Title: Death Note: Black Edition Volume II
Author: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 367
Rating 4.5/5
This is arguably the book that’s got me invested in this series, because up until this point, I kind of knew what to expect and roughly what was going to happen. As of this one, I didn’t really know what was going to happen, and that made the book much more enjoyable as a result of it.
I also like the way that the different twists and turns kept me guessing throughout, and it seems as though that’s only going to continue as the story progresses. In a way, it reminds me of Prison Break because of that, with each of these Black Edition bind-ups acting a little bit like different seasons.
Now, I don’t want to go into the story line too much because it’s the second book in a series and so it’s hard to talk about it without revealing spoilers. What I will say is that our understanding of the laws governing the death notes continues to grow here while at the same time, rules that we previously knew about and forgot come back into play.
We also get some new characters coming into play, which changes the game and stops it from feeling as though the authors are simply rehashing the same ideas. Having read the bulk of the third collection at the time of writing, I can also confirm that it sets things up nicely for that, and because this is a longer series, there’s no sense of middle book syndrome here. Just quality writing and quality illustration.
I’m relatively new to manga, and Death Note is the only series that I’ve dipped into so far, but I can safely say after the first two installments of this, I’m hooked. Of course, it helps that the story line itself is so unique, so quirky, and that I haven’t really seen anything like it elsewhere. So would I recommend this book? Of course I would, but it’s obviously not the best one to start with. They need to be read in order.
