Death Note (vol 1) - Tsugumi Ohba > Reviews (19)

For many years, a long made piece of paper, called a chain letter, supposedly gifts people with different abilities of luck or of death. Nowadays, they are considered as spam, to be ignore completely from all of the world. To be frank, I positively hate chain letters, but I always did wonder as to what if they were real. What if chain letters actually gifted you with such fortune? What if they really gave you the power to kill anyone? That fantasy draws along in people's minds, questioning as to if you could really do good things for all living kinds. And that is where one manga artist by the name of Tsugumi Ohba has shown a concept of what could happen.

Death Note, you can tell by the name itself, is an incredibly dark concept. Light Yagami is one of the highest-minded Japanese high school students of his generation. However, he is bored with having to tend to these repetitious chores of work that are so easy to do. It goes on, day in and day out, with him studying and studying. No real social life at all.

Ryuk is a shinigami, or Death God, who lives in the Death God world. Death Gods carry notebooks which are called Death Notes. These Death Notes are what let shinigami kill humans who are meant to die or just kill them anytime and anywhere, by writing the soon-to-be-deceased's name in the notebook. However, Ryuk is bored in the living world, tired of all silence and bad apples in their world. So, he drops his Death Note in the Human realm intentionally, hoping for some random human to try it out.

Well, it just so happens that it drops right in front of Light Yagami's eyes, who is intrigued by it. After joking around with the book a little, and finding that there are actually some rules to the book, he tries it out on a criminal he hears about from the media. To his shock and amazement, the criminal dies after 40 seconds have passed, leading him to experiment with the book a little. After these experiments, Light finally concludes that this Death Note is the real thing, resolving to use it for the greater good. Well, the greater good being of him eliminating all criminals of this world and rising as GOD.

Now, the previous paragraph is already good enough as the entire story, but then things grow trickier. After these sudden deaths of criminals, the world's greatest detective, who only goes by the name of "L", is called in to find out who's committing to these murders. After finding out that L is on his trail, Light begins a cat-and-mouse game with L, swearing that he will find out and kill L before he himself is found out.

And that is essentially how the storyline plays out, but it is one of those stories that you will NEVER know what's coming next. There are always twists and turns throughout the entire volume, which, in itself, can become rather short for readers, but it just sucks you dry and leaves you wanting more and more.

Another thing I do like about this series is the modern setting of the 2000's. Most manga/anime are usually fantasy places with no connection to reality.

However, "Death Note" just breathes reality because of it's complex nature and modern connections. It even gives everyone the chilling idea that this could certainly happen here, if it were possible. It would be almost exactly like this!

As for the drawing style, I do like it, but I'm not too much of an artist to fully explain some things. But, the characters are well-drawn, Ryuk terrifies me a bit, L looks exactly as he should with barely any sleep.

Overall, however, I feel this is a must-read for any older manga fan OR any person who questions the concepts explained within the series. So, with a proper bow, and a final write, Death Note gets a creepy 5 out of 5

Aaron Frederick
Time: 5:42 PM
Date: Sunday, December 09, 2007
Cause of Death: Heart Attack

^_^