It should be Raito

Light is such a ridicufuck name for a character. No one, not even english-speaking people name their children "Light". There's all the obvious references, in-jokes, and whatnots one could make with such a word. There's the obvious religious reference too, but let's not go into that.

Anyways, why the blabber about Light? Two words: Death Note. At first, when the scantalations came out, the protagonist was called "Raito", following hte kanji, or hirigana or whatever, but the author issued an official statement that it "Raito" was supposed to be read as "Light". It should be "Right", but the Japanese can't plonounce "R" properly, or so says Laymond Angelo.

Ryuuku was changed to Ryuk too. Ryuuku is so much meaner, I find :
Raito was given the moniker of Kira. Following the Raito->Light conversion, why wasn't Kira changed to Killer, since that is what it stood for. I guess Killer doesn't sound as cool, but then again, if you're reading this, author of Death Note, Light is so bloody cliche.

Anyways, there's been a Death Note resurrection. A few months after the manga concluded with the death of *******, the live-action movie came out. The anime did too, but I don't like anime all that much, since they're slide-shows with voice-overs most of the time.


Back to Death Note.

When the manga came out, at least two-and-a-half years ago, it was pretty obscure stuff. It didn't have such a rabid following, as it does now (banned in China FTW!). I picked it up only because Obata-sensei, the dude who worked on Hikaru No Go, is the illustrator for this piece of work, so it's bound to be good, I think. And it was, for the first few months, I was hooked. I managed to get a few people hooked too. Me and HaoYang (Hiya pal!) even read it in the computer room last year. I read, weekly, but the story...it died (yes, I do mean literally), and without the *story*, I lost interest.

The ending came and went, new chaLacteLs apeared, and bladblabla. I lost interest, but the whole world started to pick it up. Bleagh. I moved on to other manga instead; because Dragon is Luffy's father.

The movie came out.

It got rave reviews, both from critics and friends. So, with Delise, for our Friday Movie, we watched Death Note.

The basic premise of the movie is this: Raito Yagami acquires the power to kill anybody he wishes. He decides to use this power to rid the power of evil. However, the morality of this action is thrown into question. Is he a criminal himself? Master Sleuth and Mr. Visits-the-Dentist-Once-A-Week "L" certainly thinks he is, along with Detective Raye, and his fiance. The movie goes on a mouse and cat game with Raito trying to allude his capture; and at the same time, save the world.

Fun. And the Akatsuki leader joins the bandwagon too. He says he "Wishes to rule the world" Kishimoto better give us a good backstory, some sort of complex, a really really eccentric trait, some freaky jutsu, and he better be Yondaime or Jiraiya. Or I'm going to have to book a flight. To Japan. First to kill the guy who changed Raito to Light. And then Kishimoto for this travesty. All the build up, and he only wants to rule the world? Sheer imagination.


There's been changes here and there, for the manga to big screen transition, but otherwise, the story stays the same. Certain ingenius details have been kept (Consemme, anybody?), but they threw the "Burning the Death Note" device out of the window. I really liked how they've stayed true to the source material. They've given Raito (I refuse to call him Light)'s girlfriend a larger role, and Naomi too, but I guess it's excusable.

All in all, I liked this adaption. There's this feeling of smugness when you know that you know what's going to happen next because you've already read the manga.

I didn't like many thigns about this movie, but they're just minor details. Ryuuku was butt-ugly, and he looked totally fake. The cast wasn't as good looking as I would expect from a Jap production. I mean, Raito's girlfriend was very "bleagh", and Raito himself was "meh". I liked L thought, but that's mostly becasue of his undying love for sweets. They skipped the part where Raito played tennis with L! I can't believe they did that, because even thought I'm a guy, I squee for shameless fanservice.

Misamisa was cute :x.

I'll be going now. I still haven't gotten my pictures up yet, so no grad day update. I'm sorry everybody. It'll come.

Put in 10 hours today. I'm just reading the Death Note manga.

And Delise did an awesome job for her end-of-years. 1st in standard FTW.

The pressure's on me to follow suit.

God, that was such an arrogant thing to say.

OHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I NEARLY FORGOT! Check out this Meskin band called "Panda". It's Meskin Punk and I don't understand what they're talking about, but god, do they now how to rock. They do slow songs too, but I like heavy bass. Taco! Nachos! Siesta!