Anime and mange endings?
After watching the series for the nth time (I'm embarrassed to estimate even to a community of fans), I find it easier to examine the finale more critically and refrain myself from screaming at a certain character, guess who. So, let's compare the endings of the anime and the manga.
( Long rambling on comparing the two endings... )
( Long rambling on comparing the two endings... )
The biggest difference that sticks out in my mind between the anime and manga endings is how Light went out. In the anime I thought he was given a significant moment of reflection at the end of the line and an opportunity to really think on what this meant for him (as illustrated with the passing image of how he was in the beginning). I thought Light got a graceful closure in the anime ending, not pleasant of course but maybe more respectful.
Such was the opposite in the manga ending. In that ending, Light's name is written down while he's begging on his knees for Ryuk to kill everyone and then wraps himself around Ryuk's legs begging not to die. When he does die, he goes with a look of horror and not peacefully closing his eyes like in the anime. In other words, he dies humiliated in the manga where he just goes down peacefully defeated in the anime.
I dislike Light in general, but I personally do prefer the anime ending. I thought that ending of him running away, passing himself, and dying on the stairs with L over him was more closure to Light's character and his journey, which had been pretty much the heart of the plot. I thought the manga ending was a little abrupt and just disposed of the main character quickly and left everyone else to their own devices.
In that same vein the manga did give more closure to the series in general; you see Aizawa took over for Chief Yagami, there's a new police officer in the team, Roger is now Watari, you see Near's environment as the new L. I didn't like the conversation with Matsuda at first since it felt like a lot being shoved in at the last minute, but now I see the significance of it (I won't go into the theory of Near writing Mikami's name down now). So the anime had more closure for Light, the manga had more closure for everyone else.
As for Mikami, I do think how he died in the anime was (pardon the term) overkill. I won't go too much into how I thought the result of the stabbing was pretty much impossible, though I am not entirely happy with how Mikami's death was just kind of mentioned in the last chapter.
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