[Categories: Manga Reviews]
Death Note volume 8
Ah, L, how I miss you. The crazy snack-addicted guy who sat on the edge of his seat awkwardly holding a teacup and plotting his next move to bring Kira to justice is no more. In all honesty the story should be winding down now, with only a denoument involving Light’s fate left to address. Sadly this is SJ we’re dealing with here so I suppose the show must go on. I wasn’t too keen on reading this far actually, but since I’d already bought the thing and I was waiting for a train with only a pint of cider for company I thought I might as well give it a shot.
Actually, the new arc isn’t half bad. To (mis)quote Mike Myers in Wayne’s World, “Ah, it is like Star Trek: the Next Generation. It is in many ways superior but will never be recognised as the original.” Mello and Near are worthy enough adversaries, with the only sticking point that they’re pretty much clones of L. Seriously guys, if you can create such great characters, why make carbon copies of the important ones? It does spice things up a bit though since the two of them are going after Kira separately: it becomes a three-way battle of wits as the two successors to L become rivals in bringing Light down.
The biggest problem I’m having at this stage is that there’s no real ‘good guy’ to root for any more, apart from Light’s family perhaps. L’s dead and we don’t know Near or Mello well enough yet - besides, the latter is using dubious methods to get what he wants anyway. Light on the other hand has become a grade A arsehole now: gone are the days of a flawed hero who sees the use of the death note as a means to make his own vision of a better world. The power has now well and truly corrupted him to the point at which he’s driven by nothing but ambition to further his own greatness. At least he had some moral grounding before, as shaky as it sometimes was: the questionable policies of Kira were rooted in good intentions but now he even considers killing family members if they get in his way. The old ‘Kira’ never did this - he killed people he thought were bad (the justification for which being one of the things that made the series so interesting) in order to protect the innocent, not killing the innocent people for his own ends. It’s safe to say that Light has truly lost sight of everything he depended on to maintain his humanity - the heartless way he treats Misa is pretty shitty too and highlights how he’s been using her.
The story hasn’t lost any of its pacing or inventiveness, though. Once the new arc gets into its stride it offers plenty of the double crosses, baffling logic and cliffhangers that we’ve come to expect; while I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s (Shounen-) Jumped the Shark, *winces* I feel that the central character, and the story as a whole, has lost something important and nothing that’s on hand can replace it. The plot will continue to twist and turn as always but now I’m wishing the end of Kira to come more swiftly.
Posted on March 9th, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
I stopped watching the series when the second plot begun. It was fun but it was enough, and the second plot was a lot more predictable, maybe just because it wasn’t the first.
But hey, it’s one of the few thriller series I’ve got hooked to.