A Note To The People Doing... Death Note

It's summertime , and as has been the case with the past few years, I've been using the time between school years to watch a bit of the Japanimation. Recently, I decided to finally finish one of the most popular animes from the 2000s, that being the story of the preppy kid who picked up a magic notebook and decided to murder a shit-ton of criminals: Death Note.

I really enjoyed Death Note. It had suspense, a brilliant rivalry in the form of Light vs. L, and potato chips! 

Since the anime is now eight years old, I assumed that I was the only one paying attention to it in the last month, but I'm not! Hollywood has been looking at it, too! That's right; Warner Bros is trying to get a live-action adaptation of Death Note into theaters, with Gus Van Sant, director of Good Will Hunting and Milk, set to direct. Over the past decade, Hollywood has struggled to make movies based on anime and manga. Speed Racer flopped, but I liked it. Dragonball Evolution never happened, and Pacific Rim was not an Evangelion adaptation. The American Death Note move has been in the pipeline for several years. Shane Black was supposed to direct the film, but he left the project to work on a new Predator flick, so the studio has decided to hire Van Sant in his place.

However, the U.S. isn't the first country to make a live-action film based on Death Note. The manga received a series of live-action films in its home country back in 2006, around the same time the anime was released. I've never seen the Japanese films, but from what I've heard, the anime was a bit better. As someone who hasn't watched the previous live-action incarnation of Death Note, I can't really make any serious judgements about the films, but I may have a few stray observations to bring up in this blog post.

Okay, Hollywood. Go ahead. Make Death Note. However, I'm going to leave you a few tips on how to make a good Death Note movie. Take them or leave them; you'll probably have no idea this article exists. But, if miracles happen, and you come across my blog, get ready, because I'm about to do your job for you.

1. Show Us The Shinigami

In an interview that occurred when Shane Black was still set to direct Death Note, the Iron Man 3 helmer mentioned that the studio wanted him to remove the shinigami from his live-action adaptation. Black refused to include this change in his version of the film, and for that, I have to give him a round of applause. However, he is no longer involved in the film, and I have no idea how much Gus Van Sant agrees with Warner Bros's shinigami-hate.

I suppose it's not impossible to do Death Note without the shinigami. Half of the time, the character of Ryuk serves as little more than an observer, a character who stands by just to note how interesting humans are. But, to chop out the shinigami would detract from the original work's thematic content. One of the most fascinating parts of the show for me was that moment when I realized that Light was more terrifying than Ryuk. Meanwhile, the discussions between Light and Ryuk helped to unveil the former's motivations and philosophy. And, what about Rem? She was a better character than her human counterpart (more on that later)! The shinigami do their parts to advance the story, but their simple, lingering presence is, in many ways, just as valuable for building up the world of Death Note. To remove them would result in a loss of the series's appeal.

But, goddamit! GET THE EFFECTS RIGHT! AND, DON'T CHEAP OUT ON THE CASTING! YOUR LEADS WILL PROBABLY BE SOME UNKNOWNS, SO FOR RYUK, TREAT YOURSELF TO SOME SERKIS!

2. Don't Sanitize Our Protagonists

Studio execs, don't try to hide your merchandising plans. We all know that if this movie gets made, you will be flooding Hot Topic with buttons that have Light and L's boy-band-ish faces on them. What's that, reader? You think the studio won't try to pretty L up? That's funny. Look what Japan did with their live-action Death Note:

Yeah, it looks like they picked those actors out of the same Calvin Klein East catalogue, or whatever the hell one orders skinny jeans from in Japan. Granted, Light should be a bit of a pretty boy, fitting in with his clean-cut image, but L? He's supposed to look like this:

Yeah, I know the anime character had his share of fangirls, but still, his eyes are pretty creepy. I can guarantee you that Hollywood will, like the Japanese filmmakers, try to make the protagonists as attractive as possible, and I fear such efforts will extend to the characters' personalities.

Let's not do that, Warner Bros. Death Note succeeds because it doesn't quite fit into conventional media standards of morality. It features a protagonist, who believes in a certain ideal of justice, but who is also a psychopath with a major God complex. There is a hero antagonist, who uses rather unethical methods to catch killers, because he has fun with it. I don't want Light as written by some fangirl, who thought he was really cute. I don't want a spin-off movie about what an awesome hero L is.  I want the epic rivalry between a self-righteous madman and a nihilistic defender of the law.

3. Misa Amane... She Could Use Some Fixing

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: Misa Amane was the worst character of Death Note. Her whiny, one-note personality didn't jive with the moody tone of the anime she was dropped into. She had greater power than Light himself, but her personality was basically equal to Amy Rose.

And, I know fanboys have a hissy fit whenever you try to throw some commentary about gender politics or anything socially relevant into a talk about the stuff they like, but I can't help but fear that a bit of sexism was at work when Death Note was written. For the first third of the series, there are no significant female characters, save for the wife of the cop who Light killed, herself offed pretty quickly. Then, we finally get a young lady in the main cast, and her defining trait is how much she wants to get married and have babies with the protagonist. Put down your pitchforks, nerds. I'm not saying the series isn't great; I'm just saying it doesn't belong in the feminist literary canon.

You might be wondering why I want Misa to be "fixed" rather than removed from the storyline, considering how much I seem to loathe the character. Well, I think she is deeply flawed, but I don't think she can't be saved. You can keep her love for Light, but tone down the submissiveness a bit. Make her a bit smarter, a worthy ally to Kira, rather than just his willing minion. Get creative, screenwriters.

4. Don't Drag This Out Longer Than You Need To

Hollywood, you like money. I get it; who doesn't like money? And, if you have a potential cash cow, you have to go ahead and milk that cash cow. That's why every movie seems to have a sequel hook these days. And, I'm sure if the first Death Note movie is a hit, you're going to want to build a huge franchise out of it, but I'm going to set some limits: when Kira's reign ends, you're done. I don't want anything set in the world of Death Note, which isn't part of that central conflict that you found in the manga and anime. I don't care if it's one movie or two movies. I don't care if you go Near or no-Near. But, I sure as hell don't want to see Death Note Generations: Kira Reborn. There are many who think the anime went on for too long after... that thing that happened about two thirds in. I thought they kept it interesting for the most part, but it's obvious that Death Note isn't a meant to be a James Bond-style mega-franchise. There is only so much of Light Yagami's madness that we can take before we just get bored. Finish Death Note on a high note. You can drag the crap out of an anime adaptation when you get around to that inevitable Naruto film, Hollywood.