending played out in the film more than the anime, but both endings were good in their own right. The third film is just centered around L and what he does during the last days of his life. This one was actually my favorite of three. It didn't really have anything to do with Death Note, but I liked the story and I really like the actor they picked for L. You get to see more of his compassionate side as he takes care of a couple of kids. It was well done. The plot kind of reminded me of other things like the movie Inferno from last year and the Doctor Who serial, Invasion of the Dinosaurs. They're all pretty much about a small group of people wanting to kill off humanity with a virus/or other method to make the world a better place and yada yada, but it was good.
I'm now taking a break from anime to focus on getting through some Netflix shows so I can get that much closer to getting back to watching Doctor Who.
There's something else I want to talk about. I'm kind of in a dilemma here because I was using the Adventure Gamers YouTube channel to keep track of new games coming out. They would share game trailers and I'd watch them, decide if the game is worth taking a look at and add the video to a playlist so I can keep track of them and go by that list for what to play next. Maybe not the best idea now. I had been noticing there hadn't been any new game trailers for a while and I was worried something had happened to the channel. Today I decided to look at my playlist and my worst fears were realized. All the game trailer videos on my list had been deleted with the exception of a couple because I watched them on a different channel. All those game possibilities just wiped out. Almost my entire playlist was just gone. :( Apparently the Adventure Gamers channel was deleted and I don't know why. Naturally, I'm upset about this because I was relying on that playlist for what games to play. Now I guess I will have to use a different method because even if you make a playlist, it may not remain permanent. I'm kind of devastated right now. That was a long list I had put together.
I'm going to have to rely on a different method now, unless the YouTube channel comes back. There's a possibility they were just having problems with it. I did see a forum post about that, but that was dated April 26th, so I don't know. That's why I'm still going to keep my playlist for the time being, in case they do come back and the videos come back, which seems kind of unlikely, but I'll wait and see. So from now on I think I will just check the Adventure Gamers news section for updates on new releases and keep a written list instead. I might also create a backup playlist along with the written list. I've still got to work that out. So disappointed. I'm going to keep gaming of course. I just have to change the way I keep track of new games. I don't know how easy or difficult it will be to do that now. My old method was perfect. :(
L and Light start working together to find the Kira, who is of course Light himself and Misa is a second Kira, but I'm not going to talk about her much even though she's important too. Light has become a force for good, but I like the evil Light more and I was just waiting for him to return to that. The anime is still interesting to watch during this section, but it's not as good. Of course Light does get the Death Note back, but then here's where I think the anime falters. L dies, and is replaced by his two successors, M and N (Near). Near has a more significant role and he just isn't as impressive as L was and figures out that Light is Kira pretty quickly. Despite not caring for this final section, I would say the last two episodes were excellent. Light doesn't win. He's finally beaten, but I couldn't imagine it happening any other way. I'd say the anime was worth watching, I just wished it was more consistent in its quality and they didn't kill off basically the best character.
Now I'm going to talk about the movies. All three of the movies were good. The first two are just a remake of the anime, however they diverge from the anime quite a bit. Maybe they're closer to the manga, but I have no idea since I haven't read the manga. There were certain things the films did that I actually preferred over the anime, namely not killing off L, at least not right away. Instead of having N and Light face-off in the end, it's L vs. Light, like it should be. I also liked how the ending played out in the film more than the anime, but both endings were good in their own right. The third film is just centered around L and what he does during the last days of his life. This one was actually my favorite of three. It didn't really have anything to do with Death Note, but I liked the story and I really like the actor they picked for L. You get to see more of his compassionate side as he takes care of a couple of kids. It was well done. The plot kind of reminded me of other things like the movie Inferno from last year and the Doctor Who serial, Invasion of the Dinosaurs. They're all pretty much about a small group of people wanting to kill off humanity with a virus/or other method to make the world a better place and yada yada, but it was good.
I'm now taking a break from anime to focus on getting through some Netflix shows so I can get that much closer to getting back to watching Doctor Who.
There's something else I want to talk about. I'm kind of in a dilemma here because I was using the Adventure Gamers YouTube channel to keep track of new games coming out. They would share game trailers and I'd watch them, decide if the game is worth taking a look at and add the video to a playlist so I can keep track of them and go by that list for what to play next. Maybe not the best idea now. I had been noticing there hadn't been any new game trailers for a while and I was worried something had happened to the channel. Today I decided to look at my playlist and my worst fears were realized. All the game trailer videos on my list had been deleted with the exception of a couple because I watched them on a different channel. All those game possibilities just wiped out. Almost my entire playlist was just gone. :( Apparently the Adventure Gamers channel was deleted and I don't know why. Naturally, I'm upset about this because I was relying on that playlist for what games to play. Now I guess I will have to use a different method because even if you make a playlist, it may not remain permanent. I'm kind of devastated right now. That was a long list I had put together.
I'm going to have to rely on a different method now, unless the YouTube channel comes back. There's a possibility they were just having problems with it. I did see a forum post about that, but that was dated April 26th, so I don't know. That's why I'm still going to keep my playlist for the time being, in case they do come back and the videos come back, which seems kind of unlikely, but I'll wait and see. So from now on I think I will just check the Adventure Gamers news section for updates on new releases and keep a written list instead. I might also create a backup playlist along with the written list. I've still got to work that out. So disappointed. I'm going to keep gaming of course. I just have to change the way I keep track of new games. I don't know how easy or difficult it will be to do that now. My old method was perfect. :(