L: Change the WorLd

The third in a series of live action Death Note films, L: Change the WorLd is hardly a Death Note film. That isn’t to say fans won’t enjoy it; it’s just that the Death Notes are burned to ashes by L within the first few minutes of the film.

The Plot

Chronicling the last 23 days of L’s life, L: Change the WorLd is about L’s last big case. A bioterrorist group has engineered a virus with the contagiousness of the influenza virus and the power of Ebola and which has no time delay between contamination and manifestation, which they plan to use to wipe out mankind to save the earth’s ecosystems. It felt like I was watching L in some bizarre X/1999 / Resident Evil crossover movie. The Dragons of Earth are infecting people with the T-virus. Now only one question remains – who is Seishiro? I mean, Matoba has the same bizarre-looking eye and the correct gender but Misawa is closer to the personality. On second thought, two questions. Because could L ever possibly be emo enough to rival Kamui?

The first we see of this terrible virus is in a village in Thailand, where American troops in HAZ-MAT suits walk in, take some blood samples, kick some poor dying folks around a bit, and then leave just in time to miss the MOAB being dropped from the skies. Americans can be such bastards, can’t they?

From there, L gets a call from Near, who in this movie is a very very young boy who came from the village in Thailand – he was the only one to not get the virus and F, an associate of L’s, helped him to escape at the cost of his own life. L has Near brought to him and tests are performed on the boy. After the tests, there is a bizarre scene with L and Near in which L tries to talk Near into letting him see his necklace by bribing him with an L-kabob (which, among other things, consisted of a Belgian waffle and a doughnut – how do the kabob sticks support such weight?). L’s first babysitting experience is off to a bad start but eventually, after Near takes a chip – or several – and eats it, he allows L to see the necklace, which belonged to F and has a MicroSD card containing information on the virus hidden inside it.

A second child joins the team a while later. Maki-chan is the daughter of a doctor who worked at the same labs where K, another associate of Wammy House, developed the virus. Yes, an associate of Wammy House was behind the virus. After witnessing her father injecting himself with the virus and then being electrocuted to death, Maki runs off to a conveniently placed car, where she pops a MicroSD card into her phone and frantically yells at the driver to take her to every one of the addresses on the list contained within the card.

The two children and L develop a clearly dysfunctional but loving relationship as they, with the help of an FBI agent who was obviously thrown in for comic relief and an old associate of Maki-chan’s father, try to develop an antidote for the virus and stop the bad guys. Maki-chan has injected herself with the virus but shows no symptoms at first. Maki-chan suggests that maybe her father was making her immune to it with some mysterious injections he had given her but the doctor reveals that it’s just that the virus feeds on sugar and Maki-chan’s blood sugar is very low, so the virus is dormant. The look on L’s face when he heard the virus liked sugar was absolutely priceless.

Maki-chan decides to give her contamination plot another try. She slips away from L and arranges to meet K alone. She brings a knife to cut herself so she can infect K but of course K didn’t actually come alone. Maki-chan is captured before L finds his way to the meet site.

The climax of the movie comes in an epically dramatic scene on a plane, where all the passengers are infected when K rips an IV out of Maki’s arm, causing her to bleed all over Matoba and the stewardess. K quite pleasantly reveals to a horrified Matoba that they don’t have an antidote and that everyone on the plane will die, and from there the disease will spread.

In the end, L busts in with a bag full of antidote and convinces K to change her ways and keep living, effectively saying that he wants her to be the next L when he dies. After L saves the day like he always does, he leaves for Wammy House, where he hands Near over to Roger and gives him his name. “When someone is sick, you will always be near.”

There is also a gorgeous scene toward the end where Maki-chan wakes up in a hospital with the FBI agent watching over her. He tells her that L left a bear for her. She holds down on the hand and hears her mothers voice, as she has before, welcome her home and ask if she had a good day. She nods and then suddenly hears L’s voice from the bear too, “Welcome home, Maki-chan. Make tomorrow a good day too.” Maki whispers back a, “You too.” It’s a very touching scene to say the least.

Impressions of the Characters

L

In L: Change the WorLd, L suddenly becomes a much more active – and human – character. Now, at first, I had my doubts… but seeing a more human side of L has just made me love him even more.

Near

Near is still a genius… but he comes off looking a bit retarded. I don’t remember him speaking much, aside from a few random screams and shouting out numbers over and over until someone got their significance. I thought he was quite cute and I liked him much better than the anime Near.

Maki

Maki-chan is hardly a standard 12-year-old girl. Her character was wonderfully developed as a strong intelligent individual, although perhaps a bit naïve. I was really impressed – not just with the way the character was developed but also with Mayuko Fukuda’s acting abilities.

K

I find it odd that a woman like this was produced by Wammy House. Wammy House clearly emphasizes using human intellect to better the world, so I think it’s strange that K came to the conclusion that Watari would be supportive of her idea to destroy all of mankind. However, she is still an interesting character. She seems to feel a bit conflicted at times, especially when she watches Maki’s father inject himself with the virus, which perhaps means that she isn’t as confident as she seems.

K’s Peeps

Not much character development here. Matoba is a selfish greedy ass who actually wants to sell the virus and the antidote to make millions. Misawa is a whack job. The others barely have names much less personalities but they aren’t all that important to the plot so it’s forgivable.

Extra Special Things

There were some extra special things in the movie that I really loved. Here are just a few:

- The movie actually starts with L working a case with Naomi Misora just before he leaves for Japan to start working the Kira case (from which it then skips straight to when L writes his own name in the Death Note.)

- The movie references the BB Murders. I loved that novel. (Unfortunately, though, they didn’t go far enough as to have B listed in L’s address book when he went to send the e-mail about Watari’s death. (Before you question why a dead man would be in his address book, there were several deceased people in there. They were just unable to be selected.)

- L spoke Spanish. This was a huge thing for me as a Spanish major.

- There’s a maid café scene. Enough said.

The Experience

Now there was only one bad part of seeing L: Change the WorLd – the subtitles. This was the first time VIZ did one subtitled night and one dubbed night and I had to the theater on the subtitled night. Nearly no one was there, which made me happy, because it meant I wouldn’t have heads in my way when I tried to read the subtitles. However, nearly half the movie was in Engrish, which they didn’t subtitle but they really should have with how bad some of the actors were at speaking English. The subtitles, when present, also seemed to be off at times and some of the translations made no sense at all. Not surprising, considering only one person was listed in the credits for doing subtitles from what I saw. It was so bad that I was joking about how they hired out a fansub group from Singapore.