pseudomiracle

I knew I was forgetting something!!

Hmmm... Ranked in order of personal affinity, with no attempt made to be Objective about it:

Another Note A spin-off more than an adaptation but I'm counting it. I just think it's a really fun read and it was simply too impactful to my teenage life to discount it, even as it is guilty of similar L characterization sins as everything ever is. Its take on Naomi is precious to me.

Light up the New World It's so fucking funny. It's a fever dream. Mikami shows up for two seconds to kill a child. I could ask for nothing more.

Anime For as much as I beef with the changes made in it, it's still a really solid work with gorgeous scenes and a fun soundtrack. My griping is high level, it's a good show and it is still very dear to me. Imagine a world in which we didn't have Mamoru Miyano's Light... scary...

Musical It doesn't adapt the parts I care about the most and I am sooo frustrated with the way Misa is done in this, but its existence is still delightful and the music does go hard.

TV Drama I considered ranking it above the musical because it includes Drama!Mikami who is like a beloved family pet to me. My silly rabbit... If it weren't for L's future-predicting V-logs, it would definitely rank higher, but I have not forgiven that wild turnaround just yet.

L change the WorLd Is it good? Literally not at all. Do I have fond memories of it? Yes.

Live Action Movies Committed the worst sin imaginable - they're kind of boring.

Both, probably. I'll be real, I don't actually think the musical is that much more homoerotic, but I'm also famously not tuned in to the Lawlight frequency, haha.

Personally due to unfortunate circumstances the first DN manga I read was in russian translation, and it was like the only available translation that time, which had awful typing, but the thing I remember the most is that they translated Light’s answer to Matsuda’s “what your father died for” as “oh yeah yagami Soichiro he was a fool fools always die like that”. Like just that

... help?? That's... one way to eat half the line??

It's not actually the most damaging or anything, but I keep thinking about how the fan translation for the HTR13 profiles that floats around online translates Naomi's dislike as her disliking stalkers.

It's actually skirts.

She dislikes skirts.

It's literally the English word in katakana, too. How did this happen.

Ah, this song might need some Shinto context there! Shinto is the religion native to Japan and it frames a lot of how the concept of godhood is treated in Death Note, even despite the overwhelmingly Christian-inspired visual aesthetic.

In Shinto there are countless gods (kami) that can reside in basically anything, including living people. The idea of living a life so virtuous that it brings you closer to the gods is perfectly in line with general belief (and precedented within it) and thus also general figures of speech, so "become a god unto yourself" really just means "be unfalteringly righteous and virtuous in your life".

I think they're decent...?

Granted, I don't know how you'd qualify a "perfect parent" to begin with, but leaving my usual spiel about nuance aside...

They're kind of a textbook household. If you're asked to make a template for an upper middle class family, then you get them. Breadwinner patriarch who commands respect and admiration but is absent a lot of the time, kind housewife who is very close to her children emotionally, a perfect little boy and girl child...

They're doing everything Right in that they are doing everything according to expectation.

And I do cut them a lot of slack in that their kids clearly adore them and feel like their parents values are a genuine good they want to emulate? It's also very notable to me that Sayu seems super comfortable and happy instead of being hung up on being a 'disappointment' compared to overarchiever Light, so that also nets them points.

But also Soichiro is constantly absent due to work and instills a sense of martyrdom in the kids through his work ethic, and also he's just deeply conservative in his values. (I know I repeat this a lot but let us once again think about how "Soichiro disowned Light for dating a goth woman" registers as believable to his wife and daughter.)

I do often think about the way the atmosphere at the dinner table shifts between when Soichiro isn't home to when he is. Without him, the other three Yagamis eat very casual meals. With him, it has a bit of the vibe of a job interview. The kids love him and want to impress him but they do not have any ease of familiarity around him.