Death Note Tanpenshuu
Death Note Short Stories

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Mod Edit: This review was originally posted for Death Note: Tokubetsu Yomikiri (123699) and has subsequently been merged into Death Note Tanpenshuu (132335).

This was a very fun, short read. If you're a fan of death note in general I highly recommend it. The overarching themes present throughout the original series are ingrained into this one-shot. It presents an interesting take on how owning a death note would look in modern times. The art is as good as ever and the characters, both old and new, are given adequate development, as much as you could expect for something this short. Also included some unexpected political messaging ... which was done well and not ham handed or overwhelming.

Pretty good read. Death Note fans should enjoy it. 8/10

Mod Edit: This review was originally posted for Death Note: Tokubetsu-hen (4941) and has subsequently been merged into Death Note Tanpenshuu (132335).

Ah, well, I seriously just finished reading this, so this is what I have to say about it:

I saw this and I had never known that it was created, so of course I was going to jump straight into it. Now, let me just tell you now, ever since the second arc of the actual Death Note, I've hated Near with a burning passion. And I mean HATE. I've rooted for Mello since the beginning. So when I saw that this was based around ... Near, I got a little nervous. But I went ahead and read it. So, this is my opinion on it:

Story (7): Well, since it's Death Note, I can't really give it that low of a scoring. Because, well, it's Death Note! But the oneshot as a whole (which isn't a lot) wasn't all that great. It was a little upsetting, because it didn't really have anything to do with Death Note, except to just give the Death Note fans 46 more pages of Death Note goodness. But I think that it kind of failed. The best part about the whole thing was the Wammy flashback, when I about had a panic attack when I saw young Matt and Mello off to the side. (I seriously love them that much... XD) So, yeah. This is a long paragraph, so I'm gonna move on now.

Art (7): Now the art made me kinda mad, because all of a sudden, it was supposed to be three years, yet Near and Lidner looked really different. Either they were trying to give the look of time passing, or it had just been too long since Death Note had been written that they lost the touch of the Death Note look.

Character (6): Like I said, they featured two of my least favorite characters throughout the whole thing: Near and Lidner. I never liked them, and I never will. The only reason it's getting a six is because of the Wammy flashback and it had the kickass characters that everyone loves. (Except for the crazy people that really do like Near... no offense. =P)

Enjoyment (6): I enjoyed it, I guess. Although it could have been a lot better. There were times where I just plain skipped a few pages, because they bored me half to death.

Overall (6): This could have been a lot better than it was. It didn't really feel like the Death Note that we love, because there was none of that amazing suspence that Death Note is famous for. There wasn't really a point to this thing, except for maybe trying to make a bit more money off of the Death Note franchise. So, overall, I say just skip it. Read it or don't, 46 pages of random won't really change anything, except you might lose a little bit of respect for Tsugumi Ohba like I did.

Mod Edit: This review was originally posted for Death Note: Tokubetsu-hen (4941) and has subsequently been merged into Death Note Tanpenshuu (132335).

Death Note was a fantastic manga and anime series--sometimes, in the entertainment industry, really successful works get the creators thinking: "So many people liked this. What can we do to keep making profit off the fans?" This usually spawns a sequel, but a general rule of movies/books/etc. is that sequels for profit just don't work. Death Note is one of the latest victims of this, with a one-shot "follow-up" that leaves the readers wondering what was the point.

Story: This is Death Note, after all. ... The story, limited as it was, involves another Death Note killer. Three years after the ending of the original series, people begin dying mysteriously once again. However, this murderer's victims are very different from the original Kira's. The story revolves around that to an extent, but there isn't half as much drive or suspense as in the original. I suppose that is to be expected from a one-shot, but the way it was presented was quite uninteresting. The only thing worth reading was a short flashback of L speaking with the Wammy's House orphans, which gives a little more well-deserved insight into L's character.
Beyond that interesting little tidbit, the story played out like a really bad fanfiction that happened to be written by a professional. The professional, actually: Ohba's still the writer here. This is surprising because you would expect it to be so much better, being written by the original author.
The whole concept of another Death Note user just seems to ruin the whole idea for me: the series' ending was wonderful as it was. I, for one, was perfectly content with how it ended, and to be honest, the original idea of Death Note can only be used once: after that, it's being recycled and is not as good.

Art: The art was way off this time; the characters we know and love all look different, and not just because it takes place three years later. For instance, the adults. The way they were drawn, they just looked...different. I can't think of a better way to describe it. It seemed like the artist decided to slop his way through it, or maybe forgot how to draw the characters since it's been a little while. But that's unlikely.

Character: Terrible. Ohba wasn't thinking straight, because most of the characters are unforgivably "OOC." There are one or two new characters, but the others have weirdly different personalities all of a sudden.
I'm not condemning the characters because of their lack of development--since this is a one-shot story, that's to be expected--but for how out-of-character everyone was.

Enjoyment: I'll name the two enjoyable things: the orphanage flashback, and the fact that Near is now building a Card House Empire that fills up an entire large room. Even better than the original Dice City that I liked so much.

Overall: Since the whole purpose of this one-shot was to make the creators money, and they didn't seem all that interested in keeping to the original series' pace and tone, and felt like majorly messing with the story's canon, there is very little merit to reading this. Unless you want to demonstrate how very, very bad sequels can get, skip it. You'll be no less of a Death Note fan for doing so.