Death Note: The Last Name: Satisfactory

Shirleon joins Melvin to discuss Death Note: The Last Name, a sequel to 2006’s Japanese live-action adaptation, Death Note, that released 3-months later. The two look at the film as a unit with its predecessor, its successes as a stand-alone sequel, and compare it to the anime (as well as the Western Netflix adaptation).

Topics:

• (PATREON EXCLUSIVE) 26-minutes discussing “Evil AI is Boring Now – Which is Kind of Scary“, a think piece from James Hibberd on The Hollywood Reporter, and wondering what makes AI/AGI movies interesting, or not, in 2025. (PATREON EXCLUSIVE)
• How Death Note: The Last Name truncates the the latter-half of the source material, reordering some things and altering others outright, works pretty well.
• Shirleon enjoyed seeing the Death Note story unfold in a new, better-handled manner. It helped her better understand what she likes about the overall narrative.
• If these adaptations are missing anything, it’s the monologues.
• Melvin wonders why a “Set in the world of Death Note” anthology movie or series hasn’t been created, and he elevator-pitches five ideas that could be explored.
• Talking about the recurrent line “Sacrifices are necessary.”.
• Melvin felt the ending satisfied the main thematic beats of its source material. Shirleon feels different.

Recommendations:

• Alien: Earth (2025) (TV Series)
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) (Movie)

Death Note: The Last Name is Not Rated. It features Tatsuya Fujiwara, Ken’ichi Matsuyama, Erika Toda, Nana Katase, Magy, Sakura Uehara, Michiko Godai, Hikari Mitsushima, Ikuji Nakamura, and Sota Aoyama. Directed by Shûsuke Kaneko. Death Note: The Last Name is available here.

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Melvin Benson is the Founder, Editor-In-Chief, and Lead Host of Cinematic Doctrine. Whether it’s a movie, show, game, comic, or novel, it doesn’t matter. As long as it’s rich, he’s ready and willing to give it a try! His hope is to see King Jesus glorified as far as the east is from the west!

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