I saw a lot of movies during Subway Cinema’s New York Asian Film Festival this year. This is the first of my coverage, which will be a bit delayed this year thanks to an Otaku USA deadline and San Diego Comic Con being back-to-back in next two weeks. (Be sure to pick up Otaku USA issue 7, on newstands now! I have a few reviews and a bio in it.)

I meant to see L: Change the World with anime bloggers the Reverse Thieves but I failed to communicate that the show had sold out long ago, and I was surprised I got tickets, and last year’s Death Note films were the most popular screenings in the festival (they predated the Viz theatrical release by an entire year). My friends showed up confused and ticketless, facing an enormous line with no hopes of getting a ticket. Sorry about that!

L: Change the World

North American Premiere
Running Time: 129 minutes

I think of myself as more of an L fan than a Death Note fan, so I was very excited to see this film. I had only one expectation: I wanted to see L eating sugary snacks. I was not disappointed; L consumes a lot of sugar in this film. I didn’t know anything about the plot, so I was in for a few surprises. Here is a short list:

Things I Did Not Expect to See in This Film

• Ebola
• Cute children
• Third World Jungles
• A Maid Cafe
• People bleeding from the eyes
• A Manga Cafe
• Vomiting of blood
• James Bond-style villains
• A Hot pink crepe truck with the word “Angel” on it

Ever see Andromeda Strain? How about that episode of the X-Files where people get exploding facial sores? Change the World is not that grotesque, but the ebola scenes are disgusting, and I did not go into a Death Note movie prepared for such a high level of gore. The film attempts to somehow balance the gross-out factor with two very cute (orphaned) children as key characters. Without the children, the film might be much darker. Without the ebola, the orphans would be totally unbearable and obnoxiously saccharine.

Director Hideo Nakata also handled Ringu, Ringu 2, and Hollywood’s The Ring Two – which might explain the gore factor. Kenichi Matsuyama is totally adorable as L, and delivers an even performance in this otherwise rocky road of a film. Matsuya also plays Shin in the live-action Nana movie and has rolls in Linda Linda Linda and The Taste of Tea, all of which are available from Viz Pictures. Matsuyama even plays Robo in the Sexy Voice and Robo drama – which I must watch, since it’s one of my favorite manga titles. Matsuyama’s English dialog in the film is not great, but he’s cute, so I’m willing let it slide.

Change the World takes place after the end of the previous two Death Note live-action movies, which have different continuity than the manga or anime series. In the films, L has written his own name in the Death Note at the end of his battle with Light, giving himself 30 days left to live, which renders Light’s attacks useless.

Light, Ryuk, and Misa only get brief cameos, but Ray’s wife Naomi makes a confusing appearance in a flashback to Los Angeles (covered in the light novel Death Note: Another Note), in a long scene irrelevant to the rest of the film.

Smash cut to the jungles of Thailand, where a deadly plague is wiping out a poor village with horrible ebola-esque facial sores. A group of American bio-suited men blow up the entire town, but agent K narrowly escapes in a truck, saving an orphan boy in the process. Agent K doesn’t survive, but he gives the (apparently) immune orphan child (who happens to be a math genius) a message for L.

A group of sharply dressed Japanese scientists (reminiscent of Andromeda Strain) get news of the village and analyze the virus – it’s a bio-weapon mix of ebola and the flu, 10 times more deadly than ebola. Wait, let me say that again: Ten times more deadly than ebola!!!

Meanwhile, a group of hyper-pro-environmental terrorist kill some rich dude and come after the cure for the virus so they can release it on the world and become rulers in the post-bio-apocalypse. This ragtag band of bioterrorists consist of a scarred man with one all-white eye, a super genius clean-cut female scientist, a crazy-eyed girl with a giant knife, and a frightened-looking young man with a machine gun who doesn’t seem all that evil. I really liked the crazy-knife-girl, who seemed to have wandered out of Kill Bill into this film. Her tone is totally inappropriate for Change the World, but I found her hilarious. The other villains are essentially James Bond rejects.

The only scientist with the cure for the virus kills himself in front of the bad guys as well as his own daughter in a gruesome twenty-minute death scene. I’ve seen several Japanese films in the last few years (most recently Dororo) where characters have extremely long death speeches… cut it out, Japan! You’re really trying my patience!

The scientist’s junior-high-aged daughter escapes, infected with the virus but displaying no symptoms, and finds L with a clue left by her dad (the clue is a math puzzle). Meanwhile, the unnamed math-genius orphan is delivered onto L’s doorstop. With just 15 days left to live, L must find a cure for the deadly virus while baby-sitting at the same time.

Knowledge of the Death Note franchise is a prerequisite for understanding the film, but if you didn’t know anything about L going in, it might add an enjoyable bizarreness level to the film.

I particularly liked a montage early in the film wherein L is going through his old case files, wrapping up unsolved mysteries in the time he has left to live. It’s strongly implied that Princess Diana’s death was an assassination instead of an accident. I wonder if a lot of Japanese people think of Diana’s death as a conspiracy, since there was a Golgo 13 manga story (volume 4 in the U.S.) wherein Golgo assassinates Diana (or possibly just her boyfriend, I haven’t actually read it yet). It would be hilarious if L was solving a Golgo 13 case, but I don’t think it was implied in the film.

Change the World is ridiculously uneven, with long science-y scenes punctuating cute orphan hijinks. It’s a lot more high-concept than the previous films, between the jungle locations and a huge airport scene at the end it must have had a fairly high budget. There are great comedic moments and a funny low-speed chase scene, but overall the movie is just weird. There are a number of wonderful scenes (like L riding the train), but the film just doesn’t hold up as a whole.

The film is only a must-see for L fans, but it’s exactly the kind of movie you want to watch with someone else so you can discuss it afterwards.

My early reviews of the previous two Death Note live action movies draw a lot of traffic to this site. Viz did a small theatrical release of the two films earlier this year (2008), and will certainly release the region one DVDs sometime soon. Logically speaking, Viz will most likely also release L: Change the World on DVD eventually, but probably not before 2009. Nothing has been announced as of this writing, but I’d put money on it. Please be sure to support Viz by purchasing the legitimate releases when they come out. (Hint: Legitimate release won’t have Cantonese subtitles, and are not region free.)

L: Change the World has no distributor at the time of this writing. Look forward to it in 2009 or 2010.