Death Note 1 - Rebirth (very long)

[elsie]

19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and
men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to
the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
21 “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his
deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

John 3:19-21 (New American Standard translation)


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Death Note 1 - Rebirth

After an OP chockfull of Christian imagery, we see the shinigami realm,
underscored by a Gregorian chant. It's a bleak and desolate place of
black and gray. We see Ryuk, staring into the distance. Around him,
other shinigami sleep or gamble. The gamblers invite him to join them,
but he declines.

"Listen for the voice of God and follow it," a teacher intones in a high
school classroom to uninterested students, "and know that in time, you
will find your salvation."

The teacher calls on an attractive boy name Yagami to translate a
sentence. He stands: "Follow the teachings of God and receive his
blessings, and so it shall be that the seas will again become bountiful,
and the raging storms will subside." Later we see the boy walking along
as newscasters on video screens report on murders. "Day in and day out,"
he thinks, "the same news on permanent repeat."

Cut to Ryuk, thinking, "This is all so ridiculous." The two join in
thinking: "This world is rotting."

Yagami is back in school, now in science, as the teacher drones on about
extinction. Bored students chat amongst themselves while Yagami stares
out the window, suddenly seeing a notebook fall out of the sky into the
school's courtyard. After class, he goes over to pick it up, reading the
cover. "Death Note? As in a notebook of death?" He reads through the
rules written in English. "That's pretty lame," he says, putting it back
on the ground, "not to mention twisted." He walks away, and two girls
ogle him as he passes by. He stops walking and then looks back.

As he continues on his way home, he thinks, "There must be something
wrong with me to even consider it." We see the notebook under his arm.
Later in his bedroom, we him reading the rules. A muted television sites
on his desk. "So depending on the person you have in mind, you can
either kill them easily or painfully, huh? This is pretty detailed for a
prank. So I write a name, and a person dies. Like anyone would believe
that!"

He opens the notebook and picks up a pencil. "Wait. On the off chance
someone really dies, would that make me a murderer? Yeah, right. It's
completely impossible."

The sound on the TV is turned up as the newscasters report on a hostage
situation and identify the suspect. Yagami writes the suspect's name in
the notebook and waits. As the 40 seconds pass, he thinks at first that
the notebook failed and moves to turn off the TV. Just then the news
reports the emergence of the hostages; the suspect collapsed and died.
He stares in shock. "No way. It's coincidence. This has to be a
coincidence."

His mother calls to remind him of cram school. Heading out, he puts the
notebook in his bag, deciding it needs another test. As he sits in the
cram school classroom, he watches a bully extort "$20" from a nerdy
classmate. He considers killing the bully but decides he should avoid
someone he knows. After class, we see the nerd bitching because his mom
isn't there to pick him up.

As Light walks home, he thinks, "Once you actually start looking around,
it makes you wonder if you'd be doing society a favor by getting rid of
all these people."

Next, we see a woman on the street being accosted by a biker gang. The
leader introduces himself to her as Light enters the nearby convenience
store to watch the scene through the window. The bikers start to rape
the woman as Light writes the leader's name. "Now, what will happen?" he
thinks to himself.

The girl escapes across the street. The leader pursues her on his
motorcycle, only to be run down by a semi. A shaking Light acknowledges
that the Death Note is real.

Watching from the shinigami realm, Ryuk remarks that it's time to get
going. [commercial break] The others ask where he's going, and he tells
them that he dropped his Death Note.

"Hold on a sec. Didn't you already trick the old man to get a second
book? Don't tell me you dropped both of them?" (Just who is this old man
anyhow?)

Ryuk tells them he dropped the notebook in the human world and heads
off, extending his black wings and soaring toward Tokyo.

Light arrives home on a rainy evening to be greeted by his mother
waiting expectantly for his exam results. His scores are very high,
ranking him first in Japan. He heads up to his room to "study" but
really to use the notebook.

It has been five days since he first used it, and the notebook has pages
of names filled in, some in kanji and some in the Roman alphabet. (This
leads me to wonder if he must use the native writing system of the
victim, and if, for instance, he must also use Arabic, Hebrew and
Cyrillic for those criminals. He begins laughing, in a not entirely sane
manner. (Or is that a "not at all" sane manner?)

"You've taken quite a liking to it," Ryuk comments. Light falls off his
chair in surprise. Ryuk introduces himself as the shinigami attached to
the notebook. Light pulls himself together, claiming not to be surprised
that the notebook's owner showed up. Ryuk comments on how many names
Light has already written, saying that most human users hadn't written
that many.

Light has accepted that there would be repercussions for using the
notebook and asks if Ryuk is there to take his soul.

"What do you mean? Is that some fantasy you humans came up with?" Ryuk
says he isn't going to do anything to Light, that the notebook is now
part of the human world and belongs to Light. If he doesn't want it, he
can give it away, losing his memory of it in the process.

Light doesn't quite believe he won't be punished. Ryuk responds, "You
will feel the fear and pain known only to humans who've used the
notebook, and when it's your time to die, it will fall on me to write
your name in my Death Note." He warns Light with a laugh that the boy
will go to neither heaven nor hell after death.

Light's mother knocks on the door to offer him some apples. She can't
see the shinigami, who explains that only the notebook's user can see
him. Ryuk takes an apple: "Juicy!"

"I just have one more question I want to ask you. Why was I chosen for
this?" (Light's egomania rears its head.)

"I didn't choose you. Don't you see? This is all just an accident. You
actually thought you were chosen because you're so smart or something?
Don't be so vain. It just happened to fall around here, and you just
happened to pick it up, and that's all there is to it. That's why I
wrote the instructions in English, the most popular language in the
human world." Ryuk explains that he only dropped the notebook out of
boredom.

Ryuk asks why Light has used the notebook the way he has, and Light
explains, "It's only a matter of time before people figure out that
these criminals are being eliminated by someone. I want the world to
know of my existence, that there's someone out there passing judgment on
the wicked!" Light adds that he's been bored too.

We get a flashback to the night the biker was killed as Light staggered
home afterwards. "I killed them both," he told himself. "Those were
human lives. It won't be overlooked. Besides, who am I to pass judgment
on others? No. No, wait. Maybe I'm wrong….This world is rotting, and
those who are making it rot deserve to die! Someone has to do it, so why
not me? Even if it means sacrificing my own mind and soul, it's worth
it! Because the world can't go on like this!"

The next day in class, Light continued justifying this new role. As the
sunlight breaks through the clouds to shine on him, he said, "I'll do
it. Using the Death Note, I'll change the world." And thus we get the
epic Writing Scene of Doom!

Back with Ryuk, Light explains that he is cleaning up the world one name
at a time. The chant resumes as he says, "The world will start moving in
the right direction. It'll be a new world, free of injustice and
populated by people who I've judged to be honest, kind, and hard-working."

"But if you did that," Ryuk comments, "it would make you the only bad
person left."

Light's expression turns innocent. "Huh? I have no idea what you're
talking about. I'm a hardworking honor student who's considered to be
one of Japan's best and brightest. And I … I will become the God of this
new world."

"It's just as I thought," Ryuk responds gleefully. "Humans are so
interesting."

Comments:

Ryuk is wonderfully ambiguously in his statements about the Death Note,
and Light's hubris quickly overwhelms his better "judgment." If Light's
a hero, it's in the classical mode of the tragic hero felled by his pride.

It's also interesting to see the mingling of Judeo-Christian theology
with a Shinto figure such as the shinigami. And given the translation
work at the beginning, I'm wondering if Light attends a western-style
school sponsored by Catholics.

I deliberately quit watching the fansubs in hopes of just this: Death
Note on adult swim, and I'm not disappointed. It's a very good dub so
far for two of the most important roles.