Watched the movie already. Frankly, it was a little disappointing - for manga readers/anime watchers at least. For those who have never encountered Death Note before, I think Death Note will be a rare treat for them. Spoilers for both the manga and movie beyond this.

The Story

Firstly, the story was changed pretty significantly. There were less thinking on the characters’ part. A new character, namely Light’s girlfriend, was introduced. The introduction to the movie was done in a “flashback” manner: we first see criminals dying before flashing back to Light’s first encounter with the Note.

His first encounter was also quite different. He doesn’t see it drop while complaining about how corrupted the world is. The Death God’s world isn’t shown as well. He merely went on an investigation of his own after learning that some criminals were not punished by hacking into the NPA servers. He sees the Note on the ground. He went home and wrote down a criminal’s name and found out, in the morning through the papers, that the criminal is dead. The role of the second criminal is slightly different. His encounter with Ryuk was in the open and Ryuk doesn’t tell him about the heaven and hell part though - makes me wonder if there’s going to be anything about Light’s defeat.

Lind L Tailor’s part was done pretty similarly. The story continued faithfully for some time after this, minus lots of dialogues and thinking. Naomi’s role in the story was bigger. She even went on to suspect that Light was Kira and she played a bigger role in the story. She was killed together with Light’s girlfriend, as part of Light’s plan, to make the investigators symphatise with Light for his loss of his loved one and allow him to join them. L makes an appearance after that, saying that he welcomed Light to the team.

The Characters

Light’s actor was, frankly, not suitable. He smiled too unsinisterly. There was no signature “Light’s evil smirk” to be seen throughout the whole movie. L was portrayed as eating too much sweet stuff. Way too much in fact.

Soichiro was portrayed as somewhat against L, even calling L’s actions too much. He was more suspicious of L than in the manga. Matsuda was, as usual, the one who always messes things up. The only problem was I couldn’t tell who the other members of the investigation team were - namely Mogi and Aizawa.

The worst of them all was Ryuk. He laughed way too much and way too crazily. He seemed to be the comic relief of the movie, always making the audience laugh at his actions.

What I feel

Slightly disappointed with the movie. I guess I had too high expectations for the movie, partly because of the excellent portrayal by the anime. The movie was a little too draggy for me; but it could have been worse with all the dialogues and thinking. The music of the movie was of no help at all. I couldn’t even remember if I heard any music at all. Yes, it left that kind of impression.

Of all the cuts in the movie, the one I felt was more inappropriate was the first meeting of Light and L. The manga’s version was more exciting and really brought the “wow” out of me.

Of course there were other “wows” in the movie, like Light getting Raye Penber’s name (who was renamed as Raye Isa-something) and the “tv in potato chips” part. For those who have read the manga, it was of no surprise though.

The movie scores 8/10, without considering that I have read the manga and know what’s going to happen. If I did, it would merely be 7/10.