Results tagged “deathnote”

When we heard about a "live-action" version of Death Note, the manga/anime series, we were skeptical. The elements of anime that makes it, well, anime are the fantasy behind the whole genre: scary, grotesque creatures, futuristic buildings and cars, supernatural events. Anime just doesn't seem to lend itself well to "live-action." It's difficult to imagine all of the imagery of anime coming together in a live-action version, at least in a believable way. To be truthful, we were scared mostly of the cheeseball potential this movie has -- in order to prepare for the movie, we didn't. We went in cold turkey: no looking at movie trailers, no imdb.com'ing the actors, no re-reading the synopsis, nothing.

We've long been a fan of Japanese comics, or manga, as they're commonly called. Local publisher Viz, who is responsible for much of the product that American audiences see, sent us a review copy of Death Note Volume 1--and we're blown away. The book, story by Tsugumi Ohba and art by Takeshi Obata, is by far the best manga we've read, and, in our opinion, is readily accessable to those who aren't your average comic book or fantasy reader. The only thing a fresh reader might find offputting at first is the fact that it's printed, and must be read, right to left (pages and panels, not words). Even so, this book gets our highest recommenation and we can not wait for the next one.