First point -- Death Note people, you have cast-iron cajones, for naming your first episode "Boredom." I'm not screwing around: "Boredom". This is rather like getting onto a boat named "Buoyancy's Enemy," or reading a book named TV Schedules for the Blind Illiterate. However, most of the time the first episode of Death Note avoids this.

Basic premise: the top-ranked student in the nation (high schooler, of course), is bored as hell. A demon/monkey/angel/Noh theater dude is bored as well. Ryuk is his name -- the main character's name is Light. Yes, Light. Like you know, light. Damn it, Japan. Stop that. Bad media producer.

Light isn't merely bored, though, no no. He's disaffected, like every teenager, ever. The world is "rotten," he says, and ignore the horrible pun that makes combined with the prominence of apples in the opening. He finds the demon/dog guy's "Death Note," a notebook capable of killing folks. Like any good disaffected high schooler, he brushes it off as a daft chain letter, but takes the notebook home anyway, and pores over the instructions, while he should be doing something constructive, like studying, watching tv, or masturbating. In a bid to amuse himself he writes the name of a guy holding some kids hostage into the book, and said guy falls over, dead.

Whoops.

Then the, uh, well, the tale of interest, I guess, begins. He tests the book again, this time interposed with a scene I was impressed to see, honestly, and then Ryuk shows up to explain how bored he was, and doesn't life suck. He also intimates ooh spooky things about what'll happen to Light when he dies, and Light swears to, and I'm not being hyperbolic, to become the new god of a cleansed world.

Well, Japan, I can commend you for having the testicular fortitude to take a series in that direction right from the beginning -- Light is obviously a disturbed little bastard, but two things keep this from being great. Okay, three.

1. Light is, as I said, a disturbing little bastard, and I don't just mean he's emo. He's jaws to the wall nuts, by the end of the first episode, and I can't connect to him in any way at all. Sure, whatever, he bitches about how he's the only person in his class that would do the noble and right thing with the book, good for him, but still -- crazy nuts. It's daring to have a guy be that sure of himself and still be so horrible, I suppose.
   
   
2. It wasn't the best move to name this episode as accurately as you did, guys. "Boredom," remember? The episode needed to cut down on a little of the bitching and explanations, and just show us Light being moon'd, lunatic style.
   
   
3. I'm pretty sure this is meant to be a plot-heavy, twist-n-turn show, am I right? Maybe not in the way of a bad 70s soap, but just in that the progression of Light's whacko-brain and the repercussions of his actions will drive things, there's no super-hot action to focus on. So, Death Note production crew? Show us some of that, huh? The first episode only serves to set up Light's "quest," and show us Ryuk the Shinigami, who's morbid, oily-lookin', and mean, or something. Give us a hint of crap coming down, eh? Eh??
   
   

I don't have any screen shots, because I don't care enough to bother. The whole thing looks the same, with a pallet of "OH EM JEE PAINT IT BLACK!! EMOTIONAL HARDCORE!!!"

Don't confuse what I'm saying here, it's a decent show. I'll keep watching as long as I can, but I'm lucky it's just started -- if there were a backlog of these episodes, I probably couldn't make it through them all without a rainbow enema.

Luckily, I have most of the Soft Bulletin and Blueberry Boat just sitting around.