I guess everyone has already heard of "Death Note", and if not, I will gladly introduce it. Death note is a manga written by Tsugumi Ōba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, published since December 2003 by the Shūeisha publishing house in the Japanese weekly magazine Shōnen Jump until May 2006, the manga had a total of one hundred and eight chapters collected in twelve volumes.
It also had its adaptation to an Anime series which was directed by Tetsurō Araki, animated by Madhouse and produced by the Japanese companies Nippon Television, Shūeisha, D.N. Dream Partners and VAP, began airing in Japan on October 3rd 2006 until its end on June 26th 2007 with a total of thirty-seven episodes of about twenty-three minutes each. It also has several films in live action and video games.
THE ANIME
Death Note tells the story of Light Yagami, an exceptional high school student who finds a mysterious notebook which belongs to a god of death (Shinigami) who responds to the name of Ryuk.
The power of this supernatural notebook allows you to end people's lives, the way you want, you just have to write it and it will happen. Of course, there are certain rules stipulated for that to happen:
- The human whose name is written in this notebook will die.
- This notebook will not take effect unless the person writing on it has the person's face in their mind when writing their name. In this way, people who share the same name will not be affected.
- If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds after typing the person's name, it will happen.
- If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.
- After writing the cause of death, the details of death should be written in the next 6 minutes 40 seconds.
Taking all this into account, Yagami Light will feel empowered to make his ideals come true, end crime and have the mastery of justice that neither the police possess, his thought of creating a perfect, pure world, without crimes or threats will be reflected in the moment he is given the opportunity to use the Death Note.
As we delve into the plot, we are introduced to L a very peculiar detective, with an immeasurable taste for sweets and a brilliant mind, who seems to be the only one who can follow Light's lead; We also have Amane Misa, a young actress, who falls madly in love not only with light's physique but with his mind and who, by sharing the same ideals, teams up with him to help him fulfill his wish.
SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES WITH THE MANGA
Although the anime covered the manga in a very good way, I also simplify the complexity of it a bit.
One of the changes is seen after the death of KIRA, the world has become chaotic and disorganized again and the police of the anti-KIRA squad even go so far as to wonder if they did well to eliminate it.
We also have that in the manga there was a "eraser" of a Shinigami that could revive those executed by the Death Note just by deleting their names from the notebook, but this was not carried out in the anime as it would have complicated the plot a bit.
In the anime, when KIRA is going to die, he is terrified because the users of the Death Note cannot go to heaven or hell; However, in the manga, Ryuk reveals to him that neither heaven nor hell really exist, which is a false story that the Shinigami use so that humans fear using them, something that he had already deduced.
For me it is an anime that everyone should see at least once, since despite having fantastic elements, it leaves you thinking about justice systems, the social order and the irrefutable consequences of taking justice into your own hands. It makes you reevaluate your ethics by evaluating the weight of deciding on the lives of other people, not seeing the full picture of imposing an action of justice, which can favor many but not many others. And the big question, if it happened to you? would you do it?
LIVE ACTION MOVIES
The live-action genre welcomed Light and company with open arms. The first two films (Death Note and Death Note: The Last Name) were directed by Shūsuke Kaneko, while the third (L Change the World) was the work of Hideo Nakata. Taking actor Tatsuya Fujiwara in the role of Light Yagami in all three installments.
"Death note: the movie" was released in Japan on June 17th, 2006 and topped the Japanese box office for two weeks, putting The Da Vinci Code in second place. It has the cast of Tatsuya Fujiwara, Kenichi Matsuyama, Erika Toda, Asaka Seto, Shidou Nakamura as the voice of Ryuk and Takeshi Kaga. In this we focus on the first part of the anime, the discovery of the Death Note, the beginning of crimes and the persecution of KIRA, in this film we do not see Misa until the end.
The second, "Death Note: The Last Name", was broadcast in Japan on November 3rd, 2006. We continue with part of the original cast, in this second installment we have Misa who is saved by a shinigami and "blessed" with a Death note, helping Light a lot by taking away the suspicions they had about him, committing crimes in the name of KIRA, the plot unfolds until the imminent death of KIRA and that of Detective L.
The third film, called "L change the world", was released in Japan on February 9th, 2008; This one focuses on L, where important personality traits are shown. In the movie, L also has to solve a new murder case within 23 days, since his name was written on the Death Note and he will die after that deadline.
On October 29th, 2016 "Death Note: A New World" was released and it was directed by Shinsuke Sato, is part of the sequel "Death Note: The Last Name" and has as starting point ten years after Light and L.'s death Six new Death Notes arrive on Earth and police officer Mishima will have to fight everyone to prevent this new battle from destroying the entire world thanks to the arrival of new shinigami.
It is worth watching, all his movies are on Netflix in the original language as well as the anime. And if you want to download the series in Spanish and original language with spanish subtitles, I leave the links here.
XOXO Li.
