yeah ok i'm not gonna delete this blog, but i'm going to stop using tumblr to interact with the DN english fandom. too many racist and rude people :/
find me on discord if u need me. bye!
*edit: i've also deleted all my fics, so if you want to read them you can also find me on discord :) if there are ongoing posts on this blog, they are from my queue.
*edit 2: i've figured out the "mute/hide" button. I'm safe from certain people and their posts now, but not from the pervasive coloniser mindset out here. i'll be treading carefully. still, find me on discord if you'd like to chat!
love death note because all the characters suck soo bad you can post something like ‘i hate blorbo so much i hope they die. again.’ and all the reblogs will just be Yesss i hate My Awful Blorbo <3 #MyAwfulBlorbo
Someone much more intelligent and well-versed in Japanese national history than me has written a master's thesis in the last 20 years about Death Note as a specifically post-nuclear horror story and the global introduction of a never-before-seen weapon of instant genocide creating a future from which the entire world can never return but that is not stopping me from rolling it around in my head like a ball over and over
A huge part of the lingering horror of Death Note is the proven longevity of Kira. There is no world where Kira doesn't exist anymore. The ending of the anime is beautiful but it does cheat the viewer somewhat out of the ending of the manga, in which the last thing we see is a cult of Kira worshippers having a candlelight vigil to pray for his return. Kira is unburnable, unburiable, an idea that's impossible to shake from the global social conscience. There is common literal religious belief that the power of Kira was divinely placed into the hands of the "good guys" to put a stop to evil.
The historiography of Kira in 2019 is addressed some in The a-Kira Story, obviously, but what does history say about Kira in 50 years? In 70? Kira is officially taught in schools as a mass murderer, as an example of objectively morally evil behavior on par with Hitler, but the average person tends to be of the opinion that Kira was "terrible, but necessary," regardless of the very clear horror of his actions and the fact that they amounted to genocide. Kira ended wars when mere humans wouldn't. Kira deterred crime when the police weren't enough.
And Kira returns on a small scale repeatedly following Light's death, in these comparatively minor crises like C-Kira's swath of assisted suicides and in a-Kira's attempt to pass on the power of Kira to the US government (wonder what that's about). There is no longer a public imagination where Kira isn't looming as a possible apocalypse. There is no public imagination in which it is impossible for Kira to return on the same massive, grotesque scale as the original, if not even greater. There is no way for humanity to say "this will never happen again," because they cannot control or disable the killing tool of Kira.
#i have absolutely nothing intelligent to add to this just #a) a firm agreement #b) a fervent wish for someone smarter than me to explain why kira’s brand of control is connected to the post ww2 reconceptualization #of the emperor #im 100% sure it is there’s even a brief allusion to this in the otherwise terrible platinum end #but regrettably im just not knowledgeable enough to say anything about this other than that im really very sure there’s something to be #said #and also that these two things are connected #like the post nuclear horror story and the collapse of the japanese emperor as a godlike figure post ww2 #(the line in platinum end: people believed the emperor was a god until they saw his face #kira as the faceless god #near choosing not to show light’s face #& then obv the nuclear bombs are tied up in this #there is something here but i dont really have the knowledge to say more than that it exists u know) #does this make sense #i hope this makes sense. it makes sense in my brain. basically all this just to say i love this & i feel it very strongly (x)
@quicktimeeventfull THANK YOU for these tags because looking at this post with the additional context the exclusion of the public mythology of the emperor during/after WWII is such a glaring omission. Like I am also not informed enough on the subject to state cold hard facts about how Death Note plays into that specific sociological concept but it definitely warrants mention when considering Death Note as a work of post-WWII Japanese fiction.
sorry @kiyomitakada I lied. Essay on Tumblr because it's. really long :(
to anyone else reading this who is not Tumblr user kiyomitakada, these are just My Thoughts on the subject and I apologise in advance if anyone is offended please don't hurt me!!! this is only based on what i know and im not an expert on the subject at all, please feel free to kindly correct me if i made any mistakes. this reading is based on the anime adaptation and whatever k has told me about the manga.
Anyway, so I think that it's more relevant to think of Death Note as a Lost Decades work and less of a post-WWII work.
By the time DN was written, at least 50 years had passed since WWII and the a-bomb. It's not to say that the bomb and WWII are irrelevant, but they play a much smaller impact in DN compared to post-WWII works like Akira. We've had 50 years of stories that explore how to move on in a post-nuclear world, and stories that discuss weapons of mass destruction. The world has moved on, and so has Japan, for the most part.
DN was seralised in 2003, and it's clear that the anxieties that form the undercurrent of the story are derived from that reality. The Lost Decades were ridiculously harsh; people who had enjoyed stability, luxury, and status were suddenly thrust back into an insignificant life. People had believed, during the period of unprecedented growth, that Japan was going to become the world's number one economy - and it certainly did seem that way. There was hope and pride in the country. But the collapse of the economy plunged the country into despair. Suicide became common and young people felt that there was no future.
Anyway, this is just some background information on the Lost Decade that you can probably look up easily.
I mentioned in our chat about how defeatist DN is as a manga. The entire story explicitly tells you how futile it is to stand up against the ways of the world, and no matter how much power you get - even with a magic book - you will still lose. Ultimately, Light loses his initial battle against evil, his life to Ryuk, and his attempts to reach godhood are foiled by foreign agents acting on Japanese soil. He is not protected by his patron god (Ryuk), neither is he protected by his country, or the people who worship him. He gains everything at the start, and loses everything at the end. Standard tragedy. But what intrigues me is the foreign element in DN and how it has been so interestingly used.
There's an ongoing discussion in Japanese politics about how Japan is essentially a US colony and I think this is relevant to a discussion of DN. Japanese people (well not only them, lol, but I digress) (probably) feel that they have been fucked over by Western powers again and again, and no matter how much they protest against it or try to defend themselves, they will always come out the loser. I said this to my brother recently, but in 20 years, it will have been 100 years of Japan being America's little bitch. And that's honestly so humiliating.
I won't say too much about this since we already talked about it, but to tie this idea in with the lingering spectre of the a-bomb and the Emperor specifically: There's an interesting discussion of 'godhood' in DN that highlights just how thoroughly disillusioned people have become with the divine power of the Emperor in the wake of WWII.
When I think of godhood in Japan, the world of yokai comes to mind. Yaoyorozu no Kami comes to mind. See - Ryuk is a god. Rem is a god. But Light doesn't want to just be a god - he wants to be The God of the New World who decides what is right and what is wrong. This is a very Abrahamic concept, and the Christian imagery in DN makes a lot of sense when you think of it this way. There are so many other ways this series could have portrayed the suspense and the moral discussion - why, specifically, draw on Renaissance art and the Christian/Catholic cross? And why does Light think that his "God of the New World" should enact 'divine judgement', something that gods have traditionally not done?
I think that giving Light the Death Note in English is also particularly important here. He is fluent in English - or at least, good enough to translate easily from English to Japanese. And now he receives, essentially, this foreign weapon of mass destruction, and his first thought is that he can change his world. He can stop things from being so shitty. He can make life okay again. And to the average Japanese reader, that means lifting Tokyo out of its deep 20-year fog of depression.
It's the hope that with the injection of foreign influence - foreign belief, foreign tools, foreign aid - things will get better. In the years before the 1980s, this was true. American support catapulted Japan into the First World and they rapidly left the rest of us behind. There was no need for the Emperor. There was no need for Japan to be self-reliant. And so there is no need for Japanese divinity to save Light's world from the evil that plagues it. This English language notebook and the Abrahamic idea of an ultimate God's judgement will be more than enough.
Yet, as the series goes on, we see how the Notebook corrupts Light's mind. In case the series hasn't already beat you over the head with this fact, the first opening is a perfect reflection of this sentiment. That's where the anxiety of the Lost Decade comes in. The foreign support fails. L dies. Light cannot cope with the power of the note and loses the plot. Everyone dies.
Death Note breaks the myth of foreign supremacy and suggests - well, it follows the zeitgeist in suggesting that fighting against life and fate is essentially futile. I find it a very defeatist work, but I think it does encourage its reader to live in the moment and enjoy what they do have of life. Things are crappy, but at least they're still beautiful and somewhat exciting! If death is equal to all and there is no heaven or hell, then all the more we should cherish the moment and not chase impossible dreams like Yagami Light did.
Well, I don't know if this is compelling to anyone, but this is just what I've been thinking of recently. It's not really well fleshed out and probably never will be since I don't have time to write a paper for fun, but... yeah. Media reflects the anxieties of the day, whether you want it to or not. And it shows up in Death Note too! yay!
Someone reblogged this post and I got reminded of it again... I just wanna say that I'm really tired of people making everything that comes out of Japan about the atomic bomb. Death Note is not about the atomic bomb. Death Note is about 20 years of recession and what it looks like when people live thinking there will be no future, because everything around them is completely out of their control. In fact I think maybe DN is particularly relevant in "First World" economies today because you guys are the ones facing this huge, horrifying realisation that the world can no longer be changed by ordinary people.
I always come back to the representation of divinity in DN. You could say it's my hyperfixation... Why Christianity? Why "God", when shinigami exist? What exactly does Light actually imagine himself to be? Ryuk says there is no heaven or hell, but we plainly see that there is a spirit realm where the gods go to -- which means Christianity is completely undermined in this series. So why?
I don’t even mean this as a criticism really. I think it’s very important that everyone who gets their hands on L as a character takes him in a different direction. it’s important we have amoral sadist L (musical) and tragic hero L (lctw) and weirdo behind the curtain L (labb) and amused jackass L (anime) and the kind of L that would chase light down in the street waving around a gun (netflix)
i miss being a fan of things... not sure if it's stress, or growing up, or being surrounded by high achievers, or mental illness, or what, but everything just feels so dull these days
