L for lol?

This was how I spend my saturday evening. I should be hiting the books, not the cinemas but any death note movie or relation is marked "must-see" for me.

If you intend to watch this, please refrain from reading beyond this point. (spoilers ahead)

Death Note, Spin off, Change the World-L. Indeed, is a long title, and only after watching this film I realised why they did not name it Death Note 3. Reason being-there have been almost zero appearance of the Death Notebooks, (besides them being tossed into fire and ryuk appearing once). Death note will not be death note anymore without the notebook (which was it's selling point concept). This however, results in this film becoming a spinoff, revolving about L.

Backtracking into time, (and a little history lesson), L wrote his name on the death note himself and scheduled himself to die 23 days later. It's main aim was to nulify anybody else from instananeously killing him, namely, Yagami Light, (also known as Kira). Thus, he was able to bring Yagami Light's crimes to light (pardon the pun). Therefore, winning the battle, at a great cost. However, note that this was the movie's own interetation, and the manga had it's own plot line which was world's apart.

Therefore, in this series, we see how L spends his last 23 days. As a babysitter, an action film star, a noble "save the world" hero. L finally abandons his calm, reserved self, and leaps into action. The plot of this story revolves around a virus, and it's vaccine. A very contagious, airborne influenza virus (which apparently is crossbreeded with something and something, didn't catch the details), which will kill a person. (approximately, the time taken is proportional to how much longer the person needs to be in the show for plot reasons).

The virus was created by a female professor going by the codename K. Which suggests she was trained under Watari in Wammy's orphange. Striving to make the world a better place, she teamed up with a group of ecologist (forgot their group name), who were ruthless. Apparently, they have planned to wipe out a large deal of the population inorder for a greater good (saving the Earth) using the virus. However, there were no antidotes to this virus. Thus preventing them from spreading the virus because they would not get immunity from it and die as well.

The story was rather complex, had many twist and turns, sudden appearance of characters. I tried summarizing the story but to no avail, it is simply too long or too long-winded. However, it was satisfactory.

L finds himself with two "kids", a girl and a boy. The boy, a mathematical genius, and the girl, the daughter of the professor who sacrificed himself to prevent the vaccine from getting into the wrong hands. The boy, was the key to solving the 'mystery' and the material for the vaccine. He had MK proteins (mikitine?) within him which granted him immunity to the virus (he was picked up from Thai village which was destroyed by the virus).

This is going to be a digress but the girl (acted by Mayukom Fukuda) was extremely charming and cute.

I was no large fan of L. But I found it extremely touching at the end points. When L told her to make tommorow a better day through the voice from the teddy bear, she smiled and said " You too". She was totally unaware that L was going to die in two days, and the tommorow L had was only one.

Also, in the last few days remanding for L, he had learn how to walk with his back straight and not hunch. We also see the emotional, justice-seeking, and passionate L.

To increase the impact, the next scene showed all the last things L did before he was ready to leave the world. He send the boy genius to Wammy's Orphanage and gave him the name "Near". (note, I do not really know how I feel about this, but N (near) was a character in the orginal manga that supposedly managed to pin Kira down after kira killed L). This thai boy was definitely smart and talented enough to be N. But I liked how L came up with the reason for the name. " So that you will always be Near when someone is saved", and "so you will be near to happiness". Though cheesy, but I found it very meaningful. It sort of explains, and brings me to actually remember the nostalgic of having the original Near (Nate River) as my favourite Death Note character. In this show, the talented young boy also had the "tin-like" robot which resembles alot the toy that Near liked to play in the original manga.

In a coconut shell ( I was told Nutshell was too cliche so), a great movie. Five stars for a spinoff, but lesser for a regular movie. I was no L fanboy, but I did like the character of L. (of course L for lol). He was funny, cute, charming. A very great character indeed. And of course, with such a greater character as a protagonist, this movie has to be great. A lighthearted at times, yet heavy when required to, movie. Indeed, one word, Balanced.