#the degree that this man was underutilized was criminal

[numum]

the he

[jacksgreysays]

heehee--looking back over that post with the Three Beauties, I think the "Four of a Kind" team is a great idea, too. Maybe it's just because I love how Anko gets characterized in fics that are kinder to her, and maybe it's because I remember a fic where Anko got Kakashi's team because Anko was going to give a summoning demonstration at the Academy, and Team 7 assumed she was their sensei because why else would a Jonin be at the Academy? But a team of Genin with Flee On Sight orders is hilarious

Anko had so much potential as a character and was (unsurprisingly) underutilized in canon. Which is WILD considering how prevalent of an issue Orochimaru was. Like-- I’ve not actually read a fic that does this, but I’m sure they exist somewhere—the fact that Anko didn’t basically poach Sasuke from Kakashi as her apprentice is wild. They could have had the prickliest heart to hearts! They could have bonded about being betrayed by the older man in their life (ie, older brother and teacher)! They could met in the common ground of being infamous within the village that should have protected them but failed, but they will nonetheless protect that same village regardless!

Anyway, Anko as a solo character is rad as hell without needing to attach Sasuke to her arc. The fact that she became as powerful as she did even after her sensei betrayed then abandoned her, and its unlikely some other teacher wanted to take her on, so I imagine she had to essentially teach herself with the rest of the village watching her like some kind of ticking time bomb. And obviously there are some exceptions to that (ie, her friendship with Aoba and Ibiki and MAYBE Kurenai?) but not, I think, during the most critical window of time when she went from apprentice to the apparent next Hokage to abandoned student of the worst criminal Konoha has ever produced. [I kind of went into the politics of the fallout here on a wider clan scale, but not on an individual scale.]

Because the fall in prestige is one thing, but the fall in, like, career trajectory? Or, hm… because if you really think about it, with Konoha’s implied familial/teacher-to-student line of succession for Hokage, Anko is basically the equivalent of a disinherited royal. Maybe not crown princess per se, to continue the metaphor, but possibly within the top five “in line for the throne” kind of vibes.

She had the same standing and degree of distance from the position as Minato! Maybe even closer considering Jiraiya was kind of the fuck up of his generation and the Sandaime did favor Orochimaru even if the general public may have wanted Tsunade (who herself didn’t want the position)

Imagine a world with Hokage Anko!

And anyway, she is incredibly charismatic in a brash, aggressive way which I love in a character (hence the Four of a Kind team, although, to be honest, of that Four of a Kind team, Shikako is the least like the others personality wise but, in turn, the MOST Flee on Sight so…) That is why in my extremely, extremely slow WIP—Externality—that version of Tetsuki does eventually have Anko as a treasured and trusted senpai

Oh, Anko, I’m sorry you were not treated well in either Watsonian (diegetic) or Doylist (exegetic) interpretations. T_T

[armed-saphire]

3, 8, 13, 18, 19 :)

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

it definitely wasn't the WORST but one that comes to mind is the Raiden ASPD post. I just didn't agree really 8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

MONSOON ISN'T NEARLY AS SILLY AS THE FANDOM LIKES TO PORTRAY HIM AS!!!!! in-game he was pretty calm all the way up until you have to fight him where he does get a bit silly I will admit. But outside of that he is pretty mellow. Especially in the cherry blossom scene from the Sam DLC. He's not running around fucking shit up and going teehee come on he definitely acts somewhat as a voice of reason to a degree.

13. worst blorboficiation

There's one I wanna say but it's referring directly to a specific creator who blorbos the character so I shall keep it to myself...

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST UNIT. so underutilized in the game despite how cool the idea is. I love them so much but there's like no content for them...I wish they came back in MGS4 and did more than just their boss fights.

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

Liquid Ocelot looks great I love that old man and his peepaw swag

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Video Game Year in Review: The Top 10

As with any year-end list, this one probably isn’t complete. Last year, I fell in love with Nioh over winter break after I had already made my top 10, and just a few days ago, I started playing Hollow Knight. As I made clear in my previous lists, Metroidvanias can be hit or miss for me. I can get fed up with wandering around without a clear destination, and Hollow Knight has a bit of that so far, but it also has one of the most atmospherically welcoming settings for a video game in recent memory, and so far I’ve been pretty damn enraptured by it. I’m not too worried about it making the list at this point; it didn’t even technically come out this year anyway, but its Switch release earlier this year gave it somewhat of a second debut, for all the earned attention it finally got. At least I got a little shout-out here before publishing.

Anyway, here’s ten games I loved the shit out of in 2018. This was one year with a handful of games that I absolutely adored, none of which necessarily immediately jumped out to me as hands down the best one of the bunch, and honestly, that’s the way I’d prefer it, but it did make ranking them a bit tough. Really, from number five onward, the ranking gets pretty interchangeable. I didn’t plan on the game in my number one spot being the one that it is until I actually wrote out my feelings for it and decided that out of all them it was the easiest for me to just gush about. Alright, no further ado:

10. Donut County - Overall, it’s probably a good thing that Donut County isn’t longer than it is, but for as mechanically simple as sucking objects into an ever-expanding void is, it’s something that I felt I would’ve been perfectly entertained doing for a lot longer than the game lasted. Donut County has a wildly inspired and novel central gameplay hook, a relatably goofy sense of humor that might border on obnoxious if it weren’t so sincerely delivered, and an anti-gentrification, anti-capitalist message that mostly works without beating you over the head too hard with it. Ben Esposito and his team have created one of the most charming and original games I’ve played in years here.

9. Paratopic - “Cinematic” is a grossly overused and frequently inappropriate word to use in games criticism, but this game often had me coming back to the word, observing how many ways it feels like it authentically takes inspiration from creative methods seen more often in film, particularly art films, than in games, much more so than say, Red Dead Redemption 2, which typically embarrassingly pales in comparison to any movies it’s obviously aping from. There’s its willingness to not explain to you what’s going on, letting you pick up on clues from scenery and incidental dialogue. Its multiple switching perspectives, laced together to draw meaningful narrative connections. Its tendency to sit in the atmosphere of a scene. Its ability to tell a succinct story intended to be experienced in one sitting. And most of all, those jump cuts. I know Paratopic isn’t the first game to employ this technique, but as far as I can remember, it’s the first that I’ve played to utilize them for purposeful artistic effect, and every time it happened, it was oddly thrilling. I loved when I’d switch from walking to suddenly driving, and had a moment of panic, as if I suddenly just woke up at the wheel. The cliffhangers scenes would occasionally end on made me desperate to get back to that thread. Hell, even just the fact that there clearly were scenes, that lasted a few minutes at a time, then moved on to the next one, felt weirdly refreshing at a time when AAA design is becoming so absurdly bloated. Paratopic excited me, not in its desire to emulate a separate art medium, but in its casual realization of how many underutilized narrative techniques work genuinely effectively in this medium.

8. Dusk - I really can’t imagine a game that more perfectly matches my Platonic ideal of “video game comfort food” than Dusk, aside from, maybe, the game in the number one spot of this list. I was raised on 90’s PC FPS games like Doom and, as is much more relevant to this game, Quake. Yeah, for the most part, it’s nice that games have moved on, both in depth of gameplay and artistry, but goddamn does a back-to-basics twitchy shooter with inspired level design and creepy atmosphere just feel good sometimes. The grainy, chunky polygons of this game encapsulate everything I love about the rudimentary but remarkably evocative minimalism of early 3D graphics. The movement feels absurdly fast by modern standards, and the effect is thrilling - every projectile is dodgeable, as long as your reflexes are sharp enough. Undoubtedly the most impressive thing about this game is its ambitious level design, so much of which rivals even John Romero’s. The longer this game goes on, the more sprawling and labyrinthine it becomes. The map shapes become increasingly wacky. The gothic architecture becomes more foreboding and awe-inspiring. Dusk does a lot with a little, and in the process, makes so much more than a tribute to game design and aesthetics of the past - for me, it stands right alongside its obvious inspirations as one of the very best of its ilk.

7. Into the Breach - An absolute masterclass of game design. Into the Breach leaves nothing about its mechanics obscured, making sure you understand how every move is going to go down just as well as it does, and the fact that the result is still compellingly challenging is a sure sign we’re in the hands of remarkably skilled and intelligent developers. The narrative in this game is sparse - you assume the role of time-looping soldiers attempting over and over again to save your world from alien invasion (think Edge of Tomorrow), and that’s pretty much all you get for the plot, aside from some effective but minimal character beats and dialogue one-liners. And yet, every battlefield, a small grid with its own arrangement of sprites (giant creepy-crawlies, various creative mech classes, structures full of terrified denizens given a modicum of hope at the arrival of their ragged potential saviors) offers a playground for drama to unfold, as gripping and epic as any great mecha anime battle. As I mentioned in my previous list with Dead Cells, I have trouble sticking with run-based games, and this game wasn’t quite an exception - honestly, if it had something resembling a more traditional narrative campaign, I could see it potentially filling my number one spot. But that a game of its style nevertheless stuck with me as well as it did proves what a tremendous achievement I found it to be.

6. Astro Bot Rescue Mission - This was both the first game I’ve played fully in VR and the first game I’ve ever platinumed. I guess that might say something about how thoroughly I fell for it. For some reason, one of the questions that my brain kept posing while playing this game is, “would you like this game as much if it weren’t in VR?” I would like to pose that first off, if this wasn’t a VR game, it would be quite a different game, but yes, probably a perfectly delightful 3D platformer in its own right. But most of all, this game helped me realize what a bullshit question that is in the first place. By virtue of its VR nature, this game is just fundamentally different, just as the jump from 2D to 3D resulted in games that were just fundamentally different. The perspective you’re given watching over your little robot playable character allows to look in 360 degrees, and often you need to, if you’re seeking out every level’s secrets, and yet, while it moves forward, it doesn’t follow you vertically, so sometimes you’re looking up or down as well. It’s difficult to describe exactly how this perspective is so much more than a gimmick or something, outside of the cliched exaggeration of “it feels like you’re really there, man,” but honestly, this statement isn’t wrong. I truly did feel immersed in these levels in a way that I wouldn’t have if this weren’t a VR game, and while it’s not exactly a feeling I now desire from every game, it does stand out as one of the singular gaming experiences I had in 2018 as a result.

5. Thonebreaker: The Witcher Tales - I gushed plenty about this game in my review. How its approach to Gwent-based combat is both welcoming to newcomers and remarkably varied, offering new ways to approach and think about the game with nearly every encounter. How its sizable story is filled with fascinating characters and genuinely distressing choices, forcing you to grapple with the inherent injustices of your position. How its vivid art style and wonderfully moody Marcin Przybyłowicz score sell The Witcher feel of this game, despite how differently it plays from the mainline entries of the game. And maybe most of all, how criminally overlooked this game has been. So I’ll make the same claim I did before - if The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt did something for you, it’s likely this game will too. Don’t worry about the card game - I did too, and trust me, it’s fun. It’s the new Witcher game; that really ought to be all you need to know.

4. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life - There’s...a lot about the Yakuza games that I’ve come to adore, but one of the biggest ones that kept sticking out to me while playing The Song of Life is how they build a sense of place. After playing Yakuza 0, set in 1988, and Yakuza Kiwami, set in 2005, I played this one, set in 2016. Each time, same Kiryu, but older, same Kamurocho, but era appropriate. Setting every Yakuza game in the same map has to be one of the quietly boldest experiments in video games, forgoing fresh new vistas to explore in favor of the same familiar boulevards, alleys, and parks of the iconic red-light district, painting an exquisitely detailed and loving portrait of a neighborhood changing with the decades. While Kiryu’s exasperation at once again walking into the all-too-familiar crowded streets of Kamurocho, brighter and louder than ever, hardly matched my eagerness to see how it had changed, it felt appropriate. Though he’s still the hottest dad (grandpa?) in town, he is kinda old now, and he’s certainly earned the right to just be over it a little. Even the silliest of the era-relevant sub stories (one of which delightfully features Kiryu putting a selfie-stick wielding, obnoxious-stunt pulling, wanna-be influencer shithead in his place) serve to underscore how out of place he now is in his old stomping grounds.

By contrast, the other setting of Yakuza 6, the quaint seaside town of Onomichi, very quickly begins to feel like an idyllic retirement destination. The introduction to this part of the game has to be my favorite video game moment of 2018 - Kiryu trying to calm a hungry baby, while walking the deserted streets after dark in search of one store that still happens to be open. The faint sound of ocean in the distance effectively evokes the freshness, the bitterness, of the air. The emptiness and darkness of the space is almost shocking, compared to the sensory overload of Kamurocho. And there’s Haruto. Kiryu took Haruka in when she was 9, so he’s never had to deal with a baby before. He’s out of his element, but hardly unwilling. The help he gets from Kiyomi and his other new friends is the kind of comfort Kiryu needs at this point in his life. Likewise, the events in Onomichi play out like a retirement fantasy - building an amateur baseball team out of local talent, building relationships with the denizens of a bar in an incredible Japanese version of Cheers, hanging out with the town’s Yakuza, who are so small potatoes they seem to barely fit the definitions of organized or crime. It all works beautifully as a touching send-off to my favorite video game character.

3. Tetris Effect - There was a long time where I was contemplating putting this as my number one game. I went through some strange conflicts in the consideration - next to all these original, thoughtful games, am I really going to say that fucking Tetris is best one of them? Is that even fair? Is this game really anything more than just regular-ass Tetris but with some pretty lights and sounds and a 90’s rave kinda vibe? The answer to all of these, is, of course, yes, but also no. I’d defend my choice any day, though. This is the first game to actually get me into Tetris. I always appreciated it; it’s a classic, but it was never a game I had actually put much time or thought into before. This game not only sold me on Tetris, but got me obsessed with it, to the point where the name feels remarkably appropriate: ever since I began playing, I’ve been seeing tetriminos falling - in my sleep, in daydreams, any time I see any type of blocky shape in real life I’m fitting them together in my mind. The idea that all Tetris pieces, despite their differences, need each other and complement each other and can all fit together in perfect harmony, and that this is a metaphor for humanity, has to be some of the cheesiest bullshit I’ve ever heard, and yet, the game fully sold me on it from the first damn level. It’s all connected. We’re all together in this life. Don’t you forget it.

2. Celeste - This is a damn near perfect game, both as refreshing and demanding as a climb up a beautiful but treacherous mountain ought to be. I died many, many times (2424, to be exact), but the game explicitly encouraged me to be proud of that, acting as a friendly little cheerleader in between deaths, assuring me that I could do it. It’s both a welcome break from the smug, sneering attitude so many “difficult” games tend to traffic in, and absolutely central to its themes involving mental health. As the shockingly good plot starts making it increasingly clear that it’s about Madeline’s quest to conquer (or, at least, understand) her inner demons, the gameplay itself offers a simple but effective metaphor for struggling with mental illness - yes, it’s hard, and yes, you’re going to suffer and struggle, but you can make it, and you will make it, because you’re so much better than you think you are. Oh, and also, it’s not all bad, because at least you get to listen to some absolutely rippin’ tunes while you do it.

1. Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom - (Another one I reviewed!) This is my ideal JRPG. In my mind it stands next to childhood treasures like Final Fantasy IX. Unlike some recent Square projects that specifically try to clone their late 90’s output, this game hardly feels beholden to the game design of the past, and yet, feels of a piece with that era in a respectably non-cloying way. It has a bright, colorful, inviting world full of charming characters, an all-time great soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi, and an exciting, deep combat system with an emphasis on action. Building my kingdom of Evermore was remarkably satisfying, down to all the little dumb tasks my citizens would ask of me, none of which my very good boy King Evan was too busy or too proud to refuse. There’s very little grinding. It’s a long game by most standards, but at 40-something hours, it feels lean by JRPG standards. And for as much of a storybook fantasy as the plot is, as much as it reduces woefully complicated socio-political issues into neat, resolvable tasks for Evan to solve, it always came across as perfectly genuine, and sometimes surprisingly affecting. It’s the game that I’ve wanted to play since the PS1 Final Fantasy games stole my heart as a kid. That’s hardly what I expected it to be as I started into it, and what a joy it was to discover that it was.

[cviperfan]

OKAY DEATH NOTE 2017 THOUGHTS

Under a cut for length not spoilers because honestly who fucking cares

-So the movie commits many sins but principle among them are two 1) The Death Note is basically just a vehicle for gore porn, pretty much indistinguishable functionally from any other 'Cursed Object' type horror movie.  There's lip service paid to the suspense trappings of the original work but Wingard is clearly much more interested in the kind of brutal deaths that can be extracted from the Death Note's flexibility of options and far less in the moral quandaries that such an object would create, and Wingard's pre-release interview that expressed an interest in creating a Hard-R version of the story was at least for me a clear indicator that he was Wrong for the project, since grisly deaths are not what makes the story interesting, or in fact are even a priority.  The fact that the default way the Death Note kills in the original canon is a heart attack (by all intents a fairly 'clean' method of death) is there for a reason, as is the 2017 version's curious decision to specifically omit that detail.

(In Wingard's interview he expresses a desire to include the "adult themes of anime" which specifically include "nudity, swearing, tons of violence" to him, which suggests that his familiarity with the medium starts and ends with Ninja Scroll and nothing else and that he probably didn't actually watch Death Note outside of a cliffs notes he had an intern scribble out or something)

2) And this is much more fundamentally antithetical to the original work, but Light's transition from Villain protagonist to Reluctant Misunderstood Anti-Hero.

in the original canon it's certainly possible to find Light's end goal aspirational, even if the actual empathy with Light himself doesn't last very long, and part of the paradox of the manga/anime is Light being a pointedly and unmistakably Terrible Person while also being a compellling and interesting protagonist.  Even if you don't necessarily want Light to succeed, watching him operate and maneuver through various obstacles on the path to his goal is fascinating on its own terms.

Death Note 2017!Light, by contrast, is given great, excruciating measures to make him Highly Sympathetic to the audience, and indeed we are meant to interpret him specifically as a Good Kid Who Took A Wrong Turn and is now Way In Over His Head.  His mom died at the hands of Joe Chill a crook who got away with it, giving him a nice clean Batman justification, he's bullied at school, is extremely concerned with his actions being percieved as good and perhaps most crucially, tries to limit his body count outside of criminals (American!Light reacts extremely negatively to the mere IDEA of killing his dad when he calls Kira out, whereas canon!Light, while certainly not enthusiastic about the idea, was right there weighing the pros and cons, reasonably prepared to do so if he proved to be enough of a problem).

He doesn't even use the Death Note initially of his own volition; Ryuk has to be there to straight-up Devil on His Shoulder-him into it (in a hilariously over-the-top introduction, more on that later), and Misa (sorry, MIA) is constantly pushing him to go darker when his resolve wavers, and indeed seems way more into the idea of using the Death Note on a visceral level than Light is.

All of this is contrary to one of the crucial points of Death Note in its original form-- Light was a person of privilege surrounded by a loving family and with infinite potential who had absolutely no reason to have become a power-hungry arbiter of "justice" with a god complex, and yet when a bit of power happened to fall into his hands that's exactly what he became.  He didn't need a traumatic event or a bad situation to become Kira, just the possibility that he could do it and get away with it.  

But even in a Death Note adaptation where the first death we get is someone's head being cut off at the jaw with a fucking ladder, this seems like too dark a conclusion for Adam Wingard to come to, so even when his body count starts rising we get constant excuses and reminders that he's A Good Kid, Honest, He's Really Trying To Do The Right Thing He's Just Got So Many Bad Influences That Pushed Him This Way and in the face of the original work's frankness (and Wingard's talk of "adult themes") this just comes off as cloying and toothless.

Nevermind that in light (heh) of the extremely whitewashed nature of this adaptation, the almost fetishistic effort of the writing team to sanitize Troubled White Teen Boy Light Turner (Who Has His Whole Life Ahead Of Him) of as much active culpability as possible is certainly quite telling isn't it

Okay that out of the way, time for some just Random Bad Shit lol

-just so we know exactly what we're dealing with and what director Adam Wingard thinks is cool one of the very first shots of the movie is Misa (sorry, MIA) at cheerleading practice but see she's not like THOSE OTHER SHEEPLE who are all ACTUALLY PRACTICING AT CHEER PRACTICE SHE'S A COOL DISAFFECTED REBEL BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T WANNA PRACTICE AT CHEER PRACTICE god look at these PHONIES all having fun and laughing OUR GIRL IS SO COOL SHE'D MUCH RATHER SMOKE AND LOOK BORED WHAT A BADASS -And like later in the movie she's all to Light "I'M A CHEERLEADER nothing i ever did mattered before i met you!!" like then WHY ARE YOU A CHEERLEADER WHY WERE YOU THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?????? YOU CAN DO LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE MY KIDDO -So the Light/Mia relationship is kind of a mess because not only do they try and play it up as the emotional lynchpin of the narrative (no, for real) but the reversal with Mia being the one who becomes super obsessed with the Death Note (even to the point where she tries to set up Light to die so she can get it) and her being the Other Bad Influence on Light really manages to make even the original Death Note's bad track record with its women fucking shine by comparison.  If the original Light/Misa dynamic was basically a Joker/Harley setup written by someone who understood that it's an abusive relationship, new!Light/Mia is the Hot Topic Romanticized Joker/Harley but also Joker is the Real Victim here apparently -Like they literally get off to using the Death Note together and make out while scanning the internet for targets-- like there COULD absolutely be a place for there to be commentary on Bored Well-Off White Kids abusing power for the fun of it, but again there's no room for insight when there's those practical gore effects to throw around -Dear god there is not a HINT of subtlety in this fucking thing, an especially egregious stylistic choice when the manga/anime is (while ofc prone to Light's.... extreme and borderline comically evil reactions) overwhelmingly grounded with-- especially compared to many anime and manga in general-- comparatively moderate supernatural elements and touches, especially in terms of its visual detail and art direction.  Wingard's Death Note on the other hand, has thunderstorms AND flickering lights that accompany Ryuk's appearances until they... don't (ARE YOU PICKING UP THE SUBTLE FAUSTIAN ELEMENTS HERE AUDIENCE????????), a trip through a Spooky Dark Abandoned Mansion that features a close-up of a busted doll accompanied by a creepy child's laugh NO REALLY IM SERIOUS and deaths that frequently end in torrents of blood because that's what we're really here for apparently -Speaking of a lack of subtlety, while I get the logic in casting Dafoe for Ryuk he ends up being both underutilized and a sadly uninteresting choice, since the apparent direction for him to go more Norman Osbourne really takes away any degree of ambiguity Ryuk has as a patently neutral party in the whole thing (at least as far as the original goes; this really wants to set him up as a Red Herring possible antagonist in a thread that goes absolutely nowhere and ends up meaning nothing).  Like I think he could have worked if the performance was a little lower-key and he had not-terrible writing to work with, but at least someone's having fun in this mess so wth -L fans are gonna be fucking pissed off because HOLY HELL they didn't not fuck him up either -Canon L: Sherlock Holmes but with sweets instead of hard drugs and also he sits weird sometimes -Death Note 2017!L: Fucking Weirdo Asshole With Bizarre Rituals galore and also he can't sleep without Watari awkwardly singing the greatest hits of Celine Dion SHUT UP IM SERIOUS because okay -So the wierd race bullshit definitely doesn't stop at Light because the framing of L (who is played by Keith Stanfield, a black actor and OH BOY I CAN ALREADY HEAR THE IMNOTRACISTBUTS COMING IN) is pointedly, aggressively antagonistic.  Rather than giving Stanfield the collected, analytical, somewhat awkward detective characterized in the source material, Death Note 2017's L's erratic tics and behaviourisms are meant to make the audience find him uncomfortable rather than compelling in his own right, because autistic-coded super detective is such an interesting and not at all gross and played-out formation of a character.  Because again, the movie has no real interest in being suspenseful or focusing on the cat-and-mouse game, L figures out that Light is Kira with very little deduction or buildup, and indeed aside from a pointedly brief midpoint conversation and a completely stupid and pointless chase scene near the end, the two barely interact, so the whole aspect of two strong wills directly competing within inches of each other is tossed aside. -Also WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT A SCENE OF A YOUNG BLACK MAN BEING SLAMMED INTO A TABLE AND NEARLY CHOKED OUT BY A WHITE COP WITH ANGER ISSUES AND A SELF-RIGHTEOUS STREAK IN DEFENSE OF A GUILTY WHITE KID WHO ULTIMATELY GETS AWAY WITH IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TASTE WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT -Speaking of poor taste we couldn't find more than one Japanese actor for a speaking role (Watari, natch, with barely a handful of lines) BUT WE CERTAINLY COULD FOR THIS SEX CLUB SCENE WITH A ROOM PACKED FULL OF DEAD JAPANESE PEOPLE IN FETISH GEAR -Ryuk himself also looks Fuckin Bad and they know it since the overwhelming majority of his shots are him BLURRED THE FUCK OUT IN MIDDLE DISTANCE OR OFF IN THE CORNER -"many people have tried to write the 4 letters in my name into the Death Note but nobody has gotten farther than 2 :)" your full name was literally in there but ok -"all the deaths have to be physically possible" Ferris Wheel magically collapses for no reason to facilitate a death -"I need L's full name to kill him, I'll just take control of Watari with the Death Note EVEN THOUGH WATARI IS A FUCKING ALIAS" and also if this was in fact his real name and L knew it WHY WOULD HE HAVE LET HIM GO AROUND WITH HIS FACE UNCOVERED LIKE????????????????????????????????? -Reveals L without ceremony during the nightclub murder investigation/pretends like there's a mystery and a reveal to be had for the audience and awkwardly attempts to re-enact bits of the original introduction to the character anyway

Ultimately there's more that I'm probably forgetting but wow Death Note 2017 is just impressively dumb.  Like, original Death Note could get pretty dumb especially in the last half, but that was more a case of working itself into a corner over time and its reach extending beyond its grasp on occasion.  This just has no aspirations to even try.

Like, shit, I honestly don't like Death Note all that much but I can at least appreciate that it has some weight to it and made an effort to build a complex character-driven narrative while proposing a thoughtful moral paradox, which is more than I can say for the 'fans' who wanted to adapt it and decided this was the best possible approach lmao