On the whole I found Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's supernatural thriller Death Note to be a pretty entertaining read. Light Yagami's crusade to rid the world of all crime by becoming the ultimate criminal is appropriately naive and grandiose - Just the kind of thing a pampered, bored, know-it-all teenager with a messiah complex would think of if granted the powers of a god. So the ending when he finally gets what's coming to him is deeply satisfying to my inner curmudgeon. But I was taken out of the story early on when the character of Naomi Misora was introduced - A former FBI agent retiring to marry Raye Penber, the agent assigned to investigate Light. They're using the case as an opportunity to visit her parents in Japan. She's clearly smarter than her would-be husband. But her astute observations and pointed questions are dismissed by Raye with a condescending "You're just my fiancee. You're not an agent anymore..." (That's right! Know your place woman! Hurry up and serve me my goddamn coffee!) She apologizes and drops the subject.
Granted that the traditional behavior of the Japanese woman is to stop working when they marry in order to devote their time to raising a family, and that this is a Japanese comic. But in spite of their Japanese background, I couldn't help wondering why a couple who live and work in the United States would choose to honor that custom. At the very least Naomi's diffidence to Raye just seemed odd for someone who rose through the ranks of the FBI.
After Raye's death (Feel like listening to your fiancee now buddy? I know I'm a jerk) Naomi attempts to contact the Japanese police, but is intercepted by Light. They spar verbally, but Light gets the better of her, and sends Naomi to her presumed death. This off-panel death was very frustrating as it seemed that the creators were eliminating a potentially interesting character, and part of me considered the possibility of her surviving her murder. I guess I've been conditioned by years of watching Hollywood movies to not accept offscreen deaths as real.
This demise is repeated later with the much more prominent character Misa Amane, the epitome of the Japanese idol: cute, short, perky, childish, a moe gothic lolita, and dumb as a brick. Sure she shows early signs of brilliance, but she quickly abandons independent thought after her first face-to-face meeting with Light. Her off-panel death isn't part of the story, but told in a special volume after the conclusion of the story (Light also charms the more intelligent but still gullible Kiyomi Takada before executing her in spectacular fashion).
These are minor issues which did not stop me from enjoying the comic, but it was enough of a jolt to help remind me of the divide between me and the average Japanese reader. I'm off course constantly aware of these cultural differences, but there was something a little jarring about otherwise competent female characters taking a back seat to the alpha males in Death Note.
