Anime the easy way
Netflix lets you go to the Japanese source for original interpretations
Today’s homework assignment: Read the next chapter in your biology text, write an essay on the use of symbolism in Macbeth and kill the class bully by scribbling his name in a magical notebook.
Now on Netflix, Death Note is an American adaptation of the longrunning Japanese comic book series of the same name, telling the tale of a high school student who gains the power to kill anyone just by writing their name in a leather-bound notebook that literally fell from the sky.
It’s a shame that some film fans get their first taste of Japanese manga and anime through Hollywood adaptations that squander the source material, from Scarlett Johansson’s recent Ghost in the Shell to 2009’s gawdawful Dragonball: Evolution.
If you’ve never really been exposed to anime’s bottomless well of creativity, here are four accessible shows on Netflix worth checking out.
Death Note
Whether or not you intend to watch the American live-action adaptation, the anime based on the original Death Note comics is very much worth a look. The series explores the psychological game of cat and mouse between a high school student named Light and the brilliant, eccentric young detective obsessed with discovering the identity of the killer who is eliminating criminals across Japan. The story goes off the rails about halfway through its 37 episodes, but by that time you’ll likely be too invested in it to quit.
One Punch Man
Imagine being a superhero who could defeat any enemy with a single punch — what might at first seem like a fantastic power would soon become really boring.
Where’s the fun in being a hero if nothing can stand up to your clenched fist? Based on a popular Japanese web comic, One Punch Man is a different sort of superhero story, full of bizarre characters, silly situations, giant monsters and a whole lot of funny, superheroic angst.
Sword Art Online
From The Matrix to next year’s Ready Player One, plenty of films have tackled the idea of characters having adventures in virtual worlds.
Sword Art Online goes deep, chronicling the saga of 10,000 players who log into a new virtual reality online game, then discover they’re unable to log off. Between building a virtual society inside the game and trying to conquer all 100 floors of a deadly virtual castle — their only means of escape — it combines several anime genres into one very watchable series.
Attack on Titan
Only the wild imaginations of Japanese manga creators could come up with something as bizarre as skinless giants that attack human settlements to gobble people up, and the swordwielding warriors trained to battle them.
Like Death Note, Attack on Titan is a long-running manga series that’s been adapted across several formats, and while the anime is a little dialogue-heavy (it would be nice if the characters spent less time talking and more time fighting naked giants) it’s like Game of Thrones in that no character is safe from death.