Bloo's Reviews: Death Note

I've decided I'm going to review DVDs every week for fun. And since this blog is mostly about Animation, I might try to review an Animation on DVD each week. Originally I was going to start off by reviewing all types of movies, and I was going to start humorously with "Bloodrayne" by Uwe Bol. But I couldn't finish the movie it was so terrible. So I would keep to animation, since I know the most about that, anyways.

This week's Review is:

DEATH NOTE

Based on a Japanese Manga from Shonen Jump, Death Note centers around a 17 year old called Light Yagime. A bright young man, who has perfect attendance, school marks, and athleticism. The perfect teen who is on track to go to college at the top of his class and become a great detective. Until he stumbles across a notebook which seemed to have fallen from the heavens. This Notebook, known as "The Death Note", has special powers, and soon Light discovers how special these powers really are. If he writes the name of a person and time/mode of death, that person will die in the exact way it was described. If he writes only the name, that person will die within a minute by a heart attack. But by owning this Deathnote, he is followed by a God of Death or "Shimigami" until either the Notebook is filled or the bearer dies. Light begins using the notebook by killing only criminals and vowing to bring about a new World without criminals under the guise of "Kira", a faceless 'god' of justice. Light, soon, finds a nemesis in a young, strange prodigy named, simply, "L". The series explodes in a twirling match of wits between the two trying to find out each others identities. The first to lose this struggle will die.

From the very beginning to the very last episode, "Death Note" is rarely tired and boring. Just watching these two minds sitting in the same room and psycho-anaylizing each other is exciting. This psychological thriller, loves to toy with emotions as we dive deeper and deeper into Light's psyche as he falls steadily into madness with the power of the Death Note. The visuals and animation make up for the long steady stream of dialogue, but even the dialogue is, for the most part, very intriguing and keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. All of the characters are explored into amazing depth and each given some amazing detail which only gives the audience a reason to care about each one and worry about them. the only thing I would fault the series on would be the over explanations and very long dialogue scenes. It seemed to rely purely on the animation and direction to keep things interesting, especially since things were repeated on several occasions to remind the audience, which (for me at least), broke me from suspension of disbelief or just reminded me that I was watching an animation when I was previously right there in the room with each character.

Writing aside, the animation quality is outstanding. With Character Design by Masaru Kitao, Series Director Tetsuro Araki, and animation production by Madhouse. There is very little to fault. The style, direction and use of colors versus black and white flavors the already in-depth characters. Sometimes, things get a little wonky in the animation with missing frames or actions that could have been a little more expanded upon, but these are minor nit-picks since the overall quality on a half hour series, even out of Japan, is one of the better series I have seen.

Since this is my first ever rated DVD, I haven't quite come up with a suitable rating system, but until I do, I'll just go with the 10 point system for now.

This creepy psycho-thriller was well written and dripping with emotion and character along with some amazing visuals, design and excellent animation. It does get a little tedious at times with the repeated explanations, but is only a small grievance to an amazing series.

For "Death Note": 8.5 out of 10

I highly recommend watching, you'll be hooked by the first 10 minutes.

"Death Note" previously aired on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" and is for sale on DVD released in English Dub format in the US by Viz Media Production. Rated "Older Teen"

T'was a dark day in Azeroth

Yeah...I play World of Warcraft. I play a Draenei Shaman. Its part of my "me time" when I'm taking a break from work. For the 12 of you in the world who don't know...World of Warcraft (WoW) is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game or MMORPG for short. Meaning, you can interact with thousands of people from all corners of the Earth from within this game. I have a large group of real life friends who I play this game with...so really, its the geek equivalent of going out to a bar and having a drink. Recently, I've been rethinking my involvement in this game. Mostly due to the ass-hats that populate the world. Don't get me wrong, the majority of this games population as a whole are nice genuinely good people. But there is a percentage of players (mostly in the 8-15 age range) that think its cool or adult to spout random obscenities like a Sailor suffering from severe turrets. Some are considered, by law standards, adults (and I use that term loosely to describe these individuals). I recently had a run in with one (usually, I'm good about weeding those people out through a rigorous screening process). It was a dungeon run with 4 other players...3 of which I run with on a regular basis, so i knew them. The other was a stranger, but the others knew him. About half way through our run, he starts to berate one of our group members (as a joke, I think) and then openly call all of us a derogatory term used to describe homosexuals (no, I won't repeat it...especially on my blog). I then stepped up and and told him that that was enough, I'm leaving because I'm not going to take this sort of verbal abuse, joking or not, from a childish individual when I'm supposed to be having fun...and then I promptly left. I come to find out that he was someone from another guild who I have run with before...and who has made comments and statements within runs and he is a part of the same community of people that I thought was a safe place to be from these sort of individuals within the game. I didn't recognize him because he was on an alt character. So now I'm just upset that such people exist, that someone thinks they are being clever or "adult" by randomly spouting obscenities at another person, but they are ok because the repercussions of such acts almost don't exist due to the anonymity shield of the Internet. So, no one can enjoy anything because there is some childish individual out there who will inevitably ruin it for everyone. I just can't even begin to fathom why such people even exist...to ruin things for everyone else...why people lie, or cheat, or are just there to make everyone else miserable for no real reason.

Wow...that was long and rather depressing. I promise I'll draw my cat doing something cute/stupid next time.

What is it? What does it want?

Recently, my wife, Misha and I have agreed to start actively looking to adopt a dog from a shelter or foster home. We're a little worried about the interactions that may come with our 3 year old Maine-Coon cat, Tuck...especially since he doesn't know much about the outside world beyond the walls of our condo except the Cat only Vet hospital we take him to for check ups and boarding. He's only had brief run-ins with dogs but from behind the security of his own cage. So his reaction is going to be interesting to a new animal in the house. This is how I think Tuck will react at first. The good news, he'll finally find out what exactly is making that barking noise across the street every morning at around 9am on a consistent basis. Tuck: "Ah...so THAT'S a dog? Tell it to leave me alone."

"New Friend" 9/09 Flash CS4 B/W

Disnarvel?

Ok...so I lied...I do have some draw in me despite being overloaded with work. Only because this issue makes me sad. Anyone who knows me well enough (and it doesn't take long to know this about me) knows that I despise Disney with a passion. So you can imagine after hearing the news that my favorite Comic company, Marvel Comics, was recently purchased by Disney for $4 Billion, how I felt. So now they own just about everything in the entertainment industry that I love. Studio Ghibli, Pixar Studios, and now Marvel. None of which they had much to do with in creating...but rather they use their girth upon this world to obtain any sort of competition. I'd better stop there before I start ranting...again.

NOTE: I should clarify, that Disney doesn't actually "own" Studio Ghibli, but they purchased the rights to distribute their films in the US....so technically they had NOTHING to do with the making of the films, but they get the right to plaster their castle logo all over Ghibli's fantastic animated masterpieces.

Twice the work, half the sleep

Wow...work has been crazy hardcore lately. So it has been a while since I was able to post anything. Not much to post since work has just consumed me except for the occasional family outing or video game break (I call it, "me time"). On my way to my dad's 60th birthday party, I was working on the ferry. I took a break and took drawing requests from my wife. One was "How do you feel?" This is a cleaned up version of that drawn response. Only because I can't get my head out of work to think of anything better. 3 more weeks and I'll be back to my normal work schedule...then it'll be time for some UW 3D design classes.