Summary: >

Light Yagami is a high school student who is almost too perfect. Popular among classmates, adored by his family, and on top of this he's academically the top student in Japan. Due to boredom, a god of death drops his notebook into the human world to have some fun. Any name written in the notebook, called a death note; will cause the person to die. Light picks up the notebook but he decides on a curious course of action. He will write the names of criminals in the note and become a new god of justice to the world. His actions earn him the name Kira (Japanese approximation of the word "killer"), and he quickly becomes notorious among the people of the world. It's not obvious who Kira is, so a task force is formed to find Kira and stop him. At the lead is the investigator mastermind known simply as "L". Things turn to a battle of wits, but will Light find L's true name and kill him first, or will L be able to prove that Light is Kira?

Thoughts: >

It's been a while since I got into a show good enough that I prayed wouldn't screw everything up and just maintain the level of greatness. Could it pull it off for 37 episodes though? The answer is, yes and no. Death Note is a series that starts out incredible, moves towards being only amazing by the middle, and only pretty good by the end. While I had heard that the series goes down hill as it progresses, I didn't find that to be exactly true. Indeed it starts out awesome, but as things shift around in the story it ends up moving back and forth between decent and very good. They key thing remember is that a suspense thriller is extremely hard to keep engaging over long periods of time. Even movies often struggle with this for a mere 2 hours, never mind nearly 40 episodes. This double edged sword makes it engrossing, but very difficult to sustain. By shuffling the cards in order to keep things fresh, parts of the story languish, and different players are removed and added but not in ways that feel like they improved things. As I said though, it's daring and I think it's acceptable to forgive a title that isn't perfect due to the fact that it had the guts to try this approach in the first place.

The story starts out with Light and his vision of the future, and quickly moves to a game of cat and mouse between him and L. At the beginning of the series, this was really a great setup. The two close in on each other, but eventually the series needs to move towards something else at the midpoint. Where things went down hill is when L's successors enter the picture. At this point Light had seemingly almost won, but ends up entrapped again by more eccentric kids raised at the same institution L was. Light inconsistently hatches elaborate schemes to cover his tracks, but stumbles with simplistic plans that are botched and draw investigators closer to him. I suppose the biggest question is, how was the ending? The final outcome is expected, and it hits a great climax. Afterwords... I'm not sure how I feel about the way it concludes. I really can't complain about that since it's hard to say what my expectations would even be in the aftermath of this series.

One failing I found with Death Note was in the characters. While I think some of them are captivating, I have to admit that I didn't really love any of them. "L" is the head of the investigations trying to catch Kira, and it did a good job of presenting him as an aloof weirdo, but for that same reason I didn't find him very likable. Light is the main character of the series, and while a person with a misguided sense of justice playing executioner isn't a new idea for a villain, I can't think of any other title that had this perspective from the main point of view. Personally I found Light Yagami to be a fascinating character as a charismatic unscrupulous person. At times I found his manipulative behaviors to be just jaw dropping, but likewise this alienated me from his character.

The other characters don't even fair as well as those two, although I found Misa more likable then expected. She is introduced into the series in a way where she practically throws herself at Light and I couldn't help thinking "Please not a character like this.." Lets face it, she's as hot as tabasco on fire grafted right on to your eyballs, but also just as irritating. Then it occurred to me one way to take this to the next level would be to give to insert the crazy girlfriend. Misa is like an obsessive fan who throws Light's plans into chaos with her odd demands, but presents opportunities with her abilities. Light can't get rid of her and is forced to deal with an ever more complex web of problems. Unfortunately she still ended up being plot fodder, much like nearly everyone else.

[+] moral issues

While Death Note wasn't perfect, I still think it was very good. It's not a title to watch if you're the kind to attach yourself to characters, as few of them are even relateable. The story is good, and well thought out but a bit too convenient in a few spots, but that's forgivable for a show that has to keep things moving in order to keep it fresh and exciting. Or possibly it's better to say, to the credit of the series there are no gaping plot holes as could be expected. While there isn't much for action, there are plenty of action titles in anime, but Death Note provides an interesting story with surprising intelligence that sets it apart.