Misa, who is basically the only prominent female character is treated like crap, and was characterized poorly from start to finish. I kept waiting and waiting for her to rebel, for her to change, for her to grow as a character and it never happened. She was exactly the same in her first appearance as she was at the very end. I liked her though, if only because she provided comic relief. I also think she was treated much worse in the anime than in the manga.

I really loved the series, it was one of the most brilliant and captivating things I had read in a long time. But I’ll never engage in a discussion about it ever without mentioning its huge gender problem.

Wait till you read “Bakuman,” the new series by the same mangaka team.

Personally, I think that one of the most brilliant things in the series was the fact that Light’s abuse of ultimate power finally caught up with him. Realistically, when you give a person that much power, even if they start out with good intentions, the power takes over their brain and they do stuff that they never thought they would do. For example: Light originally only wanted to kill criminals; he eventually ended up murdering innocent people to get what he wanted. He went from wanting peace to wanting to be a god. His overconfidence and inflated ego were his downfall. He believed that he could get out of any problem with his sheer wit and charisma, when that was not in fact the case – at the end, he was in denial, thinking that no, it couldn’t be over, even though it was. Ryuk even realized that his entertainment was coming to a close. It would have been unrealistic to have Light retain all his dignity and sanity with circumstances like that, so there was no way the series could have ended any other way. Unless Light had made fewer mistakes, and Near was worse at guessing . . . then maybe the game would have gone on for a little longer. But do you really think the world would rest until Kira was caught, especially since he wasn’t just killing the bad guys?

Oh yeah, and don’t get me wrong – I almost cried when he died in the anime. I just think the series ended in a logical way.

For those who actually want to finish this series, I won’t point out teh specifics, but the plot holes on Vol 12 are large enough to fly a 747 through.

Near develops magical powers (I say that sarcastically) that let him figure out who Mikami wqas in Vol 11, tied with his ability to magically access hidden things destroys the story that up until Vol 11 was quite good.

The real tragedy here is that Tsugumi Ohba could have given an ending WORTHY of a detective story. Insterad, it failed to deliver.

Vol 1-10 I will give a 9 out of 10. Vol 11, I will give a 5 out 10. Vol 12, I give a 0 out of 10. I regrett buying teh whole series after it was concluded in such a lame way.

(sorry about posting twice – I didn’t mean to do that)

Also, I would like to apologize for a tiny error I made. After some online reading, I found out that Ohba-san’s actual gender is unknown. So s/he could still be female, like you said.

. . . Ohba-san is indeed male. I thought I should mention that.

Anyway, I don’t agree with what you said about Deathnote hardly being sexist at all depending on how you look at it. I also don’t totally understand your ‘Light as a girl’ theory; what ex-boyfriend are we talking about here? And your theory about Light looking feminine and therefore making the series sexist towards males feels like it’s stretching it a bit.

However, I completely agree with your ‘smart sexy boys’ theory. L is my husband forever. I also make a point to be like the Deathnote characters. (hence my name) The detectives (except Mello; he annoys me with his violent tendencies, lack of morals, and general impulsiveness) are admirable.

Your ideas about the women Light manipulates being average citizens, and about Misa being extraordinary but in love make sense to me. It would be nice if the authors had decided to have Light manipulate a few average men here and there, but I have to admit you have a point. Light, being your average straight (if not slightly feminine-looking) guy with lots of charm and charisma and an Abercrombie-model-ish body, naturally gravitates towards taking advantage of the opposite gender because a) his super-high self esteem lets him know how “irresistible” he is, b) he happens to know a lot of women from college and stuff and c) unfortunately, it’s easier to get them wrapped around his finger (this is where the sexism comes in a little)

. . . Ohba-san is indeed male. I thought I should mention that.

Anyway, I don’t agree with what you said about Deathnote hardly being sexist at all depending on how you look at it. I also don’t totally understand your ‘Light as a girl’ theory; what ex-boyfriend are we talking about here? And your theory about Light looking feminine and therefore making the series sexist towards males feels like it’s stretching it a bit.

However, I completely agree with your ‘smart sexy boys’ theory. L is my husband forever. ? I also make a point to be like the Deathnote characters. (hence my name) The detectives (except Mello; he annoys me with his violent tendencies, lack of morals, and general impulsiveness) are admirable.

Your ideas about the women Light manipulates being average citizens, and about Misa being extraordinary but in love make sense to me. It would be nice if the authors had decided to have Light manipulate a few average men here and there, but I have to admit you have a point. Light, being your average straight (if not slightly feminine-looking) guy with lots of charm and charisma and an Abercrombie-model-ish body, naturally gravitates towards taking advantage of the opposite gender because a) his super-high self esteem lets him know how “irresistible” he is, b) he happens to know a lot of women from college and stuff and c) unfortunately, it’s easier to get them wrapped around his finger (this is where the sexism comes in a little)

Although it’s true that Death Note is rambly and you’ll get very little if you expect physical fights with swords. But the good side is that, in the anime, you hear fantastic character themes. It makes listening to them much more enjoyable.

OH! By the way, L is 25 years old. Seven years ahead of Light. Although he does look only a few years older, doesn’t he? Girls everywhere would kill to know his secret XD Also, because I’m obsessed with him so much, I made it my personal goal to think the way he does and to come to a conclusion or deduction before him (kind of like B in Death Note: Another Note). Needless to say all I accomplished was a way to feel stupid. And I don’t feel stupid very often XD

But even so I didn’t take it in a sexist way. I look at the Death Note world in terms of average humans, extraordinary humans, and shinigami. So when Light controls a random girl and uses her as a pawn. I see it as an exraordinary human controlling an average one. Sure it’s unfortunate for the average human, but that’s just the way life works. Misa was a girl, but she was extraordinary. The only thing keeping Light from fearing for his life, seeing she’s technically more powerful than him, is that she fell in love with him.

Another thing I want to point out is that Light looks really really girly. He’s a prodigy in Japan, but they don’t have femenist movements in Japan. If we have to look at sexism we have to look at this from a more western point of view. So here, wherever you are west of Japan, Light is basically a very girly male. So technically, what we could conclude is that a man needs to be really feminin to accomplish as much or at least make as much of a difference as Light did. After all, the man practically started a new religion! So if you look at it from this point of view, Death Note is a little bit sexist, this time it’s conveying the messege that girls are indeed better than guys. Or at the very least guys who look like girls are better than guys who don’t. Just throwing a relevent thought out there.