Dumbledore Shot First: WTF WEDNESDAY PRESENTS DEATH NOTE!

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

WTF WEDNESDAY PRESENTS DEATH NOTE!

WTF WEDNESDAY PRESENTS:

DEATH NOTE

You are in class and have just finished a discussion on the flood God sent to wash the world clean of rotten people. As class ends, several of your classmates discuss a stabbing that has gone unpunished and the thought of other unpunished crimes begins to run through your head.

"Day in and day out, the same news on permanent repeat, this world is rotten."

You go to your next class and as you sit there, boredom seep in, and gives way to thoughts of the hopelessness of the world. As you sit there, staring out window, something catches your eye-- a note book. A black note book tumbles to the ground and, leaving class, you pick it up off the ground to discover it a blank note book with a black cover labeled "Death Note".

On the inside of the cover, is the following inscription:

The human whose name is written in this note shall die.
This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person’s face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
If the cause of death is written within the next 40 seconds of writing the person’s name, it will happen.
If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.
After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

You are, of course, skeptical of this object. Surely this is a prank or a sink version of a chain letter left by some other student. You take the oddity home and sit down to study. You try to ignore the book, but it keeps drawing away your attention. You decided to turn on the TV and see the man responsible for the stabbing is on the news. He has taken several hostages, women and children, at a daycare and is threatening to take their lives. You decide, on a whim, to write the man's name in the book.

You wait 40 seconds and the hostages leave the building. The reports say that the hostages saw the man collapse and die. Where do you go from here?

That is just a taste of the deliciously dark temptation of the Death Note. Death Note is about Light Yagami, a genius young man, discovers the Death Note and pursues his fantasy of becoming a god of justice.Why is it the subject of our WTF Wednesday you ask, my otaku friends?

There are a few reasons. First and foremost, not everyone has experience this anime yet. There are new anime fans who might've just missed it and their are non-anime fans who avoid anything anime on principle. For this reason, I have made Death Note today's subject so that I can help win some people to give it a try. Another reason is that the series and its fan work has produced some seriously messed up and bizarre moments deserving a WTF Wednesday. Below are some links and summaries of some interesting materials.

DEATH NOTE ENGLISH DUB EPISODE 1

The best way to start, if you haven't experienced Deathnote, is to watch the very first episode of the series. Arguably, and perhaps unfortunately, the first few episodes are my favorite of the series. Episode 2 introduces Light's nemesis L. On the plus side, the English Dub is fantastic.

DEATH NOTE LIVE ACTION TRAILER

Oh yeah! Did I mention that one of the only good anime to live-action adaptations is the Death Note film. The performance of the Light's Foil, L, is comparable to Heath Ledger's Joker in terms of mixing quirks and screen presence.