I’ve been meaning to bring up Death Note since Johanna named it the disappointment of 2007. While I enjoyed the Death Note ride throughout, I can totally understand the frustration with the series.

However, she definitely struck a chord with me when she notes her early frustration with the series:

This is when I started getting annoyed with the series. The female character who comes closest to being fully developed so far is the fiance of one of the dead FBI agents, herself a former investigator. She’s got key information that will make Light a suspect, and by chance, he intercepts her on her way to deliver it. They verbally fence for a while, and then Light finally gains the upper hand, sending her to her presumed suicide. Only we never find out what happens to her.

I thought that was a disappointing way to treat such a great character and the readers, as well. I suppose it’s a testament to the creators that they created a character I missed so much, but the feeling I was left with was that of frustration.

As I comment, I found the women of Death Note to be one of the more interesting aspects of the story, even though I likely added depth that wasn’t intended by the creators.

Still, a good part of what made the series compelling was the female characters. There was a subtle feminist perspective that I took from it (again, a perspective that I don’t necessarily believe was intended) that kept me going.

The first interesting female character is, as Johanna notes, Naomi Misora, the fiance of Light’s first non-criminal victim, FBI agent Raye Penber. Naomi is more gifted agent that Raye but she gave up her career when they got engaged. The couple discuss this openly in the series and I think American readers would quickly read that scene and think that Raye and Naomi’s arrangement makes little sense. After all, why can’t the both be FBI agents as a married couple, haven’t we seen that on TV at some point? To some degree, the series explained it by giving both characters a Japanese background, but Naomi’s voluntary retirement still feels odd, considering that they both rose through the ranks of an American law enforcement branch.

For a little while, it looked like Naomi might become a third party to the Light vs. L chase, an intriguing development. While both Light and L were logical schemers, Naomi would have been a smart person who had an emotional connection to the case. Would that make her a better detective, more driven to find her fiance’s murderer, or sloppy, being blinded by her rage? Too bad we never found out, because an increased presence by Naomi would have been very interesting.

Then came Misa Amane, who had moments where it looked like she had the potential to out-think both Light and L. I thought of Misa as that smart girl who is also pretty and who, unfortunately, grows up and never feels any encouragement to use her brain but is rewarded again and again for her looks. So, she has a brain and she can use it but society has told her again and again that women should be cute and pretty while their brains go unappreciated.

However, Misa did know how to use her head. However, unlike Light and L, she was undisciplined and chaotic. Her plans could take a sudden turn because of a feeling. For a little while, I thought we would see that dynamic — Light’s meticulous plots against Misa’s unpredictable schemes. But then the series seemed to almost forget she existed (even forgetting to tell us how she ended).

Then came Kiyomi Takada, who is smart and pretty like Misa, but doesn’t hide either quality. She immediately gets respect from Light that Misa never recieves, but that respect also means that Light is pretty quick to write her name in the death note, as opposed to Misa who Light keeps meaning to kill… just as soon as event x is taken care of.

For a moment, I thought, too, that we might have another interesting female with the androgynous Melo. After all, Near was as methodical a detective as L was. Melo was wild, emotional and chaotic and there could have been an interesting contrast between the order of Near and Light against Misa and Melo.

Even that didn’t get explored satisfyingly in Death Note. Still, the tease was interesting enough to keep me reading until the end.