Death Note – 02 – Humans are Interesting

After seeing the second episode I just had to blog this. Death Note will be an extremely interesting show. Most shounen-action series are bad, but when they actually involve complicated planning, they become awesome. The Law of Ueki showed this, and now Death Note shows this.

This episode introduces L. The detective, hired to stop Light. We start the episode with Light, who still continues school. He plans to keep his grades at the same level they’ve always been. Very interesting. It’s interesting that Ryuk actually decided to stay with him. Doesn’t he have to do his job, or anything?

It seems that Light has put some serious thoughts in his plans. He doesn’t continue writing all night long, because of sleep deprivation. Ryuk, however, is more easygoing. The fact that he hasn’t told Light that anyone who touches the Death Note will be able to see him. Because of this, Light finds a rather ingenious way of hiding the Death Note: take one drawer, and give it a false bottom. Put a diary on top of the false bottom, and the Death Note under it. You can just leave the drawer unlocked. After all, when it’s locked something precious has to be hidden, which raises suspicion. The only way to remove the false bottom is by using the cartridge of a normal ballpoint pen. Under the drawer, there’s a small hole through which it fits, so it lifts the false bottom up. If you forcefully try to remove this false bottom, a special mechanism burns the Death Note and all evidence. The mechanism works like this: there’s an open circuit running, right over the hole. The bottom part of the false bottom is made of rubber, so it’ll stop the electrical current. The cartridge does the same. But when there isn’t anything to fill up the gap between the two pieces of metal, they clap together, due to the tension of the metal. Then the electrical current starts running (I’m assuming he’s using a battery for this) and a little plastic bag of gasoline would ignite. The pressure in this bag is high enough to burn the Death Note in a second. It’s interesting that he does acknowledge that when things go wrong, he’ll have to burry the book. Most people would want to safe keep the Death Note for further use, but he very cleverly plans to destroy all evidence when things point to the direction of him getting the death sentence. It’s also interesting to note that Light has a very keen eye for detail. After all, this construction has to be perfect. Even one small design flaw and the Death Note turns to a bit of ash. Just think what would happen if the fake bottom wasn’t attached in the right way.

Interpol, or ICPO, meanwhile is trying to find out what to do with the suspiciously huge number of heart attacks on the criminal population. It seems that this anime highlighted two employees, their names haven’t been mentioned, for as far as I know. One is some kind of chief, and one is his assistant. As lost of people are attending in the meeting, things go rather chaotic, until L.’s name gets mentioned. Nobody knows his name, face, or voice, but he’s a brilliant detective, who’s solved a huge amount of cases worldwide.

There’s just one problem: nobody knows how to contact L. Then Watari appears, the only man who’s said to be able to contact him. His identity, of course, also remains a mystery. He’s carrying a laptop, from which the letter “L” appears. The laptop gets plugged in and L. starts speaking. He’s made it so that his voice gets deformed. Quite creepy.

In any case, L. firstly requests for full cooperation from both international police as ICPO, and then especially the Japanese government. L. reckons that the criminal is Japanese, or at least hiding in Japan. Later in the episode, he states the reason for this: Light’s first murder.

Meanwhile, the normal people are starting to notice that someone is killing off a bunch of criminals, and the first websites about “Kira the Savior” have popped up. I think indeed that some people would react that way. While Light isn’t exactly acting politically correct, technically, he is reducing criminality in the world. People also are starting to like him because of his mystery. It’s common knowledge that that what is unknown only awakens more interest. It’s how religions started to exist as well.

Then, the fun really starts when a live international broadcast from the ICPO interrupts the regular television. A person named Lind L. Tailor, or “L.” appears n th screen, claiming that he holds the entire planet’s police force. He claims that he’ll definitely atch the culprit behind the mass homicides, and claims that Light is “evil”. Light gets angry when he hears this, so he kills Lind L. Tailor off.

Then, the real L. appears on the screen. It seems that that was all a test by L., to see and prove that the criminal was able to kill people without ever laying a finger on them. Lind L. Tailor was just an unlucky bystander, a top-secret criminal, scheduled to be executed on that same time. This shows that the culprit doesn’t have access to that kind of information. To make things only better, the emergency broadcast only turned out to be broadcasted in Kantou, Japan. When you think about it, it’s logical. Ryuk intentionally drops his Death Note, but as he’s more of an easygoing guy (devil? do shinigami have genders?), he didn’t care where he dropped it. So it became a random location in Japan, or the location he knew best, which means the most populated and well known region, aka Kantou. When L planned his first broadcast, it was only logical to start with the most populated region, as it means more chance of success.

L. continues. He’s been doing some research. The first victim of the Death Note was the guy who hijacked a school, holding about 13 characters hostage. When you compare him to the murderous killers who died after him, his case does seem to be a bit small. L. noticed that. Light, of course, sees this as a challenge. It seems that both parties are trying to challenge each other out of their hiding place.

Still, even with such a good concept, I can’t help to be anal a bit. We see a few shots of L. For as far as things look, he’s a young adult, probably 20 years old. If that’s the case, how the heck did he manage to accumulate such a huge amount of fame, and how did he solve such a large amount of cases to make him internationally recognized?