Death Note. Highly dramatized cartoon version of Sherlock versus Moriarty, only with death gods and Japanese people. Meh. I don't get the hype from the fans. Some of it is so irrational even when considering it is a cartoon in the way they develop the investigations and such that it's kinda boring now. But I'm only on episode 7 or so and there's a couple dozen left so I'll give it a few more.
What I enjoyed about it was the narrative.
They broke the shit out of the "show, don't tell" rule of movies & TV, yet the show was still engaging.
For the record, breaking the "show, don't tell" rule is a pet peeve of mine. I couldn't watch more than an episode and a half of House of Cards because of that very thing. Death Note is almost nothing but exposition. By rights, I should hate it. Also, both the protagonist and antagonist believe themselves to be champions of justice when in fact they're amoral as [bad word]. The moral grey is interesting, as is the fact that the antagonist is less evil than the protagonist, and the show does manage to raise a few interesting questions about the nature of morality if you're inclined to read between the lines.
Lastly, the antagonist is incredibly quirky (OK, insane), which I found endearing. The protagonist would have been boring as hell if not for the fact that he was a mass murderer.
But that's just what I found interesting about it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with someone else not liking it.
Hmmm . . . I've a hard time with certain tropes when they worked fine in original form, but since we keep striving to re-"invent" them they can get stilted and dry.
I liked BBCs live action reimagining of the Sherlock archetype because there was more showing how he got there, less of him just explaining it to the gathered so-often thought of as complete fools detective archetypes.
My problem with Death Note so far, I think, is that there's far too much of both the protagonist and the antagonist over-analyzing tiny details that could not possibly lead to the conclusions they make from what little they are gleaning as a way to explain the behaviors from each one.
But it might be more that the showrunners seemingly developed it with an omniscient narrator viewpoint, which carries its own issues.
Of course, I'd say I'm guilty of the same over-analysis at times, so maybe that's why I'll give it a better go than just a few episodes.
I still don't understand the hype but then that's true of pretty much any genre of any individual sample of any art-form I've explored.
Bah, at least the art style is doable, and of course in keeping it in Japanese the voice actors seem to actually care about the finished product and the over-arcing storyline.
I'll revisit my earlier conclusions when I finish it to see if there are changes.
