Zub Tales

I’m quite enjoying Death Note so far (just finished reading book 3, which is equivalent to episodes 1-11 of the anime series).

As a brief summary, it’s about a Japanese teen who finds the ‘Death Note’, a notebook which can kill anyone whose name is written on its pages. I figured it would be some cheesy revenge story with this kid killing off bullies who’d picked on him but it’s actually become more complex than that… he decides to kill major criminals every where to make the world a better place and scare humanity in to being good. The mysterious deaths all over the globe create a sensation as people start worshiping or fearing a person/force the media dubs ‘Kira’.

From there, a cat-and-mouse style hunt begins between Kira (the teen) and an investigator, known only as ‘L’, who is determined to find out who Kira is and bring him to justice. All this happens in the first half of book one, so I’m not really ruining anything… the plot looks like it has a lot of places to go from here.

It’s not perfect or anything, but it is smarter than I’d expected and quite well drawn. A few friends recommended it and I’m glad I gave it a shot. I haven’t seen much current anime/manga that I’ve enjoyed. It’s nice reading a manga where characters aren’t stupid in order to propel plot forward and aren’t breaking out in to super deformed shenanigans every five minutes.

Anyone else reading it or seen the anime?