Death Note chap.8-25

[petronia]

8-10: I started reading the scanlations at 8, since the first volume runs up to 7 and I finished it in the metro the other day. ^^; Textbook little sociopath Raito is, and so on and so forth. The art's as wonderful as always - personally I've always been biased toward line rather than colour, it's why I'll always prefer manga to French or American comics. ^^; Funny that it's another wave-the-wand-once fantasy about a boy who's constantly haunted by a supernatural being only he can see, but the difference between Ryuuku and Sai is the difference between this and HnG. (Also Ryuuku is more materially there than Sai is, just invisible/inaudible, and I don't think he follows Raito into the bathroom. Which is what we all wondered about Sai, I think. ^^;)

Off-topic, but ever notice the vast majority of hacker-type manga characters have Macs?

11: Oh, that's L. Bit of a mad eccentric, isn't he? ...His hotel room looks like the one in my WK fic. x_x

12-15: The narrative strategy is something I associate with Hitchcock or French thriller novels: tell a grosso-modo murder mystery from the criminal's POV, taking advantage of the reader's natural tendency to root for the hero / POV character to destabilise the moral centre of the story and thus heighten tension. In a scene like this one is torn between wanting to see Raito get out of the tight spot, and watching in horror as he sweet-talks the girl to her doom. (Mystery novels are a very moral, or at any rate very lawful (in the D&D sense) literary genre. The emphasis is on "solving the murder" i.e. bringing the perpetrator to justice as an end to the conflict, and not so much on the impact the deaths have on the people around them, for instance. There's shock in murder mysteries, but very little mourning. Justice of course being blind, it can also bring personal tragedy to sympathetic characters. DN is above hack-level just for introducing the latter trope, not to mention aiming at a more sophisticated concept of justice than "punishing the evildoer". Incidentally in Japanese and Chinese the literary genre is referred to as "deductive", not "detective" or "mystery"; I had a conversation once with my dad in which he said they don't have quite the same set of conventions. I don't know if he's right about that, as my experience is limited.) But as always, the more he moves, the faster the net shrinks... What did happen to Naomi, anyway? It's not that simple, is it?

Watari looks like an older version of Dupond-Dupont out of Tintin, I swear. :D

16: See, if it were my family, not only would my mother waltz right in, but she'd a) find the paper as well and b) find the pencil lead, and probably scold me for dropping it where it can be stamped into the carpet. ...And shinigami really like to eat apples? XD I thought he made that up to mess with L's mind.

17: Seriously, the porn is a little too pat. XD (Also, wouldn't it take, like, ages to write four complex kanji with one's non-dominant hand stuck in a bag? I know it'd take me a lot longer than I could make it look like I was fumbling for a potato chip.)

18-19: Oh, yay, the plot thickens. XD Can anyone else think of a Jump manga in which the main charas were uni students? I can't, but I haven't followed many. (And how old is L supposed to be anyway? Early twenties? I note his posture is more defensive the more in-public he is.)

...I wonder what they're majoring in? XD;;;

And yeah, the old mystery-novel adage: suspect the person whose alibi is too airtight.

20: .........Lady, there was no call for that. Just no call at all. _O_

21: I don't think I've ever worked my left brain this hard while reading a manga (though that may be because I never bothered to try to solve any of the Go problems in HnG myself XD). Must be tough as hell to write, always thinking ten steps ahead of the dialogue.

In other news, if I poked Jfen I'd find yaoi, wouldn't I?

22: I feel bad for Raito's dad. Him most of all, in fact - the man's the voice of integrity itself, and plain doesn't deserve what's happening (and everything that likely will happen) to him.

23-24: Following this in the magazine must be like watching a thriller film in five-minute increments.

25: ...I reckon sensei-tachi are getting a lot of letters from teenybopper fangirls who think Raito/Kira is so psycho and hawt. Or am I just paranoid? (But then I wouldn't be able to resist meta-m0xx0ring the fans if I were writing a Jump series, so should I expect others to be higher-minded? XD;;)

Comments

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

If anything really happens to Yagami senior, I expect hell, swift and furious and ending, to break out in the manga. Because... yeah.

And as far as meta-mocking goes, Death Note has been parodied once, probably twice (if you count the Bo-bo-bo/DN mangaka swap) at least, in Jump. Quite possibly more. So. (Other people are getting the impression that Jump's more meta now, too.)

I've always had sympathy for the devil, plus a love for the cliffhangers (or at least, the sweet, sweet pain of serialization: I think the disappearance in Hikaru no go was better when your heart was being broken weakly, for examp). Besides, the two leads are both characters that over-think themselves into knots (witness the tennis match), so.... Pretty much I was doomed from the start, there.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I do wonder how long DN's going to last, though. It seems very fast-paced. But with the introduction of the latest girl-chara... ten volumes at best? Personally I'm not very good with serialisation, even as I compulsively rake the Internet for raw scans of Japanese WJ. It's a protracted process of losing interest, for me.

Actually I found some text translations for the latest chapters, no idea how accurate they are (well, the scanlations read competently at any rate ^^;), but all the meta I keep seeing really does seem to be intentional. XD Another reason to enjoy the thing, I suppose, apart from the over-thinking. (Which gives me the urge to fic, because I find multiple layers of meaning irresistable, although I know it makes me obsessive and batty to write that way.)

[two-if-by-sea.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite part about L is how long the mangakas left off letting you see his face, so you're expecting, you know, some superhot or super ugly person to show up as L, and then the first time you see him he just looks like he has buggy eyes and NO SLEEP EVER.

I couldn't imagine ever, ever reading this weekly. Well, I guess I will have to, now that I've finished the 25 chapters. ^^;; but yeah, especially with all the parts where Raye's fiancee was going to screw Raito over pretty badly.

And wait. You mean you haven't seen the yaoi yet?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Well, now I've seen the yaoi. XD;; And text translations and fanart and Chinese chapter scans and Japanese webrings and all the usual fannish apparatus that sprouts out of nowhere like a giant sparkly mushroom. There's a surprising number of people who're ficcing for it, like, right this second. I'm like... okay, I see where you're coming from, mostly because I find that kind of intellectual sparring sexy, but how/when the hell are you going to place it? (Of course Jfen is just, "Canon? What is this thing you refer to as canon?")

L... should perhaps lay off the coffee, yeah. XD But it just seems to me like the more he gets out in public the twitchier he is. He's cute in such an odd way, like a lemur. XD XD The Japanese fangirls go nuts over his little mannerisms, it's hilarious. (And why gawd why do they both have to be junior high tennis champions, though I know the reason really - the mangaka is evil and mocking the fangirls. =_=)

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, very French thriller novel also, where the criminal gets top billing, although gratuitous disguises haven't been done yet.

IIRC, from reading the Judge Dee stories in a long ago class, the difference is that we already know whodunit, but the Judge just needs to figure out how, so there is a lack of 'suspense' in that sense, at least. (What do you mean more sophisticated concept of Justice? From what I've seen, DN tends to shunt this aside and is more of a psychological thriller than an actual mystery. I tend to associate actual murder mysteries with more mundane things and a distinct lack of supernaturality, because that violates one of the rules. If it were a real murder mystery, L would be able to logically figure out how Raito did it, but shinigami and DN? )

I am guessing that Raito is majoring in law, for some reason.

Yeah, Chief Yagami is the most sympathetic living character in the manga. Either he dies early from overwork or a Death Note, or he finds out who his son really is (v. depressing to think about, actually.)

If he his meta-mocking, my love for this series has increased tenfold. ^^

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yes, from what few Japanese/Chinese pulp "deductive" novels I've read they seemed more "Golden Age" to me. A lot of the Peter Wimsey mysteries were howdunnits rather than whodunnits, actually. And yes, it does violate the no-supernaturality rule, but it only does so once, by assuming the existence of the shinigami and Death Note (which is why I called it a wave-the-wand-once fantasy, though I'm sure there's a technical term). IOW it's not a fantasy like Yuu Yuu Hakusho where everyone is aware that things are running on supernatural rules, but the supernaturality is a plot device creating a Gordian knot that the characters can then realistically fail to solve over the course of a dozen tankoubon. ^^; Once again this parallels HnG and Sai's role, as supernaturality is also against the rules in sports manga, though you wouldn't know it to read Prince of Tennis. =_= (And in both HnG and DN eventually the supernatural is redefined by the mystery-chasers as improbable instead of impossible, according to the evidence on-hand - though I'm not sure if Akira ever formulates it to himself that way.)

If the text translations are accurate, then I'm 100% sure it's meta-mocking, because the tweaking gets too much to be coincidence. ^^;

More sophisticated concept of justice: well, why not just let Kira implement his uhh unique brand of deterrence? ^^; Most shounen fantasy/fighting manga take place in universes where summary vigilante justice is the natural order of things, you know, except the plot is fiddled such that the main characters are never forced to really cross the line and do something to lose the reader's sympathy. Going by the course of events so far, one could argue (Raito does argue, to himself) that if L and the police had not come after him, Raito would never have resorted to killing innocents - except the story takes great care to demonstrate exactly why it's inevitable that someone who'd conceive and put into practice a plan like that would eventually end up crossing the line. It's important because it's not obvious. ^^; There probably are a lot of people who (as Raito puts it) pay tatemae to the idea of due process when the honne is that they wish someone would come along and just cleanse the world of all the murderers and rapists. So there is a Sailor Says moral, and Chief Yagami as good as states it in 22 - and more importantly provides the object example of true probity versus his son's superiority complex corrupted by absolute power to God complex, masquerading as altruism. The fascinating thing about Raito is that he honestly believes he's in the right, when in fact he no longer even knows right from wrong - he's nominated himself judge over the rest of the world, and thus is always able to exonerate himself in his own mind.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Raymond Chandler's screed against the Golden Age detective novel, BTW? But DN still doesn't really fit as a real mystery. I still think it does break the rules, though, because the point of the improbability is partially to the reader, not only the detective. (In other words, the writer needs to work within the paramenters of real world physics and metaphysics... Heaven and Hell are mentioned within the DN, but the shinigami seem to be entirely amoral beings. On the other hand, I really suspect that the resolution will end up being supernatural, and I suspect that justice will end up being served by mechanical means rather than L himself.)

Justice: Hmm, I don't think it is ever seriously considered in the manga that Kira is right, because we don't really see just why it is that he hates crime so much. Raito just doesn't seem to have a strong vigilante motivation (a la Batman, etc.), so it comes off that he doesn't like crime because it is defined as wrong/untidy/he was told it was bad. (reminds me of a novel I read in which one of the characters was always asking why theft is wrong, and the various answers he got) I suppose there is a Due Process moral, but it doesn't really come off as the center, really, as much as a subsidary point (in that I don't think anti-vigilantism is the point of DN. After all, most of the criminals that were killed by Raito were in custody, and the vigilante justifies his activities by saying they were necessary to prevent crime or that the police were incapable.) [Hmm, so if Raito no longer knows right from wrong, does that mean that by due process rules he is not prosecutable? ]

I see what you mean, though, that in regular shounen manga the author is never clever enough to let the protagonists skate that line. Seinen manga, yes, IIRC.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Raymond Chandler: haven't read, but I should. :P As for DN, I don't think it breaks the rules in the sense that it doesn't do what the rules are in place to avoid, if that makes sense. IOW, the reason supernatural solutions are not allowed in mysteries is because the reader-following-along-with-the-detective (who's often enough given a self-insert Dr. Watson type to identify with) is supposed to be using logic to figure out the course of events. If the solution turns out to defy the usual rules of logic and physics it would be "cheap" and "unfair". OTOH, if it were possible to logically deduce a supernatural solution, or if the solution were known to the reader from the beginning and the tension comes from seeing how the detective character figures it out, then it's not "unfair". Both hold true for DN. ("Supernatural" of course doesn't mean that L is going to deduce the existence of shinigami/DN per se, though he seems well on his way, but the Lind L. Taylor experiment proved conclusively that Kira can kill instantly at a distance. Whether it's a truly supernatural or a pseudo-scientific explanation in the end doesn't matter at this point to the police.) Of course it isn't a conventional murder mystery, but then neither are those Hitchcock movies I'm thinking of (darn, titles...). For that matter, neither is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in a certain sense. In all cases it's not the plot itself that crosses genre, but the narrative strategy.

Mechanical means: you're likely right, as we haven't found out nearly all that's been hinted re the powers of the shinigami and the DN. It's set up so we get info in dribblets. (The part in the latest chapter re how a shinigami can essentially commit suicide by extending a human's life instead of cutting it short is especially interesting. It has all the hallmarks of a revolver introduced in the first act that's meant to be fired by the third. ^^; But of course the first question that comes to mind is, what would happen if a human tried it.)

Justice: well, I think it's as much of a central moral as one ever gets in shounen manga. ^_^ I mean these things are meant to entertain, not beat kids over the head with didacticism. It's worded more subtly than the usual when someone steps out and announces "true strength only comes from fighting to protect somebody!!!" etc., but that's representative of the series as a whole. I wouldn't call it anti-vigilantism, anyway, so much as anti-putting end before means.

Raito hates crime, ironically, because he internalised his father's strong values and coupled them with the superiority complex that he gets from truly being smarter than everyone else around him. ^^; One realises as the series goes on that his father's probably been bouncing ideas off him for years, so this is a kid who not only wants to go into law enforcement, but has actually been thinking of himself as a bona-fide enforcer for a very long time. And he has the idealistic inflexibility of youth. It is rather obvious that only a teenager or someone who thought like a teenager would come up with that kind of plan. Raito's self-aware enough to know all of the above, actually, though of course he views it as positive. (He's very XNTJ. ^^;)

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I was trying to find it on the web, but it hasn't fallen into public domain, apparently. (But I tend to have strong naturalistic sympathies anyway, though). I suppose it is the narrative strategy, as you put it, but I don't find it really as characteristic of mystery than of any book where intellectual sparring goes on.

Huh, interesting. So if the Shinigami extended his/her life, and then extended someone else's, then if this was done enough, couldn't that person become immortal?

Justice: But WJ does beat you over the head with didacticism, only we don't care. Since Raito's anticrime thing is only a reflection of his misunderstanding the values of his father, that's why I can't really take it that seriously as something that is put forth. It seems inadequate motivation from the beginning. I am wondering, now, considering that normally characters change in a story, whether Raito will keep this immature perspective or change, somehow. I can't really think of how he would change, though, unless we're seeing the makings of an (even more) megalomaniac supervillain here. (OMG, DN is teh ultimate villain fangurl series) IIRC, what usually happens to characters like Raito is that the catch in the Faustian contract is realized, so I'm tending to predict that.

[nyahnyah.livejournal.com]

Arrr. >D Didn't you have a post up a few days ago asking where the scanlations where, and then someone posted a link in the comments? I was going to check it out (couldn't before due to internet issues) but... has the post vanished? *pokes around the lj*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Shinigami can't do it more than once, is the thing. ^^; It kills him (her?), and his lifeforce is transformed into however many years that human then has left to live (I don't know if it's predictable at that point). Principle of conservation, I guess. Interestingly the way Rem put it was "shinigami are killed by love," I guess because only when the shinigami loves the human would it do that for that person. >_>

Inadequate motivation in what sense? ^^; In that you or I wouldn't go out and start killing people just as a program of crime deterrence? Or that someone like Raito wouldn't? I think the portrayal of Raito makes a lot of sense. Of course the point of the thing is that he's wrong.

One of the more interesting points made by Japanese overanalysis guy in the link I posted was that both Raito and L are portrayed as childish personalities. They're intellectual prodigies, but... how would one put it? I keep thinking of the guy in The Catcher in the Rye who said "the immature man tries to die for a cause, the mature man tries to live for one." L, too, is a "sore loser", has a disregard for the comfort/feelings of others, and sees ethics in black and white. He's the sort of person who says "but justice must prevail!" I wonder if one of the underlying ideas isn't that the tendency to see the world in terms of good versus evil, justice versus crime etc. is in itself a sign of immaturity.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Did you find it yet? Is here. (http://bonatirergallery.com/DN/) ^_^

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. I guess I'm behind in DN spoilers. But the tragic shinigami plot I did not see coming. (so what are shinigami really? They seem to lack a certain raison d'etre as supernatural beings).

Inadequate motivation in the sense that it I can't take it really seriously as something to be rejected by the plot, in that it seems so obviously wrong that this doesn't really seem like that great of a point.

Hmm, that's true; the parallelism is a strong thing. (Though I don't see either L or Raito as flirting with suicide, but there is obviously this absolutism there. Excessive dislike of hypocrisy is sort of an adolescent trait. After all, people tend to dislike those who are most like what they dislike in themselves.)

I was wondering whether I was just thinking it was strange that L emphasized the hating to lose part (so what, have either of them ever lost at anything?) and that L also seemed to be enjoying himself. Does L really see ethics in black and white? The thing is, that the Kira situation, especially since the FBI agents got killed, isn't that much of an opportunity for greyness, especially since Kira wants to, er, take over the world.

(Hmm, but don't a lot of adults see the world in terms of good and evil?)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Inadequate motivation in the sense that it I can't take it really seriously as something to be rejected by the plot, in that it seems so obviously wrong that this doesn't really seem like that great of a point.

Except I've run across people online saying they don't see why Raito's fundamental concept is so wrong, seriously. ^^; Of course as it is everyone is scared off by Raito's megalomaniac psycho-ness, but I really think if it were presented differently you'd have people agreeing with him, exactly as in the manga.

It's not the flirting with suicide I mean, which is why that quote doesn't quite fit, but it's kind of the same idea - that there are certain "noble" or "idealistic" attitudes that are immature adolescent traits, even when they occur in nominal adults. (Which is not really a bad thing, necessarily. It depends on the situation and how you look at it. Personally I think adults who see the world in terms of good and evil are being simplistic, though I have admiration for people who're willing to sacrifice themselves non-foolishly for a cause. ^^;)

L enjoys himself, I guess, the same way that Sherlock Holmes enjoys himself on a case - better than moping about 221B Baker Street with his brain cycling on empty. :P And y'know, probably neither he nor Raito has lost often enough at anything that they wouldn't take it very hard when they do. XD Remember that they're junior high tennis champions as well as mad geniuses! >D D'you follow Prince of Tennis or what?

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but you find people online saying all sorts of crazy things anyway, so I don't put much stock in that. That only proves that there are people who will agree with Kira. ]

Hmm, so maybe the adolescence thing fits in with shounen jump? But with Shounen Jump, things tend to stay simplistic, although often the trajectory is with that sort of story to have the characters stop being so idealisticly noble.

Re: Prince of Tennis. But none of the important characters in Prince of Tennis do anything but resolve to get stronger. Of the characters who aren't used to losing that have lost, most (with a few exceptions) of them have taken it pretty well. (Hmmm, if Ryouma wins this match, will he ever lose in an official match to anyone in the series? In some ways, I think it would be disappointing for the protagonist never to lose in a combat manga, but on the other hand, I think I know series where he never did.)