Death Note 17... very minor spoilers.

[timepiececlock]

It really bugs me that the only female in this cast is an insane Bratz doll come to life. Where are all the women? This whole show is so... male. I usually don't pay attention, but it's incredibly obvious here. Everything about this is masculine, from the simple things like an all-male cast or the lone female as a negative stereotype, to the subtler things, like the way L and Kira think, and the way the author explains things. I don't believe that certain things are strictly masculine or feminine, but the show certainly fits the comon stereotypes of those labels. This show may be daring in its anti-protagonist and anti-antagonist choices and in its casual treatment of murder, but it's not nearly as subvertive as it could be. It's boys playing a boy game against boys, where the only girl gets used as a tool for the male characters' plot advancement.

I know that the cast is cops+Kira and the majority of cops are men, but female police officers do exist and they could do with having a few on this task force. If nothing else, at least to provide a different perspective in analysis. It seems a very basic distinction to make, but it's an important one if you want to have a full view of any situation. They should find themselves a female mathematician or logician, and a female psychologist too. For that matter, this whole team should have more intellectual fields represented than just criminal justice aherents.

I have another thought, too: if L were really as smart as he supposedly is, he'd have an entirely separate investigation team acting and reporting to him, completely unconnected to the police task force. He's too vulnerable and the information/scope too limited with just these people. Plus, he looks like the type to have a control group, like in any social experiment. In some ways he's using Light as a control when it comes to comparing the task force's theories, but that's a double-edged sword considering how suspect he is.

Nobody can build a mega sky-scraper in a few months. Pipe dream, and not a very good one. I hope we're supposed to believe that he bought and refitted it, not built it from the ground up. Even when you're rushing materials and financed by the best, shit like that takes 2 or more years to finish from cement slab to indoor networked security system.

Comments

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

It seems DN is a lot like FMA when it comes to discussion... all the juicy talk requires you to have seen the same amount of episodes as the person you're talking too, no more or less.

re: men. I guess a lot of people had problems with it, based on the comments here. I wonder if the male fans of shows like this ever talk about it? I hate the masculine=norm thing that's so ever-present in the entertainment industries, from tv stars to movie leads to the protagonists in books. But especially in tv and movies. If it's got crime and cops and chess metaphors, then women don't belong. BLEGH. And the most annoying thing is that I don't even have the luxury of enjoying the opposite-- I notice if there's no men, either (maybe because it's so rare?). I am okay with it if the plot calls for a cast that would normally hold no/few women (like pro football teams competing) or no men (five women go hiking in the mountains and fight cave monsters), but in a situation like Death Note, where gender of a character isn't necessary for plot reasons and could be written pretty much the same either way, it's just annoying. It stands out more, because there's no reason for it.

I wish L had been a woman, and right from the start. Because the story would mostly be the same (L hardly seems human anyway, nobody would notice if he was actually a girl the whole time), except TOTALLY DIFFERENT in how we viewed it. I mean, if the show had done that, I would have been unable to CONTAIN my love for the sheer analysis possibilities. I'm running all 19 episodes through my head right now, imagining them if L had been female, and acted entirely the same. How would the task force people have treated him/her? How would Light react? Based on Light's reaction to Misa as Kira 2, I don't think he cares about whether his opponent is male or female, just that the person is never able to get the best of him.

Also we could also have all sorts of bizarre het backward-romance mindfuck scenarios. I don't actually see any attraction between the two characters whatsoever (Misa appears to be the only person with a sex drive on the whole show), but I am going to bet that the yaoi community is very much into L/Light as a pairing. If liked yaoi I probably would too, but in most cases I'm too picky. (Kabuto/Kakashi evil hoyay!) Then again, it'd be pretty fun too if L were female and I *still* couldn't bring myself to ship them.

On the other hand, what am I talking about? Most anime tv writers would never write L as a woman with the same characteristics as a male L. They'd make her soppy or feel compelled to imply hidden attraction, probably have her react instead of act. Which would kill the joke of having L be exactly the same either way.

::sigh::... speculating on how I'd have written an anime to give it more pizazz is fun, but unsatisfying afterward.

even the women don't notice...

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the male fans of shows like this ever talk about it?

You'd be surprised by how few fans talk about it at all, regardless of the gender. It's the controversial questions of morality that usually spark interesting DN discussion (and the not-so-discussion), not any of the weaknesses in the series itself. To be perfectly honest, I rarely visit any boards for DN because I'm convinced that half the fandom is CRAZY (some believe in Light's cause, orz... doesn't this sound familiar.) Still, the few times I do snoop around for anything DN-related, I always stumble upon interesting DN discussion about morality or capital punishment, never once on a discussion about how few women there are.

I have a few female friends who are huge fans of Death Note but don't think of the lack of women as a failing. I have a sneaking suspicion that they think Naomi's existence was enough to fill the Respectable Women quota when it didn't come close.

Gender-bender! Write it, write it, write it! Jumping over to Hikaru no Go, though, I had a similar thought: if one of the main characters had been female, its appeal would've been off the charts. After all, both Hikaru no GO and Death Note take place in very male-dominated settings - well, at least HnG does. Death's Note setting is much more male-dominated in literature than in reality. HnG's lack of women isn't nearly as bad as DN's, either; the ONE female Go player in HnG is very cool and plays for no one but herself, and the mothers are saintly, very underappreciated by their Go-minded sons/husbands. None of them are as wretched as the woman who shows up in the second half of Death Note. But nevertheless! I found the lack of women in Hikaru no Go very disappointing, if less malicious than in DN; even if there are infinitely more men playing professional Go, both the author AND the Go expert/consultant are female.

[flutingfrenzy.livejournal.com]

I once read a fanfic where L convinces Light that he is actually a woman. He's not, but Light only discovers this during the groping that ensues.

...Um, and then they had sex.

Anyway, that fic was kind of silly, but it was also very illuminating, in that it showed that there is really no particular reason for L to be male. ("You don't know what L stands for, after all, Light-kun. Perhaps it stands for Lauren. I use the pronoun 'watashi,' and how dare you suggest that my being smart makes it less likely that I am female? What? Why don't I have breasts? Well, I'm sorry we can't all be as well-endowed as your precious Misa-san.") I wish I could find it again.

Why, in fact, the fandom IS very much into L/Light as a pairing! I think it's still the fandom OTP, if it hasn't been replaced by another one whose characters you won't meet for a little while yet. It's my OTP, too, actually. My logic? They're friends (sort of), rivals, AND enemies who spend time chained together in canon, one of them (L) is my favorite character, and the symbolism of L topping Light is relevant to my interests. Not to mention that I think they could have been awesome friends if Light hadn't been a wackjob.

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

I read almost no DN fanfiction, but I think I've read a fairly popular one: "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by aishuu. In it, Light is still innocent and, well, sane when he and L meet for the first time, and somehow there's a Kira going around exacting justice. (It hasn't finished yet, so I don't know who is making this possible nor how. It's a great fic.) But yeah, they do make awesome friends! Hilarious roommates! Epic detective partners! It's also shounen-ai so there's steam as well.

Rashaka, stay away! I don't remember if it's spoiler-heavy, but it might be, so don't you dare!

a little rant

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that I think they could have been awesome friends if Light hadn't been a wackjob.

Just watched episode 20 where Light asks L if L really thinks Light is capable of murder on a large scale. L said yes he'd thought that from first meeting him... I was dreading that he might lie, but he didn't.

The episode was mostly filler, unfortunately, and how Light went from L's theory of Light being controlled and then forgetting to the exact perfect truth of Light being willfully in control, forgetting his powers, and planning to get them again... how would L know all that? How would Light, from his position, guess that L knows all that when Light himself doesn't even know it? They make wild leaps of idea that have no basis in logic, reason, or even continuity! The show is treating it like L already knows about the powers of the shinigami and the notebook, when the only things that L really knows are that it takes a face & name, that it's done from a distance, and that more than one person can do it. Where he went from that information to the ability wipe one's own memories is arbitrary speculation and plainly only there because the author wants it to be true... L and Light happen to guess the exact right thing out of a million because it suits the plot, not because it makes sense. Ergh.