Death Note Discussion Thread

[Robin3]

This is a thread aboutDeath Note (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1421501686/qid=1137389867/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-7717498-3691057?n=507846&s=books&v=glance) a really great manga by Ohba Tsugumi (story) and Obata Takesi (art). It's being translated and put out by the Shonen Jump Advanced label of Viz, and volume 3 of the series came out last week.

It's a detective/suspense thriller, with the unusual twist that the protagonist is the bad guy of sorts. He gets a note book, called the Death Note in which if you write someone's name in it, they die. What he decides to do when he discovers that power

I wanted to talk about the main character, Light Yagami, because I've been thinking about him as a personality. This guy is super-smart, and he doesn't make any mistakes. Well, makes a few, to keep the story interesting, but he's one of the sharpest characters I've read, while still being a realistic kind of smart. It's not Batman or Reed Richards we're talking about, just a really meticulous guy.

Well, who's read it? For now, I'd only like to talk about the collections that were released officially to the U.S. I know there are scanlations out there, but going from them isn't really fair.

[Professor H]

if you only up to volume three then it's all very good

as you don't want to know about later volumes
as the oes on i can't help but lose intrest... the thing i liked best is that light is not simply good or evil but rather persuing his own goal which is rather a grey area but this simply doesn't keep the tention going for all the manga and it's really losin it's impact also what happens with L is a hue anti-climax

[apple pro]

i'm up to volume 3 — i am not reading scanlations because in the case of this book, i do not want to mis-understand something. viz does release it quite timely, so i'm happy enough.

i think this book is awesome. this is the best comic out in america right now. if this was a vertigo book, it would be a legend in the making. but it's not so american comics fans don't know about it.

[Robin3]

this is the best comic out in america right now

Isn't it ironic that the best comic in America was produced in Japan?

I'd refer it to my friends. It'd probably be good to set up fan pages too. One thing is it has fewer colorful characters than the shows that have lots of fan pages, like Tenchi or Oh My Goddess!. That's partly do to the realistic look of all but the shinigami.

I think L might be making logical leaps maybe too accurately. It doesn't stand to reason that he'd make the exact conclusions that he is without knowing anything about the Death Note. For example, because the Yagami family is too squeaky clean, then obviously they must be suspect. Right. No, that makes no sense at all. That's the kind of logic that political commentators use. So I think L is getting help, but otherwise, it's kind of thrilling to see how everything is playing out.

[Professor H]

it does suffer slightly from what happens in dectectiv novels when the author knows the outcome and the plots backwards creating this elaborate scheme the lead charactor some how sees though a little too well .... this can be used to good effect such as in sherlock holmes (his identification of a person just from their apperance) but it can lead to badly explained logical leaps

but overall in death note i found the thin that gives it that little somethin extra is the charactors not the plot so the loical leaps don't matter so much

[apple pro]

i like it because all the main characters are psycho

light is a psycho as L is. the shinigami are just as flucked up as they are!

[pennywisdom]

I just started reading this manga. I only finished Volume 1 so far, but I'll wind up collecting the entire series if it continues to be as suspenseful and tightly written as the first volume.

[Ancient-Anubis]

i can't wait to see the 2 movies the are making to bad the manga is finished

[sun tzu]

I've read up to volume 7.
Excellent stuff. I'm a huge fan of "Detective Conan", and it occurred to me that Light and L are on the same intellectual level as Shinichi Kudo...
Kira is a fantastic villain. The fact he can treat gods of death like minions, despite being, in the end, just a human to whom they lend some of their stuff...The complexity of the plot...
Now, some things have happened that upset me (how does one put spoiler tags anyway?), but I look forward to the series' conclusion.
It also helps that the art is done by the same guy who draws "Hikaru No Go".