デスノート後編/ Death Note: The Last Name

(Movie Review)

And back with the second part of the Death Note series.

The plot thickens a bit in this movie as we now have two Death Gods, and three different people with death notes. Also the battle between the teenage geniuses Light and L continues.

Because of the more complex plot, this is a slight improvement on the first movie, if not in terms of sophistication at least in terms of more plot lines being juggled to help make the story more interesting.

Unfortunately all of the criticisms I made about the first movie remain true here. In fact if anything a lot of those problems increase, making the premise of this second movie look even more ridiculous.

The battle of wits between Light and L is interesting to watch, even if some of their intellectual jumps don't always make sense to me (something that was true from the first movie as well) but at its best points the deductive reasoning of L reminds me a lot of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Among the new characters in this second movie is Misa (actually Misa appeared briefly in the first movie, but only as a set up to her role in the second one) who also receives a death note from one of the death gods, and joins Light in his campaign.

Anyone at all familiar with Japanese media knows that there is often a problem with the portrayals of women. Whether these problems represent the exception or the rule I'll leave for other to judge, but Misa represents one of the low points. High pitched voice, cutesy gestures, given to either childish pouting or childish bursts of enthusiasm, and when she meets Light she immediately throws herself at his feet (literally) and tells him she wants to be his girlfriend, is completely devoted, and places her life in his hands. From this point on she plays nothing but an obsessively devoted girlfriend.

(Also the scene in which she is captured by the police resembles an S and M bondage a little too much. I know they had to restrain her because of her powers, but in the real world I'm sure they would have found a slightly more dignified way to do it. When Light is detained by the police, the circumstances of his detention are very different.)

In closing: now that I've watched both of these movies, I do have to admit I did find the story kind of interesting. But not nearly enough to justify the 270 minutes required to sit through both movies. If the movies had been a little bit shorter, or combined into one movie, then maybe I could justify recommending them. (In my opinion, there were more than enough parts that could have been cut out to trim this story down into one movie, but I realize the film makers were trying to be faithful to the original manga.) As it is, this movie series represents far more time than its worth.

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Death Note 2: The Last Name: Movie Review (Scripted)