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The
Series:
The cat and mouse games continue in volume 8 of Death Note,
but this time Light Yagami realizes that his new opponents are no
trivial
rivals that he will easily best. With
two geniuses tracking him down and revelations made to the Japanese
task force
Light is having a harder time staying ahead of his pursuers, even while
the
rest of the world starts to accept the rule of Kira.
Series Background:
Light Yagami is a brilliant high school student. He's
at the top of his class, and on the
practice college entrance exams he routinely places first in the nation. One afternoon while staring out the window,
he sees a notebook fall from the sky.
After class he picks it up and finds some odd instructions on
the inside
front cover, instructions that tell him how to kill people by simply
writing
their name down while picturing their face.
A few days after getting the Death Note, Light is in his
room when a shinigami, (a Japanese demon,) named Ryuk appears. Ryuk was the previous owner of the Death Note
and dropped it in the human world on purpose because he was bored. He wanted to see what would happen and is
quite surprised by the results: Light
has filled up pages and pages with names.
The young man has decided that he'll craft the perfect world,
one
without crime. To do that all he needs
to do is let people come to the realization that all criminals will end
up
dying. After all, who would rob a gas
station if they knew they'd end up dead in a day or two.
With criminals in prison all over the world dropping dead of
heart attacks everyday it's not long before the governing bodies, and
the
public who dub the mysterious killer "Kira", start to take notice. Obviously outside of their league, the
multi-national taskforce that's investigating these crimes agree to let
the
mysterious figure "L" takes over the investigation.
L communicates only through a laptop
computer, and no one knows his real name or what he looks like. With a razor sharp intellect, L soon starts
to track Light down.
When a second "Kira" appears and starts killing criminals,
it seems that Light is in the clear. L
quickly determines that there is a second killer. This
one turns out to be a young attractive
girl named Misa who's not too smart, but has fallen in love with Kira
and even
discovers that Light is the other person who possesses a Death Note.
In this second season, which takes place five years after
the first, L is out of the picture but two new prodigies pop up to hunt
Kira: Near and Mello.
These two were raised in the same facility as
L, but they have very different methods and are in a competition to see
who can
bring Kira to justice first.
This volume:
With Kira's will becoming law, the governments of the world
start issuing statements saying that they will not go up against the
unknown
killer. Even the president of the United States
caves in, and that's just what Light wanted.
Though the second Death Note has fallen into Mello's hands,
Light isn't about to let it stay there.
Using Missa's 'Shinigami Eyes', he has her look through
countless mug
shots of gangsters until she sees one without a time of death. This pinpoints who has the book, and from
there it's easy to track the whole gang down.
The Japanese task force storms Mello's hideout and though they
defeat
the criminals, Mello isn't as unprepared as they thought and doesn't go
out
with a fight.
Realizing he's at a disadvantage, Mello meets with his rival
Near to compare notes. The information
that Mello reveals convinces Near that Light is actually Kira. But how to prove it? Near
enlists the help of some unlikely allies:
The Japanese Kira Taskforce. In
front of Light, he voices his opinion of who the killer is, and this
added
suspicion starts some of the members thinking.
With Near, Mello, and his own task force suspecting him, Light
gets
pushed into a corner, and that's when he's most dangerous.
Like the previous volumes, this disc is exciting and
engrossing. This show keeps you guessing
and just when you thing you know how events are going to work out, they
pull
the rug out from under you. The events
all follow logically from what had gone on before, and Light's
convoluted plans
are amazingly tight and don't rely on luck nearly as much as most TV
show
schemes do.
One of the strong points of this series is the fact that
Light is super-intelligent and that is demonstrated by his actions. A tightly scripted series, it follows the
manga closely and Light's schemes are intricate by believable. He's a great anti-hero because viewers can't
help but be impressed with his intellect and ability to out think
everyone else
in the series, but at the same time he's a mass murderer.
Series creator Tsugumi Ohba straddles that
fine line and manages to make a likeable killer.
The
DVD:
Audio:
This disc comes with both the original Japanese audio track
as well as an English dub, both in stereo.
I alternated language tracks with every episode and found them
both
equally good. The English voice actors
do a good job and don't ham it up as sometimes happens.
Given the nature of the show, mainly dialog
based without any big action sequences, the mix is adequate. There's some use made of the front sound
stage, but not a lot. The voices are
mostly anchored on the screen, but that's not really a problem. A solid sounding show. One
thing I did notice is that there isn't an
option for translations of the signs only.
This was a pain when watching the dubbed version since there are
notes
and such that move the plot forward that are never read aloud.
Video:
The 1.78:1 anamorphically enhanced image looks very
good. A lot of the story takes place in
Light's dark room, and the image is intentionally a little soft, but
this only
serves to enhance the mood of the story.
The colors in the daylight scenes are bright and solid, and the
wide
range of grey tones are well defined.
There isn't much in the way of aliasing or banding, making this
a very
nice looking show.
Extras:
This disc has another behind-the-scenes featurette with one
of the English voice actors, this time with Cathy Weseluck (Near) and
David
Hurwitz (Mello). Then there's also a
commentary track to episode 30 with the English director with Karl
Willems and
voice actress Cathy Weseluck (Near). Like most anime commentaries, this
was
okay, but that's about it. There's also
a production art gallery, a trailer to the live action film, and a
clean
opening and closing.
Final Thoughts:
This intricate game of cat and mouse between two
exceptionally bright people is entertaining and engrossing. Light's Machiavellian schemes are beautiful in
both design and execution. An
excellent
series, this is a must-buy for anime fans.
Highly Recommended.
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