EPIC episode. Apparently covering more than nine manga chapters, this episode pulled yet another 180 degree turn following last week. Although I found the pacing a bit TOO fast, it was still a captivating episode. Word has it that, at least in this arc, the anime is proving to be superior to the manga, quite a rare occurrence.

Episode Rating: 10/10

In the aftermath of the kidnappings, the Yagami household has relocated, partially to protect them from further targeting and partially to better care for Sayu-chan, who is left traumatized by the ordeal.

Back at Light’s apartment, Ryuk is greeted by the shinigami shown at the end of episode 28, identified as Shidoh. He demands Ryuk return his death note, but due to circumstances beyond Ryuk’s control, he doesn’t know where it is. Ryuk shoos Shidoh off, telling him to find it himself if he wants it back that badly.

Meanwhile, the investigation continues, with N’s information Light digs up some information about Watari’s orphanage, Wammy’s House. Rather than an orphanage, it was a place where children with potential to become L’s successor were gathered and trained. Among them, two stood out above the rest. Near, or N, the leader of the SPK (or what’s left of it, lawl) and Mello, the one whom Near suspects was behind the kidnappings and now holds a death note.

Wasting no time, Light sets another wtfhax plan in motion. First, using Misa’s shinigami eyes to scan known mafia members for the owner of the death note, Kal Snyder. Light uses his death note to control him, forcing him to mail the location of their hideout to the investigation team.

Shidoh happens to see the address that was mailed to Light and flies off to LA to find out what’s going on with his death note. He finds the hideout and introduces himself to Mello’s team, who try and kill him, obviously with little success. Mello sends Shidoh, invisible to all other humans, outside on patrol, bribing him with chocolate.

Anyways, I digress, back to Light’s plan. Next, he gives up ownership of his death note and tells Ryuk to give it to one of the investigation team members. He borrows Misa’s notebook, shoving it down his pants, so he won’t lose his memories.

The death note ends up with Yagami-san, Light calls him as Kira and tells him that all the known mafia members will die on November 10th (Protip: This is Shirukii’s birthday, buy him something!) at 11:59 p.m. He tells them the location of Mello’s hideout and instructs them to raid it at that time for the best chance at recovering the death note. Speaking as the head of the investigation team, Light says that even though it’s in accordance with Kira, they can’t afford to pass up the opportunity to recover the death note and capture Mello.

Prior to the raid, Yagami-san makes the deal for the shinigami eyes with Ryuk. At 11:59, cries of death echo from inside Mello’s hideout and the raid begins. The death note is quickly seized, but Light instructs them to pursue Mello. Yagami-san corners Mello in a room, but he has one last trick up his sleeve, the building is rigged with explosives. Mello seals the entrances and threatens to blow the entire building unless Yagami-san does as he is told.

However, one thing that Mello wasn’t expecting was the shinigami eyes, Yagami-san says his real name, Mihael Keehl, and threatens to kill him with the death note unless he surrenders. Mello, however, doesn’t think Yagami-san has the resolve to do it, and calls out to one of his remaining men, who shoots Yagami-san multiple times in the back. As the rest of the investigation team floods into the room, Mello presses the detonator, blowing up the entire building, while somehow managing to escape.

Surprisingly, most of the team, including Yagami-san, did not die from the blast, however he was fatally wounded by one of the bullets. In his dying moments he uses the shinigami eyes to note that he can see Light’s life span, proving that he doesn’t own a death note and is not Kira. While this works out nicely for Light, the more pressing issue is Mello, he urges his father to use his remaining strength to kill him. However, with the knowledge of his son’s supposed innocence, Yagami-san’s worries are gone and he passes away peacefully.

The death note is returned to Shidoh and Light stands silent, lamenting the events which brought him more loss than gain. Although he managed to pry a death note from Mello’s hands, he lost his father in the process, while Mello remains at large.

Thoughts

Bah @ long summaries. Though when so much material is covered in one episode, it’s an inevitability.

As mentioned before, various sources (mainly friends and 4chan’s /a/) are saying that the anime is handling this arc significantly better than the manga did. Apparently it’s not only this episode that will pack this much action, given the division of manga chapters left to cover in eight more episodes, much of the remainder of Death Note will be similar in pacing. This is excellent news, though I kind of wish they had shortened the Yotsuba arc and lengthened this one, as it’s a lot better IMO.

Now, as for Light’s plan. I’d say it was one of the simpler ones used, but effective nonetheless. Aside from using the shinigami eyes to find the owner of the other death note, there weren’t any “wtfux underground tunnel” moments. It was simple to follow and went just as planned, using the element of surprise as the main advantage.

There were, however, a few flaws. Most importantly, when Yagami-san was alone with Mello, why didn’t Light send him backup!? Given all their technology, I’d assume that they would all have tracking devices as well as a basic schematic of the hideout. So why didn’t Light send potentially life saving back up to his father, choosing instead to sit there and pray for him to kill Mello. Other than that, the explosion confused me, strong enough to level a building but controlled enough to leave the room they were all in intact and allow Mello to escape? Riiiiiight. No. And a side point, what was the point of the scene where Shidoh confronted Mello’s team? Nothing came out of it, he didn’t get his death note back at the time, and Mello just got a useless guard.

Moving on to a more random topic, what was up with this scene. It caught me off guard seeing Misa prance around in lingerie, and then the two start making out…with Shidoh looking on in the background. This scene crushed the spirits of many “Light is gay for L” fangirls/haetboys. Although, really, I still maintain that Light has absolutely no feelings for Misa and she’s only around for miscellaneous tasks and her shinigami eyes. Though, it begs the question, have the had secks? Four years is a long time, and they’re pretty old by now, I’d think that Misa would have managed to get it out of Light at least once in that time XD

Otherwise…

…imagine how she must have felt when she saw the death note getting more action.

Back to more relevant issues, it seems I was wrong in my guess as to which death note Shidoh would go after. I’m pretty sure my list accounting for all the death notes was right, which means that Shidoh didn’t care which death note he got back, as long as he got one. He ended up picking the one that most benefited Light, but the raid cost him more than he would have liked. But at least now he knows Mello’s name, and only needs to see a picture or his face in order to kill him, and with a fairly accurate composite sketch, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

And so I’m left wondering how the allocation of the death notes will go from here. There are now two death notes in human hands, one shoved down Light’s pants and the other in the hands of the investigation team. Light can’t take Misa’s, as that would result in the loss of the shinigami eyes, and I doubt he wants to constantly walk around with a death note in his belt, so I’m curious as to what’s going to happen with that one. Keeping in mind that the SPK has their sights set on obtaining a death note as well.

On a parting note, some sad news =( I had the ending of Death Note completely spoiled for me. Lurking in /a/ I came across a thread with an image captioned “Raito’s swimming lessons”. The resulting photoshop’d manga scan was illustrative enough for me to piece together the ending. In all fairness, it was obvious and I called it a looooong time ago, but to have it spoiled still sucked.

WARNING! MASSIVE ENDING SPOILERS!

For the insatiably curious: Raito’s Swimming Lesson

As a small consolation, I lol’d.

Well, nothing to do but shrug it off and keep watching. Until next week!

~ Shirukii ~