A review by rinku
Death Note Short Stories by Takeshi Obata, Tsugumi Ohba

dark funny fast-paced

2.0

Like its name suggests, Death Note Short Stories is a collection of short stories from the Death Note universe. I don’t know how it is in other languages, but a third of the German edition was already published in the 13th volume of the main series and this feels kinda like a cash-grab. I also can repeat here what I said for my review of Another Note: Those supplementary materials are probably only interesting for great fans of the Death Note series and I’m not one of those anymore. Even though I have my critiques with the contents, I really liked the design and layout for this book. 

L-Kira 

I was not the greatest fan of this short story. Apparently, years have passed but the character designs look almost the same and the art style in general was just not great. It was interesting to get to know more about Wammy’s house though, but the story ended too abruptly. 

A-Kira 

The general idea of this short story was interesting: The main character tried to find a peaceful solution to the Death Note conflict by selling it through the internet. This was an interesting usage of the internet for the story and gave some ideas how Death Note’s story may’ve been differently if it was written today. I also liked how
he decided to split the money to all members of the Yotsuba bank and the portrayal of Trump was funny
. My only problem with the story is that the priced becomes absurdly high, even though there is no evidence that the Death Note is real. 

But again, I noticed that the art looks not that good. Black and white were not well balanced on the pages and black was used way too extensively. The teeth of the characters looked kinda unsettling, and Near’s new design looked so terrible. Talking about Near, in the scenes he’s in, he’s just passive and does nothing. 

Coming to the last (really) short stories: L – One Day had a kinda absurd story while L – The Wammy’s House was a bit cute, but both were nothing special. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings