OK, here we go with my very first thread in Comics. There is already a thread on the Deathnote anime, but here is the Manga version. I have recently started binging on comics again after many many years, all down to me needing relatively simple material to read in Spanish, and the libraries here in Spain are stocked with many great comics. This means that I can be studying while catching up on a load of stuff that I have missed over the past 15 to 20 years. Nice.
Deathnote is a 12 parter (with a 13th xmas special or epilogue or something). I am halfway through book 2 and things are well underway.
I love the artwork, all clean lines and realistic architecture backgrounds etc This seems to emphasise for me the way that the idea of something supernatural afoot is inconceivable to the characters that are rooted in a world just like ours. The character artwork has a slight manga feel to it with the odd over-startled expression and huge exclamation marks, plus drops of sweat on a person's cheek to signify stress. But other characters such as the Police chief Father are usually drawn pretty straight as though from a 70s magazine article about fishing, pipes and slippers. The exception is Ryuk the Shinigami Death God himself. The character design has been mentioned and lightly criticised in the anime thread, but it really works for me here. I love his great gurning presence over the shoulder of Light (the only character who can see him so far), and his blindly staring white eyes that never seem to look directly at anybody. When he is just plonked down in a corner of the frame, keeping tabs on the situation his bored or amused physicality is really well done.
The story kicked off really quickly, quicker than the anime ep.1 that I saw, and Light is killing people left right and centre (many "off screen" as it were). This initially made me think that I had an abridged version of the story but I'm pretty sure now that it's the full one. All of the killing seems very without consequences for Light (maybe these are to come). This whole amoral view of the world has a very teenage flavour to it, and we must not forget that Light, although a genius, is still only 17. Solutions seem simple and his view of the world is very black and white. -"Evil people deserve to die and once they're all gone, the world will be perfect. And I will be its King." All very Teenage. Maybe the series is all about growing up into a mature, nuanced adult. We shall see.
The death of Raye Penbar has been the only directly affecting one so far as it took place in Light's presence and we knew a bit about the character beforehand.
I am just at the bit where Raye's fiance wants to go to the police with her theory and Light realises that she is using a false name and therefore he cannot kill her easily. Tense stuff.
So anybody else reading? Any thoughts on the manga/anime comparison?
When this series is done I have Bleach book 1 reserved for me. How many books are there in that monster of a cultural commitment? |
