Thoughts on Death Note episodes 1-17

Lately, I have been watching the anime series Death Note obsessively on youtube. Here is the premise, in my own words (you can also check out Wikipedia etc):

Light Yagami, the smartest kid in school, one day finds the “Death Note,” a magical notebook that gives its owner the supernatural ability to kill anyone by merely writing the victim’s name in the pages of the book, while thinking clearly of the victim’s face. without both the name and the face of the victim, the owner of the Death Note cannot complete the killing. Light decides to create a “perfect world” by killing all criminals. Eventually the most powerful political institutions of the world appoint a mysterious genius detective, known only as “L”, to solve the mystery of why all the world’s criminals (that make it onto the nightly news) are dropping dead.
(To find Death Note episodes free on youtube, look for “DN ep 1” or some other variation. If it’s overly obvious, the people who hold the rights to the DVD will pull it off the internet, therefore people who are posting it as fans are doing so under non-obvious titles. These will eventually get caught and pulled off but until then you can watch as much as you want.)

This is a totally addicting series to me because:

• it is fast-paced (so much so that if I need to wake up for my 9am shift at Beard Papa’s I just watch an episode of Death Note and I am instantly awake),
• beautifully laid-out and animated, with amazingly dramatic sequences of images, the “camera”-angling is extremely dramatic (obviously there is no camera, but … the animation is framed in a way that catches some of the most extreme changes in emotions in the characters.)
• it is extremely clever and somewhat self-conscious
• the voice-actors are extremely skilled at delivering emotion-packed dialog (Japanese version only – can’t vouch for the dubbed versions out there)
• the characters are amazingly well designed – I particularly think “L” and Yagami Light’s father are well-thought out ("L" sits in the same wierd posture as me when he needs to concentrate - which is all the time. He also has quircky habbits - like he never eats anything but sweets and coffee with a lot of sugar. The father is very flawed and very believable as a chief of police and family-man.)
• the series poses some very interesting philosophical questions (as well as many stupid ones) and its interesting to watch which versions of “justice” are valued/de-valued.
  

This series is very frustrating, too. I often finish an episode thinking in my head – I should do a better job. Here are some major flaws that really bother me:

• The concept is so Eurocentric as to be for the most part white supremacist. I have found very little evidence to the contrary, as of episode 17. For example: The whole premise of the series is that Light Yagami randomly picks up the Death Note, which fell to the ground outside the school and was able to read it because it was written in English – we later find out that its instructions were written in English because, as one of the gods of death says: “English is the most popular language.” This is a common fallacy in places where most international contact occurs through English as a medium, ie: tourist hotspots, big cities where the effects of American Globalization are most strong, etc. If you do a quick search on the internet, there are twice as many speakers of Mandarin as there are of English. I guess the Chinese Empire reached more people more effectively than has the American one …. so far.
• There is so much Christian symbolism in this series. Light’s name, for example. But even beyond the symbolism of the characters’ names, there is a lot of Christian (mostly Catholic) imagery of Good vs. Evil. If you watch this series, keep an eye out for images of the mural on the Sistine Chapel, the Virgin Mary, the Pieta, and stained glass, crosses, etc. There is some attempt at cross-cultural reference, too of course: but all of these are very half-ass, for example, one of the gods of death from the underworld wears a Plains Indian feather head-dress.
• Most “criminals” killed by Light Yagami so far (as of episode 17 of 35) seem to be 2-dimensional, stereotypical scums-of-society, with bad teeth and/or mild insanity and deserve to die. Since Light is the son of a police chief, it makes sense that he is on the side of the pigs in his philosophy, but there could be more perspective…
• All the people who appear on the series are either white American or European, or light-skinned Japanese. Where is the diversity? The series is set in Tokyo, the impact of the Death Note is supposed to be global, and the manga on which this anime is based has been translated into English, German, Chinese, and Spanish.
• Finally, the torture methods and rights-violations committed by the detectives (led by “L”) in this series are Guantanamo-level, though not Abu-Graib level. (it’s hard to say but I think that there is also a critique of the torture methodology towards the end of episode 16.)

On the other hand, there is a healthy criticism of for-profit television companies – in one episode, the chief executive of a major news channel instructs his team of news reporters and writers to construct a story in order to boost ratings. Still, the critique is frustratingly bereft of bias-analysis, ideology-analysis, etc.

At the end of episode 17, the series embarks on a new chapter in which the next target of societal commentary appears to be aimed at corporate leaders – Japanese businessmen.

A note on the pop-culture context of Death Note:
I’m starting to see a trend in popular and highly-acclaimed literature (including manga) coming out of Japan these days. It seems that many high-quality works of literature and anime are showing the impact of suspense/mysteries. Suspense (SASUPENSU) and mysteries (MISTERI-) are a genre of lit/TV programming that has been extremely popular in Japan since WWII (possibly even before). In any case, I’ve seen the influence of the mystery genre (which I characterize as featuring a. detectives, b. human drama, and c. some kind of social commentary or existential question) in works such as The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, Paranoia Agent, and now Death Note. It’s really amazing. These are only the most recent manifestations, and the most genre-bending. Previously we also had the Meitantei Conan series and Kindaichi Hajime series.
My final comment on the Death Note series is that the creator of the Death Note franchise is – and this is no surprise – so totally Japan-centric as to be almost painful sometimes. But isn’t that true of cultural products originating in the U.S.? Totally ethnocentric. Totally oblivious to the scope and depth of ignorance. What is interesting, though, is that this hugely successful and highly disseminated series – Death Note – is not coming from an American perspective… it’s coming from a Japanese team of writers and producers. Yet it is so white supremacist, with a Japanese twist. Which is why I keep saying to myself as I tune in for more… I can do better.

Check it out if you get a chance and let me know what you think.