I’m sure most of you know what Death Note is. So let’s get right to
business. I will be analysing some of the female characters the anime. There
only seem to be six that appeared more than once in the anime. First of all,
Misa Amane or Misa Misa, is the closest we get to a female lead in this anime. Her
character is defined by three points – her career as an idol, her shinigami
friend Rem who granted her wish to possess shinigami eyes and her obsession
with Kira because he killed the people who attacked her home. Then there’s the
whole thing about how for no apparent reason, two shinigami are completely
obsessed with her to the point of sacrificing their infinite life to extend
hers, which she repeatedly halved in exchange for shingami eyes for Kira’s
sake. At the end of the anime, she is the last one standing without any memory
of the kind of things she accomplished or lost and for no reason what so ever,
she finds herself all alone. It was as though her character was just written as
an example to people about the horrors faced when someone who is too weak
willed stands in the shadows of the shinigami powers. The lose everything, and
they have no idea why.
Wedy was one of the “criminals” L brought on board his crusade against
Kira. That’s it. Her character is this extremely sexy, hot, thief girl who...
does she do anything else in the anime? No. Her male partner gets to act as the
second best detective in the world but Wedy just steals and once L is dead,
gets killed by Kira. Then there was Naomi Misora, a brilliant cop. But she
quit, because she was getting married, and her husband who wasn’t even as good
as her at the same work refused to let her even talk to him about his work.
What is that all about? And then he goes and gets killed by Kira, so she
becomes a vigilante and tries to kill Kira herself, but of course, a woman
could never be good enough so she dies to too. That’s her story. She gets
engaged, quits her job, loses her fiancé, tries to take revenge and dies. And
let’s not forget Kiyomi Takada. She started off as the stereotypical example of
the kind of women that a successful man would want. She was smart, aloof and
secretly submissive to her male partner. She was someone that Kira exploited
and broke.
Finally, Sachiko and Say Yagami, Kira’s mother and sister respectively.
From start to end they had no role to play except for the stereotypical
housewife mother and the stereotypical boy band obsessed little sister who
couldn’t solve simple algebra problems. They never found out that their son and
brother Light was actually Kira. To them, Light was a martyr who beat Kira.
Funny isn’t it, because the whole point of the anime’s story was that the more
Light was in contact with the Death Note, the more Kira was taking over and
Light was slowly being lost. But to those two women, the point of the anime is
never clarified, as though your mother and your sister only exist to act as a
base or foil of some kind.
Some of you may argue that Misa and Kiyomi are examples of the perils of
obsession just like the main character himself, Light. To be honest, that’s
only partially true. Part of the reason for the girls’ “demise” was their
obsession but it wasn’t an obsession with something like their personal goals
or the betterment of the world or the desire to be God. They were obsessed with
a man, worked for a man and in the end gave everything up for a man and no one
ever questions this. All in all, I think Death Note sends many misogynistic messages to
the public. That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the anime, it
is probably one of my favourites. It’s a good anime that sends some messages
that I do not agree with and I may be wrong or reading too much into it, but
hey, it’s just a topic of discussion. Do you agree or disagree? Comment and we
can have a civil discussion and share some new and different insights into the
world of Death Note.
