Thursday, October 19, 2006

MORE DEATH NOTE.

A follow up to Gillian's post, since we watched the movie together.

This review is mostly spoiler free.



L takes the cake, literally or not.

L was really cute. Well, not cute!cute, but weird!cute. They kept all of his quirks in the manga - the toothache-inducing dieting habits, that hunched posture and the general anti-socialness were a delight to watch. Had Raito known his real name in the manga, he could easily have made L die of diabetes and NO ONE would have suspected a thing. Seriously. All I can say is, Matsuyama Kenichi makes a much better L than a Shin (in NANA) - it's the hair, I'm telling you. I need animated L icons now. X_x

Movie!Watari really looks... Watari. XD The actor should win an award for being the closest replica of his character in the manga.

Movie!Raito had not enough personality - not bored enough, not genius enough, not evil enough - too normal. Being the Raito fan I am, it was disappointing. What happened to the megalomania, the 'I-am-god-I-am-justice-and-I-pwn-j00'? He still bags that Oscar award for being a highly convincing actor, though. They downplayed his genius by excluding a lot of the details originally in the manga which truly showcased his great scheming abilities, so basically movie!Raito morphed from manipulative bastard to normal-and-somewhat-emo person who probably contributed to deforestation by wasting a lot of pages of the Death Note (he wasted one entire page writing a single name). Ouch. Fujiwara Tatsuya (the same guy in Battle Royale) is so unRaito, but at least he can act, so that saves us the pain of bad acting (again, think NANA).

I still do not really see the point in introducing a completely new character. What was Shiori (Raito's girlfriend, in case you have a tendency to forget her existence, like me) supposed to show, honestly? That Raito wasn't completely gay? Well, if that was the case it certainly backfired. Her appearance screwed up the entire timeline and as far as I could see it, apart from taking over Takada's role to aid Raito to kill the FBI agents she was pretty much extra.

Overall, the movie was okay as a standalone, though the action was not on par with the original manga until the last two deaths. The rest of the scheming was much less complex, less intelligent - why? Because they did not follow the manga. So yes, like mentioned in the previous post, READ THE MANGA kthxbai.

That said, I can't wait for the sequel in November. The low point in this movie was the lack of L-Raito interaction, save the ending, which was zomgexciting!11!!11! I hope the next part screws with my brain more, because that's what Death Note really is - brain candy.

Quotes during the Movie

[L eats sweet stuff]
Random Woman in Cinema: Wow, won't he get fat?

[Misora Naomi asks Shiori out]
Me: This is the last of the Mary Sues. 8D

Ryuk: [to Raito] Omae wa yappari akuma da na. (You're indeed a monster.)
Me: [to Raito] Omae wa yappari gay da na. (You're indeed very gay.)


Er okay I'm done ranting. Go watch the movie! And read the manga too, while you're at it. XD

so5b at 9:42 PM