Death Note II: The Recap

It was... OK.

The dub was fine, I stopped noticing after a while.

Chairman Kaga did indeed play Light's dad, which was exciting.

They took some interesting departures from the manga. One pretty important character was entirely different (sex, occupation, raison d'etre, etc.)... which is why I was so incorrect in naming the people on the poster.

And there was a lot of humor in it! I can only think of one line in the manga that made me laugh ("Why is this girl always hugging things?" which I'm sure is very unhilarious out of context), but the movie had a number of good bits.

But what I didn't like, aside from the crazy people who had to shout comments all the time (this was a pretty low-key screening, who WERE those people?! Fans? Lunatics? Or are just so many people idiots and a-holes that they feel they're allowed to say hilarious things all the time?), was the way it ended.

And no spoilers, but Death Note (the manga) is pretty long. This sequel was still midway through the story arc, but then they conclusively ended it.

It's like if, during Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, they were like, "You know what? We're not gonna make anymore Harry Potter movies. But we shot 3/4 of this film. Let's just write a new ending, and have that be the finale of the series."

I was surprised, but not in a good way.

When we exited the theater, someone with a camera asked us what we thought of the movie. Don't be fooled, I just said "I really liked it" out of politeness.

Shinigami

I'm going to a special screening of this tomorrow:


I'm pretty psyched... though a bit skeptical. It's a sequel to the first Death Note movie, which I haven't seen, but I've read a lot of the manga and have really, really enjoyed it.

It's about a guy who finds a book that, if you write someone's name in it, that person will die. And the guy decides to change the world by killing criminals.

Why am I skeptical? Two words: English dub. I hate 'em with a passion, and would rather just read subtitles. I tried to watch an episode of the anime (I think they screen it on Cartoon Network), but had to turn it off in five minutes because the voice actors were so, so bad.

This'll be the first movie I've seen in a theater since The Dark Knight.