One manga that has been made into a highly successful anime series and more recently a hit live-action film is Death Note. Originally serialized in Japan in Shonen Jump , the story involves notebooks from the gods of death. Once you possess one of these, all you have to do is write a person's name in it and that person will die. A young man named Light (Tatsuya Fujiwara) decides to use the notebook to rid the city of criminals, but the power goes to his head. Enter L (Kenichi Matsuyama), a sly young man described as the world's greatest detective. Light and L end up in a delicious cat and mouse game that spans two films and involves so many twists that your head will spin.
From manga to live action...Death Note scores big. (Viz Graphics/Viz Pictures)
Death Note and its sequel Death Note: The Last Name have given a big boost to the local Japanese film industry. They were also huge hits here in the U.S. when they played earlier this year at the New York Asian Film Festival. Grady Hendrix, the festival's programmer, says, "What's popular in Asia is now often popular in the United States because young people in both countries are closer than young and old within each country. Young people everywhere are into cell phones, video games, pop culture is pop culture everywhere now. Someone said Japan and America are in love with each other's trash."
Death Note does an exceptionally good job at capturing the look, tone and characters of the manga. Check out the image above comparing a manga panel to a film frame. The CGI work to bring the punky death gods to life is great and the two young stars play Light and L with great appeal.
Hendrix also points out that "the films were surprise hits because they don't have big effects or gory set pieces; story and plot twists drive these movies. They're Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes for a new generation and with a very savvy pop sensibility. These films are hip and cool."
Yet no U.S. distributor has picked up the films for theatrical release, but Viz Pictures looks to be releasing it on DVD. Director Shusuke Kaneko said that "the films tap into the frustration of what people are feeling in society. In the U.S., there's easy access to guns, but in Japan that's not the case, so the fact that the main character is writing names to kill people is a very Japanese way of getting revenge." And what may have contributed to the films' popularity in Japan adds the director is "filmgoing as a kind of clubbing. For the past few years, a lot of teenagers have been going to the American-style multiplexes that have opened in Japan."
Hollywood should take the lead from Japan and realize that mangas are a rich source of material. Death Note is well worth checking out in any of its various formats: manga, anime or live action feature films. The manga series, created by the writer Tsugumi Ohba and illustrator Takeshi Obata, also contains wonderful art work.
