Death Note (Drama)

Episode 8

At this point, a play-by-play of how the Death Note drama is and isn't like the anime or manga matters less and less. It's such a different story, taking its own direction with the material, that any comparison is almost a distraction from what this series is actually trying to achieve. It's now something distinct from the original Death Note, or at least, an expansion and superior articulation of it. This show has shuffled all the events around, but with clear intent—to make Light far less secure and perfect, and to therefore interrogate what he's trying to achieve more harshly.

Not only has Near arrived on the scene long before L could die and the Third Kira was defeated. To speed things up even more, Higuchi is almost immediately followed by Mikami, the Fourth Kira. We've seen Mikami hanging around the edges of the story, foreshadowing his later importance. He even confronted Light and Misa while their memories were gone, swearing his devotion to Kira's cause. Now, Mikami shows himself to be a real threat—not just to L and the investigators, but even to Light. If the real Kira won't put Mikami on the board himself, Mikami will shove his way in by force. When Misa is trying to dig up her death note in order to regain her memories (at Light's command), she's beaten up by an anonymous thug who takes it from her. It turns out he's a disgraced investigator now working for Teru Mikami.

In the original story, of course, everything Mikami did was under Light's control and at his command, just as much as Misa. The only time Mikami made a mistake was at the very end of the story, when he broke away from his perfect routine to act on his own instincts, getting himself caught by Near's investigation team. In this version however, Mikami is already ensuring that things won't all go according to plan. Light is able to contact the investigator based on the information he leaked that fateful day in the park, bringing him into his fold. But Mikami's still his own person, with his own goals and his own way of seeing the world—brought about by his very different upbringing from Light. He's a much more troubled person, with an even more black-and-white view of justice that's somehow been confirmed by the world's lack of attention to it. He's almost a foil to Light, with an even more simplistic and childish view of morality, but a more clever way of making plans and acting on them. This makes Mikami, like so many other characters, more interesting here than he was in the original story. Thank goodness they still preserved his over-dramatic "DELETE! DELETE!" exclamations while writing names in the Death Note.

In both versions, Mikami's purpose in the story was to show that you can't control your own followers. In the original Death Note, this never goes beyond "Light didn't make a mistake; only his followers did." Here, it's an honest examination of how a cause you create can grow beyond yourself and take on its own meaning for the others who find it. Mikami's created his own Kira fansite with countless followers who worship Kira, and now he's decided to take a more active role in bringing about Kira's dream. All of Kira's fans have their own reasons for deciding that Kira's world is the one they want. Once an idea gets out into the world, it mutates and changes as it passes between different people—and its hard to close that can of worms back up again, even if you do try to hunt activists down individually to recruit them. Eventually, there will be too many for Light to manage anyway. Mikami's possession of the note was set in motion by Ryuk, so I wonder if he's trying to get Light to see things a different way. (Far more likely, Ryuk just wants to have fun.)

Of course, L has his own follower that he's struggling to control. Near understands what L is doing a lot better and has genuine compassion for him, fretting over his comment about Near being the one to "put in the last piece" instead of L himself. Near wants to make sure that L is around to achieve their goal, so he's happy to play his assigned part until then. But Mello, Near's alternate personality, is unpredictable and doesn't seem to care about L at all. He has no stake in whether Light or L wins this game, only wanting to watch the madness unfold. Mello can be powerful when he gets his way, killing Mikami's helper in cold blood. It's creepy how even Near doesn't see his death as a big deal, very casually telling L that "he's dead."

All the actors put their all into this episode, with Shugo Oshinari's wormy Mikami and Mio Yuki's gentle and just slightly unsettling Near stealing the show. That is, except for the final scene, where L and Light go all-out in a battle for the Death Note. In spite of the new fake rules clearing Light and Misa of suspicion (one of the few remaining holdovers from the anime/manga), L can't get over how everything else lines up perfectly for them, so he begins to suspect some of those rules might be wrong. He can't prove anything though, so after a tense battle of wits in front of the cameras, he turns them off and lets Light have it as they throw the notebook around, swinging accusations both ways. In the end, they both take turns cornering each other, ultimately forcing Light to reveal his identity to L. He only drops his guard because he thinks he's about to kill L, but then it doesn't work! He writes L's real name in the book and nothing happens! People who've seen the anime can make an educated guess as to what's going on (L made a fake copy) but we're still left hanging on the fallout of this moment, especially now that these adversaries know everything about each other. The whole scene is tensely directed, with the show's weird lighting finally working to its advantage. The dark blue haze makes everything that much spookier and more suspenseful.

Death Note leaves us on this delicious cliffhanger after easily its best episode so far. This week's installment did what it had to do to justify this new adaptation's existence. In many ways, the themes of the story are more sophisticated than the original story ever tried to be. Death Note was never the deep, thoughtful show it could have been, but it had potential. This version might have a shot at finally delivering on that potential.

Rating: A+

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 Rose's Turn.