Hey there guys! Even tough I don't know if this revue will be of any use, I really wanted to make a post about today's manga, and it's quite the logical sequel for the post on Bakuman.
Today, we are going to talk about the king of psychological thrillers,
Death Note!
I already mentionned it in my last post about Bakuman, for it has been made by the same duo of authors, Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba, my actuels models in manga writing, but I'll tell you more about this another time. This manga is the first of the three this duo made, it was first released in 2003 and has thirteen volumes in all, and an anime adaptation came out in 2006, counting 37 episodes perfectly accurated to the manga. As I said it in my former post, this manga is not what you could call a light one. Here, you will be brought to think about the rightness of the actual justice and the limitation between good and evil, while being absorbed in a dark and unfair world.
So, the story is about Light Yagami, a gifted teenager who's life looks perfect from outside, but who is actually bored of the world around him. As the son of a police chief, he knows that a lot of criminals are running around the world, and even just around him he often thinks that a lot of people would deserve a punishement for their actions. One day, after school, he finds a strange book on the ground, titled "Death Note". In the "How to Use it" section, the first rule that is written is that if you write the name of a person in this book while having this person's face in mind, this person will die in 40 seconds. Also, it is written that if you write the cause of death during these 40 seconds, you have an extra six minute and fourtee seconds to describe it, and it will happen. After experimenting it, he will meet Ryuk, the god of death that made the death note fall into the human world out of boredom, and the basic owner of the death note. Light, who is also bored of his own unperfect world, choose to use the death note to purify the world by eliminating every criminal or person that he judges guilty of a crime. After that, he plans on becoming the god of this perfect new world. But the death of
numerous criminals will soon catch the attention of L, a mysterious detective who is known to solve every case he works on. After provocating Light, who is at this point known all over the world as Kira, the battle between the two begins, and the all story will talk about the strategies that both are going to build in order to get closer of the other, and eliminate him. I can't convey you the feelings you have while following the two of them during their fight, and also while getting to know a bit more about Light's way of thinking, for even if you can't say it in front of
everyone, for what he defends is clearly immoral, it's easy to get identify to Light and to think that Kira would be good for the world. In fact, a lot of people are arguing about the fact that Kira might be, in a way, of better influence for the world than L is, but I will talk about this precisely in another post, because yes, death note is one of the special manga I am going to talk about.
So, later in the story, we will meet another key character, who is Misa, a girl that found a death note too, but who is more powerfull than Light, for she did with her god of death, Remu, a deal that Light refused: By giving half of her life time, she obtained the eye of the god of death, that allows her to know the name of someone just by looking at this person's face. She immediately falls in love with Light, who judged the killer of Misa's parents, and he will use her at will during the all serie. The manga has a second part, but just telling a few word about it would be an horrible spoil about the first part, so I will not talk about it in this post, but in a next one.
As you might have guessed, this manga is going to talk about really dark themes, such as death, the reliability of human's justice an manipulation, with the relation between Misa and Light, which is not reciprocal at ALL. If you are looking for a light manga just to laugh a bit and get relax, this is not the good one, but if you are just looking for an excellent manga, or anime, you have to give it a try, even if it might awake the madness inside your heart...well, this was really depressive, so...hey!
Anyway, just to let you know that this manga will give some serious work to your brain, and might also make you think differently about the reliability of everyone around you, higher up or...friends, for finally, Light is only a student that thinks about making the world better, but who has a blazed notion about good and evil. That's what you may think, but is your version of evil the same as mine? What if the notion of good and evil was just something artificial, if you had the power of applying your vision of it, wouldn't you do it too? The evil is not something that is basically in some people and not in others, every single person is capable of the better as the worst. Even though you probably heard that douzains of time, it's always good to remind it sometimes.
So, Death Note is a real master piece, and one of the must read of the manga world, so if you have not seen or red it already, just hurry up, you really have to. In fact I almost envy you, for you are going to discover a freaking awesome manga...and authors duo, if you didn't knew them.
Of course, because this manga is really extremely famous, I don't think this post is going to be useful for a lot of people, but I hope some people will find it interesting, and I really had to write at least once about this one...even if it is not the last time, but well...
As I said it at the beginning, this post is the logical sequel to the Bakuman post, and I hope you enjoyed it, for I did enjoy writing it. As always, react to it in the comments, and tell me if you want me to talk about something special or either something else than manga, I will read all of them and take them into account, and of course if I made any mistake or that you want to discuss of something I wrote, tell it and I will answer you,
Bye guys!
