Death Note, vols. 1-3 (author Tsugumi Ohba / illustrator Takeshi Obata)

[chomiji]

Death Note is the second manga series that I started at the recommendation of Sanada (the first was Saiyuki ... thank you thank you, Sanada-san!!!). She also warned me that Death Note wasn't likely to appeal to me the way that Samurai Deeper Kyo or Saiyuki had, and she was 100% right. The series is worth reading, but this is an affair of the head, not the heart.

Light Yagami, a high school student who is just finishing his final year, is academically brilliant, socially charming ... and bored by life and by his fellow human beings. One day he finds a mysterious notebook inscribed with instructions that will allow its owner to use it to kill people. Light assumes that this is some kind of joke, but he can't resist experimenting with the Death Note, using the names of a couple of criminals - who die, just as the instructions promised. Light quickly decides that he will make the world a better place by killing off criminals. But this is the 21st century, and his actions don't go unnoticed. Soon he's playing cat-and-mouse with the police and with a brilliant criminologist known only as L - but who's the cat, and who's the mouse?

This series is basically a fantasy, but it's set firmly against the backdrop of current technology and sociology. Of course the police notice what Light is doing - and to up the ante on the game, Light's father is Chief of Police. Of course the media reports breathlessly on every new death, and the public can't stop talking about the vigilante that they dub "Kira" (Engrish for "Killer"). The timing of a series of e-mail messages (or possibly FTP transactions) becomes a crucial clue at one point, as well.

By the time we're well into Vol. 2, Light has become one of L's principal suspects. By the end of Vol. 3, things have taken several additional twists. Light is enrolled at university, and one of his new classmates is ... L, who reveals his identity in the hopes of either forcing Light into an error or (if he's in fact innocent) coopting his keen intelligence for the investigation. And another Death Note seems to have come into play: "Kira" is making new demands and threats - but Light has nothing to do with any of it.

Several Digressions on Light (and a Little About L)

In The Lord of the Rings, when the Fellowship encounters the powerful elf queen Galadriel, Sam the hobbit suggests that she should take the One Ring, and use it to "make some folks pay for their dirty work" (IIRC - wording may not be exactly right). Galadriel answers that it would start out that way, "but it would not end that way, alas!" (ditto). She refuses the Ring, and notes that thereby she has passed the test set for her.

Light Yagami would have failed the test, and taken the Ring - in a heartbeat.

Light is very interesting but (to me) pretty repulsive as a character. He's a complete sociopath in many ways - utterly disconnected from other human beings. It's all too easy for him to make the switch from killing criminals to killing the FBI agents who are on his trail. His main opponent, L, is a little twisted also, but in a rather different direction. He has a number of personality issues that make me think he's meant to have Aspergar's Syndrome or some similarly "functional" form of autism: his eyes are always wa-a-ay open like he's just seen a ghost, he doesn't meet other peoples' gazes very often, he can't sit in a chair in a normal fashion (instead, he crouches like a gargoyle) ... but he still seems connected to other people, even if it isn't a very close or warm connection. I imagine that this is on purpose: handsome, suave, charming Light-the-Sociopath vs. disheveled, twitchy, weird L-the-Humanist.

I keep coming back to Light's personality and the way his mind is put together. I'm strangely reminded of Danny Saunders, the Hasidic teenager in Chaim Potok's The Chosen, who at the age of 4 read and memorized a religious book telling the story of a man who'd undergone Job-like torments. Danny was absolutely unaffected by the poor man's troubles in the story - all he cared about was showing off his reading and memory. His father, a rabbi who wanted a son who could follow in his own footsteps as counselor to and spiritual leader of their community, realized that he'd have to take rather severe actions if his son were to grow up as anything but a brain without a heart. In Light's case, the father would instead have celebrated his son's intellectual achievement and encouraged him to do more, and better. And so now we have Light, who could well be the person that Terry Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax was thinking of when she said "Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things."

Some other random thoughts: I find myself wondering about whether the name "Kira" has some sort of connection to Light's name - I think I remember that kira means "sparkling" in Japanese. And I also wonder whether the Death Note is writing itself in response to Light's input. Will the second Kira's Death Note contain the same rules?

I'm going to keep reading this series because it appeals to the part of me that used to like to read police precedural mysteries, like Ed McBain's "87th Precinct" stories. I want to see how it all works out. And it does have interesting ideas - just look at how much babble I've produced here! But I don't love this series the way I've loved the others.

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Let's just say that of the characters left who I'm fond of, you've only met 1, and that 1 is probably the only character I'm fond of who will make it out alive.

And the FBI agent's fiancee is cool.

[chomiji]

A couple of people have said that the latter part of the series isn't as good ... I think Sanada said something like, "When you get to the part where it seems like it should end - let it."

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I agree on that, though I still like it after that point, just not as much. It feels like it was meant to end then, but didn't. Actually SDK felt like that to me, too, around the Sea of Trees arc, except there, it got worlds better when it kept going.