Waiting for Death

Can't wait to see the animated version of "Death Note" which aired Tuesday in Japan. That and "D. Gray-Man" which I also want to watch are part of the crop of new shows this fall. I'm crossing my fingers that both are faithful to their manga versions.

A fellow geek recently recommended the manga when I whined that I wanted a new series I could sink my teeth into. You know, something I would use more than two brain cells to read.

So I bought the first volume of "Death Note" and was blown away by the art. And the story is definitely interesting. To summarize, Light Yagami regularly brings home As, studies hard to get into college and is a model high school student. But he is bored out of his gourd. He finds a notebook called the Death Note which was purposely dropped in the human world by Ryuk, a bored Shinigami or death god.

If you write someone's name in this notebook, they die. But you have to know what the person looks like and how they spell their name. You can also write down the cause of death and even details on how this person dies. If you don't specify the cause of the death, the person just keels over from a heart attack.

There are other rules associated with the Death Note which Light later finds out.

Light decides to rid the world of crime by killing off criminals and plans to eventually rule over this utopia. The Internet denizens christen whoever is killing the crooks as "Kira". But the international law enforcement community isn't just going to sit back and let this vigilante be. They call in "L" who cracks unsolved cases but hides his face from the police he assists. The public becomes aware of their clash when "L" uses the media and a convicted man to test a theory.

On the strength of the first volume, I ran back to the store and bought the rest of the six volumes currently out. Hope I don't regret this later.