curse you, death note!

It's after midnight, and tomorrow's a workday, and I knew I wasn't going to get more than five and a half hours of sleep anyway, so I had the bright idea of finally watching Death Note. (Awesome show, by the way.) Well, I started last night, and as is only meet when one starts a new anime series, I binged my time away both last night and this night; and as fate would have it, the episode I ended on tonight, at which point I decided that I could not in good conscience watch another, given my age and the common sense I presumably amassed after my love affair with Bleach during the tenth boards, was the one in which L dies. Yes, he's dead. I checked on the wiki. I don't think anyone alive can match me for my ability to spoil a good thing for myself. I spoilt the last Harry Potter when I skipped blithely to the last few pages on the car ride back from the book store, when rumors that Harry was going to be killed off in the seventh book still abounded. Fortunately, there was not much to spoil in regards to L's death, since the wiki entry pretty much ended at the point where he died, leaving no possibility of a Holmesian return from the grave. Dear God, oh God. I can't remember the last time the death of a character made such an impression on me. And damn, was the buildup to the act marvelous, from the first time L's electronic voice boomed out at the assembled plenipotentiaries all the way up to the neo-noir paroxysm of insanity that erupted at the moment of L's death. From the beginning I was rooting for L. I'd been of the opinion for the last seven years or so - which is to say, ever since people started recommending Death Note to me and I started putting it off for later - that I'd be in Light's camp - perhaps because the sort of evil in the Biblical sense that that he embodies has historically appealed to me (see Trinity Blood), or perhaps I just thought he was superior to L sartorially; but when I actually started watching the series, I found Light to be utterly odious from the get-go. There is nothing appealing about his delusional narcissistic megalomania. L, on the other hand, represents the thinking man - which is to say, us. I realize Nicky's blog layout still indicates as much, and there's not much more I can add. I'll just say, RIP, L.