§ Reflection ^
Rewatching Death Note in 2026 --- nearly 20 years after it was released --- makes me feel nostalgic and very, very old. I watched this while it was still airing. It was at the tail end of the miserable Bush years, which are tinted rose in my memory after 10 years of Trump. Obama hadn't yet been elected or failed to make good on his oft-repeated campaign promise to close Gitmo on day one, the first of many experiences that ultimately made me an anarchist. I hadn't gone vegan quite yet (that was in 2008), though I had at least stopped eating meat. I hadn't even transitioned, which really intensifies the feeling that I was a totally different person. I wonder if I'll still love it.
A bit later it got imported and became rather popular, which made me feel cool and ahead of the curve. This was still fairly early days for anime in the West; just knowing how to watch fansubs was 1337. Elitism is the theme that really stands out to me about this show and my personality at the time (and nerd culture in general). I think part of Death Note's appeal was that nerds really believed, like Light, that they were in some way the elect, like knowing how to use IRC made them superior beings who should be in charge of the world. This delusional arrogance is called out by the show right away in Episode 1:
Light: [details his plans to execute everyone bad] ... I would create a new world of earnest, kind humans.
Ryuuk1: Then you'd be the only fucked-up person left.
Light: Huh? What are you saying? Ryuuk, I'm probably the best, most dilligent honors student in Japan.
Ryuuk: ... O_O ...
Looking at it from this angle is retrospectively chilling. It was nerds who cut their teeth on places like 4chan talking about stuff like Death Note who ended up playing a substantial role in the creation of fascism as we know it. Whenever they could, they seized power for themselves; they now run companies with more money than entire countries. They are no less delusional in their arrogance than Light, and far more ambitious when it comes to mass murder.
§ Let's Get Started ^
The beginning feels a bit rushed. Before the first episode is even over, Light has already filled up half his frickin notebook and declared himself god. I seem to recall the manga drawing things out more? His first two kills are defensible:
- A man who's killed six people, then taken hostages at a daycare. This kill might have saved lives, and it would be a freebie no matter who it was, since it shouldn't have actually worked. (Accidentally killing someone you love as your first one would be a great story. I don't remember if that ever happens.)
- A man who's part of a gang trying to rape a woman in broad daylight2 outside a convenience store. (Light should have definitely tried to help instead of just flexing his god-muscles and leaving her to fend for herself for the 40 seconds before it kicks in.)
Light has some moral misgivings but overall doesn't seem too broken up about these. Then the next time we see him he executes 100+ prisoners. I'm starting to think this guy was always kind of a piece of shit! No Faustian bargain here.
Actually, I want to go back to #2 for a moment and how much it sucks. Obviously it's always trash when a series uses sexual assault of a third party solely for the development of the (male) protagonist, but that's actually not why this sucks so bad. It just feels like they're trying really hard to validate Light's perspective that crime is out of control. This is an actual, shocking, violent crime that no other bystanders seemed to care about. In real life, Japan has a low crime rate and it was (and is) falling. It's extremely stupid, 24 hour news/talk radio -brained shit to think violent crime is a big issue, but Light's stupidity is validated in a major way.
He must be watching a lot of copaganda to think people who are imprisoned are ipso facto guilty and got off too easy. Maybe it just comes with having a cop for a dad. He bears a striking resemblance to fascists who fall for racist pseudoscience and obvious grifters but believe they're intellectually superior.
§ Having Fun On-Line ^
Does Light use fucking Internet Explorer?
I found several recreations of this site. None of them are a perfect visual match for the anime, but I like this one a lot: https://legendofkira.com/
This one I don't like (plays English audio and depends on Telegram) but it has a feature like my Digital Death Note: https://kira-website.vercel.app/pages/write There must have been a ton of these 20 years ago, but I didn't turn any up in my cursory search before I made the page. The internet is seriously lacking in venues to wish death on people! I'm providing an important public service.
§ ASCII Art Break ^
\ \\ // / \\\\\\\\ //////// \ \\\\\\\ /////// / \ \\\ \/ /// / \\\\ )___ ___( //// \\\\ ,--, \/ ,--, //// \\ ( o ,\ /, o ) // (s `'' /\ ''' s) `- Z /||\ S -' \ \__________/ / \ \ vv v v / / \ \_^^^^_/ / \ _/\_ / \ / `----' <( KEHKEHKEHKEHKEH )
§ Rem & Misa ^
Well, now there are women on the show, one human named Misa and one shinigami named Rem. Rem is in love with Misa, and it's extra dramatic because when a shinigami falls in love with someone, they're likely to die by abusing their Death Note powers to extend the person's life instead of shorten it like they're supposed to. But not by writing their name down in the future, by killing the person who was fated to kill them.
So, I'm not sure how shinigami can ever use the Death Note, since by interfering with causality they probably extend people's lives as a random side effect all the time, right? Or they just can't kill murderers? It seems like it's more some kind of heavenly law that punishes them for doing it on purpose. So I guess being in love is a sin for shinigami? Episode 21 has a "how to use it" rule reading: "If the god of death decides to use the DEATH NOTE to kill the assassin of an individual he favors, the individual's life will be extended, but the god of death will die." In any case, Rem is a tragic character who's cursed to die for her love. Woo, queer representation!
I might be overselling it a bit here. Shinigami are basically weird zombies and it's hard to tell what love even is for them. A previous shinigami who fell in love with Misa did so after just like... watching her all the time through the magic portal to earth. So basically stalking the hell out of her. But, they're shinigami, so I guess that's like, kind of normal for them? They come across like just more of Misa's stalkers.
I... don't really love what they did with Misa. She's a model and a massive Kira groupie. I think she gets better later? It would be nice if the only (human) female character wasn't supposed to be a nutso dum-dum.3 I guess only L and Light get to be supergeniuses. Still, she outwits Light, or at least gets the drop on him.
Her look makes the show feel very 2007. This was the emo era, also reflected strongly in L (are those bags under his eyes or eyeliner?).
She has a bunch of goth stuff in her room including a shelf full of emo dolls from Hot Topic.
She even has the red and black socks.
§ Crimes Against Humanity ^
I already wasn't entirely happy with Misa, but then they went and did this to her.
L and the cops tie her upright with leather belts aross her body and tightly between her legs. Then they just... torture her. They leave her like this for weeks! They even watch her when she pees. She doesn't believe she's being held by the the cops, because "there's no way the police would tie me up in such a fetish-like way."
There's no point to any of this abuse that I can discern except to torture her. She's already in a cell; why does she have to be blindfolded and restrained as well? I guess one justification is they don't know how the Kira powers work --- but then why not do the same to Light? (This brings up another gripe, actually: why did they decide so quickly that Kira had supernatural powers? Why not some kind of high tech death ray?) Light is seemingly handcuffed for weeks, despite also being in a prison cell, but at least he didn't get put in bondage gear.
Supergenius L should know that torture doesn't work. Unless the goal is to make someone suicidal --- they successfully did that after only the first three days. It's very Oh Fuck It's 2007 And Bush Is President that the good guys are holding people in a black site without charges and sexually torturing them.
§ MAXIMUM THE HORMONE ^
The second intro is one of the GOATs. Fuck it's so good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6sSMIfG94k
The outro is by the same band --- Maximum the Hormone --- and it kicks ass too. It explicitly mentions Kira, so I guess they wrote it for the show? They even made a Death Note-themed music video that goes hard as fuck. (I don't think I was alone in searching them up, seeing this video's thumbnail, and thinking they looked like a visual kei band!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_vvv1oPnKY&t=31
I really like that they have the same group do both intro and outro. Death Note actually got me pretty into this band. They have this fun hit music video from the same time that stands out more for its abrupt tonal shifts than anything else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQAYLxAIerE&t=90
These used to be readily available with English subtitles but I'm coming up empty-handed. I probably have them on, like, an iPod hard drive somewhere. They're still great even without knowing what they're saying though; I love how everytime the band shows up they're going fucking apeshit and that one guy looks like he wants to murder the mic.
§ Footnotes ^
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When I first watched/read this, fan translations were all over the place in their spellings. I seem to recall Light's name being written as "Raito". I still think of The Character Known Canonically In English As Ryuk as "Ryuuku"; I've compromised by omitting the trailing vowel. <-|
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Figuratively. It's more like broad darkness. Like, stuff's open and there are people around. <-|
