#mangameta

I don't think so, no. Going from reading Death Note to reading his second series, Bakuman, wasn't that big of a difference to me writing quality-wise. I wasn't as personally interested in Bakuman and didn't end up finishing it, but I thought then that maybe it wasn't due to a drop in writing quality so much as that it was just a totally different genre of story that he isn't as suited to writing. Bakuman is more of a light-hearted low stakes slice of life/educational story teaching kids how manga is made. And though I did find the informative aspect of it interesting and think he structured the story well and so on, I don't think he's particularly good at writing warm human connections like romances and friendships and such. His super plot-heavy style and pessimistic outlook and dry sense of humour suits a detective/horror thriller type story much better than that kind of story, maybe.

The steepest drop in quality I saw was from Bakuman to Platinum End, which really shocked me in a bad way and made me question how competent of a writer he actually is. Even aside from all the lazy and offensive and cliche aspects of the premise and plot and characters, the directions he took things every time an interesting opportunity presented itself in the story seemed to be the worst and most bewildering choices nearly every single time. I found it pretty unreadable and cringey and boring, and was very disillusioned with him as a fan of his previous works by the time I finally gave up on it.

What was pleasantly surprising to me was how decent the 2020 one-shot for Death Note was which came out after that, actually. Because I wasn't expecting to like it at all after reading Platinum End. I thought Minoru was an interesting and likable character that fit into the world as a later generation character well, and that the notebook situation created for him by Ryuk to navigate was an interesting scenario to analyze and discuss with others as well.

I think that it barely squeaks by as a pass, according to the criteria listed here: 1) That at least two women are featured (and sometimes people specify the female characters should also be named)

2) that these two women talk to each other 3) That they discuss something other than a man

From what I recall the female-to-female interactions in the series are pretty rare. And the vast majority of their conversations with each other are entirely centered around the male characters, like so:

Sayu and Sachiko are almost always focusing on Light and Soichiro's lives, emotions, and accomplishments whenever they speak to each other. Misa is nearly always obsessing over Light as well, including when she talks to the other girls (like that scene she has with Kiyomi where they are having a catty dinner together while fighting over Light).

@mikami checked the whole manga for this before and said it passed The Bechdel Test because it had a few scenes of Misa and Rem discussing the shinigami eyes with each other and other little things like that. Here is her post about it that goes a bit more in-depth:

It might be my shipper side speaking, but I do believe Lawlight was way more personal. L was a person Light actually respected. Light is probably like, “hey, L wouldn’t ignore/dismiss/brush me off!” and Near is like, “well, luv, I don’t give a shit.” Serves Light right!

But I do wonder... It likely would’ve been more dramatic/emotionally charged. And to imagine L watching Light’s desperate pleading/death at Ryuk’s hands...... Despite the fact L loves to win, I don’t think L would take any pleasure in that. I don’t think L would ever, ever forget the Kira case. Or Light. 👀

Aw, yeah... I wonder that too, and most people who get emotionally invested in the series probably do. I think you're right, Lawlight was a lot more personal because of the time L and Light spent together. And I think that since L and Light were both very motivated by boredom and ego and a strong sense of superiority that they clicked pretty effortlessly in many ways.

I personally think that Near had more of an... I dunno, appropriate reaction? To Light, at least in terms of the immense carnage he was causing and the authoritarian tyranny he had been gaining with the notebook worldwide. Colder and more distant, yes. But Near also had a much different relationship with Light by default, as a kid who grew up in the midst of this strange new world Light was creating, I think. Near saw a lot of the suffering and chaos Kira created firsthand, and he went through a ton of stress because of him during his formative years. He watched his fellow successor, most of his own team, and his idolized childhood hero all die due to the repercussions of Light's actions. And he definitely had every right to be angry and unsympathetizing and to see Light as an "abominable murderer" at that point, I would say.

But I agree that at the same time it would be intriguing to see L and Light actually given the opportunity to confront each other honestly for real, and to know exactly how L would react to something like Light personally appealing to his emotions. I wonder what kind of things Light would say to L if he really could speak openly to him for once. L did actually show some compassion for Light at times; like when he acknowledged that anyone with Kira's abilities was an unfortunate person for even being given that kind of power over others in the first place.

Hello!

I think shinigami!Light can be an interesting idea for fanfic, but I don't personally think Light became a shinigami. And I don't really like the idea of there being any afterlife or reincarnation for any of the DN characters. I personally go by how things were explained in the manga, when Ryuk tells Light that ALL the humans in the story go to Mu (nothingness/nonexistence) after they die. There aren't actually any special consequences for using the Death Note. Light would have gone to Mu whether or not he used the notebook at all.

Hahaha... I really am not sure why Trump was included, other than that maybe Ohba had something in particular to say about him, or thought it would generate a lot of social media buzz for the one-shot to include him? He also included Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, I think. That's definitely different than how things were done in the original manga serial, where the US President was just a generic fictional dude named David Hoope.

There's always an underlying current of hopelessness in Death Note, though. And in most of the things Ohba makes. He's probably genuinely a pretty cynical and edgy dude in terms of how he views the world. It's shown in the manga epilogue that everything basically goes back to exactly the way it was before Light ever picked up the notebook, just a year after his death:

CHAPTER 1:

THE EPILOGUE (CHAPTER 108):

I guess you could also say it was shown that Light changed the world somewhat in how Minoru was learning about Kira in his textbook and all. But I don't think the Death Note universe is necessarily meant to be the exact same world that we are living in ourselves, so the inclusion of actual politicians in the new one-shot felt a bit out-of-place to me for that reason.

Hi anon, thank you for the thoughtful ask! Those are definitely the questions to ask about L, and about L and Light.

I personally think L is not putting on a persona or an act in any way once he meets up with the task force, and that he's very often being pretty bluntly honest about himself with others as well. His design and his mannerisms changed somewhat between his first chapters in the manga and the time he met up with the task force simply because Ohba and Obata hadn't fully decided on them yet, and they also wanted to reveal some of his eccentricities like his sweet tooth more gradually over time. They explained all this in detail in the behind the scenes book. And I very much prefer to think of it simply as L's design changing, because once you really get going with the "persona theory" hypotheticals it is usually nonsensical at best, and cringey and offensive at worst.

So I think that L basically only outright lies when it comes to trying to trip Light up with the investigation somehow, such as when he pretends that there was another fake note mixed in amongst the ones Light had the prisoners write. I think that in the rare moments that L does reveal concrete information about himself, like when he tells Light that he lived in England for a few years in the past, that he is very likely telling Light something that is true (because he is super calculating about what he reveals, so he already knows it will be fine to reveal, and also very competitive; he would probably rather tell Light something real to bait him or taunt him than he would just make up some random lie). And whenever L tells others things about his personality, like that he is competitive and childish, I think that he genuinely sees himself that way. He isn't trying to deceive anybody in those instances, but is instead trying to be pretty upfront about himself.

I think that most of the deceptiveness people sense in L's character just comes from how immensely difficult he is to read in terms of his true motivations and emotions, and how continuously mysterious as a person he is to Light and to everybody else. I'd say it isn't so much that L is deviously putting up all these smoke-and-mirrors façades around others as that he is just proud, emotionally guarded, and notoriously difficult to get to know personally. And I think he is that way both intentionally and unintentionally sometimes. I think he's that elusive as a person both in order to protect himself during the Kira investigation, and also because he is a bit snobby and prickly and awkward; he probably doesn't actually have that much interest in getting close to other people most of the time. I think he usually only really cares about doing his job and being right and having fun.

I also think that L likes to be slippery and sarcastic sometimes in order just to tease people, and that he somewhat downplays his own stubbornness and self-awareness occasionally to slyly get away with things he knows that other people might not agree with him doing during the investigation, if that makes sense? But he probably also hides impressive and considerate things about himself sometimes in a humble sort of way as well; like when he had secretly set up life insurance for the task force and their families, and acted a bit weird about it being unexpectedly revealed by Watari in front of everybody else.

I don't think that Light despised L during the Yotsuba arc, but I wouldn't have blamed him if he did. At that point Light was being held prisoner by L and genuinely thought himself innocent, and knew that he would likely be put to death by L if he was actually found to be guilty for his crimes. But then the more he tried to help L and prove his innocence and win his freedom the more suspicious L still found him anyway. Lol. Light had already been put through a long confinement and traumatic fake execution at the hands of L and his own father, and then L handcuffed him to his wrist without consent and proceeded to sulk and mope around about the investigation for weeks and weeks on end. Light barely ever thinks anything negative about L in general, even during the Yotsuba arc, but I find that to definitely be L's least sympathetic arc in the story in terms of the shady and controlling behaviour he pulls towards his coworkers and his suspects. So I wouldn't really have blamed Light for disliking L at all when he didn't have his Kira memories intact.

There's a rule that Shinigami can't go to their realm if their DN is on Earth and Ryuk uses this as a reason to stay with Light most of the time, but technically he's not the owner? He's carrying his own DN on his belt. Also, for some reason Light was able to see Ryuk after touching DN and not Sido. I just can't grasp the concept behind this, every shinigami has only one DN attached to them, but if another shinigami takes it it becomes theirs in that moment?

hey, that's a good question and one that's a bit confusing for me to think about as well. I will try to think up a way this makes sense based on the rules we were given, but successor arc canon is extremely fuzzy in my mind at the moment, the eye technicalities and notebook swapping stuff are some of the things that confuse me the most in the story, and I could very well be forgetting some rules or mixing things up. I'm also just getting my list of rules to reference from a Quora answer, since I don't have my manga boxset handy (X). So please keep in mind that I haven't actually gone to dig out my manga to fact check all the rules, and I'm just kinda guessing about this stuff too.

So apparently Ryuk sneakily stole Sidoh's notebook without him noticing and then dropped it to the ground on earth, telling others that it was actually his notebook:

And there's a rule that states any notebook dropped to earth automatically becomes property of the human world now:

So maybe Ryuk stealing Sidoh's notebook and dropping it to earth is like overriding/erasing Sidoh's claim to ownership of the notebook? The human who first uses it once it lands on earth becomes the priority owner of it instead, and then the first shinigami who attaches themselves to that person becomes the notebook's death god. I think Ryuk became that notebook's shinigami since he came down to earth first and touched that notebook and introduced himself to Light.

There's also another rule that seems to indicate that it's possible for a shinigami to claim ownership of another death god's notebook by stealing it or cheating them out of it somehow, so maybe Ryuk owned it already even before Light picked it up:

This particular scenario could be similar to what happens when a shinigami dies while attached to a notebook. If a notebook has no current shinigami owner then apparently the ownership of that notebook is usually transferred to whatever god of death first touches it after that: