Death Note

Again, can't resist piling in despite having only read the first three volumes. I think the most important thing to keep a hold of when reading Death Note is how silly the whole thing is. It may be easy to forget amidst the tendrils of subterfuge and second-guessing between the two whizz kids. The details of how they chase each other's tails seem impressive, until you take a step back and see how ridiculous the thought of a teenager directing a manhunt against a supernatural terrorist really is.

The seriousness with which Death Note takes its zany concept is off-putting, not least because the Sherlock Holmes-like detective games direct attention away from what can be quite an interesting morality tale. Kira summarily executes criminals to create a new world order in which evil is eliminated. The idea of a straight-A student being a delusional psychopath must surely nod to the shock of the sarin attacks on the Tokyo underground in 1995, perpetrated by a cult composed of educated and successful members of Japanese society. Kira is our avatar in the book – the reader is being asked what they would do if they could kill people anonymously. To do so, it has to present the murderer neutrally, and his victims as fodder.

There is a risk here of losing a grip on why what Kira does is wrong. Kira's adversary L occasionally alludes to ideas of human rights and the case against what Kira is up to. But the ethical argument gets sidelined in the game of cat and mouse which takes up the majority of the narrative space in the volumes. Perhaps I'm wrong to get worked up about this – surely it will be clear to most people why we have checks and balances when dealing with lawbreakers, rather than sending them all to the gallows. But if the book is suggesting that some Japanese really do think like Kira, it has a duty to set out why that attitude is wrong-headed. The way Death Note handles its ending will be decisive in this regard.