tv show Archives - My Japanese Wife

Ask Mr. Robot

Though I haven’t had a TV now for over 10 years, I discovered a new show from USA Network called Mr. Robot. It’s becoming increasingly easier to find content online. I mean lets face it, at some point cable is going to be completely gone as we know it. Not to mention all the pirating that is done. I would never do that of course 🙂 I found Mr. Robot from a reddit post about there being a free pilot to watch on YouTube. What an excellent way to get the pilot out and gauge the response other than to post it on YouTube for free? Kudos to USA Network on that one, though I am sure it’s been done before. The video has since been made private for some reason. I guess the response was good enough however to keep the series going.

I watched the pilot without reading the reddit post comments or looking up what the show was about. Being a robot myself, I was interested. I usually don’t like to watch trailers or know what I am watching until the movie or show is going and either I find myself being entertained or disgusted and turn it off. I have to say though I was pretty taken with Mr. Robot. Not for it’s fantastic acting or action scenes or CGI, but for the actual content of the show. It’s refreshing sometimes to watch something that captures your attention enough to want to think about what’s being presented rather than just being mindlessly entertained. Though that has it’s merits at times.

A notebook about death

There are still many things I have yet to discover about Japan or Japanese or something Japanish or Japaneseish, you get the picture. Through my extensive research so far of everything Japan, I am becoming and expert of course, I have found something called Death Note. Death Note is an anime series about exactly what it says in the name, a note about death. More to the point however it’s a notebook that is used to write someones name in to have them die. Quite something if you ask me. Could you imagine a notebook written for the soul purpose of the systematic destruction of a people(s) of your choosing? Come to think of it, it’s happened already many time throughout our history. Probably the most recent and notable is Mein Kampf authored by Hitler outlining his political agenda and plans for the new world Germany. With that there was also a book at the time called Sonderfahndungsliste G.B or better known as The Black Book which was a list of 2,820 Britons to be arrested by Nazi Germany of her successful invasion of England by 1940. So I guess an anime series about something similar isn’t too far off.

The Death Note series is composed of 37 roughly 20 minute blurbs taking you through a dramatic process of conflict and resolution around the notebook. The series starts with a shinigami or death god that drops the notebook from the “underworld”. Death gods are supernatural gods in Japanese culture who invite humans to their death. In the case of the Death Note series, a shinigami writes down a humans name they choose to die. The notebook is dropped by the god because he’s basically bored with the underworld and wants to give the power of the notebook to a human for his own personal “entertainment”. The notebook is picked up by Light Yagami who is a highly intelligent young high school student who believes the god picked him for the purpose to use the book. He immediately is enamored with the power of the notebook and wants to become his own god of a “new world” to rid the planet of anyone he’s see’s fit to die. Yeah, you can see where this is going already. Light is challenged by L, who is rivaled by Light’s intelligence and youth, to find who the user of the book is and bring him to justice. The notebook also has a set of particular rules to follow when using it. It’s quite an extensive list to describe but basically if you don’t follow the rules properly, bad things can happen to the user or otherwise.