The Boswell House: DNTDNVP

DNTDNVP: Death Note Themed Death Note Viewing Party

Ah, theme parties. Our absolute favorite indulgence! As you well know, we here at the Boswell House are no strangers to Anime. Okay, I'll admit you may know that if by some change you manage to read my updates that have become monthly at best. *cough*

Yeah. Sorry about that - back to the point though. Anime + theme parties, yes?

Death Note is a fantastic anime we finished up earlier this year. It has 2 seasons and a satisfying ending. (Not all anime will give you that!) When we caught wind that Netflix was going to release a live-action version of the popular animated series, a theme party was almost instantly born.

Here is a glimpse at Death Note, the anime:

(There's a lot of fan made trailers out there to enjoy, I chose this one. A couple of the ones I watched made me scoff because folks sometimes assume anime is for kids. Hah!)

Here's the official teaser for the Netflix movie:

Google and/or other fans will tell you what a terrible thing the movie is. Was it bad? Yeah, it was bad, but not in an unwatchable way. It was excellently bad in the kind of way where you watch it with your living room full of friends and you hack away at it. The production value was quite good, actually and I was impressed with all of the acting. Other than that though, it didn't do anything well. It didn't reflect the anime well or stand alone well. Folks who have seen the anime had to explain a lot to folks that hadn't.

I'll tell you what was a success though, our party was!

Here was the menu we created for the evening, shocking - we themed each offering

Now I'm going to start this blog post with the Shinigami eyes, because I took a bunch of photos whoo hoo!! First off, I stole the idea from the good ol' internet. But I'm not sharing the link because theirs are so gorgeous that they'll put mine to shame :-p

My bento tools came in super handy for this project!

What I used: 2 sizes of circle shaped cutters, one that fits into the other

The handy tweezers

The even handier pokey tool (you'll see)

Step one: Hard boil some eggs! Then chop them in half and scoop out the yolks just like you would for any deviled egg recipe. I boiled mine the night before and didn't bother peeling/decorating until party day.

Step 2: Bust out some olives, chop those in half and utilize your smaller circle to stamp out some pupils & set those aside. This was where the little poker-outer-tool came in super handy.

(Forgive my crappy photo, I was working solo)

Step 3: I used the larger circle to stamp out an iris, then used the smaller circle to stamp out where the pupil was going to be

Then you end up with these cute little egg white donuts.

Step 4: prep some food coloring and water it down a little, since I was making Shinigami eyes, and they're all kinds of monster like I just went ahead and used all 4 of my basic colors. Your call for your theme what color you'll make the irises. Any cheap-o little paint brush will help you here -

Step 5: paint the iris!

Step 6 (For me anyway) was filling up the eggs with their delicious deviled egg innards, then I put them upside down (or, you know, delicious inner goo side down) onto the serving tray:

Step 7: pick up your iris with your handy bento food tweezers & gently press them into the void (and I'd say these plastic fellas are super helpful here, metal would have chewed up the delicate egg whites)

I have to admit, I was impressed how well/easy they mushed down into the egg to become level like a real eyeball!

Step uh, where are we? Is it 8?

Step 8: pupils!

And there we have it! EYEBALLS!!! :D :D :D

How cool are those?!

Alright next item on the menu I'm going to showcase was the "Body of Rem" mummy dogs.

Rem is one of the Shinigami's from the animated version of Death Note, sadly, Rem does not make an appearance in the live action version. Here's what Rem looks like:

So I tried to give them hair like that but, eh. I don't know how successful I was in the end

The Misa-Misa-Miso Potatoes were AMAZING! First off, Misa Misa is another of the characters from the animated version. (She kind of exists in the live action, but she has a different name and backstory.) We used this miso potatoes recipe: You won't regret clicking this link

Here's a look at the spread:

I did not take detailed photos of the "Hot Pot of Default Death" which was the apple, onion pulled pork on the right in the white dish. It was GOOD! We didn't really follow a recipe, so let me see if I can remember this. I put some onion and apple slices down in the crock because we follow the rule of not letting the meat touch it directly. Then we seasoned the pork loin (about 2lbs, it was 2.77 because I randomly remember that!) with cumin, a tiny bit of allspice, salt, pepper, some red pepper flakes and a bunch of garlic. We mixed a couple tablespoons of brown sugar in with about a cup of apple juice (we opted for that "simply" brand) and a splash of apple cider vinegar that was probably a tablespoon in the end. When it was cooked we shredded it with a couple of forks and were worried, it was a bit bland. So, we kept in going in the crock pot to mix it in with all of the juices and Dylan drizzled it with just a bit (maybe a tablespoon or two) of Korean BBQ sauce. When we put it all into the serving dish it was magically delicious.

Our Death Note cake was store bought magic, a box of cake mix and some chocolate frosting. We utilized more food coloring to try and make the chocolate frosting look black, and a small tube of white writing frosting for the letters. Yes, I saw that it says Death Not E. But what was I going to do? Bake another cake?