So it has been a few months since I've writ anything here.  A big part of that is because every time I would try to login here, the site would be like OOPS SORRY TOKYOPOP IS MAKING ITS WEBSITE DIFFERENT FOR REAL THIS TIME.  Which would in turn send me away saying darn, I guess nobody wants amazing and insightful pearls of wisdom today, do they? 

Moving on...

I went to AX.  Anime Expo?  More like CRAPime Expo.  I'll write a more detailed rant about that eventually, but what I am here to rant about today is Deathnote 12.  Just in time for Harry Potter spoilers everywhere, I'm going to go ahead and review the book and the series as a whole.

Ahhh, Deathnote.  Deathnote is kind of like that guy you started hanging out with because a lot of people said he was cool.  Once you started hanging out with him, you immediately hit it off.  He was good-looking, pretty intelligent, fun.  Occasionally, you would run into people who were like "Oh HIM...yeah, I thought he was cool, then something happened and we don't hang out anymore..." but despite being vaguely curious, you didn't let that stop you.  But after a while, you started noticing that the two of you never really did the things you used to do; you mostly just hung out and talked.  Which was okay at first, because you thought he was pretty intelligent...but that's before you realized that he just kept saying the same things over and over and none of it really meant anything. 

And then you found out why so many people stopped being friends with him.

But you didn't care, because after all, he's a cool guy, right?  And you really enjoy his company, right? 

So you keep hanging out with him, not because you're actually having that much fun with him anymore, but just because that's what you do.  You and Deathnote.  That's just how it is.  Then eventually, the relationship just ends.  And you're like that's it?  Hmm.  Guess it is.  And you wonder, for the moment, why you wasted your time on that guy...though thinking about it, he did start off pretty cool, and there were some cool moments you shared.  But things would have definitely been better if the relationship had lived up to the initial potential you thought it had.

That is how I feel about Deathnote.  It started off pretty cool.  In the middle, it started dragging.  Eventually, I wondered when it was going to start getting cool again, and it never really did.  Every darn plot point was like Light going AHA I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

That?  Does not take skill to write.  You can do pretty much anything.  Like, they could have had a random chapter where Light went to Chuck E. Cheese and got drunk from drinking pepperoni grease, then ran around with his underwear on his head and accumulated 99999 tickets while playing whackamole with his butt.  Then Near could have revealed that he had taken photos with secret cameras and then he could have used them to prove that Light is Kira and Light would of course be all EXACTLY AS PLANNED while making dramatically screen-toned serial killer faces at the reader.

If you write books in chronological order, it is not so hard to do!  Anything you write beforehand could factor into the plot.  Sorry, Deathnote, not fooled!

Perhaps the most annoying thing about Deathnote is that I should have seen the exact ending coming. 

Okay, just a minute, before I get into that.  For all you people who are saying right now "but JESS, this isn't a review!  A review should tell me whether or not I am going to want to read this book!  What you are doing is just typing a bunch of vaguely insulting angry things on your internet!  This has nothing to do with what reviews are supposed to do!", get real!  If you have already read Deathnote up to the point where you are considering Deathnote 12, go ahead and read it!  You didn't read 11 books just to waffle on the last one, and if you did, you're either a communist or a little girl!  You might as well read the last one, too, if you already got this far; otherwise, you just should have stopped reading after volume 7 like all the other little fangirls.  (You know who you are!)

And for those of you saying "shouldn't this have spoiler tags?",  WRONGO! 

It is impossible to spoil the ending of Deathnote for anybody who has read the beginning.  They tell you exactly how it is going to end and then write words at you for 12 volumes, hoping the sheer number of words tricks your brain into forgetting you already know what is going to happen. 

So you read and read and read and read and you know that Light HAS to die.  He can't just be left alone or anything.  He HAS to.  So you are like "I wonder what cool way he will die!  This will be so awesome."  But NOPE!  You already knew how he was going to die.  They told you.  And it isn't even cool or anything.

The entire last half of the series, while very visually appealing, is just sort of filler.  You know what's going to happen.  Then it does.  Personally, I'm not too angry at Deathnote, because it was still better than a lot of manga I've tried to read and then stopped, so I did read the whole series.  But at some point, instead of thinking OH GOD DEATH NOTE IS SO BRILLIANT, I started thinking WHEN IS THIS GOING TO GET BRILLIANT AGAIN AND OH GOD WHY DO THEY TALK SO MUCH?

Not a good transition.

Anyway, you should still read Deathnote, just be prepared to shake your fist in the general direction of Japan after you finish and realize it could have been so much better.

I hear the movies are better plotted...I'll have to watch those and see for myself.

edited for typos.  Also, I can't say ANY bad words now?  That doesn't make me very happy.