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Originally Posted by Rjina  Tada! It's been an eon since I've posted anything... Did you guys miss me?
Ryan, I'd have to say I'm pretty impressed. I leave for a while, I come back, and you're still actively turning up ideas (as expected).
I think I've made a thread about this, (though it's initiative was discussing Misa... the whole thing sort of branched out into a "Death Note is sexist" thing) but it must have drowned due to all of this new threads (happiness!). |
To address why this thread even exists you can check out my reply to the thread you mentioned in your post, but a simpler explanation is that I did not feel I should hog your Misa thread with what is, essentially, a completely different topic altogether. And in regards to your comments on the women of DeathNote (see how catchy that is:-), I humbly disagree in certain regards. As I mentioned here prior, many more men were far less functional in design and capacity than the women, who were fairly fleshed out and, in some regards, maybe even a little
too fleshed out. After all, it was Naomi Misura who seemed to have the complex deductive abilities to take Light out in the small conversation she had with him. Sadly, her life was cut way too short for us to see any extensive play of wits that could have further expanded the story in one of the most shockingly detailed, yet excessively short character build-ups in all writing history. (New writer's looking to become established are taught a cardinal rule of them with supporting characters; make them nteresting enough to be interesting, just not interesting enough to really get attached to. The writers of DeathNote gleefully smashed this rule repeatedly and made all of womankind suffer for it. But then again, Matt was the most intricate short-lived character in the whole series, next to Naomi, so you really can't argue sexist there, either.)
I think in some small way, you could even argue that each woman that was incompletely played or fleshed out had a male counterpart of the same caliber. Some men weren't even
that lucky, as Raye Penbur was just an everyday cookie-cutter field agent with no outstanding credentials. (Which I'm glad of, because I'm tired of seeing
super agents posted everywhere just because a work falls under the
fiction category. Real men doing real jobs, that's the way a fed should be portrayed today, but not really stupid like they do in the t.v. series
Criminal Minds, that ticks me off also.) Naomi/Matt; Kiyomi Takada/Makami Teru; Aiber/Wedy; Saiyu/Raye Penbur; Misa Amane/Matsuda. Each one receiving similar amounts of time as the other and each being used as a specific function in the overall plot device. Two lived, but tey are not correlated due to the basis of their functions being dissimilar, they were grouped with those who served a likened function, and for a similar timespan. Hal was not addressed at all, as I will be devoting a thread to her as there are several unique factors concerning her which have been grievously overlooked, in my mind.
Now, Mikami, I promised you that I would explain why I could argue that Naomi never really died, so here it is... (Speculation only, and it'd make a great one-shot); Although the 'How to Read' lists a date of death for Naomi, the anime made it clear no body was ever found. Why was this? (Yeah, yeah, Light orchestrated etc.); It was because Naomi handed over the license of identification with picture and name...
of her recently deceased twin sister!! (Yeah, it's a stretch, bu not by much considering the D.N. universe.) Once Naomi realizes Kira's designs and powers, she has to regroup and rethink, which she's in the process of doing when it all goes to..., yeah, you get it.)
Anyhow, to summarize my main point: Just as many men, if not more, were used by Light/L/Near/Mellow, as women were. It was mostly about making those four look cool, and everyone else took a backseat in the end. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it:-)