For this
week, I decided on reading “Death Note,” written by Osamu Tezuka, and
illustrated by Takeshi Obata. A chilling murderous mystery based around Japanese
folk lore and dark magic, specifically about the Shinigami Ryuk, a dark spirit/god that drops magic
into the human world out of boredom. Following the ensuing chaos that results
from a young man and woman trying to use the murderous artifact known as the “Death
Note,” the story has been very highly respected for decades, being translated
into numerous other languages, has acquired world-wide publication, and even
been reimagined as several live action films, an anime television series, and
even a musical. While trying to rid the world of it’s villains, our main
character, “Light” ends up being corrupted by his newfound power and even
declares himself a “God of this New World,” prior to being betrayed, (once
again, out of boredom) by the same Shinigami, Ryuk. Showing very dark results
of good intentions creates an interesting situation where as our protagonist is
not really the hero of this story, despite the fact that most of the story is
told from his point of view. I found this story to be very interesting,
especially with its role reversal our protagonist as our main villain of sorts
and our antagonist, L, a detective, as our hero of sorts, that is rarely seen
anymore. The story is perhaps most relatable to the European story of Macbeth,
another story heavily involving murder, magic, and the power it promises.
The likes of Herge's "The Adventures of Tintin," to the original "Batman" comics by Bob Kane, despite being wildly different in seemingly every regard, basic narrative, characters, even locations and approaches to adventure literature; both are equally capable of inspiring morals along with having many similar approaches to conveying their individual narratives. For example, one massively popular trop of visual narrative is to start off with establishing shots that familiarize new comers to the literature or old fans to the location or characters, often with mental narrative of the protagonist informing the audience whats going on. Both comics also use sequential, action to action art where the start, climax, and ending of a particular action or gesture is explored by the artists, showing these characters "move" despite only showing static poses. Adventure comics as a whole create these larger than life heroes and characters that, regardless of their ...
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