Death Note Overview

[sashocirrione]

Comments

[jamafanta]

I've always been curious about Death Note, as I've seen it pop up on numerous rec lists. I'm going to give it a shot, thanks!

[sashocirrione]

Thank you!

I'm very enthusiastic about this series as you can see!

[twigged]

Thank you for putting this together for us!

[sashocirrione]

You're welcome. It took longer than I thought to finish it, but I really wanted to do it.

[sashocirrione]

Thank you!

It was really hard to keep the spoilers out while discussing things so thoroughly.

[lembeau]

Oh man, I'm going to leave DN to the side for a moment and just marvel at your overview. It's just so good! I saw the anime a couple of years back and never truly recovered from it enough to read the manga. I'd been curious about everything other than the manga and anime and you've done an amazing job covering them, pointing out their pros and cons, all without spoiling anything. That takes mad skills, yo! :O)

[sashocirrione]

Thanks! I had fun writing it, but it was hard.

[shayheyred]

This is an excellent, and very thorough overview of Death Note, and I commend you. I would, however, challenge your description of Light as "insane" twice in the first part of your overview. By the end of the story, or significantly into it, he may very well be insane, but for much of the opening part, Light is brilliant, bored, and feels that he is "doing right" in his actions. But self-satisfaction and hubris are addictive, and the more he uses the death note, the more he becomes convinced that he is on a noble enterprise. That may well be what tips the balace and sends him over the edge.

Kudos, though, on a great review.

[sashocirrione]

I did a word-search on "insane" and only found one mention, not two, in the Light section as you implied (there is also a mention of "craziness" but that applied to L).

I did not mean "insane" to apply to just-at-the-beginning Light. Was it written so that it sounded that way?

I view Light as having a gradual descent that gets worse and worse, but the narrative clearly portrays him as insane fairly early in the process (such as his reaction to meeting Ryuk, his declaration that he is a god, and the way he gloats over killing non-criminals who are only doing their jobs and that have the same job as his father).

Light does get far worse as the series progresses (for example, the Higuchi plan is something that early!Light rejected as immoral, yet mid-point!Light had no problems with) but both the manga and the anime seem to portray Light as being significantly affected fairly early.

Good intentions doesn't mean that the insanity can't coexist with those good intentions.

[shayheyred]

It felt to me that you were saying he's insane from the beginning. That's my only quibble, and YMMV, that's all.

[sashocirrione]

Okay, let me see what I can do to re-write that section. I'll try to have an improved version up sometime tomorrow.