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Perhaps you want to discuss a movie, TV series, cartoon or anime you watched, a book you read, or any other piece of culture.
Babylon-Berlin.

A show by German director Tom Tykwer that combines the genres of detective, thriller, and melodrama and is done in an almost noir style. It has everything we've once heard about, like a magician pulling a textbook rabbit out of a cylinder, Tom Tykwer pulls out our own memories from the universal base of the "collective unconscious" by telling the story. Berlin - 1929. This is the time in which the most terrible regime in history was formed, but for some reason many people forget that even under this regime there were exactly the same people who lived in the same way like we do.

The period between the two world wars, known by historians as the Interbellum period, is a crucial and often even decisive period in the development of many countries, usually associated with serious social, cultural and economic changes. Of course, such a controversial period in world history is often reflected in popular culture, including such genres as television crime dramas. In the U.S., this period was the era of Prohibition, brilliantly reproduced in Underground Empire. The English had their critically acclaimed "Sharper Veils". Now Germany has its own TV project, masterfully transporting the viewer into the era of the "Roaring Twenties".

Communists, nationalists, prostitutes, policemen - a motley circle of glitter and poverty, where the latter is countless times greater than the former - people looking for any job, agreeing to anything, selling out without restraint. A nation standing at the very edge of a precipice into the abyss, but not yet realizing that it dances and sings in the last moments before the grandiose fall into the deafening abyss is mesmerizing.

This story is not so much about politics and detective investigations at all as it is about people. This series is like peeking through a keyhole at a life that was, beaten, loved and hated, but now remains only in old, yellowed photos and music.

The atmosphere of the era is something. I've always had a weakness for that 'golden age of jazz', as in 'The Great Gatsby', and with a European accent this era becomes even more appealing. Poverty neighbors with ostentatious luxury, gunfire in the streets makes you think of the trenches of the recent war, the rooms in the bars, where art is closely intertwined with pornography and prostitution, is generally delightful! Anyone who is partial to anything pretentious should take a closer look at this series.

Another plus is the wonderful actors. I've never heard of Volker Bruch and Liv Lisa Fries before, but they play first class, and just watch them enjoyable. I would like to give special mention, of course, to our actors who were invited to play Russian roles. The result is normal Russian speech, and not 'где ваши доказательства" (what's your proof - it became a meme in terms of voice acting for Russian). That's great.
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Death Note


A classic of Japanese animation, this anime watched by many of those who do not watch anime. It's funny that in Russia this title was banned on many resources and there were a lot of scandals with this anime both in Russia and outside of it. But if we analyze the plot, there is a message that is the opposite of the one that is derived from the buzz around the series.

From the very first minutes, a dark story immerses you in the atmosphere of real Tokyo, the plot thrills with its provocative subject matter: it immediately seems to be a reference to Dostoevsky, where there is obviously an attempt to replay the finale of Crime and Punishment. For once, Raskolnikov was replaced not by a reflective brat, but by a strong and self-confident cynic. It's hard to review without spoilers, so read on at your own risk.

Spoilers!!!
Unfortunately, all the psychology and philosophy outlined in the first episode ends there as well. The question of the moral justification for killing criminals is very interesting, and you can open a debate on the subject here (which I will try to do at the end of the review). Easily discarding the philosophical-psychological subtext, the series turns into a chess-like game, a tense intellectual duel between the two main characters: Yagami Light and L. These two are the best thing about Death Note. Equally ambitious, cold-blooded and determined players, how different they are in everything else! How cleverly they both manage to deceive everyone with their looks! One is an enviable role model, but in reality a cynical, unprincipled, and self-absorbed boy. The other - unsmooth and eccentric - turns out to be the most astute and principled. Worthy of each other's rivals, watching the game - a pleasure. And Ryuk, as a spectator, watches it and enjoys how we do it.

Unfortunately, the series has turned out to be very uneven in character and quality.
The first 17 episodes are watchable in the same breath, each episode comes with surprises. It is remarkable that throughout the whole plot the main driving force is the tense dialogues and reasoning of the characters. Perhaps the crowning jewel of the entire series are the episodes in which Light cynically takes out Agent Ray Penber and his fiancée.
However, it seems that all viewers have noted that starting around episode 18, when L finally manages to give his opponent the check, the action dramatically loses tension. The Yotsuba story (episodes 18-24) leaves a sense of bewilderment. On the one hand, it is given too much attention to distract the viewer from the main storyline (the confrontation between Light and L, in which a stalemate occurred), but on the other hand, the story is told too crumpled, and new characters are replaced too quickly to really captivate the action.

Episode 25, which in itself is exceptionally beautiful and deserves its own review, in the context of everything that precedes it, seems to hang in the air from the very first minutes from its atypicality. References to the New Testament in which L washes Light's feet, The ringing of the bells, the visuals. Just a terrific episode. L's death scene and Misa's sad song will surely go into the golden fund of Japanese animation.

After episode 25, Death Note loses that pacing, and resembles a jammed record, endlessly repeating the same situations, motifs, and images. Light still builds more and more complex combinations, and the result is less and less attention to the meaning of what's going on. One by one, his new supporters and opponents are replaced, with the opponents proving to be mere diminutive copies of the dead L. The characters are still watchable, and they even show some new approaches, but it still feels like we've seen it all before.

Death Note is a very interesting work, undoubtedly worthy of the attention it receives. The series has the necessary sum of qualities to be appealing to both mass viewers and more demanding audiences, but it is intended more for fans of suspenseful action rather than psychological depth.
Resume. The series has pretended to be a lot of things. Accordingly, and a great demand for it. In many ways it has justified this demand. The ending has a lot of complaints. But on the other hand, what good can the ending be, where the main character is a mass murderer? Well, the Death Note creators alas can't say that they "created a new world" as Light would have wanted, but they can rightfully repeat the final phrase of the Ryuug Shinigami - "We defeated boredom". Let's give them a big thank you from the audience for that.

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And here we can start a discussion about the moral right to kill criminals. And as a provocation to a reasoned discourse, I will speak out as the devil's advocate.
I have seen reactions to this topic in the form of statements such as:

"Moral principles...killing is bad." \ "Who gave you the moral right to kill?"

- And who gave the moral right to the goverment to kill? (like executions or wars) Now the state has a monopoly on violence and murder .. where does it have such a moral right? Why do we consider something moral for the state but not moral for an individual person? Why? If you define it as the self defense of society against criminals, then yes, that's the point, that's what Kira is doing.
Morality is different from country to country, from culture to culture, from one time to another time. People have always killed each other throughout the entire historical process. And no one has ever given any rights to this, and nothing has changed from this Then what is morality anyway? What are you appealing to? Why exactly is "morality" a factor in this question? So a man kills a man...and? What's next? Go to hell, or what the point? And there is a clear contradiction with the fact that throughout history man has constantly killed man and this is morally justified as something right like again on wars or in executions...
I mean, public morality says it's bad to kill a people, and at the same time it's good to kill a people. It's kind of a contradiction.
And what is morality to you anyway? Is it up in the air somewhere? Can you point a finger at it? No? Well, as in the case of fairies or unicorns, according to the scientific method, what cannot be looked at materially does not exist. There is no morality, it is a social construct which has been imposed on everyone, an individual can hold any ethical position, for example - "human life has no value like that of other animals, he who killed - won, he who was killed - lost" And death is much more objective than any invented morality. And that's what really matters.

"Human life is priceless. There's a commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill.' You're not a god to take a man's life."

- What god are we talking about? There's a lot of justification for murder in the bible... The story of Abraham and Isaac, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and the murder of the babies of Bethlehem, Moses' speech to the judges of Israel, Deuteronomy, and so on and so forth. Too many to list. So is Judaism, Islam, and many other religions. So? What does this have to do with God? Why is it relevant? How can a Christian god be a relay of absolute public morality when he himself justified the murder and rape of women and children? "Human life is priceless"-Why? In what is the value of the life of a man who murdered and raped children measured?
Suppose there is no God. What then? So according to you if there is no god, then it's okay to take a person's life? Why not? The law? The law changes from time to time. When it's legal to kill others, when it's not. If you are in power and you have separated yourself in some way from others, then you can kill others. Even as recently as the 20th century, it was in Soviet times with the kulaks, the clergy, and the party class. In Nazi Germany with the Jews. It was all legal. If you appeal to the law, you appeal to that, too. And similar things still happen today, albeit on a smaller scale. For example with oppositionists in authoritarian states.


"Kira can start killing less and less guilty people."

- And if she doesn't? Then will you side with Kira? Why are we talking not about what happened, but what happened in the theoretical future in terms of Japanese animation which someone came up with in their head and created a manga and then an was created anime based on that manga? Like...what? The argument should not be based on Kira, but on the principle of killing criminals. Think of it then as an execution by the state. There is a chance to execute an innocent person, and the more authoritarian the state becomes, the more likely the innocent will be executed. Again, think of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union under Stalin. But those states had the moral strength to do so. After all, as proponents of natural human rights believe, morality spreads through the state and its law. It turns out, following these beliefs, if they are consistent in this, they believe that the USSR and the Nazis did nothing wrong.
I believe that morality and law as a consequence of morality in the state is just a social construct, which can be convenient at one time but disastrous at another. But at the same time, the very existence of the state confuses no one, states exist everywhere, and for some reason people do not picket against it. That is, they are fine with it.
How then is Kira any worse? None.

And here's my simple argument, let's present an uncomplicated
mental experiment:
Consider with the example of murder.
We have two worlds.
Our world: where innocent people are murdered every day. (Statistically, ~437,000 murders a year \ ~1200 a day, and this is not taking into account military conflicts) Where there is room for war, genocide, the repression of innocents, and other such things...
And Kira's world: A world where murder and other serious crimes are reduced as much as possible due to the fact that almost all criminals are killed by an invisible force and those left behind are afraid of committing any crime, and there is very little murder and other crimes in this world. So much so that even if you count the murder of all criminals by Kira + the murders of the remaining criminals, the number is thousands of times less than in the first world.
The question is, which world would you choose? And why?

I prefer a world with fewer murders, and for me clearly wrong is one who chooses a world with a large number of murders. And you can even dismiss the fact that this world is causing more suffering and murders, its obvious, you can look at it from the lens of rational selfishness. Because I want there to be as little chance of me being killed as possible. A man values his life first and foremost. Since he can only be aware of himself, because he is looking from himself in the first person. He cannot think for everyone else, life (subjective experience) in other people is unprovable.
To me, the one who chooses a world with more murder is clearly wrong. Especially because in kira's world, almost always, only the guilty are killed.
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Discussing movies, shows, books, cartoons, anime, manga, etc.
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