Death Note (Drama)

Episode 1

I suspect I like Death Note for different reasons than most fans. Since its wave of popularity rode past me during an extended break from anime, I only watched the full series over this past year. So for my part, I liked Death Note as a pulpy, silly thriller. I grew up on trashy crime dramas and Investigation Discovery specials, so that worked for me. It didn't hurt that it had some interesting characters at the center of it; I'll always have a soft spot for L. Still, a lot of my interest came from Tetsuro Araki's bombastic direction that added a sense of camp to the show's furious talking heads. I tried to get into the manga and struggled with its self-seriousness.

So I was intrigued when I found out that Death Note was getting yet another adaptation, as a live-action series. I've only seen a few J-dramas, but I had a vague idea of what to expect. First, there's the exaggerated, theatrical style of acting. Some would call it "overacting," but it isn't always as jarring as that term implies, since it can gel nicely with the style of the presentation when done right. There's also the less-than-impressive CGI, which Death Note luckily calls for less than a lot of fantastical series. We still see some of it with Ryuk, who looks like a person in costume with a CG head. His design is exactly like the anime, so it stands out too much in live-action, but it could have been a lot worse.

Beyond that, the thing that bugs me the most is the show's lighting. Every scene that isn't in bright daylight has that awful low-contrast green-brown color scheme. I know it's standard J-drama cinematography, but that doesn't make it any less irritating. It stands out a little less in Death Note than some other dramas, but it still pales next to the much more creative use of color and shading in the anime. There's a way to do moody lighting, and it's not done well here. Of course, a live-action show would have difficult with the anime's directorial style, which explains a lot of the adaptation.

J-dramas thrive on melodrama, which makes Death Note potentially a strange choice. Almost all the drama and plot movement in the story comes from L and Light's dispassionate head games. The anime used Araki's sweeping camera-work to turn Light's lonely scribblings into a passionate battle scene. However, that technique is harder to achieve in live-action, especially with the limited budgets of Japanese television. So instead the show re-writes the story to make things more PERSONAL!!! In doing so, it takes a huge departure in both the characters and themes of the story.

We start with a college-age Light attending a concert by Misa-Misa, because he's already a super-fan of her music. Afterward, he goes with his friend Kamoda to the restaurant where Light works, where their former high school bully Sakota suddenly confronts them. He just got out of jail, and now he wants to threaten his old prey again, holding their stuff for ransom while brandishing a knife. Just after Kamoda tells Light that he wishes guys like that would die, Light finds the Death Note on his way home. Just like in the anime, he takes it for a joke at first. Still, Light decides to try writing Sakota's name in pencil (which leads to a hilariously overwrought moment where Light finds out he can't erase it!) He's shocked when the next morning the police arrive with Light's cell phone, and he learns Sakota keeled over while crossing a railroad, dying instantly.

The decision to give him such a personal motivation already changes the story, but it's Light's reaction that seals the real difference. He's so upset over the death that he nearly vomits, even after dismissing it as a coincidence and trying to throw the note away. He's encouraged by his former classmates saying Sakota is better off dead, but he still feels disgusted. This is totally unlike the Light of the anime and manga, who felt little guilt over his killings even early on in the story. He was only concerned with the possibility of getting caught, and whether or not he subscribed to an abstract code of "justice" to his satisfaction. Love him or hate him, it's clear that Light was a sociopath. However, this Light is so distraught that he nearly ends his life over his second killing (an escaped serial killer who's out for his dad). It's only when Ryuk tells him he'd give the note to someone worse if he gave it up that Light takes up his duty.

I wonder why this change was made: could it have been a practical choice? Light's actor, Masataka Kubota, lacks the charisma Mamoru Miyano brought to the anime, so it's hard to imagine him playing the original version of Light. He is good at portraying his character's emotional breakdowns, so maybe the change was made to suit his abilities as an actor. I'm not sure how I feel about it from a writing standpoint otherwise. The fact that Light was so unapologetically vile is a lot of why the original story worked for me, and what made it feel so fresh. The "he who fights monsters" corruption of a nice guy by evil actions has been done to death in fiction. It could put an interesting spin on this story though, especially when contrasting Light with his adversary, L.

L was my favorite character in the original story, but I'm not sure what to think of him here. As befitting the J-drama standard, Kento Yamazaki is way too pretty for the role, and the show seems to realize this, giving him a shirtless scene. He's still isolated and quirky, but this time his awkwardness seems deliberate, making him into more of a carefree cool guy. In the process, he loses the vulnerability that made the character so appealing, but it's only the first episode, so the show could gain that back somewhere else. It makes sense that if Light is different, L would also be different, so I'm curious to see where they take these characters.

Supporting characters remain largely the same, with a few exceptions. Misa is introduced earlier and her backstory is explored better than it ever was in the original story. That gives me hope she'll be more than a satellite to Light going forward, shuffling off some of the original story's toxic gender politics. However, her actress is the weakest so far, so I hope we don't get too much of her. We also meet Near at the end of this episode, where he and Mello wonder who will lose Light and L's battle first. Oh, and did I mention that Mello is Near's puppet? Like, a literal puppet?

So while it may please old fans of the series with familiar scenes and story beats (the speech by Lind L. Tailor comes off like a campy supervillain here), this version of Death Note is very much its own beast already. I'm not sure how I like the changes yet, but I've been pleasantly surprised by looser adaptations in the past. At the very least, the show is highly entertaining, which is all I can ask for in a J-drama.

Rating: B+

Death Note (Drama) is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a music Ph.D. student who loves overanalyzing anime soundtracks. Follow her on her media blog and her Twitter.