Death Note: Movie vs Anime(Part 2)

I think this is the most tiring subject I have ever written about. Last time we talked about the difference in the characters, and the difference in the story of both movie and anime. This time I want to talk about the theme of Death Note and dive deeper into the mentality of the characters and why they do what they do in the anime.

The overall theme of the anime is to question us about justice. Is killing criminals justice? What is right and what is wrong? Won’t the world be a better place without criminals? Is Light the correct one here or is L the one who is right? The anime will make you go through these questions and you have to decide on your own. Do you think that killing criminals is a sure way to make the world more peaceful? People may not become criminals because of the fear of death. But the movie, does not raise questions like this in your mind. These questions are the very essence of death note and the whole story revolves around these questions. The movie does not have a proper theme do go with a title like death note. Only once did the movie talk about justice. And that was just one scene, five minutes maximum.

Now lets talk about the character development. In the start you can see Light as a normal person. Someone who is innocent and does not want to kill people. But then when he gets the death note, he changes drastically. You can see that slowly the death note is corrupting him. And when he loses all is memories of the death note and reverts back to his old self, you can see how far he has changed. The old Light would never lie to a woman as he states( the time when L asked Light to take advantage of Misa) but when they had first met, Light had used Misa’s affection for Light to control her. But in the movie, you do not see this change inn Light. Rather you see Light become more conflicted in using the death note as we progress through the story. That is not who Light is as a character. People really liked the anime Light even though he was evil( the same question arises here. Was Light truly evil?)

Long story short, Netflix tried to make money out of the death note name and tried to put zero thought into the movie.