Title: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
Author: Death Note: Black Edition Volume IV
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 417
Rating 3.5/5
I am still enjoying this series, but it’s starting to get samey by this point – and dare I say it, predictable? I don’t know, it’s just starting to feel a little bit as though the authors are trying to make it more complex at the expense of the actual story. Plus there was a character death that kind of bummed me out, although I kind of knew it was coming. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they turn out to not be dead.
I’ve compared Death Note to Prison Break in previous reviews, partly because each of these Black Edition bind-ups feels like a season of a TV show and partly because each individual issue ends up on a cliff hanger. It works, at least for a while, but at this point of the series the formula is starting to feel a little thin and I was kind of hoping for some extra innovation.
Still, I’m still enjoying reading through each of the different books in the series, it’s just that they went good, great, pretty good and then okay. That doesn’t fill me with much hope for the last two books in the series, but hey ho. I’m invested enough at this point that I want to see it through, and I also have a feeling that I’ve predicted a few of the twists and turns that the story is going to take.
I think another of the reasons why I gave this a 3.5/5 instead of a 4/5 or even a 4.5/5 is the fact that it’s getting hard to track who each of the death notes has belonged to. That then had the knock-on effect of making it difficult to theorise about what might happen next because there were too many different threads going on. But at the same time, I can see why that might appeal to some people.
All in all though, the series is pretty good and even though this isn’t the best installment, it’s worth reading and continuing on. There are only two more Black Editions to go now, and I will admit that I’m curious to see how it will end. I just think that at this rate, when I look back at it, it’ll be the first couple of editions that I think of. So yeah.
