![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Death Note, vols. 6-7 (Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata)
Ever since I started Death Note, people have been warning me that the plot takes a radical twist at one point and becomes a different story. Well, this (specifically volume 7) is that point.
The search for Kira - who may, of course, be more than one person - continues, as does the touchy cooperative relationship between brilliant college freshman Light Yagami and the eccentric but equally intelligent investigator who calls himself L. The overly cute, tremendously naive young actress Misa Amane, now hopelessly in love with Light, agrees to help with the investigation, and soon one Kira is cornered. But it turns out that Light's plans were much more involved and far-reaching than anyone else could have imagined -- and things proceed exactly as he had planned.
The world may never be the same.
Death Note, vols. 6-7 (review)
My reactions to volume 7 were (1) arrrrrgghhhh! No! He didn't! and (2) well! I was right all along - Light Yagami is the Antichrist.
Because L is dead as a doornail, and Light killed him. By proxy, because he's such a scumbucket. He manipulated poor, confused, tormented Rem - Misa's original shinigami, who had a bizarre, temendous love for Misa - into doing to actual deed, in such a fashion that Rem was destroyed as well.
I'm cross with the author for a number of reasons. L's death is the obvious one, but that's a dramatic choice that I can - I guess - respect. And the cover of the tankoubon volume telegraphed it: L is upside down, and as Sanada pointed out to me, the black cross (which I didn't notice at first) and white roses are also tremendously suggestive of death. (In Japan, as in many cultures - including some in Europe - white flowers almost always symbolize death.) But what really makes me angry is the blatant sudden manipulation of the text and the reader. Up until now, most of Death Note's narrative has been pretty straightforwardly chronological. Now all the sudden, we get flashbacks - retcon, plain and simple - to have Ryuk insert fake rules into the Death Note at Light's command, so that L's conclusions will be faulty, and to re-invent W as the founder of a series of orphanages, one of which is home to the young boys Mello and Near. These kids are magically inserted into the timeline so that L has been having his possible successors raised under, I guess, controlled conditions - all this time, of course. > Gack <
OK, so the kids are moderately entertaining - it's fun the way they've split L's quirks, with Near (the good boy) getting L's mildly autistic personality and fidgeting, and Mello (the very naughty bad boy) getting the junk food habit (although the only thing I've seen him munch so far has been many, many chocolate bars, unlike L's endlessly varied parade of sweets and caffeine). And I guess I want to find out what's going to happen, from the problem-solving point of view. But the story had actually gained a bit of heart - which I'd felt, initially, that it completely lacked - and now it's gone.
no subject
My opinion on L's death(btw, he's by far my favorite character of the series) and what it means for the series i've mentioned a few times at my LJ, though I agree that the orphanages and heirs(fond of both Near and Mellow as I've become) is very contrived. Mellow did turn me off chocolate bars for a while though...there's just something creepy about the way he eats them...
no subject
I'm sure Mello's meant to look creepy with the chocolate bars! Or at least, I'm sure that the way he eats them is meant to be significant ... he's starved for what he really wanted, which was L's seal of approval, and he'll never get it. I have this uncomfortable vision of him at age 35, after his metabolism has slowed down: he's nearly spherical and has even more dental work than I have.