Death Note, the popular manga and many people’s first anime (At least from my experience) has recently released a new one-shot and oh boy, is it a doozy. It’s not bad at all; I loved it. But it definitely shook middle school Megan to her core. Of course, spoilers abound in this, so I recommend you stop reading if you haven’t read it yet.
The manga answers the question of what would happen if the death note was introduced to the modern world of social media. And the answer? Someone would use it to redistribute wealth.
I’m not kidding. The new Kira, an e-boy looking type, decides to use the death note to end capitalism. He decides to sell it to the highest bidder, and well, what a surprise, the buyer is the United States. And yes, that means we get to see anime Trump. I’m just surprised the authors decided to just say screw Trump, making him out to be almost a cowardly figure who only cares about making himself look good. Not to mention, by purchasing the death note, Trump has wasted millions of American tax dollars.
There’s more, of course. The amount of criticisms against aspects our current society held within this 90 page book is amazing. There’s also an implicit message of standardized testing being outdated. For example, the main character’s teachers are disappointed that he doesn’t have good grades in school. The main character proves them wrong by managing to sell the death note without anyone, not even Near, being able to track them down. Additionally, the main character basically says standardized tests mean nothing, and that intelligence is measured by people actually going out and solving problems. Iconic.
I’m also just in love with the fact that we just get to see these characters again, after all these years. I liked seeing Ryuk again, still eating apples. Matsuda, still a detective and goofy, was well missed. I even liked Near’s character in this, which is surprising. In the original watch, I considered him a lesser version of L. I suppose it’s either due to my own maturation, or the fact that his character in this seems more distinct from L’s.
I loved the connections to the original manga, too. I liked how they mentioned Kira is now taught in ethics classrooms about what not to do as a serial murderer, and the reflections on how if the series took place in 2020, many of the storylines wouldn’t make sense. People have cellphones now, and cameras are more and more common. You can’t just kill people with a magical book like you used to, after all.
The whole one shot inspired me to reflect back on my own childhood(Teenagerhood? Middle school I guess) invested in Death Note as a franchise; the tv show, the anime, the musical, and even the abysmal Netflix adaptation. Reading fan fiction, writing my own. Death Note even inspired my own book, which is still in progress as of this article.
I forgot how great it was. I think the best part about this whole one shot being released is the revitalization of the Death Note fandom, in a sense; it was trending on Tumblr and Twitter. It was bittersweet in some way to see the old fans in a sense ‘wake’ back up and start talking about death note again. I even started watching the old Death Note abridged videos, which I thought were the peak of humor when I was approximately 12 years old.
It just made me think about how much of an impact some forms of media have on our formation. Sure, Death Note is an anime, but it sure did give me practice with writing my own stories, and helped me to make new friends in real life who also loved the show. And isn’t that the beauty of fandoms?