[Review] The pen is mightier than the sword – especially when writing a Death Note

Written by Katherine@forbiddenplanet.co.uk

“The human whose name is written in this note shall die…”

No manga series has truly hit the big time until it’s got at least a TV adaptation, whether live-action or anime (or sometimes both), and preferably also drama CDs, character song CDs, light novels, visual novels, video games, and miscellaneous “character goods”. But it’s relatively rare for a manga series to be adapted to a live-action feature film, especially for manga with supernatural elements. This makes the DVD release of Death Note (the 2006 live-action adaptation of the phenomenally popular manga series) particularly interesting. How faithful can such an adaptation be? And how well does the story work in live action?

The answers are “more than you might think” and “surprisingly well”, respectively. The film-makers didn’t feel a need to tamper with the story much, perhaps because Death Note has such a strong central concept – the notebook that kills anyone whose name is written down in it, the crusade that the notebook’s owner embarks on to rid the world of criminals, and the cat-and-mouse game that ensues when the police start trying to hunt him down. The film only adapts the first nine chapters of the manga; there have been two sequels covering later storylines, not yet released in English. Some of the plot details are different, even so – though if anything, they’re improvements on the manga; the introduction of two new female characters and the expansion of the role of Naomi Misora is highly welcome, since one of the manga’s weaknesses is its paucity of interesting women. In other ways, the manner of storytelling has been changed to fit the new medium: where the manga depended a great deal on thought bubbles and narration, the film naturally opts for punchier, simpler visual exposition, which has the odd side effect of slightly softening the character of Light: he seems less calculating in the film, if only because we’re not constantly being told what he’s planning.

Although, that said, a certain amount of the softening comes from Tatsuya Fujiwara’s performance. Fujiwara has an open face and a ready smile that makes it hard, at first, to think of him as the cold and sociopathic Light Yagami of the manga. As Light uses the Death Note more and more, and graduates from killing vicious murderers to killing people who get in his way, he smiles less and less, and during the train sequence (very faithfully adapted from the manga) he finally displays the cold, triumphant grin most often seen on the manga Light’s face.

Fujiwara aside, one of the most striking things about the film is how recognisable the characters are: as soon as there was a glimpse of the police unit investigating “Kira” (the codename for the owner of the Death Note), I could immediately pick out Matsuda, Aizawa, Ide and Soichiro Yagami, before a single word had been said. Naomi Misora, Watari, and L are likewise uncannily true to their manga incarnations. As with the manga, the film kicks into high gear as soon as L appears. Ken’ichi Matsuyama is perfectly cast as the eccentric but brilliant detective who comes close to rooting out Light’s secret.

But perhaps the most remarkable achievement of the film is Ryuk, the shinigami (god of death) who drops the Death Note into the human world and follows Light around to watch what he does. Ryuk’s ghastly, clown-like appearance is rendered in CGI, and while there are occasional moments when the animation doesn’t quite work, for the most part he’s utterly convincing; he moves that little bit more fluidly than the human characters, floats around weightless, flies on his bat-like wings, and passes through solid objects, but still looks just as real and just as present as the live actors. Shido Nakamura gives Ryuk a deep, gravely voice that likewise marks him out; it’s not surprising that Nakamura was cast for the same part in the Death Note anime.

 

As both a stand-alone film and an adaptation, Death Note works remarkably well. Its faithful without being slavish, transferring both the narrative spine of the manga and the dark, tense atmosphere that makes it so compelling to read. I enjoyed it a lot, and I look forward to the English-language release of the sequels.

[Review] “The human whose name is written in this note shall die…”

Written by Katherine@forbiddenplanet.co.uk

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A little over a year after the final volume was published in English, I’ve finally gotten around to finishing one of the most hyped and most heavily-spoiled manga series ever: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s Death Note. Death Note is based on the highest of high concepts: “The human whose name is written in this note shall die.” If you had a notebook you could use to kill anyone whose name and face you knew – what would you do? Death Note‘s main character Light Yagami decides to use it to cleanse the world of evil people – evil by his definition, of course.

After a brief reflection on the morality of this decision, Light sets about his task with glee and gains the attention of police forces worldwide, who dub the mysterious murderer “Kira” (a Japanese pronunciation of “Killer”). The eccentric detective L decides to join the chase. Once L comes into the picture, the story settles into the form it retains for the rest of its run: an increasingly complex cat-and-mouse game between Light and the people investigating him.

It’s in the twists and turns of the pursuit that Death Note comes into its own. Tsugumi Ohba doesn’t go in for character development, and doesn’t bother much with exploring the moral dilemmas the existence and use of the Death Note throws up; instead, the focus is on the plans and manipulations and gambits and counter-gambits Light engages in to cover his tracks, fool his pursuers, and further his ascent to virtual godhood. Sometimes these plans get ridiculously convoluted; in the words of TV Tropes, they cross the line from Xanatos Gambit to Xanatos Roulette, with all parties involved seeming to know too much and manipulate events with far too much skill. More than once, the moment when you’re convinced that Light has been caught in a trap and cannot possibly get out of it will be followed by Light grinning his evil, satisfied grin and thinking to himself: “Exactly as planned!”

There’s always an explanation, but it’s not always terribly convincing, and even when the plans are more or less reasonable, there’s always a lot of lengthy introspection along the lines of “he thinks that I think that he doesn’t know that she knows that I know…”, repeated for each character so that you can be absolutely sure who knows what about whom. Provided, that is, that you can hold it all in your head.

I get lost a lot when I’m reading Death Note, and sometimes it’s irritating, but it’s worth it for those moments when the dominoes fall in exactly the right way and Light’s plans — or someone else’s — work out just perfectly. The bizarre thing about Death Note is that I actively dislike most of the characters, and yet that doesn’t hinder my enjoyment at all. Would you enjoy a chess game less if the king was a sociopath and the pawns were all naive morons? It’s the moves that matter, not the pieces; not even the players.

Takeshi Obata’s art is never less than gorgeous, and one of the interesting things about revisiting the first few volumes for this blog entry has been seeing how his style evolved over the course of the series, growing smoother and slicker by imperceptible increments. The subtle, understated touches he adds in facial expressions and body language make up somewhat for the thinness of the characters as written. It says something for his range of faces that characters as superficially similar as Mogi, Ide and Matsuda are impossible to confuse for each other.

Does Death Note live up to the hype? Yes and no. Yes, in that it’s a compelling read from beginning to end with more twists than a ten-mile corkscrew; and no, in that every aspect of the storytelling other than the simple unfolding of the plot is thin and unsatisfying. Ohba gestures towards moral reflection, but doesn’t follow through, and most of the characters are, as I’ve said, either very lightly sketched or thoroughly dislikeable. (Don’t get me started on Misa. I don’t normally hate fictional characters, but dear God, it’s so easy to make an exception for her. As Shaenon Garrity put it: “She’s the stupidest creature on planet Earth. Even stupider than the other female characters in Death Note, who are all stupid. Even stupider than other idol singers… a woman with the mind of a squirrel monkey.”) What’s more, after volume 7, there’s a sudden dip in the quality of the plot, as the events of that volume leave a hole in the manga’s narrative structure that’s never quite filled. The last five volumes are less compelling than the first seven, and the plotting begins to get sloppy by comparison. To be fair, the pace picks up in volume 9, and even if it never quite matches the tightness of the early volumes, it’s always fun to read.

And, ironically, a large part of what makes it fun is the very sketchiness of the aspects I’ve described as “unsatisfying”. One of the Death Note fandom’s favourite characters is Matt, a character who appears in a grand total of 12 panels. Not 12 pages: 12 panels. The very concept of the Death Note encourages speculation: if you had one, what would you do? If you were in Light’s shoes, and wanted to do what he did, could you do a better job? If you were investigating Kira, what steps would you take to find out who he was? Death Note is set up to encourage the fans to read between the lines, to speculate, extrapolate, and come up with their own ideas. It may not be deliberate, but that’s the effect, and that being so, too much detail in the characterisation or in the moral reasoning would be counter-roductive — it would leave less space for the reader’s imagination.

So in the end, the thing that makes Death Note so powerful is the same thing that makes the Death Note itself powerful: the fact that you can write anything you like in it.

Just don’t write any real person’s name. After all, “The human whose name is written in this note shall die…”

Death Note Artbook