Fan Fiction Review #043: Death Note: Equestria

Death Note with ponies? My interest has been piqued.

Author: Nonagon

Equestria is growing, and magical savant Twilight Sparkle is disgusted by the crime and corruption this change has brought. Her life is changed forever when she discovers the Death Note, a notebook with inexplicable and deadly powers. She uses this book to pass judgement on those she deems unworthy of life, aiming to create a perfect world free of crime. But when the two Princesses put their best pony on the case, a mysterious detective known only as L, a psychological game of cat and mouse erupts between the two.

Comments contain spoilers. Artwork by blu-red, opening by Anon3mous. Now with its own TV Tropes page.

Well, this sounds like an interesting crossover. I mean, a tool of mass destruction such as the Death Note would be interesting to throw into a world of peace-loving ponies. I wonder what their reactions would be? Does this fic explore the possibilities of the chaos or lack thereof of said object being introduced to this world of love and friendship?

Nope!

Death Note: Equestria   (Word Count: 273,606)

EDIT: THIS REVIEW WAS POSTED WITHOUT MY PERMISSION BEFORE THE LAST CHAPTER WAS FINISHED. OUR APOLOGIES.

Before I get into the meat of this review, let me tell you a little bit of my feelings on the anime this fic is based on. I do think Death Note is a little overrated. I personally despise the main character Light Yagami and his motivations for wanting to become the self-righteous mass murderer he is. The anime itself I feel was longer than it needed to be, and there were many moments where I had to call foul on the plot. I suppose the biggest thing that bugged me was killing off L to replace him with Near; who was a far less interesting yet exactly the same character, and his appearance dragged out the anime far longer than it needed to be. If anything, I'd have to say the live-action movie is miles better than the anime, because it has great pacing and ends how I felt the story should have: Poetic, ironic, and satisfying.

That doesn't mean I was going into this with a biased perspective. You can always take plot elements, characters, etc. from other worlds and stories and incorporate them into your stories and still have them be awesome. We wouldn't have crossovers otherwise. Heck, there are even some fanfictions that I would argue improve upon the original.

Is this one of them? Does this fic hold up in comparison to Death Note? Well... that's the thing. It's not like Death Note.

It is Death Note. Just worse.

The entire world of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was changed to better match the world of Death Note. Crime and technology are now up in the utopian Equestria for some unexplained reason, and ponies now have crystal televisions and modern day technology. While this isn't inherently a bad thing, as many successful fics do this, I take issue with what it did to the characters. Each of the characters of MLP: FiM are shoehorned into the roles of the Death Note cast. When writers take characters with established personalities and change them for the sake of the plot, it really grinds my gears. Take a look at fanfics such as the fantastic Pony Age: Origins. It takes the characters and throws them into an entirely new universe and even completely changes their backstories, and the characters still feel and act like the characters from the show. Adding on, in Pony Age: Origins, Twilight makes the choices that she would actually make when presented with the conflicts from the source material. The characters in this fic on the other hand are forced to make the decisions of the characters from Death Note and, as a result, don't feel authentic.

We've gone on record stating the fanfic "Faith and Doubt" as having the worst characterization of Twilight Sparkle possible. I would put forth the suggestion that this fic absolutely skullf**ks that. If you are familiar with the show, or if you just took one look at the cover image, you could probably guess that our favorite purple unicorn Twilight Sparkle has been placed into Light Yagami's role. (Get it? Twi-Light? Yeah, I didn't think it was clever either) In all fairness, I can see why the authors did this. Both Twilight and Light are naive, highly intelligent, upstanding members of the community and you wouldn't suspect either of them of being the criminal mastermind Kira. Her motivations are a tiny bit more vindicated and understandable for wanting to become a mass-murdering crusader, but my problem is the triggering event is born of character derailment. Similarly to "Faith and Doubt," Twilight has been bottling up pro-death penalty feelings since the beginning of her studies with Princess Celestia. We have not seen this in the show, so we can safely call this grossly out-of-character. Twilight has changed from the happy, pleasant geek to a bitter, cold misanthrope. While that does make for a good character to utilize the Death Note, it is still hindered by the fact that this isn't Twilight Sparkle we are reading about. The main character of this fic is some brand new pony who looks like Twilight Sparkle but acts like Light Yagami.

As for the rest of the Mane Six, Fluttershy has been shoehorned into Misa Amane's role of Second Kira and beaten-wife love-interest. She exists in this plot to essentially be Twilight's b**ch, which is a huge disservice to this character. What the writer forces Fluttershy to do in this story fills me with the righteous fury of a thousand suns. I'm not going to spoil it, but if you've seen the show or movie of Death Note, I'll ask you to remember when we are first introduced to the Second Kira. Fluttershy does that, because a tragic backstory was forced on her that caused her to become the Second Kira.

We have Rarity who is shoehorned into Naomi Misora's role. I will admit, I thought this was pretty clever as both of these characters are voiced by Tabitha St. Germain. Then again, she's only there to be killed by Kira, so the writers had to make up a backstory and love interest for her to fit in with her new role. While certainly creative, it didn't make me believe for a second that it was authentic. In other words, a lot of core elements of Rarity's character were twisted and changed for the sake of the plot. Doing that to any character is terrible, but to do that to best pony is unacceptable.

Rainbow Dash and Spike sort of trade off between being Matsuda and Aizawa as members of the Kira investigation. The only difference is neither of the two are treated with respect or dignity by the rest of the Kira Investigation. This does beg the question, why the heck is Rainbow Dash on the Investigative Team? Rainbow Dash does not have the mental adeptness to be on an investigative squad, especially the Kira Investigation. However, they realize this, and only bring Rainbow Dash on to be their dancing monkey for when they need some heavy work done. I find this disrespectful.

And then we have Applejack, who is shoehorned into the role of Takada/Higuchi, depending on which version of Death Note you watched and Pinkie Pie is filling in the role of Shiori. So that basically means that the plot just ignores them until it's their turn to be used as plot devices. Meaning, Applejack become the third Kira and Pinkie gets axed by Rarity How original.

Also, we have multiple background ponies who fill in the rest of the roles of the Kira Investigation Team and the television station. Even then, the writers still managed to botch this up. While the background ponies had no established personalities, therefore, creative freedom, it seems like the writers completely missed the point of the anime. Death Note was about the battle of wits between Kira and L, and the writers here put so much time and effort into developing the unimportant and uninteresting side characters instead of our two main ones. I should confess the events of the side characters bled together in my head, so I forget what each character did halfway through the story. I would completely place the blame on myself for that, if this fic didn't fall into that classic pitfall of too many characters to keep track of.

What's particularly insulting is the "Original Characters." By "original" I mean completely ripped off from the anime. Literally no effort was spent into making these characters unique or interesting. The only change to L made was that L is a unicorn mare. The two Shinigami suck away any respect that I had for the authors. The Shinigami in the show are called "Ryuk" and "Rem." In this fic, they are "Byuk" and "Mer." Did you hear that? That was the sound of me bashing my head against the keyboard.

Here's something I don't understand: Why simply copy-paste the characters personalities and some of the characters names, but not do it for all of them? You already slew your own creative integrity, why not go all the way and stop pretending that this is original? It honestly baffles me.

I'm not going to talk about the plot too much, as the plot is exactly the same as Death Note's and Madame Pinkie's magic crystal ball tells me I'm going to have a certain negative stance on whether or not you should read this fic. So if you are familiar with the anime and/or movie, you can, and will, guess exactly what happens in the plot. However, if you don't care, feel free to highlight the spoiler in the next paragraph.

Twilight manipulates Rarity to kill Pinkie Pie then kill herself, Fluttershy kills Sweetie Belle for speaking out against Kira, the prison sequence, Twilight frames Applejack to prove her own innocence, Twilight manipulates Mer to kill L. The more astute readers would note this is exact same plot as the movie. I know there is a sub-plot involving "golems," and they did change the ending, but it's a thinly veiled attempt to disguise the fact that the writers barely tried.

Now let's talk about the shipping. I would like to take this time to say I despise shipping and clop in all of its forms. Inter-Mane Six, background ponies, homosexual, heterosexual, I don't care. I'm not anti-romance and I have seen shipping done right, but for the most part shipping just feels like wish fulfillment or exists to add pointless drama. In this fic, there is AppleDash and TwiShy. The AppleDash shipping is purely plot-constructive, so it ends up being shallow and tasteless. The TwiShy is infuriating to say the least. It's only there because it was in the original story and the authors felt compelled to keep it in there. I suppose they didn't want to deviate too far from the original work, the rebellious scamps.

The writing is a unique case. Someone once asked me what I preferred: watching the Twilight movies or reading the Twilight books. Ignoring that choosing between them was like asking me to pick a poison, I chose the movies. Why? Because they are only about two hours long when compared to however long it takes you to read 700 pages of trash. This fic is over 250,000 words. The first season of Death Note is about 10 hours, while the movie is 4.5 hours. The question I must ask is, why waste your time and effort reading the longer, inferior version when you can watch the better versions in less time? They at least had good music.

Now, before you go ape on me, let me make something clear. I know that they tried. Anyone can see that they tried really hard to make this fic good. I mean seriously, look at that word count. The grammar is near flawless. It's well paced. While the plot was copypasted, it was copypasted lovingly from scratch. I can see why they made  most of the choices they did, particularly in character role assignments. They obviously are having a great time writing this, and are passionate fans of both series. As am I.

However, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. The thing that ticks me off IS the amount of effort they put into this abomination of literature! I mean, just imagine how great this fic would've been if they put that effort into creating something unique and believable. It burns me up to see this potential wasted!

If you haven't seen the original Death Note and are considering reading this fic, I would highly advise against it. Just go watch Death Note. Forget this fic ever existed. Why? Because there is nothing in this "crossover" that offers anything better than the original series did, and if you can't do it better, then why do it at all? This fic doesn't work for fans of Death Note because they already know how the story ends up. This fic doesn't work for fans of My Little Pony because it takes the characters we already know and forces conflicting personalities and roles on them. This fic doesn't even work for people unfamiliar with EITHER source material, as it relies on you being familiar with My Little Pony in order to understand what's going on. It's not an adaptation. It's not a tribute. In fact, this fic is borderline plagiarism. The only thing that would've possibly made it worse was clop, and at LEAST it had the decency not to do that...

Unless the sequel incorporates it.

Yeah, you read that right. Pray for the apocalypse people; this is only "season one."

("Burn It" is reserved for the worst of fanfiction. This fiction likely angered me with it's sub-par quality or unoriginality. Simply put, it's just downright worthless.)

This is Commander Firebrand saying Semper Filly, and I love apples.