DEATH NOTE / First Impressions

Summary:
While piecing together the clues from security camera footage of Ray Penbar’s fated train ride, L notices that the envelope Ray was carrying disappears sometime from when he got on the train to when he got off an hour and a half later. L also sees how Ray is looking at the train when he’s dying, which could mean that Kira was aboard. As morning approaches, L gets a call telling him about Ray’s fiancée disappearing. The others think that it might have been a suicide resulting from of Ray’s death, but L thinks otherwise. Her name sounds familiar to him because he worked with her on an FBI case in Los Angeles, and the Misora Naomi he knows is an excellent FBI agent with a strong heart. This leads him to decide to narrow the search to the families that were being investigated by Ray Penbar: Light’s father’s and sub-chief Kitamura’s. For these two families, L wants wiretaps and surveillance cameras installed. The detectives are worried getting in trouble for violating civil liberties, but L points out that they’re already putting their own lives on the line for this investigation. When Light’s father asks for the possibility that Kira is one of the families, L thinks that it’s around 5%. The others feel that 5% is low, but Light’s father believes that they’d have to investigate if there were even only a 1% chance, so he agrees to have the surveillance put in.
Back at home, Light has been busily spending his time writing names into the Death Note for future weeks so that people won’t notice the lack of deaths of criminals if he gets hospitalized or something. He then gets to making sure that no one can trace what he’s done with his computer. Light also cuts up pieces of the Death Note and hides them in preparation. It’s not until he returns home from school sometime later that he notices something strange. By this time, L and Light’s father have put the house under camera surveillance and see Light go to his room. Ryuk tries to talk to Light, but Light has stops responding. After lying on his bed for a moment, he goes back out, remembering to reset the paper slip trap on his door as he leaves. Light’s father wonders if his son is hiding something, but L finds that that kind of behavior normal for a 17-year-old. With Ryuk still pestering him to respond as he walks outside, Light first checks to his clothes to make sure they’re not wiretapped. After he’s confident that they’re not, he tells Ryuk about the surveillance. Ryuk remembers that the door was trapped with the piece of paper to indicate that someone opened it, but that trap hadn’t been sprung until Light entered his own room moments earlier. Light, however, reveals that that piece of paper was only a fake – the first real trap had been the door knob.
Light explains that he purposefully keeps the handle about 5 millimeters lower than it normally sits. When he got home earlier, he noticed that the handle was sitting in its normal position. However, that alone isn’t enough to determine that someone entered his room. That’s why Light also has a piece of mechanical pencil lead hidden on the door’s hinge that would break when the door opens. He would normally take this out before opening the door, but today it was already broken. Ryuk then suggests that it might be Light’s parents who entered his room, but Light refutes that because neither his parents nor his sister would have noticed the slip of paper and purposefully put it back. Having made this conclusion, Light is now going to buy books on wiretapping and surveillance. On the way back home, he reminds Ryuk that the Shinigami won’t be able to eat apples anymore because of the cameras. Unfortunately, apples are to Ryuk like alcohol or tobacco are to humans, and Ryuk claims that his body will get screwed up without them. For Ryuk to be able to eat apples under the current situation, Light says that they first need to locate the positions of all the cameras because there might be a blind spot. Ryuk agrees to find the cameras, saying even that it’s another interesting thing to do.
That night, Light pretends to look at dirty magazines while Ryuk searches through the room. With Ryuk discovering cameras in multiple hidden locations, Light thinks that L must be behind all this and suspects the people Ray Penbar was investigating. But Light also assumes for now that he’s the only one being suspected. He then goes downstairs for dinner where his sister reads out a TV bulletin saying that the ICPO is dispatching 1500 agents to Japan because of Kira. Knowing that L has the living room bugged, Light says out loud that this announcement has no significance because a real investigation would be conducted in secret. He reasons that all the police are doing here is exaggerating a report to scare Kira. As he watches all this, L remarks to Light’s father that Light is clever. In any case, Light brings a bag of potato chips upstairs with him after dinner as a study snack. In his room, Ryuk has finished the search and has found all 64 cameras. Since the entire place is covered, Light enacts a plan where he has hidden a tiny television and a piece of the Death Note inside the potato chips. Using his body to shield the TV from the cameras, Light is able to get see the criminals and write them down, all under the guise of snacking while studying. Once Light is done, he simply throws the bag of chips – with the TV in it – into the wastebasket.
At the hotel, Watari reports of some new deaths of criminals who were featured on the news. L had seen Light’s mother and sister watching a drama and then turning off the TV, and he saw Light studying all night. Since Kira needs a face and a name to kill, then those who didn’t watch the news can’t be Kira, or so he reasons. Light’s father thinks that this clears his family, but L finds it strange that today’s Kira killed minor criminals fairly quickly and that the Yagami family was cleared on the first day the cameras were used. The next morning, as Light’s mother takes out the trash with the potato chip bag still in it, Ryuk comments on how the small LCD TV cost Light 39800 yen.

Preview:

I really loved this episode, but it was mainly because of some surprisingly funny moments. For one, there was the ice cream that Watari was handing out. It’s really hard to take people seriously when they have an ice cream cone in their hand. I also laughed really hard when the potato chip scene came up because of how overly dramatic they made it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone open a bag like that and eat chips with such gusto – leave it to an anime to make chip-eating exciting.
But despite how he ate those chips, Light was still pretty impressive this episode with how he was able to figure out that they were under surveillance and how he convinced Ryuk to search for the cameras for him. It’s times like this that having an invisible Shinigami on your side really does help. In any case, I’m now looking forward to seeing how they animate the tennis match that should be in next week’s episode.

32 Comments

  1. o.O; It’s exactly like the manga. o__o
    SKILLZ. Dx Can’t wait to watch. =] Agree with Omni’s comments. Icecream really kills the affect. XD Well, it’s Raito, and he’d be sick if he didn’t act melodramatic. x] zomgPRON. D:

    Shii
    Reply

  5. Shii, is right, they are too much based in the manga, I havent seen such an manga-based-anime ever~
    But actually, the girl over there is more “powerful” in the anime XD!

    Potato Drama FTW!!!~

    Kaede Kei
    Reply

  8. yeah the potatoes scene heheheh I was rolling on the floor jajaajajajajajajaaaaaaa XD
    anyways with all that (the ice cone and the potatoes) heck it makes you almost forget how darker the epi was jajajaja potatoes……
    nah I’d rather have a pizza from PIZZA HUT XD!

    RickaZ
    Reply

  13. Another great episode of DN. I loved the scene with the ice cream. I was laughing when Watari started handing them out to the others. Gives me a craving for green tea ice cream, my favorite.

    The potato chip part was hilarious too, although I preferred to see Ryuk tired/in pain from the camera search.

    Can’t wait for next episode!

    Basilimux
    Reply

  23. This episode is the funniest so far. Drama chips, icecream, apple-addict shinigami, porn, shoujo movies…
    And when L snatched the cell from Matsuda, it was hilarious.

    p.s. Poor Raito was reading porn like a school book XD
    But he looked so sexy *_*

    Gally
    Reply

  26. When he’s eating the potato chips, doesn’t he need to be able to hear the television to write the names in the death note book, but if he did that then the because he’s bugged wouldn’t people hear it? And it’s not like he could use headphones.

    And what a waste to throw away that television! lol

    Angel407
    Reply

  27. Light is not Paranoid, i think L is. just look at the way he sits on a couch, the way he talks on the cellphone…Light has behaved very mature and normal. One more thing, Light’s dad decision to accept installing cameras in his house was very disappointing. How could you do something like that to your family, your wife and daughter? you disgusting Pig! If I were light I would have killed him in the most brutal way possible; you don’t need a father like that anyway.

    Ben
    Reply

  28. oooooo….realli w8ting for next episode..cant w8 to c wads gonna happend..bud isnt the episodes coming out abit too slow?? mabe..is becuz i too anxious to watch bah..~~ hahazz
    cant w8 for the movie too..harxz..^^

    Wish_chan
    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *