Jun 23, 2020
I know this is one of the anime “greats” but I’m giving it a low score because the writing of the female characters is just… so, so bad. The show runners generally are obviously wildly misogynist, which shows up most clearly in all the close-ups of cleavage and ass-cracks, but in what is easily the laziest writing I’ve seen in any "well-regarded" anime, every single female character of note is given the sole motivation of attachment to a man. Misa, Kiyomi, Naomi… the entire reason they exist in the show is because they happen to be in love with important male characters.
Light and L are
...
allowed to have these high-flown motivations sounding in justice and truth, they can spend hours talking about philosophy and playing intricate games of mental chess, but Misa changes significant allegiances at the drop of a hat because… Light told her to. I wouldn’t mind this so much if Misa had legitimate, valid reasons for 24/7 worship of Light (which I guess him killing her parents’ murderer provides SOME flimsy cover for - but even then, it’s bizarre to me to support a mass murdering psychopath just because they happened to do one positive thing for you - and that’s assuming you believe in the correctness of extrajudicial murder anyway, but I digress), but she’s like this even when she loses all memories of Kira. That behavior just does not make any sense to me, and I say that as someone who’s been in love with my fair share of male “genius" assholes. I would not follow them into serial killer-dom.
Meanwhile, Kiyomi’s interest in Kira just goes… unexplained. We’re supposed to believe she agrees with everything he says because… ?? Writing like this would make sense with a new character who is properly introduced as prone to Kira-like leanings. The show did this well with Mikami - probably because it recognized that his motivations needed to be meaningfully fleshed out for his worship of Kira to be believable. With Kiyomi the writers apparently felt they could rely on the tried-and-true “woman who just wants a man” trope to explain everything she does. AND for some reason I’m supposed to believe she’s smarter than Misa, when both women's behavior and motivations are exactly the same - they're just packaged into different male gaze fantasies (Misa as the cute fun bimbo, Kiyomi as the hot sophisticated socialite).
There’s also a massive difference in the treatment of Light’s parents. Dad is allowed to explore the pain and heartbreak associated with the (almost) realization that your kid is a mass-murdering psychopath. We also easily see how Yagami-san figures into Light’s understandings of the world and of morality and justice. His mom though? Mariah_Carey_I_don’t_Know_Her.gif. If the show purports to be a real exploration of how someone with strong ideals about justice morphs into a homicidal maniac with grandiose delusions, how can it devote multiple episodes to one parent while fully ignoring the other one, and especially when that parent is also 100% present in said maniac’s life throughout the entirety of the show?? Make it make sense (you can’t, without misogyny).
There are good things about the show - I did watch the whole thing (but honestly towards the end I was just hate-watching it). There are more than enough positive reviews about Death Note out there though - I don’t really feel the need to write anything nice about it lmao. This is just a TLDR; to say that it’s a deeply misogynist show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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