Despite being an iconic series, Death Note has some major flaws that its spiritual successor Super Smartphone is rectifying. Oftentimes new manga with premises similar to older series can have difficulty distinguishing themselves. But luckily Super Smartphone seems to be avoiding this problem.
Death Note is a manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata that ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2003 to 2006. The series followed a teenage boy named Light Yagami who finds a notebook that lets him magically murder people simply by writing their name in it. Light uses this Death Note to punish people he deems to be wicked and protect his identity from being discovered. His general disregard for the lives that he takes makes him feel like a sociopath, and by the time the series reaches its conclusion he has become a full-blown villain. In addition, Light’s genius-level intellect in Death Note allows him to enact schemes that no normal human being could reasonably concoct. Both of these elements of his character make Light a somewhat unrelatable protagonist. While this doesn’t take away from the fun of Light and his rival L’s extremely complex mental battles, it can make the other parts of the series much less compelling. Luckily the manga following in its footsteps is making its protagonist much more relatable.
Super Smartphone is a manga by Hiroki Tomisawa and Kentaro Hidano following a teenager named Q who comes across an incredibly powerful device called a superphone. This thrusts him into a dangerous world of intense mental battles with other superphone users, just like the conflicts present in Death Note. However, in Super Smartphone’s latest chapter, Q sets himself apart from Light. In Chapter 15, Q doesn’t consider the potential ruthlessness of his enemies, which leads to the death of Moura, another superphone user. While Q and Moura weren’t super close, Q is still greatly affected by his death, to the point of curling up in a ball and becoming unresponsive. This shows that Super Smartphone’s protagonist is much more empathetic than Light.
In addition to not being a sociopath, Q’s inability to predict Moura’s death shows that he is much less smart than Light is. He’s still incredibly intelligent, as he has been doing an admirable job cleverly fighting against villainous superphone users while concealing his identity, but he can’t compare to Light, who constantly thinks an absurd number of steps ahead of his enemies. However, rather than this being a negative trait, this makes Q’s character feel much more grounded and relatable. Whereas Light felt like a sociopathic supercomputer, Q feels like a smarter-than-average high schooler, which makes him much more compelling.
While Death Note is an iconic manga, Light becomes more and more unlikeable over the course of the series, which is one of the many reasons the final arc of the series is generally not well regarded by fans. It would have been very easy for a series emulating Death Note to fall into the same pattern. However, by Q more relatable, Super Smartphone has a chance to avoid Death Note’s mistakes and set itself apart from its predecessor.
Super Smartphone Chapter 15 is now available to read from Viz Media.
