Haha thanks. That is pretty much exactly how it went down, too. By going out of my way like that, I definitely made the professors wet and pretty much secured myself an easy (and fun) A.

Right now I am at the point of the manga where the famous “I take a chip… And eat it!” But I am faced with a realization of how truly talented the folks at Madhouse are. They, without a shadow of a doubt, improved on the manga. The style and technique truly succeeds in blurring the line between live-action and animation; at times it feels like you are watching a really great movie directed by a hybrid of Danny Boyle and Martin Scorsese. The shakey lense, the carefully constructed sense of slow film stock… The last 4 episodes of HSotD further solidify this. Now, what I am eagerly anticipating is the ending sequence, and more importantly, the “alternative ending” and “3 years later” special mangas.

The anime is definitely superior to the manga, and I’m sure if I had read the manga before the anime was planned I would have an even stronger bias of this.

I dropped Death Note anime after two eps. It was terribly directed.

manga on the other hand was genuinely great for most part 'till LADIES

then it went to shit but at least it wasn't that initially

^ I'm sure you've said this to plenty of people, but you cannot determine that by two episodes of a 37-ep series. That's like saying you hate The Godfather cuz it took too long to set up and didn't even finish it. The Mise en Scene, if you will, was much superior to the manga. Scenes which you could have easily just missed or read through without second thought are amplified to be truly gripping. Plus, I'm a huge advocate of using music to accentuate the importance of a scene, and Death Note (as much of Madhouse productions) excels is this area, even if it is the same two damn songs over and over again. (Worked for Evangelion!)

^ Not only did you flawlessly cite evidence of what I knew to be true, but you seamlessly integrated my absolute favorite Emerson quote.

Kami!!!!

Mr. Tines wrote:*ownage*

I'd be pissed off at myself if that hadn't been such an brilliant piece of ownage. I can appreciate the irony indeed

( I could weasel my way out of this by saying I watched DN before I adopted my current line of thought but I won't do that. )

I did check out bunch of eps from much later time to see if it got any better (eps 2X-2X, if I remember correctly. One of those eps was the infamous feet washing ep ) though. It didn't change much from my original impressions, unfortunately. I was trying to figure out what was better, manga or anime and since they were plotwise nigh-identical (and DN isn't exactly work of with huge revisit value so I had no intention to go through both) I just had to figure out which one was better.

So I read first couple of chapters and then decided to test the anime version (I would've felt more comfortable watching anime version anyway because I'm more used to watching animus than reading mango on computer screen, which can be something of a eyesore if done for long periods of time). The anime was horrible in comparison so I decided to go with manga.

So my judgement "anime is terrible" was more case of comparing it with manga than overall evaluation of series: I had read the chapters that would make up first two eps and then watched those so I could compare the execution. My quick checkout of some later eps was to see if directing had got any better (marginally). It hadn't.

In retrospect I think anime adaptation would've been better experience if simply because it was such ridiculous over-the-top bullshit that it's impossible to take it seriously: manga didn't reach this critical mass of ridiculousness untill much, much later. If I had gone with anime from start I could've watched the whole thing as piece of camp and thus not end up suffering through considerably intense fits of RAEG at fucking up promising premise and storyline.

Eva 02 wrote:The Mise en Scene, if you will, was much superior to the manga. Scenes which you could have easily just missed or read through without second thought are amplified to be truly gripping. Plus, I'm a huge advocate of using music to accentuate the importance of a scene, and Death Note (as much of Madhouse productions) excels is this area, even if it is the same two damn songs over and over again. (Worked for Evangelion!)

Funny that you come and cite the exact reasons why - despite glorious Madhouse production values - the anime adaptation was such a piece of shit in comparison to manga. What was intense, outwardly subdued psychological battle of wits was turned into corny, hammy piece of ridiculous theatrics and major competence issues in editing and pacing.

And anime turned the shitty ending into something even shittier: gotta admire that feat!

Ok, so most will agree that DN started downhill after L died. Lets just say the anime version of this manages to distract heavily from this when compared to the manga. Seriously, if you already know the story, watch the last two episodes for comparison with the last 2 chapters. I haven't read them yet but I can easily say that the anime is superior without hesitation. Sounds to me like you picked the wrong-ass episodes, especially the feet washing scene: symbolic as it was, it seemed a little... gay.

It was four years ago, but I do remember quite vividly that the first 2 episodes had me thinking: "It feels like the show is at the climax the way they built up everything".

It does accomplish a lot in the first 2 eps, the pacing goes from steady to lightning-fast seamlessly and effectively. Mix that with malevolent theme, the deep creativity running parallel with succinct simplicity. Whatever caused the creators to burn out towards the mid point should have been excised at first signs of plot wanage (possibly hiring more writers) because the result would have been [a] pinnacle of Japanese visual/auditory achievement.

I thought the show did get worse after L died, but not significantly. It was still exciting and fun to watch.

IMO it would have been cool to see Light defeat L like he did, but overlook something, fall into L's trap, and be cornered by the SPK and killed by Ryuk like in the manga.

I never really liked Death Note. It just seemed that it rode on the "They're geniouses" thing far too much, to the point that they're guessing each other's moves with no real coherent logic other than a hunch that always rings true.

It's interesting watching Light and L's cat and mouse, but really it felt to me that they only had about 8 episodes of material. That whole section where Light made himself forget he was Kira was some of the dullest stuff I've ever seen. Then when they killed off L and replaced him with someone identical, give-or-take the likeability, characterisation, relationship with the main character or mystery I just gave up on the series because the one thing the show hinged on had just been erased. Not to mention this was just after a few vaguely romantic scenes between the two that seemed to be genuine bonding between them (Admitably it was a bit out of the blue for them to interact like that but it was at least interesting).

Overall I liked the idea but it seemed to lack enough ideas to keep it going as long as it went. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 5 or so episodes, though. After which it began to steadily decline for me.

LeoXiao wrote:IMO it would have been cool to see Light defeat L like he did, but overlook something, fall into L's trap, and be cornered by the SPK and killed by Ryuk like in the manga.

That's actually pretty similar to how the second live action movie ended. Light finds out L's real name and writes it into the death note. He then proceeds to brag to L that he is about to die, only for L to reveal that he already put his own name into the death note to nullify Light's entry and die at a later date, all so Light could be revealed as Kira. Cue police force coming in, Light dying, yadda yadda, so on and so fourth.

The live action movie certainly did a better job finishing off the series, now that I think about it.

Naomi survived having her name written down because she was 2 weeks pregnant. She was unaware of it and left because she thought she would die. Upon realising that she wasn't going to die, she went into hiding, awaiting when it would be safe to return. She later discovers that she's pregnant and realises that Light can't kill pregnant people.

Start from anywhere in the story, but assume this happened. Rewrite the series under this pretence, and make any alterations you want.

However, you'll get bonus points if the same character who won in the anime and manga wins in this fic.



If you're wondering why I'm requesting this, it's because Naomi is one of my favourite characters, and I'm curious as to how it would turn out.

This is the obligatory write it yourself post.

Was Naomi the detective's wife that hanged herself?

Fucking Light, that was the moment I geniunely started to hate the bastard (and I also hoped through the whole series she had survived and would act as cavalry for the good guys sooner or later...feh)

Yeah. She was.

Xard wrote: Fucking Light, that was the moment I geniunely started to hate the bastard (and I also hoped through the whole series she had survived and would act as cavalry for the good guys sooner or later...feh)

You're just jealous that you aren't as awesome as Light. The more evil and badass he is, the more of a great character he is. If he was real, I'd totally worship him as god.

Light was the most sympathetic "bad" guy ever.

BrikHaus wrote:If he was real, I'd totally worship him as god.

I'd like to see that as the next AwesomelyShitty article.

EvangelionFan wrote:I'd like to see that as the next AwesomelyShitty article.

So you're the other person who reads my blog.