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I thought I’d write an entry on this book after having read it, but I’m in one of those writing moods right now, and since I’ve been in a dry-spell for so long, this opportunity simply can’t pass me by.

I’m a bit more than half-way done with the book and have been since day one of reading the book…so why haven’t I progressed? Actually, I wanted to finish the book the day I bought it but wasn’t able to because 1. I’m a slow reader and 2. I keep getting distracted while I’m reading. The two are somewhat intertwined really. I’d like to say I have too much going on to find time to finish the book, but I should be able to find time for something even if I am really very busy. Perhaps I’m not motivated. I shall finish before the end of June though.

Yes the word Alchemist was a huge determining factor for becoming interested in this book. Me and my Fullmetal Alchemist obsession…>.> I did read the inside jacket before choosing it however and was on the verge of picking a book about Jane Austen before seeing this one.

What’s so unique about The Alchemist is that the main character’s name is only mentioned once, at the very first sentence of the very first page of Part One: “The boy’s name was Santiago.” For the remainder of the book, he is known as “the boy”. I actually forgot his name was ever mentioned until a few days after reading the book and glancing at the first page. It’s written by a Brazilian author by the name of Paulo Coelho and the main character is from Spain. Most of the adventures take place in the northern deserts of Africa.

It’s a book about finding one’s destiny and how pursuing it is one’s own responsibility. Some people choose not to because they haven’t realized it, or they feel that it is merely a fantasy too far away to reach. Some people would rather have the fantasy and dream about their destiny than actually pursuing and fulfilling their destiny. The main character is confronted with many obstacles both internal and external and at times he almost gives up his dream. But he has courage, a determination to listen to his heart, a belief in omens, and creative optimism to guide him through his journey.

There’s something magical and enchanting about this adventure book. It has fantasy, adventure, romance, and other genres that I like. I also like how the main character starts by living a common life of travel through his trade of shepherding and fantasizes marrying a merchant’s daughter. Then one day he has a dream telling him to go to the Egyptian pyramids, a destination pointed out to him by a child in his dream and apparently leading to treasure. That one dream and the words of a gypsy and King Salem push him towards a great adventure.

Warning: may contain spoilers in process of analysis though nothing major

I haven’t finished watching this anime yet. I’m not sure if I will since I’ve already read the manga. I was fully engrossed in the manga while I was reading it and the anime seems to follow it pretty well. There are parts cut out, but for the most part it stays true to the manga. I could be wrong later in the anime, but thus far, everything is predictable - so much so that it’s at times tedious to watch. It’s only tedious because I’d read everything before, but if this is your first time watching it, I can almost guarantee you won’t want to stop.

I love the art for the manga as well as the anime. The symbolic use of colors such as red and blue and the continuous use of apples is pretty nice. Light’s evil laugh is something I hadn’t imagined while reading the manga and I think Mamoru Miyano did a remarkable job of that as well as the change in Light’s voice from cheerful innocence to cunning evil.

If you like mystery, psychology, the supernatural, drama as well as amazing art, then I would recommend this to you - that is if you haven’t already read or watched it. I didn’t like the ending much but that’s just me. Other than my disappointment with the ending and what happened to L, everything else was superb.

What interested me the most was that the protagonist is an anti-hero. Light/Raito Yagami is an honors student who is extremely smart yet bored out of his mind. When he finds the Death Note, unlike most people, he isn’t scared by its power to kill. Nor does he think of using the Death Note for personal gain. In fact, he vows to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. On the surface, this may seem like a noble deed, but to have one person judge the life of all others is unjust in itself. I’m one of those people who believes no one has the right to take the life of another, like Vash the Stampede. Ryuk/Ryuku the Death God/Shinigami even makes the comment that in the end Light would be the only one with a bad personality if he were to rid the world of evil. Light, himself, does not see it so. Instead he believes it’s his destiny to judge and change the world.

The Death Note grants Light great powers, but with great power comes great responsibility. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely. The people of this world would not be happy if evil were rid through death as punishment. Instead they would live in fear and possibly even hate. Sure Light’s method of abolishing evil may be fast and efficient, and it has been proven in the manga that the crime rate dropped 70%, but in the long run this sort of judgment will create much controversy and revolts. Light not only kills criminals without hesitation, but he also kills those who are in the way of his grand scheme.

Ryuk, Light’s Shinigami, is pretty special in terms of Shinigami. Normally, Shinigami are lazy and don’t bother meddling with the human world. Unlike other Shinigami, Ryuk has an unusually large capacity for boredom and the need to stop his boredom. He’s actually interested in the human world and the way people use and respond to the Death Note. He makes no judgments however, and neither helps nor hinders Light’s plans and goals. He does, however, warn Light that he will be the one to write Light’s name in his notebook when it comes time for Light to die. Also, that those who use the Death Note can neither go to Heaven nor Hell, that humans who use the notebook will experience feelings of terror.

It’s true that Light becomes more corrupt as the story progresses, but looking back towards the beginning at the closure of the story, one can sympathize with Light. He wasn’t an evil person to begin with. He had good intentions and wanted to use the notebook for the benefit of society. It was the magnitude of power that the notebook possesses that inevitably corrupts him. Also, Light’s confident personality and his resolute mind after deciding his own destiny. When he lost memory of the notebook, he even said so himself, after realizing the similarity between himself and Kira, that he couldn’t possibly be Kira because he wouldn’t kill people even if they were criminals. I think in this way, the notebook itself may have an evil force about it that drives people towards evil and misfortune.

This anime doesn’t seem to have absolute themes (according to the author), but one I consider to be important is the concept of justice. The manga doesn’t state outright that the police represent justice and Light/Kira represents evil. Many people may argue that L is justice, and when L says “justice will prevail” with his cute little smile, you can’t help but believe it so. Yet L was also willing to sacrifice criminals such as Lind L. Taylor. Though Taylor’s death was indeed inevitable (he was scheduled to be put to death just at the moment that Kira killed him), L deliberately allowed the execution of criminals to fall out of the impersonal justice system, and this shows that he is in this aspect no different from Kira in his willingness to let the power of judgment fall out of the law’s hands. It is hypocritical, also, for L to insist that Kira must be stopped if L himself freely allows Kira to continue his actions, even if he does so out of pragmatism. Additionally, L lacks respect for human life, possibly to a higher extend than Light himself does; as demonstrated in the Yotsuba arc, L is willing to allow more criminals to die in order to assist in his winning the war against Kira; on the contrary, Light, having lost his Kira memories, wants to save as many lives - even those of criminals! - as possible. This further suggests that true evil lies in the Death Note itself.

After all this, I’m not saying I dislike L and that I’m on Light’s side, but I just wanted to throw this perspective out there. If anyone were to personify justice, it would most likely be Chief Yagami, Light’s father. He also wants to save as many lives as possible, never killing anyone, putting people’s lives above winning against Kira, and putting his own life on the line in the persute in catching Kira. Yet I believe the main message Death Note tries telling us is that people are all different, and they each have a different sense of justice. There is no good and evil in Death Note, just like Near said in the last chapter. There are just different sets of beliefs at war with each other, though I do believe Kira is evil and that Light’s form of justice is twisted and corrupt.

What do you think determines or defines justice?

For further discussion relating to Death Note, check out the forum. If there isn’t already a topic, feel free to start one.

I hadn’t recalled this while watching Fullmetal Alchemist but now that our Western Civilization class has read Frankenstein, it finally dawned on me that Victor Frankenstein studied Alchemy was well. But, alchemy is viewed differently in Victor’s world than Edward’s world. It is out-dated and pale in comparison to modern science. In Edward’s world, alchemy is modern science, and it’s pretty powerful, used in the military in Amestris and for medical purposes in Xing. I read the book for the first time Junior year in high school and thought it was a pretty interesting book, but the second time around, I found it to be even more fascinating than the first because now I can compare and contrast Frankenstein with Fullmetal Achemist.

Both Victor and Edward were pretty absorbed in their studies on human life and the idea of creating life or restoring life. Victor Frankenstein’s mother died as well, but his objective to create a living being is different from the motives of the Elric brothers. He simply wanted to see if it was possible to create life without biological means (asexually). Edward wanted to bring his mother back to life to see her smile again, out of love for his mother.

Victor created a monster who was largely grotesque yet intelligent and compassionate. Edward, however created a monster that died right after its creation, but in return he lost his leg and arm. He lost his leg as a passing fee when he saw the gate and his arm when he tried transmuting his brother’s soul to a suit of armor. Alphonse had his body taken to the other side of the gate and almost lost his soul as well when it was somehow taken by the monster, but luckily was rejected because the soul is only compatible with certain media. In a way that suit of armor is like a time bomb because he will never know when and if that suit of armor will reject his soul.

Well, that was the manga version of human transmutation. The anime version somewhat flows better with Frankenstein’s monster since the monster or better known as homunculus created by Ed and Al did survive. But Ed and Al’s monster was not rejected by society because she was not grotesque and looked pretty human from the outside. Had people known she was a homunculus, however, like Ed and Al later, she would have been somewhat of an outcast, but still accepted by the other homunculi namely Wrath. But then again, she did resemble of a decayed body till after eating the Red Stones or incomplete Philosopher’s Stones.Yet Ed and Al’s homunculus had an evil conscience and Frankenstein’s monster was only driven by revenge after being shunned by society as well as his creator. I wonder if that would have been the case for Ed and Al’s homunculus had it not been fed Red Stones.

Now I’m wondering if Frankenstein’s monster can be considered a homunculus since it probably didn’t have a soul since there’s no way of creating one. Victor didn’t use a Philosopher’s Stone or Red Stones - at least not that I’m aware of. He did use various dead body parts and human sacrifices were also needed in alchemy to resurrect the dead. There was even mention of the Philosopher’s Stone, transmutation and chimeras. Perhaps Frankenstein’s monster can be more accurately defined as a chimera. According to the MSN Encarta Dictionary, “an organism, or part of one, with at least two genetically different tissues resulting from mutation, the grafting of plants, or the insertion of foreign cells into an embryo.” And homunculus in our world are classified as basically a “little person.” and Frankenstein is a giant compared to human.

As for themes, both Frankenstein and FMA have Dangerous Knowledge as a theme. With the knowledge in chemistry/anatomy/alchemy, both Victor and Edward go beyond accepted human limits and access the secret of life. Whereas Victor’s obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to his death, Edward has his brother’s support and they had no idea that they had created a homunculus till much later. They were both able to defeat their homunculus, but not without difficulty as she resembled their mother so much. It was especially hard for Al to see the homunculus die in the anime.

Monstrosity is another theme. Though both Frankenstein’s monster and Ed and Al’s Homunculus can be considered monsters, so too are Victor Ed and Al. Both Ed and Al were alluded to as monsters at some point or another because Al does not have a body and Ed doesn’t have an arm and a leg. One can argue that Victor himself is a kind of monster, as his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society. Ordinary on the outside, he may be the true “monster” inside, as he is eventually consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation.

Both Victor and the Elric Brothers carry an unforgivable sin. For Frankenstein, however, he had lost more of his family and friends and was driven with revenge and the want to kill his monster. His ending was a tragic one whereas the Elric Brothers - in the anime - were able resolve their problem and kill their homunculus. According to the movie, they ended up living together, Al with his body back, though they lived in our world, where alchemy is devoid of its powers found in Amestris in their world.