I have seen the entire show - and the movie - and don’t recall anything homoerotic about the two main characters offhand.
Did you see the anime?
L calls light “his first ever friend.”
L puts ~64 cameras in Light’s bedroom; and maybe a half-dozen more in the rest of the Yagami household.
Light (as Kira) voluntarily submits to confinement; L has him bound hand and foot, and blindfolded to boot, in a mildly suggestive BDSM style.
L handcuffs himself to Light. Sleeping, eating, and bathroom (personal hygiene) arrangements are glossed over, but you kind of have to wonder…
L washes Light’s feet, right before Light kills him. ETA: Rem actually does the deed, but it was Light’s machinations that forced Rem into that choice.
After L’s death, Light is constantly comparing Near to L, and clearly fondly remembers L.
As Light lay dying, shot to hell and gone (Matsuda, who knew you had it in you?), he either hallucinates seeing L’s ghost, or perhaps actually saw L’s ghost; who knows for sure?
Most of it is fairly innocent, with the most egregious scene being the foot washing scene, but the way Light tenderly caresses L’s wet hair…yeah, nothing to see here. Popular fan theory is that the writer’s/producer’s deliberately threw that in to give the Yaoi fangirls something to go all moe about.
The real puzzler is the amount of Matt x Mello shipping. Do not do a web image search for some of the fanart for that pairing!
I’ll grant that it was not blatantly homoerotic; it was somewhat suggestive of it, though.
Yagami=I’mAGay backwards.
Probably 14yo stuff, but there it is. That’s what Sophia was talking about… like I said, the child can’t summarize for shit. <3
I could see Light being gay. I’m just surprised I didn’t catch any sort of element of homoeroticism since there was a time in my life (when I had a zillion gay friends) that I could see homoeroticism in anything.
Clueless straight guy here. Reading that list, I can see where that stuff is available, but nothing I picked up.
But I was into comic books as a kid and didn’t see the various subtexts related to folks running around with their underpants outside their clothes. What do I know?
Never heard of Deathnote before this thread. Now as a result, I’m about six episodes in and totally hooked.
It’s on Hulu if anyone else is interested.
And Netflix, last I checked.
I just chalked it up to Japanese cultural differences, more than seeing it as intentionally homoerotic.
Plus, they are pretty screwed up individuals regardless of their sexual orientation.
Yeah, I know about the homoeroticism mostly from the fandom. And I don’t doubt that it was probably more do to cultural differences.
I’m going a lot by what I’ve been told and what I’ve read. I only watched it a few times, at a time in my life when I wasn’t really that interested. I just feel like I’ve watched the whole thing because I hear about it so often.
Maximum The Hormone totally fucking rocks!
I just started the manga. It’s very good. Good enough that I may check out the anime version soon.
Some background: I’m not a big fan of manga or anime. I don’t really like either and find most boring or uninteresting. It’s just not my cup of tea.
But Death Note is good and interesting and not hard to follow at all…and it’s completely unlike what I thought it was going to be.
Still early in the story…only chapter 19 of 108.
I’m not really into anime, but Deathnote is one of the legitimately good ones. Maybe not quite as good as its reputation, but it’s a worthwhile watch. There’s a lot of genuinely clever tricks and ploys in its cat-and-mouse back and forth. I do have a couple major criticisms though.
Firstly, it keeps introducing new rules that basically amount to deus ex machinas to bail out Light.
Light can’t figure out someone’s real name? Oh, here’s this extra power you (or your ally) can get to see anyone’s name just by looking at them! Light’s cornered and on the verge of having to confess? Oh, here’s a way to pass off the book and invoke a weirdly selective amnesia! Light needs an accomplice? Oh, well, now he can pass it off without that pesky amnesia thing.
It felt like the writers kinda took the easy way out rather than follow through with the situations they created.
Secondly, society doesn’t really react in a plausible way.
They figure out pretty early on that Kira needs names and faces to make his kills, but the government still publishes that info freely. Yeah, I get that the people in charge fear for their lives, but it’s ridiculous that people would go along with getting arrested = death without society immediately descending into riots. I mean, at the very least it would create a situation where all criminals violently resist arrest for even the most minor offenses, turning policing into an all out war.
It feels like a kind of weirdly Japanese attitude where it’s assumed people will still follow the rules even when they no longer make any sense.
It’s a good series, but it definitely has some major flaws.