Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by some_okie_dude27
Death Note, Vol. 10: Deletion by Takeshi Obata, Tsugumi Ohba
5.0
(Minor Spoilers)
I used to believe that manga was a bit too silly for my tastes. American comics can get away with it because they know how to ground their silliness and not lose track of the story at hand.
But then Death Note came along...
Death Note singlehandedly solved any issues I had with manga and is, to this day, the only manga that I can say without a doubt is my favorite and one I will defend until I die.
The series follows Light Yagami, a young high schooler bored with mundane, everyday life. But that all changes when he comes across a very strange notebook, dubbed the Death Note, which belongs to a race of old death Gods known as the Shinigami. One particular Shinigami, Ryuk, is also bored and befriends Light over their mutual boredom. You'd expect Ryuk to take Light's soul or something of the sort, but no. Light can have the book and do whatever he wants, as long as he wants with it. If Light dosen't want it anymore, Ryuk will take it and wipe Light's memory of ever encountering it. Light decides to go for something noble and eradicate all crime in the world, all while becoming what he hates and devolves into a megalomaniacal sociopath with a raging God complex who becomes just as, if not more dangerous than the people he hates.
Death Note is a clever mix of crime drama and dark fantasy, but is also a meditation on justice, fate, and how a man loses his soul when given power over fate itself. Light Yagami is almost Walter White with a magic book, which might sound negative, but it's really not. Light Yagami is up there with antiheroes (or anti-villains) such as Tony Soprano, Walter White, MacBeth, Pinky Brown, Dexter Morgan, and I can name more. But is more like Frank Underwood in how, while you root for him sometimes, you become more and more disenfranchised with his increasingly immoral acts and you begin to question if you even should even root for him. We also meet such unforgettable characters as Ryuk, Misa, L, Near, Mello, and so much more.
Ohba's writing and Takeshi Obata's beautiful art plays with the conventions of the manga medium, showing people that Manga was much more than an over the top, cheeky band of silliness that it can often be. But also shows that manga is an art form, like comics, prose, and everything else. Death Note, for me, is comparable to the early Vertigo works of authors like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, etc and how they don't just subvert genre cliches, but also the medium itself and playing with the endless possibilities of the medium at hand, and Ohba takes every opportunity that he/she can to see what they can do with the medium.
Death Note, to keep it short, is nothing short of a masterpiece and one of the best mangas I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
I used to believe that manga was a bit too silly for my tastes. American comics can get away with it because they know how to ground their silliness and not lose track of the story at hand.
But then Death Note came along...
Death Note singlehandedly solved any issues I had with manga and is, to this day, the only manga that I can say without a doubt is my favorite and one I will defend until I die.
The series follows Light Yagami, a young high schooler bored with mundane, everyday life. But that all changes when he comes across a very strange notebook, dubbed the Death Note, which belongs to a race of old death Gods known as the Shinigami. One particular Shinigami, Ryuk, is also bored and befriends Light over their mutual boredom. You'd expect Ryuk to take Light's soul or something of the sort, but no. Light can have the book and do whatever he wants, as long as he wants with it. If Light dosen't want it anymore, Ryuk will take it and wipe Light's memory of ever encountering it. Light decides to go for something noble and eradicate all crime in the world, all while becoming what he hates and devolves into a megalomaniacal sociopath with a raging God complex who becomes just as, if not more dangerous than the people he hates.
Death Note is a clever mix of crime drama and dark fantasy, but is also a meditation on justice, fate, and how a man loses his soul when given power over fate itself. Light Yagami is almost Walter White with a magic book, which might sound negative, but it's really not. Light Yagami is up there with antiheroes (or anti-villains) such as Tony Soprano, Walter White, MacBeth, Pinky Brown, Dexter Morgan, and I can name more. But is more like Frank Underwood in how, while you root for him sometimes, you become more and more disenfranchised with his increasingly immoral acts and you begin to question if you even should even root for him. We also meet such unforgettable characters as Ryuk, Misa, L, Near, Mello, and so much more.
Ohba's writing and Takeshi Obata's beautiful art plays with the conventions of the manga medium, showing people that Manga was much more than an over the top, cheeky band of silliness that it can often be. But also shows that manga is an art form, like comics, prose, and everything else. Death Note, for me, is comparable to the early Vertigo works of authors like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, etc and how they don't just subvert genre cliches, but also the medium itself and playing with the endless possibilities of the medium at hand, and Ohba takes every opportunity that he/she can to see what they can do with the medium.
Death Note, to keep it short, is nothing short of a masterpiece and one of the best mangas I've ever had the pleasure of reading.