Wow! Another blog post! I’m on a roll!
For those following my tweets, you may have realized I’ve become a big fan of Dexter lately.
I’ve read the Death Note manga during college, watched the anime series shortly after (it’s now streaming from Hulu), and recently rented the 1st part of the Live Action movie from Netflix. When it mentioned the god-complex, it triggered a memory from a Dexter episode I recently saw and then I started noticing similarities.
Of course, they’re far from being the same story, but here’s a very few similar points:
- Both kill evil criminals and believes the world would become a better place.
- Both are part of the task force who are investigating the serial killer.
- Both Dexter’s and Light’s father were good policemen, though they played very different roles.
Of course there’s a lot of differences. Since I haven’t seen Season 3 yet and the series hasn’t officially ended, I can’t really say where it’s going. But Season 2 of Dexter moved away from the formulaic of 1 new kill per episode and more onto the focus of the investigation and capturing of the serial killer, which is what Death Note was all about.
Searching online, I found this article (from April 2007): ‘Dexter’ and ‘Death Note’: Pop-culture cousins? which basically mentions the same thing I have above. And the author says and I quote:
However, I’d like to point out the obvious: If you’ve been digging Dex as much as I have this season, there’s a good chance you’ll devour all volumes of Death Note, and vice versa. The series is available in most major bookstores.
Argggh, after watching the movie, I realized Netflix sent me part 2 inside a sleeve of part 1. I was wondering why the movie skipped a whole bunch at the beginning and what they were planning to do with part 2 after this ending. Then I looked at the DVD and it showed Death Note II: The Last Name
A lot of things have changed between the manga/anime and the live action movie. I guess it was inevitable since they’re compacting such a long series into 2 separate 2-hour movies.
<SPOILERS>
- It’s a battle between L and Light all the way to the end. Near and Mello were never introduced.
- They merged 2 plot-lines together: the syndicate that was imitating Kira and the newscaster that idolized Kira
- Swapping with a fake Death Note was switched to a different character
- + a lot more
</SPOILERS>
All in all, the movie was still very fun to watch. Like those who have read Harry Potter books and then watched the Harry Potter movies, seeing how the movie was altered from the original works was a bit disappointing. But if I had never read the manga, I probably would’ve enjoyed it greatly.