DEATH NOTE ANIME (VOLUME 2)
September 17th 2008 05:27
Category: Videos, Television
Based on the Death Note manga by: Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata.
Director: Tetsuro Araki.
Screenplay by: Toshiki Inoue.
Starring: Brain Swaile (Light), Alessandro Juliani (L), Shannon Chan-Kent (Misa Amane), Chris Britton (SouichiroYagami), French Tickner (Watari) and Brian Drummond (Ryuk).
Produced by: Madhouse/NTV.
Released by: Madman Entertainment.
Running Time: 100 minutes. Rating: M.
Glancing through the television guide from the Sydney Morning Herald the other week I noticed that ABC 2 was still showing episodes of this series, although it seems that they’re not being aired due to that channels coverage of the 2008 Para Olympics in Beijing. As far as I am aware the ABC is the only free to air network that has been screening any quality anime of note in the last few months, SBS hasn’t been showing anything and if you do want to watch Naruto you have to go the pay TV networks. Still something is better than nothing and I hope ABC 2 continues to show quality anime on its network, after all some is better than none.
Kira, the individual who can kill just be knowing a persons name and face has become something of a major problem to the worlds law enforcement agencies as well as being something of a challenge to one of the worlds leading investigators; L. Of course what the authorities aren’t fully aware of is that they are dealing not only with a criminal mastermind but one who has a messianic complex to boot. The old saying is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and this certainly seems to be a fitting quote for this particular series. After having twelve FBI agents dispatched to Japan to investigate the various police officers involved in the Kira investigation task force L sits back to contemplate his next move in this rather macabre chess game between himself and Kira. Unfortunately as this volumes events open things begin to unravel in a most dramatic manner.
Somehow all twelve FBI agents end up dying from heart attacks at various different locations all over Japan, one of these is Raye Pember, an FBI agent who was investigating Light aka Kira although at the time he is completely unaware of this fact all that he knows is that Kira is on to him. Of course Pember’s demise is not so much the result of his cover being blown but by the fact that he is a link to Kira’s real identity as well as a means by which the shadowy enigmatic figure can discover the identity of the other agents who are currently in Japan working on investigating potential suspects. With the Bureau out of the game Light/Kira feel’s that his problems are effectively over and that all he has to worry about is L, for such a very smart guy he isn’t quite completely aware of all the factors that are in play.
Just glancing at this particular volume one could easily make the mistake that it is simply a straight police drama with a supernatural element, there is the feeling that this is a tragedy of epic scale, a tragedy in the making and the collision of an immovable object with an unstoppable force. Could I reach any deeper into my bag of superlatives, probably but there definitely is the feeling that the drama is moving towards an inescapable collision between two impressive intellects. So far Light has through the medium of the Death Note has not taken anything more than a kind of Deus ex Machina stance in regards to his actions as Kira and L has only acted so far through intermediaries such as Watari and the FBI. Now it seems that the two are getting more intimately involved in the struggle, taking a far more personal stance.
Of the two L is the one who is opting for a far more direct interest in the case, telling the detectives involved with the Japanese task force that he wishes to meet with them in person. By now with the death of the FBI agents being known to the task force members along with their initial focus of their investigation their trust of L has been severely dented to say the least. They’re existing literally on the edge, as numbers of law enforcement officials who are part of the taskforce decide to quit as they feel they’re in danger from this investigation, as well as the fact that are not too keen on the methods of L. If ever there was a comparison between literary figures I’d draw between a character in an anime and one in literature I’d have to say that L reminds me a lot of Sherlock Holmes in the fact that even though Scotland Yard makes a great deal of use of Holmes ability and technique but never truly trust him, so it is with L. He is used by various agencies around the world to solve various trying and difficult cases but is never actually trusted by the agency in question. It is only the agents or detectives who work with him that come to realise his worth and value as an ally in the fight against crime.
Thus in this particular volume we have L effectively revealing his ‘true’ identity to the remaining members of the Japanese investigation task force, a major leap of faith on his own part in his campaign to bring Kira to justice. But as the events unfold it is a move that needs to be made, in order to engage in an effective campaign he needs to become directly involved with the Japanese detectives involved on the task force, the few who have remained after all the resignations. With Souichiro Yagami, Light’s father, L gather together the remaining detective on the Japanese task force and explains his strategy for investigating Kira and his actions, this primarily involves first looking at the death’s of the dozen FBI agents then moving on to focus on the two key suspects that those agents were investigating in the first place.
Meanwhile as L is laying the groundwork for the means by which he will hopefully capture Kira that worthy is himself trying to tie up any loose ends caused by his elimination of Raye Pember. His efforts result in some amusement for the Shinigami, Ryuk, as he realises that there is more than just his removal of the inquisitive FBI agent than meets the eye. Pember and his colleagues may have gone to what ever awaited them in the hereafter but what Kira didn’t count on was that Pember would have a fiancée who had also been an FBI agent, one who had worked with L in a previous criminal case in America a few years ago. Can Kira tie up this loose end that will prevent L from making a connection between him and the death of Pember? The plot begins to bubble away and thicken like a good tasty and nutritious soup…
If Death Note has a problem it is with the protagonist, I have to admit that if Light is the central character in this drama I do not in the slightest bit like him. He is a bloke who has just let the whole god complex get to him in a major way, so much so that he actually believes that by what he is doing will eventually make him the deity of a bright, glorious new world order. Although in reality all he is really doing is providing amusement for a bored and jaded Shinigami, Ryuk, who has become so stultified by what is happening in his own world that he decides to shake things up in the mortal world in order to put a bit of interest in his own existence. It certainly ends up paying some big dividends in Ryuk’s amusement but as far as fulfilling Light’s ‘agenda’ in actual fact all that is doing is leading Light into one problem after another, something that for a genius intellect he seems to dense to pick up on.
For my own preference I find myself rooting for L, the detective and hoping that he will eventually bring Kira to justice although I know in the end that what is going on is being organised so that Ryuk can alleviate the eternal ennui that he feels in his role as a Shinigami, a God of Death. Just goes to show that power doesn’t so much as corrupt as stultify any potential or creativity in something other than a mortal, and this certainly seems to be the case with the Shinigami. But when it comes to someone like Light the Death Note is not so much a means of forging a better world and a better future but as creating tyranny and despair cloaked in a more palatable guise. Such has always been the way and Light, in spite of his ‘good’ intentions is no better than Adolf Hitler or any other similar tyrant who sought to ‘improve’ society and the world. Still it is this moral ambiguity that no doubt makes Death Note such a quality anime series and one definitely worth watching regardless of how you may feel about the series primary protagonist and his adversay…
Director: Tetsuro Araki.
Screenplay by: Toshiki Inoue.
Starring: Brain Swaile (Light), Alessandro Juliani (L), Shannon Chan-Kent (Misa Amane), Chris Britton (SouichiroYagami), French Tickner (Watari) and Brian Drummond (Ryuk).
Produced by: Madhouse/NTV.
Released by: Madman Entertainment.
Running Time: 100 minutes. Rating: M.
Glancing through the television guide from the Sydney Morning Herald the other week I noticed that ABC 2 was still showing episodes of this series, although it seems that they’re not being aired due to that channels coverage of the 2008 Para Olympics in Beijing. As far as I am aware the ABC is the only free to air network that has been screening any quality anime of note in the last few months, SBS hasn’t been showing anything and if you do want to watch Naruto you have to go the pay TV networks. Still something is better than nothing and I hope ABC 2 continues to show quality anime on its network, after all some is better than none.
Just glancing at this particular volume one could easily make the mistake that it is simply a straight police drama with a supernatural element, there is the feeling that this is a tragedy of epic scale, a tragedy in the making and the collision of an immovable object with an unstoppable force. Could I reach any deeper into my bag of superlatives, probably but there definitely is the feeling that the drama is moving towards an inescapable collision between two impressive intellects. So far Light has through the medium of the Death Note has not taken anything more than a kind of Deus ex Machina stance in regards to his actions as Kira and L has only acted so far through intermediaries such as Watari and the FBI. Now it seems that the two are getting more intimately involved in the struggle, taking a far more personal stance.
Of the two L is the one who is opting for a far more direct interest in the case, telling the detectives involved with the Japanese task force that he wishes to meet with them in person. By now with the death of the FBI agents being known to the task force members along with their initial focus of their investigation their trust of L has been severely dented to say the least. They’re existing literally on the edge, as numbers of law enforcement officials who are part of the taskforce decide to quit as they feel they’re in danger from this investigation, as well as the fact that are not too keen on the methods of L. If ever there was a comparison between literary figures I’d draw between a character in an anime and one in literature I’d have to say that L reminds me a lot of Sherlock Holmes in the fact that even though Scotland Yard makes a great deal of use of Holmes ability and technique but never truly trust him, so it is with L. He is used by various agencies around the world to solve various trying and difficult cases but is never actually trusted by the agency in question. It is only the agents or detectives who work with him that come to realise his worth and value as an ally in the fight against crime.
Thus in this particular volume we have L effectively revealing his ‘true’ identity to the remaining members of the Japanese investigation task force, a major leap of faith on his own part in his campaign to bring Kira to justice. But as the events unfold it is a move that needs to be made, in order to engage in an effective campaign he needs to become directly involved with the Japanese detectives involved on the task force, the few who have remained after all the resignations. With Souichiro Yagami, Light’s father, L gather together the remaining detective on the Japanese task force and explains his strategy for investigating Kira and his actions, this primarily involves first looking at the death’s of the dozen FBI agents then moving on to focus on the two key suspects that those agents were investigating in the first place.
Meanwhile as L is laying the groundwork for the means by which he will hopefully capture Kira that worthy is himself trying to tie up any loose ends caused by his elimination of Raye Pember. His efforts result in some amusement for the Shinigami, Ryuk, as he realises that there is more than just his removal of the inquisitive FBI agent than meets the eye. Pember and his colleagues may have gone to what ever awaited them in the hereafter but what Kira didn’t count on was that Pember would have a fiancée who had also been an FBI agent, one who had worked with L in a previous criminal case in America a few years ago. Can Kira tie up this loose end that will prevent L from making a connection between him and the death of Pember? The plot begins to bubble away and thicken like a good tasty and nutritious soup…
If Death Note has a problem it is with the protagonist, I have to admit that if Light is the central character in this drama I do not in the slightest bit like him. He is a bloke who has just let the whole god complex get to him in a major way, so much so that he actually believes that by what he is doing will eventually make him the deity of a bright, glorious new world order. Although in reality all he is really doing is providing amusement for a bored and jaded Shinigami, Ryuk, who has become so stultified by what is happening in his own world that he decides to shake things up in the mortal world in order to put a bit of interest in his own existence. It certainly ends up paying some big dividends in Ryuk’s amusement but as far as fulfilling Light’s ‘agenda’ in actual fact all that is doing is leading Light into one problem after another, something that for a genius intellect he seems to dense to pick up on.
For my own preference I find myself rooting for L, the detective and hoping that he will eventually bring Kira to justice although I know in the end that what is going on is being organised so that Ryuk can alleviate the eternal ennui that he feels in his role as a Shinigami, a God of Death. Just goes to show that power doesn’t so much as corrupt as stultify any potential or creativity in something other than a mortal, and this certainly seems to be the case with the Shinigami. But when it comes to someone like Light the Death Note is not so much a means of forging a better world and a better future but as creating tyranny and despair cloaked in a more palatable guise. Such has always been the way and Light, in spite of his ‘good’ intentions is no better than Adolf Hitler or any other similar tyrant who sought to ‘improve’ society and the world. Still it is this moral ambiguity that no doubt makes Death Note such a quality anime series and one definitely worth watching regardless of how you may feel about the series primary protagonist and his adversay…
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