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ローゼンメイデン 
This episode is kind of disappointing after last week's. Not only the majority of the episode are comprised of recaps, the remaining animation are quite bad. In addition to this, there are major alterations to most of the scenes. I think from here on, we can expect an abridged version of the remaining manga stories. I think the anime writers will do anything in their power to ensure that they can fit the remaining 5 volumes into 11 episodes. I don't know how they'll do it but I hope they'll do a good justice to the story. Animation-wise, this episode is also a downgrade from last week's episode. The character's faces are quite inconsistent and look mangled at times. As a side note, I only screencap the new portion of the episode since I don't want to repeat screenshots from the previous episodes.
In the aftermath of L's death, the rest of the Japanese police are surprised that Kira somehow spared them. While L's true identity was not known, they find out that Watari is actually Quillsh Wammy, a famous inventor who has established many orphanages on the properties that he acquired through his patents. In other matters, the group realises that they won't be able to continue the investigation if the police finds out that L and Watari are dead. Light then informs them that he managed to re-construct the fake voice that L was using so for the time being he can make it looks as if L is alive. Light, however, pretends that he doesn't know who's going to take L's place. Not surprisingly, everyone immediately nominates him to succeed L's place. At first Light pretends that he's not interested. Eventually, however, Light tells them that he'll do it but he'll refuses to do the dangerous stuff that L did like when he challenged Kira to acquire a hint.
Light also thinks that he would be able to do this better if he can do it from home. However, his mother and sister are living there so he thinks it would be beter if he can rent one room. Souichirou supports the decision, claiming that there's nothing strange about sending his son to live on his own. Light also offers to take on the Watari role since Watari's job was just connecting L with other people. As for the Death Note, Light suggests that they hide it where humans can't reach it. Eventually everyone reaches a consensus that Souichirou will get the task of hiding the note. Later on, Light asks Misa to live together with him. Misa is happy about this because she 'wins' against other girls who like Light. She, however, promises not to kill these girls since she thinks Light was just using them. That night, Ryuk asks Light if his fight with L is over and Light confirms this. However, he asks Ryuk to watch him create a new world.
With this, Light begins to kill every other person who could possibly have known him including Wedy and Aiber, whose real name are Merrie Kenwood and Tierry Morrell. He then goes on to kill the remaining Yotsuba group members. A narration then informs that on April 2012, Yagami Light joins the National police agency. In Summer, the punishment by Kira accelerated by rate and speed. The world are split between those who fear Kira and those who cheer for him. Eventually even the later group starts to make their voice known. Unknown to Kira, however, his plan hits another bump when a self-activated alarm sends an automated message to the head of the Wammy House, whose founder was Watari. The head of the orphanage summons two boys into his office. One is dressed in leather while the other wears a white shirt while playing jigsaw puzzle. The man, whose name turns out to be Roger, then informs them that L has died.
Impression:
Well, that's slightly disappointing. The majority of the episode was basically a recap of the last 25 episodes. As for the other part of the episode, I think concealing the death of L and Watari is one of the dumbest and most desperate plot point I've ever seen on this series. I mean, what kind of police would agree to cover up the death of two people without the permission of their supervisor? It's especially kind of reaching since Souichirou was known as a character who'd never resort to this kind method. For him to actually go along with this plan feels really out of character. In general, I'm just annoyed at how easy Light gets his way after L's death. I was especially pissed off that he killed off Wedy and Aiber, two characters that I happen to like. I think this shows that Light is the kind of character who'll do anything to reach his goal. I think if his family were in his way as well, he would not hesitate to kill them as well.
The ironic about this, however, is that his plan is foiled by a simple alarm clock. I think it was very clever of L to set the alarm in case he dies. It seems if he doesn't update the alarm then the head of the Wammy House will get a message alerting his death. This, of course, brings me to the two new characters introduced in this episode: Near and Mello. Near was the one wearing the white shirt while Mello was the one wearing the leather-like outfit. I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed when I saw them. Near, however, quickly endeared himself to me with his intelligence, which is very comparable to Light. Unfortunately I can't say the same about Mello. What I'm more interested, however, is the orphanage itself. I want to know how and why Watari set up orphanage and why the majority of the children housed there have high intelligence. Did Watari purposely find the ones with high intelligence or did he have to cultivate these children?
Preview
On next week's episode: Near and Mello.
Light got his way for 5 years after L is dead. He could now play the role of L and his real role as Kira without being found out. Though I also agree that he is merciless and cruel killing everyone known to the recent Yotsuba case. -_- But then it made his job easier as he could stay out of sight for a long period committing his act of "justice".
Funny how L managed to get a final blow on him in the end by alerting the orphanage that he came from of his death. Now Near and Mello are going to annoy the hell out of Light. ^^ Near's more to L's way of doing things, though just only similar. Mello is the hot-tempered one who wants things done his way (and through criminal acts).
Oh Wo0o0oW !!!!
Wedy's Death :P
Ep.26 Pretty GooD ,,
But Rem I Miss U >
It took me awhile to warm to Mello and Near, but I grew to love them, maybe even more than I loved L. Garten, did you say before that you hadn't read much of the manga past 58? If so, I hope that they do an adequate job of representing the story so that you may end up appreciating both Mello and Near. Well, I hope they do regardless; I'll be very sad if they get shortchanged. I was actually hoping that they might give us some more background information in the anime ... like it would be nice if they actually establish later that Matt is also a Wammy House kid. I don't think that's ever explictly mentioned in the manga. He's just kind of there.
Anyway, it's funny. I only know some people who love both Mello and Near, like me. I know a few people who only like Near, and a few who only like Mello, and some who like neither. To me, you really need both. They are kind of incomplete without each other, to hate each other and help each other. They would have made a great team ... and I guess in a certain way, despite how things play out, they do.
So we see Mello, eh? And he's a guy, right? Wow...I've always wanted to see who Madonna had been cosplaying.
*It's especially kind of reaching since Souichirou was known as a character who'd never resort to this kind method.*
Clever as always Garten... that's what bothers me... even Soichiro is downplayed in the second arc I can't understand WHY for heaven's sake no one suspects Light...
L and Watari were the ones who most people didn't knew about and they are the only ones who die... if that happened in real life with me (and I am not that clever as Aizawa or Soichiro) I'd start having second thoughts about Kira being among the team... c'mon! plot holes... ugly plot holes.
Question Garten, there's one image on the internet that shows L sent a message AND all his investigation data to the orphanege... but I didn't see it in your review is that image real?
Dlazuli, in this episode, it seemed like Light was looking at the message, and then he deleted it. In other words, the investigation data apparently didn't make it to the orphanage. BUT I didn't really get that scene, so I may be wrong. Plus, it has been a while since I read the manga, and I don't remember wether Near was using L's investigation data or not.
Diazuli, I think that the team is just used to following someone as underlings. If you think about it, they were the only ones to place their trust blindly in someone else. Now with L gone, they need someone else to follow again. The more independent minds probably stayed out.
As for the pacing of the series, I'm not too worried about stuff being cut out, since it goes along at a slower pace. The final volume could probably be done in a single episode.
They're not using data from L's investigation (like Light and Misa being suspected), but they somehow get the info that a notebook is in fact the killing tool.
As far as I can remember, this hasn't been explained in the manga so I wonder how did they figure it out?
Well since I have finished the manga I can said I like Mello and Near, I prefer Mello because he is more interest than Near, but since Near is most like a pasive person who thinks twice before act... well If I continue it will be a major spoiled, but I like them...
I really think that there is a Light in every person in tis world, if anyone obteined that kind of power what will you do, I was talking to a friend last time and really think I will erase from this world lost of people, but Light in the beginnig have a noble porpuse but he just lost it his perspective for the amount of power he obteint...
Oh good. I stopped reading the manga from this point until just before the end [I had to read what happened in the end]. I'm glad I can pick it up again from these handy summaries.
I've noticed that particularly in the Death Note anime, the scenes are always sort of "diffused" with this hazy glow, usually from the top of the screen or from either of the top corners. It's really effective at showing what the light settings are in the scene [i.e. sunset, computer screen, etc.]. But I only really noticed this effect around the time of Ouran and Death Note anime. It's quite nice. ♥
Question Garten, there's one image on the internet that shows L sent a message AND all his investigation data to the orphanege... but I didn't see it in your review is that image real?
Yeah, I wasn't sure at first but that image seems like a real message from L. Light, however, erased it immediately. I suspect the anime writers added that as some kind of 'decoy' that L used so that Light doesn't suspect that his primary means of communication to the outside world is actually the timer.
Wikipedia has a list of the upcoming titles of the Death Note episodes:
#28 - Successor
#29 - Breaking In
#30 - World
For those who have read the manga, they will surely know which part of the manga are referenced by the titles, and judging by these titles, the anime will progress at a very fast speed towards the second arc ending... To avoid spoilers, I'll just say that episode #30 will most likely cover up to manga chapter #75 already, while on episode #25 we were still on chapter #58. Finishing 108 chapters in 37 episodes means about 3 chapters per episode, so we can say that the current pace is actually slower than necessary, unless they make cuts everywhere like in the Yotsuba/Higuchi arc.
good job! Garten!
movie「L」!? humm...
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20070411-00000009-maia-ent
WOOHOO!! 26 episodes doen, 26 to go!!
@ dlazuli: I think we have been reminded of Light's intelligence so much that even if someone started to suspect that Kira was in the investigating team, Light would easily be able to talk himself out of it. Besides, the fake 13-day rule was still a strong piece of evidence of Light's and Misa's innocence.
Thanks Garten I was a bit unsure about it being real or not... since so many fake pics were around 4chan
@Taki & Icli:
in the manga Near is supposed to investigate by himself asking police officers who were when Higuchi was arrested, asking here and there alone(?) I can't remember... I thought that cutting off that in the anime meant no respect for Near, that's why I asked.
@Glade:
I know they need one and Light is as capable as L (he showed that in the Yotsuba arc) but it is not strange that the two only people who still suspected him die and the people who didn't were still alive?
@ibatum
More than intelligence I think it's because of looks... Light doesn't look like he could be a mass murderer. And that's how he usually wins over everyone except L & co.
Aren't we a sad society?
I want to know how and why Watari set up orphanage and why the majority of the children housed there have high intelligence. Did Watari purposely find the ones with high intelligence or did he have to cultivate these children?
I can't remember where is explained in (the manga, HtR13, and perhaps a bit of the DN novel, too), but Quillish Wammy (a.k.a. Watari) owned orphanages world-wide, and took all the super smart ones back to Wammy's House orphanage, where they were raised to be little genius detectives (the next L's).
Wammy's seems to be a rather fishy place, in any case, since the first L successors (codename A and codename B) committed suicide (A) and the other (B) became a serial murderer, etc. Around the time of M and N (Mello and Near), Wammy's had changed their methods quite a bit, so as to prevent such disasters as A and B from happening again.
So, yeah. It's an interesting place, all right. Especially to have produced such odd people as Mello, Near and even L himself. ^^;
Gah . . . meant to italicize your question (in the post above), Garten, but seems like my HTML code failed me. :(
Garten...If you don't start blogging SOME new season anime...You're going to lose a lot of readers to other blogs..
I thought you said you had no attackments to any characters, then go ahead and say you're pissed at Light for killing Addie and Weddy D:... *shot*
Dissapointing, yes. But this means things will go at a much faster rate and then concluding with the great ending that--
Ahem... I won't be watching any longer since I despise Near anyway...
Ahh...this is where the extremely illogical part of the series starts. Do not expect anything from now on to live up to the first 25 episodes, Garten. I also saw episode 26, and was left with a sense of...emptiness. You're right, the whole process by which Light manipulates everyone is extremely lacking in credibility.
Btw, I think the whole "L's successors" thing is a fundamentally problematic idea. At first, with Ryuzaki, it was easy for the reader/viewer to accept the idea of two extremely intelligent people as rivals (L Vs Light Yagami). But to insert more and more "genius detective" characters in the equation inevitably results to the depreciation of the entire plot. How many of these "ultimate genius people" are there, anyway? RE-making genius detectives is too reminiscent of Yu-Gi-Oh for my tastes: take down one ultra-super-extremely hard foe (L), and then successors pop out, miraculously even MORE super-ultra-extremely powerful than the original. Makes you wonder about the quality of these geniuses...
The situations in which Light calls upon his "super IQ" are just not believable. Would the police really be so understanding and easily manipulated? Better yet, since it only takes a few minutes for names to be written on the Death NOte, why doesn't Light immediately dispose of all his L-group partners immediately, before knowledge of the Death Note is spread to the world. This would make him the prime suspect, of course, but by then he would have all the L-investigation data in his hands and he'd be able to destroy any obstacles...hmm...
I believe this is happening because all Death Note characters' personalitites have become so affixed to the progress of the plot by now, that when the plot is simply not based on consecutive events, the characters are found floating in a sea of...inconsistency...and occasional OOC.
Btw, if you see the Death Note cinema movies, you'll notice that (despite the many flaws of the movies compared to the anime, like the bad acting and lack of sinister atmospheree) they've managed to create a believable and rather satisfying alternative ending to the story, which reaches the same conclusion and overall effect (L dies etc, etc) as the manga without once mentioning the characters of Near, Mello the orphanage or any others. Just goes to show that the plot and characters after L's death are genuinely viewed as "superfluous", by the people who created the Death Note movies. In fact, ironically, in the Death Note movie, L at one point says a monologue which was originally recited by Near in the manga. Interestingly enough, this does not appear at all OOC for L in the movie, proving once again Near's status as L's kind-of-replacement character.
As Garten astutely remarked, the animators will now try to cram 5 and a half manga volumes into 11 meager episodes , whilst they spent huge amounts of screen time for the first 7 volumes (L arc): personally, I view this as general depreciation of subsequent characters and plot. I'm genuinely interested on how they plan to do this, without mucking everything up, when it already is -_-;
Wow,... this episode was pretty boring.
I wasn't paying attention like I normally do (reeecap!) so could you please help me out with one scene? :
There's L sitting on a chair moving his lips.
Who's having that vision (Light I guess?) and what is L saying...?? I have to know T-T !!! Urghhh~ (There's a screenshot of that scene right on top of the page)
Oh yeah, I have another question:
This timer L is using... I read that it sends the massage if L stops updating it or something. But why exactly does it send the 'L is dead' massage YEARS after he died?
Did I get this wrong? Or was something behind that? Please tell me...!!!!
Well,... I have no motivation to watch on since L is dead. *sigh*
It's not only because L was my favourite character - even if he wasn't this sudden change of the whole plot feels kinda unnatural.
I wonder if this was even the intention of the author or if he just had the story heading this way and somehow couldn't change it from a certain point (and than had to deal with it and came up with the second arc).
(sorry for my bad english - I'm german)
Near and Mellow time huh? Cool even tho after L's death the show is not as good at least we get 2 new characters that are sorta interesting I stopped reading the manga after volume 10 cause I want to enjoy the last bit of the anime without knowing how things are going to turn out lol
***attachment
I really have no clue how I misspelled that for attack...
D:
My likeness in characters:
L = Kira > Light > Mello >
Are they really going to do this in only 37 episodes, because they cannot do the next story arc in 11 episodes. There's so much more dialouge. Maybe 37 eps. was just the original schedule because they didn't know how many viewers they'd get. Since the show has been succesful, maybe they've extended the run? Plus, if they wanted to do it in just 37 eps., they could have easily put episodes 25 and 26 in one episode, and multiple other episodes could have been condensed.
i really mis L.... he was so brilliant and neither mello or near will ever replace him...
Don't you think at the beginning Light kinda was spaced out without L ?? I mean have you noticed the blank in this eyes like he lost his spirit or something .. I truely truely believe that if it wasn't for death note these 2 could have been GREAT FRIENDS !!
.....
To everybody posting who's retarded.... the part where L's alarm goes off and mello/near hear about L's death is a flashback. It happens before the time when Light stands on the roof declaring his victory... probably a couple days after L's death.
Yeah, investigation members pissed me off. But more the fact that they didn't care about L's death. I think Light probably knew him best (other than W) and ironically... imagines and thinks about L alot as the story goes on. I've always hated light but after this episode, that stopped. He is a very sympathetic character and his complexity makes him such a great vilian.
I was pissed about W and A too... in the manga A dies after many months of cancer.... very cruel.
Yep, agreed about the timer. VERY smart on L's part... a genius way to automatically send a message if he dies... Likely the time is a few days that you have to reset is within a few days so M and N almost immediatly got the info. Couldn't believe so many ppl didn't get that though... it's really obvious... I skipped that part in the manga and still got it right away..... use your head people...oO
Okay and the summary.... come on.... you had to be expecting that. There was a 6 month gap between arc 1 and 2... the summary rep that. And I think it was very well done with the part at the end = genius.
plus... near sucks. period. there is absolutely nothing about him that I like. He's a midget. And except for overlarge eyes... I have no idea why people think he's like L. Near should most definitely curl up in a hole somewhere and die. Mello all the way. (even though both of them combined aren't even half as good as L...)
to shinigami-love-apples,,, you're the one who's retarded, just because you got it and others didn't, you feel like your really smart now, eh? and also,, if that's the case, then what did M and N did for the past 5 years while Light is killing people?? did they just carry on with their life or what?? BTW i hadn't read the manga so i don't have a clue., retard.
Guess what Mr. Whaa. During these years, they were building their way towards getting Kira. Mello decided to go underground, and in just five years he's a mafia bigshot. Near followed L's path, and managed to assemple the SPK.
The story will shift from this point onwards. The L VS KIRA theme vanquished. It's a (NEAR VS MELLO) VS KIRA theme now. You have to set for their own battle, while they both have the same goal.
WHY DID L HAVE TO DIE WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Soo...the first episode after L dies( ='( )...it was quite boring, yes, but still you kinda have to watch it to know what's happening in the next episode. Near and Mello are interesting enough, but they just can't replace L =( I like Near much more than Mello...Mello kinda dresses like a girl =P and I prefer Near's way of handling things.
Soo...first episode after L dies( ='( ).... it is a little bit boring, yes, but i guess you kinda have to watch it to understand what's happening in later episodes... So Near and Mello finally show up.... Near and Mello are interesting enough, but they just can't replace L... And I've just noticed that in one of the screencaps above, where Near's showing us(or rather, to the SPK members, I believe) a picture of Mello, he's holding it by the tips of his finger like L did....just wanted to point that out.... Anyway, I like Near better than Mello, but I still like Mello. It's just that I prefer Near's way of thinking and handling things more than Mello's.
And no way is Near smarter than L.... I admit that Near is very smart, but L is smarter than both of them... that is when they don't combine forces. If they join together as one team, then yes, maybe they are smarter than L....but that's only a very slim chance that they are......
*mutter to myself while rocking in the corner* No one can be smarter than my L.... *now starts twitching*.......
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