DVD Review: Killing people while eating potato chips

I've held back on reviewing "Deathnote" for about a year, because all the characters look so stereotypically emo. L looks especially goth and emo, and I really hate the entire goth community for being so emotionally pissed off.

Now then, where was I? Oh yes, the review.

Anyhow, "Deathnote" is an excellent shonen anime, with a gripping plot about a boy who can kill people by writing their name in a notebook. This review covers volumes 1-3.

This boy, Light Yagami, was a goody two-shoes law student, until a shinigami spirit drops a "Deathnote" book. If anyone writes a person's name in the book, the person with that name will die of a heart attack.

Light thinks this is a joke at first, but he soon discovers the ruthless power of the book. He starts killing prisoners left and right, hell bent on removing all the evil people from the Earth to create an ideal world. Light pronounces himself to the world as a god, simply known as Kira.

Fortunately, the Tokyo police have implemented every effort they could to defeat Kira. They hire L, the most famous detective in the world, who has never lost a case. L is so elusive that hardly anyone knows his real name. Thus, Light and L engage in a battle of wits, each hoping to outsmart the other to reveal his true identity.

This is one of the more violent anime series. Just from what I've seen in the first three volumes. Numerous people die of heart attacks or gunshots in the series. Although there isn't anything that resembles the grotesque gore in "Fullmetal Alchemist," this series features so much killing that one has to wonder whether Light has even a shred of humanity in him.

Thankfully, the series isn't completely composed of gloom and doom. Light has an especially humorous photo-opportunity moments, in which he epicly pronounces in the middle of one of his killing sprees that he's going to take a potato chip and eat it. And for some reason, Light's shinigami friend Ryuk, who gave him the Death Note, spends most of his time eating up apples. L and Light even engage in a tennis match, in which each characters is plotting their next move while they are playing their game.

While the series gets really overdramatic and over-the-top, "Death Note" is intriguing for the deep mind games which the heroes and villains play against each other. For example, L spends plenty of time predicting how Light will react, so that he can calculate the odds that Light really is the mysterious Kira. L even uses Light's deducing skills to his advantage, so that he can brainstorm what to do next.

And even if the characters yakkity-yak a little too long while standing still, they are very smart at predicting each other's next move.

Although "Death Note" is an overdramatic action anime, the characters still manage to pull off brilliant voice acting. Shonen anime fans may want to pick up "Death Note" just to see how cerebral the series gets.

Images courtesy of randomc.animeblogger.net

The most depressingly beautiful airplane anime

Director Mamoru Oshii has pushed the envelope once again with his newest film, "The Sky Crawlers."

The movie is a complex, but stunning film about teenagers trapped in a world of aerial combat.

The movie opens up at a snail's pace, with isolated, depressed male pilots known as Kildren, with no other amusement other than eating at the meat pie diner and having sex in the mansion with other women.

In their planes, they fight enemy planes from a country known only as the Loutan. However, most of their existence is a boring world, in which they never grow old. All they know is that they are children, who could never possibly gain access into the adult world. The only threat to their existence is the unknown airplane above the clouds, known only as “The Teacher.”

Perhaps it’s a somewhat excessive visual representation of the life of Japanese otaku, young men who trap themselves in their home, fearful of the criticism from the adults in the faceless corporate world. The characters have the most depressing and nonchalant dialogue ever heard in an anime. However, director Mamoru Oshii makes it all work.

The film is a deadpan “Catch-22”-styled story, in which the main character, Yuichi, is trying to figure out exactly who he is. He's only heard rumors that his love interest, Suito Kusanagi, shot her previous boyfriend in the head. Although Yuichi has hardly any memory of his past, he offers his girlfriend a new hope for change in their depressing life as Kildren.

Admittedly, the aerial dogfight in the end of the film is an impossibly excessive and violent end. However, given that the concept of the film is out of this world in the first place, it all works beautifully. Although some anime fans might find the film boring at first, “The Sky Crawlers” has plenty of earth-shaking emotional sequences, in which Kusanagi desperately plays with a gun in her hand on a particularly depressing night out.

This is one of the best anime films I have ever seen, filled with some spectacular dogfights with surreal imagery. But although there is plenty of action, the dogfights pale in comparison to the heartbreaking emotions throughout the film. While American audiences may be easily turned off, this is a true masterpiece by Mamoru Oshii.

Image courtesy of larcho.files.wordpress.com

Advertising time

I've held back on this newest change to my anime blog for a long time, but now that I graduated, I could use some money. Thus, I added advertising to my blog.

I was afraid that the ads would dominate my page, but thankfully blogspot has been friendly enough to post only reasonably-sized ads.

Anyhow, as the Violent Femmes once sang, you gotta "ad" it up. Get it? Ad?

Oh, that's such a bad pun...