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

[flamingly-fey.livejournal.com]

Oh my god. Thank you. Thank you. Honestly, the lack of female characters beyond Notebook Cannon Fodder FBI Woman from the earliest chapters and "an insane Bratz doll come to life" bothered me too... but you're the first person I've ever seen speak up about it.

To my shame, I haven't, mostly because the anime club I'm in is definitely more of a boys' club than it ought to be; while I dearly love some of the guys there, I don't think their grasp on the realities of feminism is such that I can bring stuff like this up without being laughed out of the room. Also, with a few notable exceptions, the girls there aren't the type to realize things like what you've pointed out here (can you say shallow fangirls? who generally think feminism is equivalent to misandry?)... but are the type to flip out at me for bringing things like that up. (It's "just an anime", after all, and if I think it's being sexist I "don't understand the different cultural standards".)

Wow, teal deer is teeeeeal....

I thought in the comic the skyscraper was just a bought and refitted hotel, but I could be wrong. It's been almost a year since I read any of it.

[jaina.livejournal.com]

I hate that Misa annoys me so much, because in a male-dominated show like this, I WANT to like any ladies I can, yanno?

The thing about Death Note is that as much as I do like L, neither he nor Light are anywhere near as smart as the series keeps TELLING us they are. Which is sort of maddening and is the source of my hate in the love/hate relationship I have with Death Note.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

The mystery author of Death Note (Ohba Takeshi is a pen name) is soooooo misogynistic. The anime directors, for whatever reason, decided to faithfully reproduce that. It NEVER gets better -- it only gets WORSE. All of the women in this series are being used by men. None of them are independent actors. Naomi is actually the *most* competent, and see what she got for it! There's a particular "comedic" catfight later in the series that was just nauseating. (I don't know how the anime treats this, as I didn't watch that far -- but in the comic, it was awful.)

Really enjoying your commentary so far.

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

Echoing sub_divided here: it gets a lot worse. Misa at least had a redeeming personality trait: for all her lack of brains, her motivations are almost completely selfless, more about securing Light's happiness than her own. (Whether or not this is actually a good thing, though, depends on the perspective, but I can tell that she has my sympathies.) The next significant female character you'll encounter is, in my opinion, the most wretched of all. She's not as fascinating and complicated as Misa, just more pitiful.

When I think about it, despite being so few and far in between, the women in Death Note are essentially the same: lacking their own ambitions, tied down by their own affections, in a manga where the male characters are conveniently without such a weakness. There is only one female character who stands on her own (Wendy, chick with the motorcycle) and her role is so minor that I'm grasping for straws, mentioning her at all. There was also Misora Naomi with her own career, her own goals, and her own brain, but to an extent, her objectives are an extension of her husband's, and her personal motivations are rooted in his fate. Not to mention that she was also incredibly short-lived.

But I did love her. It is my most sincere wish that she had received more screentime. In fact, there's a novel spinoff (not by the mangaka) about the case Naomi worked on with L, as narrated by a character you'll encounter shortly. Naomi... is awesome. You can find its first few chapters translated here but I HIGHLY recommend you put off reading it until you finish the anime.

I have to say, I'm so glad that you started watching Death Note! It's the kind of series that makes for awesome discussion, but only after you've finished the entire thing - it's difficult to discuss without utterly spoiling everything. So far, I too am enjoying reading your commentary and dying to either confirm or correct some of your theories.

re: the question of what L might do with a Death Note
Let me just say that he's of the "end justifies the means" school of thought...

[flutingfrenzy.livejournal.com]

Re: men, this is true facts, and my least favorite thing about Death Note. I've been indoctrinating an RL friend with it, and we spent the Naomi Misora episodes having a good time discussing just how awesome in the sack that idiot Raye must have been to keep her. We ♥ Naomi. There actually is a woman in the group of police officers in the movies, and more of a female presence in general, but I can't really comment on that at length because the movies are so cheesy that I haven't managed to watch the first one all the way to the end.

I have other thoughts on this post, but they're spoilery again, so.