TV priest of the internet death god.
Seeing as how we’re closing in on five straight weeks of me posting my thoughts each episode of DEATH NOTE and we still have nine episodes left in the series, I figured it’d be best to speed things up. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been loving the show and I want to see it through to the end, but I think we don’t want DEATH NOTE to dominate Anime Vice. As such, I’ll be commenting on two episodes at time, now…
Where does he get those wonderful toys?
Sound good everybody? Without further ado, here are my thoughts… with bullets!
- One “benefit” of this show’s plotting is that it gets plenty of time to show how thoroughly wretched a human being Light is. He contemplates killing his sister to keep control of the death note, and his only real concern regarding his father’s dying is that he won’t have access to the Shinigami eyes anymore. It really is hard to tell if he was shedding crocodile tears in the hospital. I don’t think Light even knows anymore, and his insincerity is a marked contrast to Chief Yagami’s nobility.
- I wouldn’t say this show’s jumped the shark, but it’s definitely getting messy. Like when did the Shinigami eyes rules change? Now, you only need pictures to learn real names? Wasn’t that an obstacle before? And with the introduction of this owl-like Shinigami, I’m really not clear how many death notes are floating around, now, either. There seem to three?
A devil perched on one shoulder, and a shinigami perched on the other? - On the other side, things getting messy like this actually works thematically as a comment on the nature of lying. The truth is simple. Honesty is simple. Lies are complicated. One lie begets another lie, which begets yet another lie in turn to cover up the first one... until you have a whole mess of lies like we’re seeing here.
- Living in LA, it was a bit trippy to see touristy landmarks like the Roosevelt Hotel and Rodeo Drive in an anime. Definitely “outside looking in” moments.
- I don’t think this is nit-picking since it’s kind of a big deal, but I don’t think the Kira task force would actually be donning SWAT gear themselves for that warehouse rescue. You use officers with special training for Special Weapons And Tactics, and even if you explain it away that the task force is unofficial, that explanation raises the issue of where’d they get the gear. I doubt they sell it all at Japan's equivalent of Dick’s sporting goods.
- I’m seriously digging all these abstract points made by Near’s toys. I’d never thought I’d see a visual metaphor represented through action figures AND tarot cards... but my expectations exist only to be confounded on a daily basis.
- Speaking of symbolism (and going back to my whole screed about Kira being a monster for the digital age) I do think it’s fitting that Demegawa (demogoue?), a TV mogul, would become the prophet/priest of this internet-borne death god.
Watch these episodes, "Father" & "Justice", on Hulu, here and here. And read my comments on the previous episodes here.
-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Studios and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia. HYBRID BASTARDS! is available here and UNIMAGINABLE is available here for pre-order on Amazon.com.
I try to submit articles for consideration occasionally. I also don't have the free time to write as much as I would like to. I do very much appreciate when my article submissions get approved. I'm just trying to do my small part to help out. Wish more people would submit.
Moving on.
These episode show that an apple can very well fall far from the tree.
Light is the kind of man who uses the death of his own father to try and give himself more of an alibi. Knowing the eyes will show he specifically doesn't own a Death Note for the time. He knowingly devastated his own mother and sister for himself. I just don't see how someone could root for this kind of behavior.
When you kill someone. You don't just take a life. That's the simplistic ideal that Hollywood portrays. You take something from everyone that person has ever touched. Nothing shows that better then the scene of the person crying alone in the house.
I can understand why they would use SWAT-esque gear for their raid. They know someone inside has a Death Note and could of made a deal for Shinigami Eyes. Why take that tactical risk? Where they got it is a better question.
Funny how Demegawa was one of the people from Sakura TV back when they did that fake news broadcast about revealing Kira. Now he is the self proclaimed priest of Kira. Though like many self proclaimed religious televangelists. They are less men of God and more men of them self. Less about spreading the "good word" and more about self-aggrandizing. Though, the same could be said for many politicians.
That was best shown in the hedging of the president in the press conference scene. Talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Near is just constantly surrounded with metaphors.
I have to love Near in the 30th episode. He planted the seeds of distrust to Light's Task Force and made him listen to it. He couldn't stop it without confirming his guilt. In the process confirmed there was Shinigami there.
I understand Chief Yagami is supposed to be the polar opposite to Light at this point, but I get the same dislike when Batman acts like a graceful knight and doesn't want to take the lives of his enemies. The Joker intends to kill many more people (he's made that clear), but no matter how many times Batman gets the chance he doesn't end it.
Either way, I'm glad Chief Yagami got to die peacefully. Even if it was kind of on the basis of a deception, he died happy that he didn't know Light was Kira.
It was at this point that the idea of a truly vengeful god got interesting to me. When the narrator explained how the public had reacted to Kira it made me think about what if God delivered immediate vengeance. Everyone talks about the afterlife as if God will punish you when you die, but immediate punishment would probly create whole new attitudes in the world. What I didn't understand though was how Light or anyone else found the time to sit there and continue writing criminal names in a notebook. Maybe I am forgetting some details that revealed that info.
......A "jerk"? Light murders innocent people, FBI, uses his own father's death to create an alibi for himself, was completely willing to kill his little sister, is generally violent and abusive toward women, and the best you can come to is that he's a "jerk"? Seriously??
A jerk is a person who cuts you off in traffic, keeps forgetting to return your DVDs, eats your last cookie without asking, or takes a girl out for a date and wants to split the check.
How would you describe Jack the Ripper? A brat? Light is an egotistical psychopath.
Even calling Cheif Yagami naive for having some morals and actually living by them? What he did was Police S.O.P. You are required to give a verbal warning before using lethal force. It's something in his blood. He's lived most of his life as a police officer. You can't just turn that off.
Values don't mean anything if you abandon them when they become inconvenient.
You are taking the word "jerk" too seriously. Light is much worse than that, but it is a word that I use in my vocabulary quite often, and it was the first thing to came to mind as I was typing. If it makes everyone feel a little better, Light is murderous psychopathic despicable scum...after episode 2.
Also, police officers are able to use deadly force whenever they are suspicious of any deadly force aimed at them (especially in the middle of a raid). If I am not mistaken, Mello had threatened to blow up the building. I would consider that deadly force. Yagami had the right to take out Mello in my opinion. Officer of the law or not.
are they going to go super-saiyin before the show ends???
Keep those articles going. We definitely appreciate them.
Yeah - - SWAT gear ain't that easy to come by.
Near's definitely got Light by the balls, now, too.
This definitely seems to harp on the same transgressive themes as FRANKENSTEIN, too - - except it's not the act of creation that's getting perverted, it's the act of judgment.
"If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, then they aren't values! They're... hobbies."
Jon Stewart
Pretty much.