Patreon Letter - 26th August 2017

Hey folks,

Yesterday, the long-awaited (by me) Death Note western adaptation came out and - I don't mean to shock you here - but it's hot garbage. Honestly, this is a real shame. I think Death Note is a rare anime where a western adaptation could, if you made a few smart changes, work really well. Death Note is, ultimately, a story about what happens when a well off, successful man gets the power to enforce his worldview absolutely: we get the most horrifying world imaginable. I would say that's fertile ground.

This is not the theme of the 2017 movie. In fact, it pretty much manages to avoid having any real theme or sense of identity entirely. It's part horror movie, part high school love story, part international investigation and part... romantic tragedy? It removes every element of the source material that makes it work, but then sticks too close to its outline that it can never do anything original either. It's a big nothing mess and I hate it a lot. But all these disparate changes really stem from one central goal: the need to keep Light as a sympathetic protagonist.

In the original Death Note, Light Yagami is introduced to us with a monologue about how the world is rotten and it needs to be cleansed, as he gives a bored look out of the classroom window. By the end of the first episode, he has murdered multiple hundreds of people and proclaimed to Ryuk that he intends to become the God of the New World. By the end of the next, he has attempted to murder a police officer on live television. There is no pretext given to the morality of Light's crusade, he is a hypocrite from the start, passing judgement he has no right to pass and devoting most of his efforts to killing the detectives trying to stop him. Rest in peace Raye Penber.

Here, Light is introduced as a bullied loner, eye-fucking the cheerleader from across the yard. Ryuk goads him into using the Death Note for the first time, and only starts killing criminals en mass as a way to bond with Mia. There's a montage of them fucking and murdering while he decides "we need to give them a god, that's what they want." But once the police get involved, Light decides he cannot compromise his morals, and Mia starts murdering people on their tail. The climax of the film is Light vs Mia in a battle to see whether the Good or Bad person gets to keep the note. Even his confrontations with L are the result of a tragic misunderstanding, L blames Light for killing Watari, which sends L completely off the deep end, even though Light was trying to save him.

Making Light a Good Guy isn't inherently a bad choice - they butt up against the idea of an L and Light team-up against the very concept of Death Notes, implied to have been shaping society for millennia. That's nothing like Death Note, but it'd probably be a great time. Instead what we have is a very lose retelling of the same story, but with a sympathetic protagonist that we can root for. In a world where Death Note itself has an uneasy relationship with awful fans who think Light is so cool and smart, and where the bad politics of anime nerds has been - deservedly or not - thrust into the mainstream, that's a fucking problem.

Some people like Death Note because of the cat and mouse detective chase, some for the near-constant depressing twists, some because it's occasionally extremely gay, but to me Death Note has always been a story about the tragedy of abuse. The weight of Light's crimes is unbearable, and he makes those around him complicit simply because they decide to trust their friend. There's a reason that the biggest climax of the show is when the truth comes out and Matsuda - Light's staunchest defender, after declaring that his hero, his best friend and his mentor could never hurt a fly - shoots Light in the fucking chest. No high road, no we-can't-become-like-him, just the righteous fury of a man betrayed, a catharsis 37 episodes in the making. Without the shield of those he has manipulated to trust him, Light is reduced to a pathetic, hypocritical coward, begging hopelessly for his own life before dying alone and unloved.

Death Note (2017) isn't even interested in these ideas. Instead we - I shit you not - get Light giving a "lesser of two evils" monologue to his dad about how he saved the day, and cut to credits on L about to write Light's name in his own page of the Death Note. What was once a battle of worldviews has been reduced to two almost identical characters who hate each other, and even that hate rests on a coincidence.

Look, Death Note was always stupid. It was a show where the greatest detective in the world and the greatest serial killer in the world were also the greatest tennis players in the world and spent a full episode analyzing whether the angle of their backhand swing could be used as evidence. It's an uneven and exhausting show to watch, with its cliffhanger heavy structure meaning arcs blend into one another, and the story doesn't actually reach an honest to god climax until episode 25, and then again at 37. But what it did do was commit to its themes, and I think it's a tragedy when something comes out and refuses to commit to anything one way or the other.

Right. That's that. I'm free of Death Note, let's hope I have something more positive to write about in two weeks!

Til next time, friends,
Jackson <3