By:Â Kayla Royster
Contributing Writer
Some shows are not meant to be modified, remade, or turned into an Americanized movie.
Many fans knew the recreation of Death Note” would be different. For one thing in an interview Adam Wingard, director of the Netflix movie adaptation of Japanese manga and anime “Death Note”, stated that he wished to modernize the anime in an American way. Even though so many things about the show itself were not accurate.
The original anime told the story about a notebook being dropped by a death demon Shinigami into our world, Earth. It falls into the hands of a high school student by the name of Light Yagami who is determined to use the book to cleanse the world of all evil. “The human whose name is written in this note shall die.” The story follows Light going mad with power as he uses his intelligence to battle against the equally intelligent L; who is trying to track down Kira (The name Light uses to protect himself.
Starring Nat Wolff, Lakeith Stanfield, and Margaret Qualley, the Netflix version of Death Note portrays Light to be a high school loser. Right away, those of us who have watched the original notice that Wingard threw the anime versions script out the window. It had been less than 60 seconds and in and I had already begun mentally criticizing the fi lm for major changes that I knew would affect the entire story line.
Light Yagami, who had been the original protagonist in the Japanese series had been ruthless and cunning. Both an excellent athlete and student, one would not have suspected him to be destined for anything but greatness, little did they know the greatness he desired was in playing God. The Americanized Light Turner? Total opposite. He’s sensitive, idiotic, and a major cry baby.
I feel that the true issue with this fi lm was the creators simply didn’t notice what made the anime great to begin with. No need to fix or fiddle with is not broken. The original concept of the anime was the battle of wits between Light and L. Both incredibly intelligent psychopaths each fighting for a different side; good vs. evil per say. When watching the movie, one can’t help but ponder if Light or L have a brain at all.
The problems that I found within this fi lm remake were the following.
The traits of the characters in general were extremely off . Be it hair color, skin color, or even their names. Thus, leading me to believe some characters were removed if not replaced completely.
Both Light and L act like complete idiots. There is no battle of the wits at all, Light is an emotional, whiny teenager and L isn’t the strange unique intelligent man he was in the anime.
The original anime did have a love interest, Misa. (Though Light Yagami simply used her, taking advantage of the love she had for him.) Yet in the fi lm she is known as Mia. Why does she exist? Also, why does the remake of Death Note allow Light Turner to find it completely appropriate to share the fact that he has obtained a magical notebook in which allows him to kill people so freely? Pretty stupid to me. The mastermind that Light had been in the original anime, would not have done that. Hence leaving us fans suspenseful as to how he would finally meet his demise. In addition, the original Misa was oblivious and so blinded by Light that that she was ignorant to everything. First falling for Kira, the name Light used to protect himself and later Light himself. In the Americanized fi lm, Mia was a crazed, death, obsessed chick. A completely different character to the original “love interest”’ shall we say. Which may be why he killed her, which isn’t something that happened in the anime.
Too much gore. In the anime, when Light killed he did it swiftly. The anime though dark and macabre, could not be described as gratuitously gory (no focus was set on the deaths and gore). This Netflix flop had blood galore, often reminding me of a couple of Final Destination death occurrences.
Family wise, the Americanized fi lm lacks Light’s sister and has his mom deceased, when both existed in the anime.
Director Adam Wingard apparently deleted his Twitter due to cruel comments, including death threats and harassing comments. Criticism was something to be expected from anime and manga fans. After all, Netflix was attempting to turn fictional characters into well, realistically fictional ones. After some research online, I made the discovery that Wingard had been replying to comments for some time until the comments turned into harassments and threats. Upon entering Wingard’s name into the twitter search bar, nothing comes up. As if he never had an account to begin with. I get it. I honesty hated the remake, but a bad fi lm shouldn’t be enough to cause you to threaten someone’s life. Light played with fate and the hand of God and look how he ended up: dead.
There are probably a lot more differences I failed to notice among the mass of failures in this recreation, but why can’t anime just remain anime?
