Two days ago I borrowed nine Death Note manga volumes from a friend. Re-visiting the earlier volumes is tremendous fun. Yay for the breakneck pace. We wouldn’t have it any other way, would we?
Some fannish thoughts about the series. Silliness and spoilers galore.
During high school, Light sometimes walks home with two schoolmates. Do you suppose one of them is the Yamamoto that appears in chapter 108? They look the same, anyway. Then again, Ooba says that chapter 108’s Yamamoto is a new character.
Does anyone else think that the finger-puppet Near makes to represent Mikami looks like Stephen King?
Someone has written a crossover with TeniPuri, right? I mean, Light was a tennis champion during junior high, and both series run in WJ magazine. The combinations are too hard to resist.
Fan disappointment aside, Lawliet’s death, especially in the wake of Light’s regained memories, is completely logical. If Ooba does not kill Lawliet, fans will be pleased, but the series will lack credibility. So, goodbye Lawliet. At the same time, though, it also amuses me to see Light walking around with that big, so-psychotic-it’s-almost-dopey “hee hee, I won!” grin all over his mug.
That Light’s life is extinguished (I like bad puns, sorry) the way it does shouldn’t be surprising. Play with fire, and all that. That ending also sort of compensates for a lot of the things missing from the second arc compared to when Lawliet is still around – Light’s fiendishly clever tricks and maneuvers, detectives that are really intriguing and not just two halves of a deceased one.
ETA:
Speaking of Near and Mello – if they don’t remind us constantly of Lawliet, readers might have an easier time switching into the second arc. It would’ve been better if Near and Mello are completely different from their predecessor (for example, one of them could be a girl, but this is a shounen series, so we can rule out that possibility). Instead, we keep seeing that each of them is a half-Lawliet and therefore we keep missing the panda-eyed detective. “If only he were still here!”
By 2009 Light is already resigned to having Misa around (ahaha). What interests me most at the moment is his speech pattern when he commands her to do something. (e.g. “Misa wa damatte!”) ‘Misa’ is the subject of the sentence rather than something added after the imperative verb. It’s like speaking to a pest-like little sister. A little sister you sleep with. (pause) Okay, I’ll shut up now.
