Review of Death Note (2017) by Watashi Wa L — 31 Aug 2017

This movie isn't great, and nor would I recommend watching it. However, one must bear in mind that Death Note is 37 episodes long, and very hard to successfully sum up in a mere couple of hours.

Furthermore, one of the main goals of the movie was to grow the fanbase, and to achieve this, the director effectively felt like they had to Americanise the story completely, as it could be difficult for non-anime-watchers to connect with.

However, there are some aspects that the movie has no excuses for. Light Yagami (Anime) is a cool, calculating and manipulative young man who is bent solely on creating his own perfect world. At some points, it is clear that he is even prepared to kill his own father. Light Turner (Movie) is rash, easily manipulated himself, and shows little evidence of the intelligence he is supposed to have.

Moving onto L. In the anime, L's methods are smart and cunning, whereas in the movie his deductions can't really be justified, he practically GUESSES that Light is Kira. In terms of L's personality, he is led far more by his emotions than his logic, which is completely the opposite of the anime, and this just doesn't work.

Now onto Misa. I feel a lot like Misa, or "Mia" and Light switch personalities for the movie. Mia is far more manipulative than Light, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing except for the fact that it further proves Light Turner's lack of judgement and intelligence. She goes so far *Spoiler* as to threaten Light, which would never happen in the anime.

The plot in general is decent, but too fast-paced and leaves too many gaps in the story, though as I already stressed earlier, this is extremely tough to do. It does provide a few new and good substitutes for some parts of the original Death Note, which twists the story a bit. Although some fans of the series may say that some are too drastic, I believe that they work quite well (being a hardcore fan of the series myself.).

In conclusion, this adaption is far from perfect. However, it is very hard to create an adaption of an anime, which has been demonstrated several times in recent years. In terms of general enjoyment: If you stop thinking too much about the movie and stop comparing it to the original, then it's a half-decent watch.