ザラ Notes: デスノート Death Note

11 April 2008

デスノート Death Note

Title: デスノート Desu Nōto (Death Note)
English Title: Death Note
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Year: 2006
Cast:

藤原竜也 Fujiwara Tatsuya
松山ケンイチ Matsuyama Kenichi
中村獅童 Shido Nakamura
藤村俊二 Fujimura Shunji
鹿賀丈史 Kaga Takeshi
青山草太 Aoyama Sota
瀬戸朝香 Seto Asaka
戸田恵梨香 Toda Erika
香椎由宇 Kashī Yu

SYNOPSIS
Yagami Light is a college student who is studying law. He once hacked into the police database to research whether the punishment given to criminals are reasonable and proportionate to the crimes they have committed and he was surprised to find out that the worst criminals either received light punishments or are not held accountable for their crimes.

Weary and disillusioned, Light finds a notebook called the Death Note on a street. The Death Note was accidentally dropped by Ryuk, a Shinigami or God of Death. Light uses the Death Note to kill criminals.

How to Use the Death Note:
The human whose name is written in the Death Note shall die.
The Death Note will not take effect unless the writer has the person’s face in his mind when writing his name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person’s name, it will happen. But, if the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.
After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
The human who touches the Death Note can recognize the image and voice of its original owner, a god of death, even if the human is not the owner of the note.
The individuals who lose the ownership of the Death Note will also lose their memory of the usage of the Death Note. This does not mean that he will lose all the memory from the day he owned it to the day he loses possession, but means he will only lose the memory involving the Death Note.
The Death Note can only operate within 23 days (in the human calendar). This is called the 23-day rule.
Once the victim's name has been written, the individual's death can never be avoided.
The human who uses the Death Note can neither go to heaven nor hell.

The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO) are investigating the mass killings of criminals and they are counting on a mysterious detective called L to lead them to the criminal.

REVIEW
Death Note is a great movie in terms of plot development. It is tightly written that the mysteries are unraveled slowly and some outcomes are unexpected.

I think I was supposed to be torn between two opposing characters with different ideals. However, I didn't feel any inclination to side with Yagami Light and have immediately concluded that I will be on L's side.

I am disappointed that Light was not written better by the writers and portrayed better by the actor. I don't really know how to explain but he gave the impression that he wanted to kill criminals more so because he thinks he has the right to do so rather than because he wanted justice.

I think I would be able to sympathize with Light as a character if he was initially presented as someone who wants to exact justice for the sake of humanity, albeit using the wrong method, and then he gradually became drunk on his power (but really the Death Note's power) of killing other people.