Death Note: The Manga

I read a manga. Adult Swim is one of the few programming blocks that airs new and new-ish stuff on my kind of schedule. Usually I ignore a lot of it, but I really got sucked into the anime with the same title.

Scorecard

Manga: a Japanese sequential artform influenced by American comic books. Japan churns out loads of the stuff and unlike the American comic book market, it's not a declining niche product. It's not a genre, but the medium for many genres.
Anime: the equivalent in animation. Often based on a manga. Successful anime usually have numerous marketing tie-ins.

Enough digression. Death Note premiered on Adult Swim in late October, according to Wikipedia. It's about a teenage genius (Voiced by Brad Swaile in the dub. I loved his voice all the way back when I was a kid watching Gundam Wing. I used to wish I could sound like that.) who gets a magic notebook that lets him kill people and starts using it to rid the world of criminals. This draws the attention of an eccentric genius detective. They play a elaborate game of cat and mouse. The teenager, Light, needs to see the face and know the real name of someone to kill them. He can't be safe while his hunter, L, is stalking him with the help of the Japanese police. L avoids using his real name and letting his face be seen.

After two weeks of watching this, I was enthralled. Unlike a lot of media depictions of geniuses, L and Light are both clearly brilliant. They're an equal match for each other. Light is a real school success story. He's smart, handsome, extremely sociable, athletic, everything schools try to turn you into so you don't freak people out. He's perfect.

L isn't. He compulsively eats unhealthy food, is constantly fiddling with something, sits in chairs with his knees folded up. He's a weird guy, and I say that as a weird guy. The contrast between how they think and behave is really fascinating. I got into it enough that I couldn't wait for all 37 episodes to come out. Every week left me with this delicious cliffhanger. I needed more gratification.

I've bought a few manga before, but this was a few years ago and they were pretty expensive. I never got very far. I thought I would get the first two and read them to catch extra angles on the shows I'd already seen. That lasted about thirty seconds. In the last week I've burned through all twelve volumes. It helped that they sell for a lot less now, about two-thirds what they went for a few years ago. The lady from the bookstore didn't even look at me like I was about to cut off her skin and eat her insides when I asked about the volumes they didn't have on the shelf. I come in there a lot, but I've always got my sunglasses on and my hoodie and my coat. I probably look like the Unabomber, but without the hair.

I hate hair, by the way. I can sort of stand it for a while, but it's itchy and ugly...and there's not a barber shop in town open at night. They all have giant windows to let the sun in too. I think they have to be sadists or something. I can't really cut my own hair and I don't like it anyway, so I just get rid of it when it gets to where I can't stand it anymore.

Anyway, I read that the anime diverges from the manga eventually. That means I still have some stuff to look forward to in the show. The manga is great and the show has been great so far. I guess they're psychological thrillers, really.