Kira, Pop Sensation: the Ironic Urban Landscape of Death Note.

[bookshop]

Note: This essay is a revision of an essay I wrote for death_note a while back. (Okay, like, 3 years ago. What.) It is a commentary on the manga, anime, and both films of Death Note, and contains major spoilers for all of them.

Death Note is one of those iconic, apocryphal stories that it feels like everyone's read or at least heard of by now and

Comments

[ceilidh_ann]

Good stuff. I recently watched the entirety of Death Note in about 4 days and really enjoyed it. I'm not really an anime fan but I am fascinated by those characters and what power does to humanity. Watching L and Kira battle so meticulously, almost like a dance, was so incredibly riveting (also, L's English dub voice artist is perfect!) I wasn't so big a fan of Near and his involvement because

[dybji]

Aaaahh, Death Note meta omg, and has it really been five years holy cabooses. :/

I have never thought of the idea of DN creating and feeding into its own commodification/mass-culture "cult," but actually it makes all the sense, especially given that horrifying gaze of hope beaming at you from the final page of the manga. I think that's why I found the climax so satisfying, though - you know "The Wave," when the students finally realize in horror who their "leader" was. The DN climax provides the basic satisfaction of seeing Light recontextualized outside of his own megalomaniacal world, sure, but it also throws you a philosophical lifeline. It throws you Near, taking the whole can of worms and justice and Kira and right and wrong and morality and mortality and power and the supernatural that everyone else (readers included) had been struggling with for so long, and shelving it all with something as simple as "This that you've been doing is insane, and it's stopping now

[amanuensis1]

*gasps* Did I actually say that? It sounds like I thought I knew what I was talking about, holy heck.

Look, look, this post is getting more people to watch/read DN! YOU WIN EVERYTHING! :D

[asherlev1]

Jesus Christ, Zefron is playing Light? I just threw up a little in my mouth.