Death Note, Vol. 1: Boredom by Tsugumi Ohba

 

When I was in college, I used to read a TON of manga, and this series was one of my favorites (until they introduced that weird manic pixie dreamgirl character and the whole series started to fall apart, that is). The Death Note series is one of the darker manga I have read, and it's kind of sad that all of the attempts to bring it to the big screen have failed, because it's got so many disturbing and sensational twists that I think it would do really well if they got the right team on the project.

Light Yagami is a brilliant high school student and star test-taker. Ryuk is a shinigami, or a "death god," or is bored AF living in the shinigami realm doing nothing but gambling or napping. All hell breaks loose when he casually drops his Death Note into the human realm and Light picks it up. Suddenly, Light has power over human life and human death, and he thinks he's going to create his own personal eugenics paradise by killing off all the bad guys, psychos, and murderers.

I feel like this manga tackles a lot of really tough philosophical questions about good and evil. The cat and dog relationship between Light and L is also really fascinating. Both people are brilliant and think they are working on the side of good, but they're also super manipulative and willing to do pretty terrible things in the greater name of justice. A lot of manga doesn't hold up, but this series really does. It was fun to revisit one of my old favorites and still feel myself getting shocked by the twists.

4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars