Manga Review: Death Note: Special One-Shot

Death Note: Special One-Shot

VIZ

Mangaka: Tsugumi Ohba (Writer), Takeshi Obata (Artist)

Death Note was the first manga I fell in love with. The physical volumes began printing in the US during the mid-2000s, right as I was entering middle school. The 2006-2008 era was a different time; edginess ruled supreme, and I was a wide-eyed naive kid who wouldn’t hurt a fly while simultaneously believing Shadow the Hedgehog to be the pinnacle of cool. As I said, it was a different time. So, when 12-year-old Chris saw the black cover of Death Note, Vol. 1 and read the plot synopsis on the back, it instantly appealed to every single one of my sensibilities. A “battle of logic” between a genius high-schooler and the world’s greatest detective, with one black notebook (at least in the beginning) and a Shinigami at the center of it all. This was, at the time, the greatest story I’d ever read. The infamous “all according to keikaku” scene in the manga was, to my young mind, the greatest plan ever executed.

Every time a new volume of the manga came out, I read it as soon as I could. I couldn’t get enough. Once I’d collected all the volumes and finished the read, I reread it all immediately. Aside from Dragon Ball Z, Death Note was my favorite piece of media. I’m not ashamed to admit the word “shinigami” appeared in at least four different usernames I had in middle school. Well, okay, there’s a little shame. My point is, Death Note was a special series for me. And even after the lukewarm anime and the dumpster fire that was the American Netflix adaptation (the original Japanese live-action films starring Tatsuya Fujiwara I will defend), I still hold the manga dear to my heart despite the flaws in the narrative becoming more and more apparent as I grew older. So even now, twelve long years after Death Note finished its serialization in the States, when I saw that Death Note was getting a new one-shot story… I was damn excited.

The Death Note: Special One-Shot takes place over 10 years after the death of the original Kira, Light Yagami. Ryuk, once again bored, decides to find another human to use his spare Death Note. Seeking out the purported “smartest middle schooler in Japan” Minoru Tanaka, Ryuk tells the young boy to follow in Kira’s footsteps. Because Tanaka is apparently smart, Ryuk believes he will do a good job as a new Kira (not get caught) and Ryuk can hang around the human world for a while and eat apples. Tanaka has no desire to use the Death Note himself but instead devises a plan to sell the supernatural book to the highest bidder. Thus, A-Kira (dubbed so by Near (the new L) meaning “Auction Kira”) is born and the world is once again thrown into chaos.

I’m honestly surprised by how much I enjoyed this read. While the original Death Note story focused mainly on the cat-and-mouse-game of logic between Light and L, this one-shot focuses more on watching humanity reacted when faced with the chance to own the “power of a God”. In the original story, because they always had to increase the stakes and continuously create new twists and turns to keep readers interested a lot of the plot elements stopped making sense or decisions made by characters felt sloppy when chapters before they may have never made the same decision. Due to the self-contained nature of the one-shot, there isn’t enough time to try and develop such an elaborate plot and instead just does enough to create an interesting premise that doesn’t take too much time to unfold. However, there is still plenty of drama and intrigue as the bids for the Death Note continue growing and growing and eventually entire nations begin bidding for the power.

Tsugumi Ohba also addresses how the original Death Note story probably could not take place today. While Light was able to get away with a lot of things early on, in the modern age of 2019 Tanaka notes that due to surveillance and government tracking on the web there’s no way he’d be able to successfully use the Death Note without being caught.

The story is light on central characters, mainly focusing on Tanaka and Ryuk but intermittently cutting to L giving his opinion on the situation. Tanaka is an interesting protagonist to follow; he is smart enough to execute his plan and make everything happen without being caught. He is distinctly different from Light Yagami in his motives and his actions could even be seen as altruistic in the end. While he and Light are both very smart, Tanaka chooses to affect the world in a distinctly different way than Light. Aside from Tanaka, it was a treat to see Ryuk again, and seeing Near as the new L was both hilarious (at least in regards to his appearance) and nostalgic. We also got some brief cameos from Shuichi Aizawa and everyone’s favorite fool Touta Matsuda. I will say that besides Tanaka and Ryuk most of the other characters don’t really do much so they ultimately come off as a bit boring, but due to the nature of the narrative there really isn’t a lot they could have done so I can’t hold that against them too much. Oh, and we got to see manga Trump so… yeah.

Lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the art. I’m always touting Yusuke Murata as my favorite manga artist of all time, and while that remains true the only other artist to ever come close to that renown in my mind is Takeshi Obata. I mean, just look at this article’s featured image. Obata does incredibly detailed work, and he’s always able to bring to life the characters he draws. His humans are lifelike and expressive, and his monsters (shinigami in this case) always stand out with their creative designs. Obata doesn’t have as many opportunities to draw dynamic spreads due to the content he’s usually illustrating, but he always creates such a strong atmosphere on the page with the use of shading, a facial expression, and maybe the recoloring of an eye or two. I didn’t have a Death Note wallpaper on my computer until late high school for nothing, after all. In this one-shot, Obata doesn’t disappoint at all and I wouldn’t be able to say a bad thing about his artwork even if you made me look again.

All in all, this was a really enjoyable addition to the Death Note canon. It doesn’t detract from the original story at all and creates its own narrative that, in some ways, surpasses the original. As happy as I am with this being the last we hear of Ryuk, I’d love to see more short stories like this set in the Death Note universe in the future. At the very least, I hope we can get an animated OVA of this one-shot at some point.

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