DEATH NOTE / First Impressions

Summary:
Presented with the Shinigami Eyes deal, Light tells Ryuk that it is out of the question. He explains that he’s trying to create an ideal world with no criminals, and as the god of such a world, he has to reign for a long time. Light claims that he would consider a deal for wings, but he’s actually joking. He amusingly says that if he made those kinds of deals, he’d be made into a real Shinigami before he’d know it. In response, Ryuk tells Light not to worry because he feels that Light is already a splendid Shinigami. Light, however, doesn’t want to be put together with Shinigami because he is using the Death Note as a human for the sake of humans. Flipping through it, he suddenly comes to a realization that he thinks will allow him to learn the name of the person who’s following him. But first, he wants to test out the extent to which he can dictate the details of a death.
The next day, Light’s father gets a call at work that reports six new deaths. However, three of them were strange: one drew a pentagram in blood before he died, one wrote a note, and the final one escaped, but went to a restroom and died. After learning of all this from Watari, L thinks that tells the police not to announce anything on these aside from the usual heart attack. However, Kira already knows the results because he’s able to access his father’s computer and thus the police records. All of them had died just like he wrote down for in the Death Note. However, there were the other three criminals too, and Light had given them all unreasonable death conditions, such as dying in front of the Eiffel Tower when the person was in a Japanese prison. From them, Light learned that the Death Note cannot do the impossible, but can do whatever is humanly possible for the criminal. As for the pentagram and the dying message, those are both things to throw L and the police off his tracks. Indeed, L is at that moment noticing a hidden line formed by the first character of each line of the dying message.
As for Light’s real plan, it involves a man who failed to rob a bank and ended up shooting people before escaping. It also involves a phone call to a girl that Light knows. Ryuk finds out later that Light is going on a date with that girl, named Yuri, to an amusement park. Watching from the shadows at the bus station, the man following Light thinks that Light is normal and not suspicious. In any case, he’s not going to be doing this anymore after today, and so he boards the bus, sitting right behind Light and Yuri. At a stop further down the road, they pick up a seedy looking man who is the failed bank robber that Light saw on the news. As expected by Light, the criminal pulls out a gun and holds the bus hostage, ordering the driver to call the amusement park and demanding their sales money. While everyone else is being afraid, Light writes a note to Yuri saying that he’ll take on the hijacker. When the man following Light sees the note, he tells Light not to do it and decides to take action himself. Light first questions the guy for proof that he’s not an accomplice since there have been cases where a second criminal acts as a lookout from the back for the first. To prove who he is, the man hands over his FBI credentials to Light, which show that the man’s name is Ray Penbar. Since Penbar has a gun, Light decides to leave it up to him.
Just as Penbar is realizing that the person holding them hostage is the one who was on the news, Light drops a piece of paper. Penbar panics because he thinks that it’s the note that Light wrote to Yuri earlier, but when the criminal notices and picks it up, he finds out that it has only got Light’s plans for the date written on it. Suddenly, however, the hijacker is able to see Ryuk. At first, Ryuk is confused, but he soon realizes that Light had dropped a piece of the Death Note, and by touching it, the hijacker is now able to see him. The scared robber empties his gun into Ryuk, but all the bullets fly right through and hit the back window of the bus. Ryuk remembers telling Light that a person touching the Death Note allows him or her to see Ryuk, that Ryuk would always be behind him, and that the Shinigami won’t die from getting shot by a gun. All of these things have come into play here and have allowed Light to use a hijacker to figure out the name of the person who was following him.
Out of bullets and with Penbar after him, the hijacker stumbles off the bus and right into the path of an oncoming car. Checking his watch, Light notes that it’s 11:45AM, exactly the time when the hijacker was supposed to die. Everything that had happened had gone according to what Light had written in the Death Note earlier. And next is Ray Penbar’s turn…

Preview:

Well this is probably my favorite episode so far because of how cunningly Light pulled off the strategy combined with how the criminal’s death scene was portrayed. There was that eerie silence from when the car struck until when Light started talking again. We know from the start that this is all a plan by Light, but the pieces didn’t start falling together until around when the hijacker was able to see Ryuk. All of this as an elaborate plan for Light to figure out Penbar’s name.
A couple of other things of note. First, I liked that short, but really good guitar song when Light and Yuri first got on the bus. It doesn’t quite fit the mood of the overall series, but it was good for that scene. Second, Light’s date Yuri was voiced by Koshimizu Ami, who also voices Kallen from CODE GEASS. I only point that out because CODE GEASS has Lelouch, the only comparable anti-hero to Light.
Anyway, next week we’ll get to see Light deal with the FBI agent.

29 Comments

  16. Guys I was thinking here and came to an EXTREME CONCLUSION!!! 😀

    If every seiyuu watches every single anime they work with, and some times even rewatching over and over again the same scenes…..DOESN´T THIS MAKE THEN THE MOST POWERFULL OTAKUS ON THE ANIME UNIVERSE????? 😀 😀 😀

    tensai_otaku
    Reply

  20. Where can we watch this?Cause no-one has uploaded it on youtube yet 🙁 [n i dnt no where to dwnload it]..
    btw i just watched the 1st half of desu noto [death note] the movie, n i didnt get to see ‘L’ *cries* did you hear, they’re making number 2 and possibly number 3 yaaaaay *sqeals*

    Mii-Ne
    Reply

  21. allmighty internet!!! thats were you can find it. about this episode…i like it:D seems like raio/light is a genius. (duh, I know that,I read the manga, but lets play dumb:D) the next episode would be even better in my opinion , with that fiance of that FBI agent.

    mettare
    Reply

  22. how did the FBI agent suspected Light so easily?

    L figured out that Kira is actually someone related to one of the cops (because Kira was appearently getting confidential information known only to the police). So he ordered the FBI to search for the identity of Kira, but limiting the search to the relatives of the cops only.

    Then again, nobody, not even an FBI agent would suspect a smart, good-looking, son of a police chief to be a mass murderer for real. 😉

    I really feel sorry for Yuri. That poor girl really likes Light, and didn’t susupect a bit that he was actually just using her to act like a normal teenager. 🙁

    btw i just watched the 1st half of desu noto [death note] the movie, n i didnt get to see ‘L’ *cries* did you hear, they’re making number 2 and possibly number 3 yaaaaay *sqeals*

    If I’m not wrong, the movies work as consecutive episodes.

    I really feel sorry for Yuri. That poor girl really likes Light, and didn’t susupect a bit that he was actually just using her to act like a normal teenager. 🙁

    Rasmiel
    Reply

  25. Yayy..i got to watch this episode! it was so0 good, my favourit so far, because you get to see how cunning Raito is..
    Rasmiel
    i feel sorry for Yumi to 🙁 that poor girl who wants to impress Raito, bt then ends up seeing someone die [probably an image that you can never forget, right?]

    Mii-Ne
    Reply

  28. how was light sure that the detective will sit behind him or that there will be places so that the detective can sit behind him if it were nt for luck detective may have to sit away from him and how he was sure that the detective will see the paper he wrote to yuri because if neither of those happened his plan would have failed if someone know the reason please tell me

    qwertypoiuy
    Reply

  29. ^because this anime is filled with improbable events used to advance the plot. This reminds me of the “perfect planning/timing” of Monster, but done to more of an extreme, and much less cleverly and realistically.

    lax
    Reply

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