An interesting thing about any piece of media, whether it be movies, music or anime, is that calling it good or bad strips away any nuance that could possibly be attached to it. A bad work of art can have good points about them, while a good work of art can have bad points. That should be obvious enough, after all, nothing is perfect. But with that said, it is quite rare to find people negatively critiquing something they like or vice versa. I have yet to see someone say something negative about Breaking Bad, but still acknowledge how incredible it is. Okay, so with that mild introduction out of the way, I would like to jump straight into it, first with Death Note. [Warning: major spoilers for Death Note and Attack on Titan Season 3 Part II]

Now Death Note is no stranger to criticism. Contrary to what I said before, Death Note is both subject to high praises as well as accusations of being a letdown, in a similar manner to Game of Thrones. But here’s where I’m going to branch off from the usual criticism. Death Note’s major flaws do not only exist in the second half, which is what most people target their disappointment towards, it exists from start to finish. Here is where my earlier intro comes in: I’m not saying the first half of Death Note is bad, much the opposite, I think Death Note is a masterpiece including the much panned second half. But the reasons why Death Note fell in its second half were planted all the way back in the first half, so no matter what Death Note did in the second half, it could never have satisfied the expectations built into the audience in the first. To highlight my points, let’s compare it with an anime that executes well the areas Death Note gets wrong; an anime that only seems to get better with its second half- Attack on Titan.

Attack on Titan first aired in 2013, and it quickly rose to levels of popularity matching, if not surpassing, that of Death Note. It can even be argued that Attack on Titan did better and broke through to a mainstream audience in the west to a much greater extent than Death Note. Though that could be because Death Note paved the way and made it possible for anime like Attack on Titan to do better in the future in the first place. But unlike Death Note, Attack on Titan was immediately criticized by many people in the anime community, being belittled as an overrated popular “Shonen junk” likewise to Naruto and Bleach, and something that is not as good as the less mainstream gems (Monogatari fans are you reading this!?) . Fast forward to Attack on Titan’s third season in 2018, and suddenly this anime is “incredible now“. But the thing is, although I do agree it did improve as the seasons progressed, the idea that it turned good later is entirely untrue. What Attack on Titan did in its second half could not have been achieved without what it did in season 1.

The basement key: a mystery box

Mystery Boxes

Some of you might be familiar with the concept of mystery boxes, coined by Lost creator JJ Abrams. It is when a mystery is set up in a box in front of the viewers, but only as a tease to get them to watch further with the promise of it eventually being opened to reveal said mystery. It is an effective tool for mystery storytelling and something JJ Abrams ironically enough isn’t all too good at, as can be seen in Lost which starts amazingly, but like Death Note approaches its final arc with a whimper. Now, I believe for a mystery box to work it needs to follow the below rules:

The mystery box should not solely be used for shock factor or cliffhanger purposes, but should also serve the plot. The longer a mystery box is left unopened, the greater the reveal of the mystery should be. The reveal should not be an ass-pull, i.e. foreshadowing and logical consistency with past plot/character developments.

The third rule is only really a problem for the really badly written works, without any pre-planning or idea behind it. Fortunately, neither writers of Death Note or Attack on Titan are incompetent writers with no clue as to what they are doing, neither is Abrams, although occasionally he does lean towards coincidences and a lack of a reward to viewers for paying attention (i.e. changing plot points because the fan theorists figured it out). But only one of these writers satisfy all three rules and that is Attack on Titan’s Hajime Isayama.

The second rule is fairly simple. The impact or reward of a reveal should be directly proportional to the length the mystery’s answer was withheld from the audience in order to satisfy the mounting expectations. People are satisfied to find out that Eren is actually alive and not eaten in the very next episode, but would only groan if it was revealed after a whole season. People are wowed to find out what’s in the basement after two seasons, but they would hardly care and only be overwhelmed if it was revealed in one episode. JJ Abrams completely botches on this one, he doesn’t seem to want to open any of his mystery boxes, and by the time they are opened they have little impact on the audience or the plot. Both Death Note and Attack on Titan has this rule covered.

Death of L

Now here’s the interesting one, the first rule. This is where Attack on Titan and Death Note diverge. Death Note infamously made the mistake of killing off L for the sake of shock and a cheap short-term pay-off. The mystery box of “who will outsmart who” is something that should have been held off until the very end, for an ultimate long-term pay-off. Instead the writers decided to cash-out early and out went their biggest reason for audiences to tune in- L vs Light. Thus they wrote themselves into a plot pit. While Attack on Titan’s big plot twist, the basement reveal, turned the plot onto its head, giving us a twist that not only enhanced the story, but gave us an impact equivalent to the amount of time it took to reach this revelation.

This is not the only instance where Death Note shows impatience in the craft of mysteries. Death Note is one of the most binge-worthy, cliffhanging, fast-paced anime to ever exist, and sometimes that works to its detriment. Death Note is afraid, it is afraid of boring its audience, it is afraid of falling behind on Weekly Shonen Jump’s tables of content rankings, it is afraid people won’t pay attention.

Death Note is filled with short-term mystery boxes, stuff that is set up and opened and explained thoroughly in the very same episode, and it is filled with hilariously over-dramatic scenes such as the potato chips one, all in a paranoid attempt at preventing the audience from being bored. This is how it created the high adrenaline, binge-able episodes/chapters. As soon as the revelation of one mystery sets into the viewers, another box is introduced, multiple ones are opened simultaneously, and the audience is breathless and excited for more. And this was what I feel ended up being the bane of Death Note.

Potato chip scene: no room for boredom… or thinking

The lack of long-term mystery boxes meant that by the end of the series, there was no grand reveal, no big pay-off that rewarded the audience for sticking with the show. Things that happened in the first half was now barely relevant to the plot of the second half. The only exception may be the mystery of what Ryuk was actually planning to do with Light, and then the pay-off where Ryuk writes Light’s name onto the death note, which is also a callback to an earlier conversation the two had in the beginning of the series. That mystery box may as well be given most of the credit for making the ending of Death Note great, despite the rest of the second half being lacking.

Attack on Titan on the other hand employs short-term and long-term mystery boxes masterfully, with each following the first and second rule well. No character is killed prematurely against plot interests (see Armin and Reiner’s case vs that of Erwin and Marco). The revelation that Eren is alive and can transform into a titan was revealed in the very next episode, the revelation of the identity of the Armored and Colossal Titan was on the very next season, and the basement mystery box that was set-up since the first episode made its grand reveal by the third season’s second act. Isayama utilizes both kinds of long and short-term mystery boxes with great intent and purpose for his plot, and there are many more boxes still unopened, waiting to be unleashed in the final moments of the anime/manga.

Death Note’s theme spelled out clearly (read from right to left)

Themes

Theme is important, theme can be the difference between an okay anime/movie and a masterpiece. Before going in further, let’s define what the themes are for the two shows. For Death Note, its central theme is unarguably “justice”, it is not even made subtle, probably because the writers underestimated its audience (which I don’t blame them since Death Note originally ran on a Shonen demographic magazine). For Attack on Titan, which has many themes, its central one is most likely “freedom”. Both of these concepts are personified by the protagonists, with L and Light embodying their ideas of true justice, and Eren and Armin embodying their ideas of freedom.

Focusing on Death Note, the main conflict arises from the contradiction between Light’s and L’s brands of justice. Light believes justice should be swift, intolerant and punishing, while L believes in a more liberal interpretation of justice involving due process, investigation and systematically determined punishment. Light believes in the use of vigilantism, whereas L believes justice can only be served by a body greater than one person (i.e a jury or government). Light’s approach to justice is stemmed in emotion and anger, L’s approach is apathetic and logical. Neither displays a perfect form of justice, with both lacking the touch of humanity or empathy. This was the central conflict of Death Note, and it failed in delivering it.

When L died prematurely, the philosophical debate at hand died with him, as now only one side of the argument stood, which was Kira’s. The philosophical theme reached one half of its climax in the middle of the series. Without the dynamic between the two trains of thought, Death Note quickly lost its substance. A work of fiction is not obligated to impart life lessons or offer solutions to its consumers. The idea that it is up to the audience to interpret how they see fit is not a new one. But in Death Note, L’s philosophy ended up unexplored in comparison to Light’s.

By the end, no one is really sure what message about justice Death Note tried to tell us, other than Light’s end of the story: that the hubris of one man cannot serve true justice and will only lead to failure. Because of this Death Note came out a half concluded product by the ending, missing that other half that L embodied and brought to the table. Maybe if Death Note slowed its pace down, fleshed out its characters and themes more, and gave room for its audience to think instead of trying to shock them at every other moment, the second half could have come out much differently.

“Those enemies on the other side of here, if we kill them all, does that mean… we’ll be free?”

Attack on Titan, on the other hand, is not finished, but it has showed time and again that it did not forget about its theme in the chaos of plot twists. The basement reveal only deepened the question of what it means to be free. Before, Eren thought freedom meant killing all the titans, after the basement reveal the enemies turned out to be other humans. Does freedom now mean killing all humans? In doing this, the stakes were made higher, the plot was served, and the concept of freedom is still at the core.

Attack on Titan has continually been tightly focused on its theme and always avoided straying away from it. Armin could have been killed for the shock factor, but Isayama realized Armin is still needed for the plot whereas Erwin has fulfilled his arc. This is why people who think Erwin should have lived over Armin is wrong, from a narrative perspective of course. Armin forms the other half of the coin to Eren, and whatever message Attack on Titan is trying to tell us about freedom, isn’t going to be revealed until the climax of the final season. This is how storytelling is done right in the long-term.