Death Note = still tl;dr
Jun. 13th, 2005 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
croikLast time I ranted about Death Note in my journal, it was to say that the primise was interesting but the plot contrived, and I didn't like Light but L was cool, so I'd stick around for longer to see if got better.
I'm sorry to say, it didn't.
I picked up volume 2 at Acen this year, and then 3 and 4 at Borders (Borders carrying import manga now!? Who'd've thunk). Took me a while to get through them because everyone in the damn manga talks for sooooooo frickin' long. Seriously, I was translating for five hours straight that morning, but I got to Death Note and it was making my head spin. But I did get through them, so here's what I thought, compaired to what I thought before.
The premise is no longer interesting. At first the idea of the Death Note itself was really interesting, but many chapters later it's starting to get really lame. There are just so many rules. It really doesn't make sense to me that, in the Shingami world, the Shinigami aren't supposed to own more than one Note (Ryuk was supposed to give his second over or something), and yet there are DOZENS of rules set up for all the UNLIKELY scenarios of Shinigami bonding with humans, humans getting ahold of Death Notes, Shinigami falling in love with people, humans who get ahold of more than one Death Note, humans who steal Death Notes from each other--blah blah any number of bizarre scenarios that just happen to pop up in whatever chapter is going on.
TK suggested that the rules exist because they had a problem with the Death Notes in the past, them getting to humans and what not, and the rules are to prevent more problems. But if that were the case, why would so many of the rules benefit humans? Why would they encourage humans to use the Death Note? There's probably an explanation but I've stopped caring.
The plot is still contrived. I didn't really expect it to get less so, but I thought it'd at least be more interesting. But it's not. What's the point of watching two super-geniuses in a battle of wits if their jumps of logic just make no sense?
Light: "...I'm a 17 year old boy living with my parents and sister. Someone has been in my room. Therefore...they must have set up video cameras!!!"
And even L: "He's reading porn. But maybe he only has the porn so that in cases like these when he thinks he's being spied on--because I'm sure he'd reach that conclusion, knowing someone has been in his room--he can read the porn and throw off the spy into thinking he's just a normal 17 year old who reads porn. It's DUMMY porn."
WTF!?
As amazing as it is, L is right. It IS dummy porn!!!
And it gets worse from there. By the time they're ATTENDING SCHOOL TOGETHER in a manner befitting every Gundam Wing yaoi fic ever, they're second guessing each other like crazy to the point where I just want to kill them both for spite.
Light still sucks. He's nothing more than an extension of the author's penis (Is it a woman? Light is still her penis). For as smart as he is, he just doesn't have any character. He is, very litterally, a sociopath. He feels no guilt or remorse for any of his actions. Because he spends the first part of the manga simply killing off people from a distance, without meeting or having to face them, I thought that when he finally faced someone who honestly suffered because of his actions, he'd feel...something. A moment of, "Hey, I fucked up her life because I was playing a game. This really is serious shit." But no. Not even a tiny glimmer of humanity. All around him are people who care for him, trust him, challenge him, and each of them he attempts to kill off without hesitation or even for any good reason.
What point is there if he's not questioning the loss of his humanity on his path to becomming a living god? If he doesn't give a shit for anyone who dies, why should I, and more importantly, why should I care about him? He's just one big killing brain, without personality or even an interesting goal. And I can't even really think of him as genuinely smart, as his methods of doing things are just so complicated and contrived that *I* could have come up with an easier way.
He's...kind of like Seishirou in a way. Hotter, maybe, but just as boring.
L is still cool, but not cool enough to save this series. L is still cool. But when he starts falling to Light's level, not really "figuring" anything out but just instantly knowing it (because that's what genius's do, they're actually mind readers), he stops being interesting. I love his quirks and habits. I like that he feels dumber if he sits correctly. But in the context of this comic it's kind of a waste of character. His character is driven by his so called rivalry with Light, but if I think Light's a boring child, it brings down L, too, in a way. And that's really too bad.
At the end of comic 4 I really have no idea how the comic is going to progress without skipping ahead two years or something. The end didn't make much sense to me but by then I was cross-eyed anyway. If someone knows exactly what Light was trying to accomplish let me know...?
Despite all this, I was willing to look into fanscans to at least keep track of what was happening (without spending any money). As long as ONE SINGLE EVENT did not take place, I could ignore Light while enjoying L's crazy long-toed antics. But I learned this morning that that ONE SINGLE EVENT did happen, some time ago in fact, and the manga is still going. And now I'm not going to do even that much. By next week expect to find my four volumes of Death Note on ebay.
Farewell, L! May you be reincarnated as Otakukin and treated better than this mangaka has treated you.
I'm starting to get really tired of settling with mediocre manga/anime/movies. If Fire Emblem is better than some games but still not really great, is it worth settling for? Can't anyone write a GENUINELY good manga anymore? Is Gantz, with its DDDD titty pinup girls and severed limbs all I get? Are plots and consistant characters really THAT hard? Or am I just wrong and Naruto really is as good as it gets?
God help us Q_Q
P.S. ...To the Death Note fans that may viewing my journal...don't take my opinions personally ^^;;;
I'm sorry to say, it didn't.
I picked up volume 2 at Acen this year, and then 3 and 4 at Borders (Borders carrying import manga now!? Who'd've thunk). Took me a while to get through them because everyone in the damn manga talks for sooooooo frickin' long. Seriously, I was translating for five hours straight that morning, but I got to Death Note and it was making my head spin. But I did get through them, so here's what I thought, compaired to what I thought before.
The premise is no longer interesting. At first the idea of the Death Note itself was really interesting, but many chapters later it's starting to get really lame. There are just so many rules. It really doesn't make sense to me that, in the Shingami world, the Shinigami aren't supposed to own more than one Note (Ryuk was supposed to give his second over or something), and yet there are DOZENS of rules set up for all the UNLIKELY scenarios of Shinigami bonding with humans, humans getting ahold of Death Notes, Shinigami falling in love with people, humans who get ahold of more than one Death Note, humans who steal Death Notes from each other--blah blah any number of bizarre scenarios that just happen to pop up in whatever chapter is going on.
TK suggested that the rules exist because they had a problem with the Death Notes in the past, them getting to humans and what not, and the rules are to prevent more problems. But if that were the case, why would so many of the rules benefit humans? Why would they encourage humans to use the Death Note? There's probably an explanation but I've stopped caring.
The plot is still contrived. I didn't really expect it to get less so, but I thought it'd at least be more interesting. But it's not. What's the point of watching two super-geniuses in a battle of wits if their jumps of logic just make no sense?
Light: "...I'm a 17 year old boy living with my parents and sister. Someone has been in my room. Therefore...they must have set up video cameras!!!"
And even L: "He's reading porn. But maybe he only has the porn so that in cases like these when he thinks he's being spied on--because I'm sure he'd reach that conclusion, knowing someone has been in his room--he can read the porn and throw off the spy into thinking he's just a normal 17 year old who reads porn. It's DUMMY porn."
WTF!?
As amazing as it is, L is right. It IS dummy porn!!!
And it gets worse from there. By the time they're ATTENDING SCHOOL TOGETHER in a manner befitting every Gundam Wing yaoi fic ever, they're second guessing each other like crazy to the point where I just want to kill them both for spite.
Light still sucks. He's nothing more than an extension of the author's penis (Is it a woman? Light is still her penis). For as smart as he is, he just doesn't have any character. He is, very litterally, a sociopath. He feels no guilt or remorse for any of his actions. Because he spends the first part of the manga simply killing off people from a distance, without meeting or having to face them, I thought that when he finally faced someone who honestly suffered because of his actions, he'd feel...something. A moment of, "Hey, I fucked up her life because I was playing a game. This really is serious shit." But no. Not even a tiny glimmer of humanity. All around him are people who care for him, trust him, challenge him, and each of them he attempts to kill off without hesitation or even for any good reason.
What point is there if he's not questioning the loss of his humanity on his path to becomming a living god? If he doesn't give a shit for anyone who dies, why should I, and more importantly, why should I care about him? He's just one big killing brain, without personality or even an interesting goal. And I can't even really think of him as genuinely smart, as his methods of doing things are just so complicated and contrived that *I* could have come up with an easier way.
He's...kind of like Seishirou in a way. Hotter, maybe, but just as boring.
L is still cool, but not cool enough to save this series. L is still cool. But when he starts falling to Light's level, not really "figuring" anything out but just instantly knowing it (because that's what genius's do, they're actually mind readers), he stops being interesting. I love his quirks and habits. I like that he feels dumber if he sits correctly. But in the context of this comic it's kind of a waste of character. His character is driven by his so called rivalry with Light, but if I think Light's a boring child, it brings down L, too, in a way. And that's really too bad.
At the end of comic 4 I really have no idea how the comic is going to progress without skipping ahead two years or something. The end didn't make much sense to me but by then I was cross-eyed anyway. If someone knows exactly what Light was trying to accomplish let me know...?
Despite all this, I was willing to look into fanscans to at least keep track of what was happening (without spending any money). As long as ONE SINGLE EVENT did not take place, I could ignore Light while enjoying L's crazy long-toed antics. But I learned this morning that that ONE SINGLE EVENT did happen, some time ago in fact, and the manga is still going. And now I'm not going to do even that much. By next week expect to find my four volumes of Death Note on ebay.
Farewell, L! May you be reincarnated as Otakukin and treated better than this mangaka has treated you.
I'm starting to get really tired of settling with mediocre manga/anime/movies. If Fire Emblem is better than some games but still not really great, is it worth settling for? Can't anyone write a GENUINELY good manga anymore? Is Gantz, with its DDDD titty pinup girls and severed limbs all I get? Are plots and consistant characters really THAT hard? Or am I just wrong and Naruto really is as good as it gets?
God help us Q_Q
P.S. ...To the Death Note fans that may viewing my journal...don't take my opinions personally ^^;;;
