Death Note Complete Edition, review: when it hurts the pen the most

Death Note Complete Edition, review

Planet Manga brings to the shelves of comics and bookstores Death Note Complete Edition, an impressive and decidedly unusual edition of the cult signed by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata: a tome of over 2400 pages with a box set that contains all 108 chapters of the manga plus one chapter special published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in November 2008 to coincide with the release of the third film from the series entitled L: Change the World. This very peculiar Italian edition is based on the original one that hit Japanese shelves in 2016.

Death Note Complete Edition, “The human whose name will be written in this notebook will die”

Light Yagami he is a very brilliant seventeen year old: he excels at school, thanks to his above average IQ, and is very popular with girls. But he is deeply bored. His life changes dramatically when, in the schoolyard, he retrieves a notebook. Apparently a very normal notebook with a black and uncut cover, which only bears the words "Death Note" and inside a sinister warning: "The human whose name will be written in this notebook will die".

Between intrigued and skeptical, Light takes the notebook home with him and tests it by writing the names of two criminals caught on a newscast. To his surprise, not only does the notebook work, causing the victims to die from cardiac arrest, but it will also make him meet Ryuk, the God of Death who brought the notebook to Earth just for fun.

In Light's mind, therefore, a crazy purpose flashes: to use the Death Note to eradicate evil and corruption from the face of the Earth, thus creating a new and perfect society in which he would rise to the role of the new God. The plan amuses Ryuk who favors Light who thus begins to discover all the rules of use of the notebook and to bend them to his needs, first of all, of course, that of not being discovered.

The work of Light, who l public opinion renames Kira, attracts the attention not only of the Japanese police but also of Interpol which decides to hire the renowned, but mysterious, private detective Elle. A manhunt made of misdirections and brilliant deductions begins in which the circle begins to tighten around Light / Kira both because of Light's father's entry into the anti-Kira task force and because of the sensational appearance of a second Kira and therefore of a second Death Note.

Light even manages to enter the task force as a consultant, thus trying to manipulate the investigation while appeasing the second Kira, the young idol Misa Amane. Soon, however, the confrontation is reduced to Light / Kira against Elle and apparently to win it is the first but with an extreme sacrifice: giving up the possession of one of the notebooks. By renouncing possession, all the memories related to the notebook and its use are erased, Light thus begins a complex maneuver to manipulate Rem, the second God of Death associated with the second Death Note, who kills Elle to protect Misa, and thus recover the notebook.

With the only intellect capable of countering him out of the way, Light takes over the direction of the task force while, like Kira, shapes a company in his own image and likeness. Five years pass and in great secrecy two other investigators, connected to Elle, come out of the shadows. These are Near, who acts with the support of the American government and creates the SPK, an organization born with the explicit aim of capturing Kira, and Mello who tries to achieve the same end by making a pact with organized crime. After years of unchallenged domination, and with Misa firmly at his side, Light begins to falter again.

Unlike Elle, both Near and Mello are much more aggressive and unscrupulous in their actions, even going so far as to perform acts to the limit of the legal. However, their strategy seems to work and the circle around Light is tightening again. Not even "delegating" the power of the Death Note to another ally, Teru Mikami, seems to work as it did long ago and with a sensational twist Light / Kira is unmasked. However, it will be Ryuk's entry into the scene, who was amused by watching all these years, to mark the end of Kira's reign.

In the special unpublished chapter at the end of tome, 9 years after the events that led to the unmasking of Light / Kira the murders suddenly resume. Near is asked to resume investigating immediately but the detective refuses, not considering this new Kira to his height and in fact Ryuk will confirm this hypothesis in an unexpected ending.

Death Note Complete Edition, beyond the cult is there more?

Death Note Complete Edition allows us to reread after a few years one of the greatest phenomena, attributable to the manga / anime genre, of the 2000s. This allows us to relate to the work with a con a certain detachment by examining it now with more rationality and bypassing the aura of cult that surrounds it. In fact, Death Note was also a social and customary phenomenon that led to censorship in many countries of the world and to widespread alarmism in the more generalist television (and not only) pedagogical circles.

While addressing the public of the shonen (the series was originally serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine) and therefore a decidedly young audience, the series has morbid connotations from the very first bars amplified by an aesthetic that is in some ways gothic and by a supernatural component that it did, and still does today , immediately breaches above all in the imagination of the most easily impressionable readers.

The formula for a work that can "divert" the minds of teenagers all over the world seems to be within reach: there is no doubt that the idea of ​​an object of such daily use, specifically for the target reader of the work, but with terrifying properties it exerts a magnetic charm especially since it is an object that could give vent to the most hidden desires of revenge and revenge.

Death Note Complete Edition, a morbid psychological thriller

With Death Note Complete Edition it is easy to ideally identify three great narrative arcs in which to divide the series. The first is the one in which Light / Kira discovers the functioning of the notebook; the second is the one in which Light / Kira and Misa lose and then regain possession of the notebooks; and the third in which Light / Kira collide with Near and Mello.

The three macro narrative arcs are structurally very similar reducing themselves to a pure and simple detection story of the whodunnit type? in which the element of interest is represented by a plot often based on the interaction of three characters. Light, Ryuk, Elle; Light, Misa, Elle; Light, Near, Mello (in order of narrative arcs) for a tripartite scheme that then adapts, widens and overlaps with the secondary characters as needed.

Tsugumi Ohba writing therefore plays on the construction of a simple tension, that between investigator and investigated or between hunter and prey. It is a battle of intellects fought with moves and counter moves to unmask the opponent. Death Note is also for this reason a purely plot driven series in which the reader is swallowed up by the protagonists' ruminations and surprised by the strategically placed twists to give more or less clear breaks to the events.

The narrative is engaging but not free from some physiological drops caused by an above average verbosity, and often expressed in long captions, but also in the reasoning of the sometimes pedestrian protagonists that force the reader to make an effort to rationalize the succession of events and their concatenation. It is also difficult not to notice that there is no real development of the protagonists. Light / Kira remains almost the same from the beginning to the end of the series, it certainly changes her audacity and the scope of her plans, but temperamentally she remains a megalomaniac manipulation as well as Elle, and her surrogates Near and Mello, are geniuses at the limit. of sociopathy whose only reason for living is to dismantle the intricate skein constituted by Kira and the notebook.

In this sense, and with the renewed sensitivity of recent years, it is also impossible not to notice how space for female characters is minimal. Both Misa and Kyomi Takada (character who appears in the first and last story arc) are submissive figures and completely succubus to Light / Kira. For them there is no redemption or revenge, even becoming expendable. The same speech, static and expendable characters, can be applied to the various secondary characters or the Japanese policemen and special agents who really act as a background to the events never managing to really influence them.

Takeshi Obata's graphic research is also interesting. The realistic style, the precise and detailed stroke made up of fine lines enhanced by the use of half shades, and the fascinating anatomies of the protagonists constitute a first level of reading of Obata's pencils and in fact a hook for the younger reader thanks to their accessibility. However, the great merit of the designer is to never weigh down the composition by combining the accessibility of his pencils with a storytelling that is as smooth as possible.

The obstacle is obviously represented by the verbiage mentioned above. Obata therefore prefers verticality to horizontality as the main coordinate thus obtaining space for the captions while thanks to an orderly division of the table that rarely allows geometrically irregular solutions. Close-ups, close-ups and cuts of the shots on the faces, the eyes in particular, therefore become the best stylistic code to underline the aforementioned ruminations of the protagonists, instead reducing proxemics to a minimum and emphasizing the distance between Light / Kira and the others. characters for example.

Obata's style which, with "apparently minimal" solutions, resolves the structural complexity of the series not only plot driven but also almost devoid of large action scenes (there are just a handful and in any case well-conceived graphically) and all extremely psychological.

Death Note Complete Edition, when it hurts the pen the most

If it is true that part of the charm of Death Note also lies in the component supernatural of the plot, however, it is also true that, re-reading the series in one go, it is evidently that net of the first chapters, this component fades more and more becoming instead a pretext to build a tense and equally morbid psychological thriller that lends itself very well to some reflections on justicialism and the influence of public opinion in fact in advance of a decade and applicable very well today in the society dominated by fake news and social media out of control.

It is very interesting, in this sense, to note how the initial dismay for Kira's rise changes by splitting public opinion between supporters of her work and detractors. The issue is then debated publicly and Light / Kira herself exploits this unprecedented situation both by influencing public opinion directly with blatant acts and by identifying potential and actual allies thanks to the media exposure of her supporters.

It is even more distressing to note how Kira's work is progressively accepted by replacing the normal administration of justice which is therefore emptied of its rules and guarantees in favor of a system of executions that are, after all, summary they hit the belly of public opinion. Something that happens, with due proportions, on a daily basis in which the socio-political debate is often reduced to hasty and often naive proclamations, aimed at winning the greatest number of consents in the easiest possible way.

Death Note Complete Edition shows in a self-evident way how the series has undoubtedly inspired and opened a new more or less fortunate narrative vein evidently addressed to the shonen audience but with a more cerebral structure, with more robust themes and suggestions related to thriller and horror right for mention the most popular. Suffice it to take as an example works of different origins but which ideally refer to Death Note such as Tokyo Ghoul or The Promised Neverland.

The volume

From a carto-technical point of view, the Death Note Complete Edition is really a well-made product, especially taking into account two factors: the foliation and the format. The hot paperback binding holds up very well so much so that the rib, although embarking from half the volume onwards, does not show signs of sagging. The more than 2400 pages are printed on a plain paper whose weight is obviously not too important, a choice dictated by the need to make the tome easy and solid.

We are talking about a complete but not deluxe edition: the 11.5 × 17.5 format cm may not satisfy collectors who, on the other hand, might be attracted by the beautiful box, in thick cardboard, and by the excellent graphics. The volume has no extras whatsoever, apart from the special chapter clearly, and does not have color pages but in half-tone. Finally, from the editorial point of view, there is a very brief introduction by the Italian editor. Good adaptation while the translation presents some colloquial choices (very indicative instead of a more correct subjunctive) that could be alienating. Furthermore, in the first chapters the lettering is not very precise with the text not centered in the balloon.