Death Note

A death god drops a notebook in the path of genius student Light Yagami. Upon picking it up, he discovers instructions that whoevers name is written within will die. Despite initial disbelief, Light decides that using the Death Note, he will purge the world of criminals, writing the names of those who appear on the news. Soon enough, the media has named this mysterious force Kira, and parts of the population has grown to support and revere it. Opposing Kira is L, a world renown reclusive detective who has taken a special interest in solving this case.

Writer Tsugumi Ohba and Artist Takeshi Obata also teamed up to create Bakuman, another very good series but not one I've followed all the way to the end yet, and Obata also drew the manga adaptation for Hiroshi Sakurazaka's All You Need Is Kill, otherwise known by the name of it's hollywood remake The Edge of Tomorrow.

Me! Me! Me!

I had absolutely no intention to blog about Me! Me! Me!, the music video accompanying the single of the same name by Japanese Electro Pop DJ Teddyloid until the urge to do so came over me all of a sudden. Me! Me! Me! is a short film/music video animated by Studio Khara that's picked up a lot of heat and attention due to it's perceived controversialness and shock value. The reactions of those viewing it as cheap and shallow is perplexing me a little and I took a while to think about why some people found the video this way whilst others have found it to be extremely deep and thought provoking.

The first big barrier seperating the two aforementioned groups is the maturity of the content. Despite being a 5 minute music video for an electronic pop song, it contains a lot of mature images including nudity and gore. What sets Me! Me! Me! aside from other things controversial for containing these things however is that none of these things are used for the sake of it. The sexual explicitness is a key plot point in the story the song and video is trying to convey and the more gruesome action scenes are to be taken as metaphors. From being naturally exposed to peoples opinions on the short, and from listening to the lyrics of the song and thinking about the animation, I've pieced together a few interpretations of it.