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I have seen plenty of anime due to this my level of expectation has gone up. I can no longer enjoy something which doesn't make sense. After trying this over praised anime Jojo, I am seriously left disappointed, it started good but soon converted into another generic show.
My problem with Jojo is that it doesn't know what it is doing, let me give you little summary.

Story: 2
The story is piss, maybe worse because at least piss probably has some flavor based on what you put into your body. This had pretty much nothing. Few new baddie of the week powers to defeat, but really just moving on to beat DIO. Art style doesn't prevent a story from being good. Like I said, I figured out to watch this show with my critical brain turned off, but here is what I noticed even without it. First, SO MANY PLOT CONVENIENCES!!! Occasionally they are fine, but I found most of the show's scenarios were that there was an item in the exact right place at the exact right time, or that a character was holding something that was never shown or alluded to. One of the worst examples was when fighting a monster weak to sunlight in part 2. Once the monster was lured outside, it just so happened to be exactly noon, and there was a well in the exact spot where the sun was shining brightest, which was used to reflect light to the monster on both sides. Even with no critical mind, I noticed that and it bothered me, and I can name plenty of other similar scenarios. Also, Part 1 was incredibly boring to me. The 7 year time skip from episode 1 to 2 was really stupid and we got no sense of what the characters involved went through. It was jarring. On top of that, scenarios that weren't plot conveniences, which were few and far between, were just too stupid to be entertaining, and too cringy to be funny. I know that they were trying to be "bizarre", but they took it way to far. It wasn't even stupid funny, just stupid. The premise was somewhat interesting with the idea of a multi-generational epic, and there were a few episodes that were actually kind of entertaining, but overall, the story was just really bad in my opinion.
At some point they just gave up on keeping a theme to stands, and they are just never really explained to begin with, so now they're actually just purely arbitrary powers. They still like to say what they represent, but then you never see the connection.
This part of the series becomes so predictable that it's disgusting.
There are some very minor surprises in the fight with DIO, but that was about the most interesting part of the whole thing and the only reason I didn't give the story a 1.

Art/Animation- My god does this anime look like shit. I get what they were going for: a very stylized, comic book style art style. I don't have a problem with that, and I feel that it could have added to the story. However, it just looks so unpolished. I give points for the interesting style and occasionally decent animation, but the art makes this anime look like it's from the early 2000's. Hell, I saw footage of the 1993 adaptation of Jojo and at some parts, it barely looks better. I will also say that character designs are very uninspired and I found many of them to look remarkably similar, but with some different colors on them. Overall, the art was pretty bad on this one, and the solid animation doesn't make up for it.

Characters- I wish that the characters helped, but unfortunately, they don't. I'll name most of them. Jonothan Joestar was bland. The seven year time skip changed his personality totally and we got no idea of what happened during that time. He was supposed to be a gentleman, but he did some rather rude things to Dio (though he deserved them). He was supposed to be a weakling who can't win a fight, but he suddenly transformed to a monster who can win with a broken arm. All of that is just stupid, though he was entertaining sometimes. Dio was a decent villain, but only because he was so easy to hate. He had little motive, and was simply an asshole for no good reason. He also went from wanting money, to wanting to take over the world in literally one episode. I just found that jarring. Speedwagon was interesting, but my problem with him is that in less than an episode, he went from fighting Jojo, to becoming his best friend and biggest supporter. Thankfully, I was somewhat interested in his character. Zepelli was by far the most interesting character, but we didn't find out much about him at all. Joseph Joestar was mostly an annoying, arrogant brat whose presence on screen usually made me want to tear my eyes and ears out. Caesar was also annoying as fuck. Finally, Lisa Lisa was intriguing, but not enough for me to want to finish the show for her story. Overall, the characters were along a normal curve, with some being rather good, some being rather bad, and most being meh.

Seriously, this anime follows the horrible sense of logic, it is so annoying that it gets me irritated.

I watched this series because it was supposed to be good, but it's not. Now, I'm basically just watching it because you need to watch some bad and mediocre anime to really appreciate the good anime out there.

Q: What happens when an unstoppable Mary Sue meets an immovable Mary Sue?
A: Death Note.

The protagonist, and his adversary, are both genius pretty boys (with the odd names of Light and L) who have an incredible amount of achievements and skill for their young age. Light somehow predicts things that he could not possibly have the foresight to predict, because, you know, probability is a thing. Don’t worry though, it’s not like you know that he’ll always win, because L possesses this exact same unexplained and ludicrous ability to predict the future; he just does so without a cheesy “Just as planned!” catchphrase that makes me want to shoot myself every-time I hear it. In this way, rather than being a dark and mysterious thriller, Death Note often manages to be an overblown mental mudslinging contest between two impossibly perfect master practitioners of bullshit who are both describable in a single sentence. This is epitomized in an early scene where the two, who both have tennis skills at a professional level, get into a match and engage in a ridiculously drawn-out internal line of logic about how the desire to not lose might relate to the true identity of the other.


Furthermore, what kind of psychological mystery thriller has a plot entirely driven by coincidences, improbabilities, and impossibilities? Again, Death Note. Plot devices like this were used every-time the anime found itself in a narrative corner, and these cop-outs always completely killed the tension that was built up to that point, while simultaneously disengaging the plot from the audience.


The concept was intriguing, and I won’t say it did not entertain me at some parts, but it was ultimately far too flawed in its execution to be called enjoyable or good overall, and it never managed to pull off the promise of its premise. It seemed overdone at times, with eye-roll worthy developments, and lines like “I take a potato chip and eat it!” delivered with the utmost significance and conviction, devoid of any irony or self-awareness. Light’s ability, of writing a name in a notebook as a method of killing, is initially well established and limited, while being relatively creative, although you would think he’d be able to do a bit more with it, but the way the new rules of the note are introduced as the story goes on can get a tad contrived.


Characterization quality is somewhat varied, but I would say that it's generally not all that good. It was bad, really. Light is a bit too perfect, his only flaws being the well-concealed logical results of his perfection, such as his narcissism and overconfidence. It could be argued that this flawlessness was intentionally done in an effort to depict the deconstruction of a seemingly perfect human being, but I think this concept eventually fell flat. It would have been far more interesting to see an average teenager find the note and watch the scope of his ambitions and arrogance develop over time. Light is arrogant, ambitious, and a staunch consequentialist from the very outset; this, logically, kills almost all opportunity for development. As for the rest of the characters, L was far more interesting and entertaining than Light, although he was even more unrealistic, evoking the child prodigy and boy detective clichés among other things; I mostly found myself rooting for him rather than the protagonist. Light's eventual “girlfriend” falls in love with him, to the extent of obsession, right away, as the plot commands it, and this insufficiently-explored obsession with him defines her entire character. There is absolutely nothing to her besides that, despite her eventually becoming one of the most significant characters in the series. In all actuality, the motivations for most characters, besides the protagonist and the Shinigami, are hazy at best and, with the exception of L, none of them are interesting in the slightest.


There are some religious symbolisms and themes, which are underplayed and done well until a forced Christ allegory towards the middle, but this all kind of falls apart in the second half and all of the symbolism disappears. To make matters more dire, the already limited development of the protagonist stagnates and his adversary is quickly replaced by two identical, yet duller and less compelling, copies. At the same time, while the developments and additional rules to Light’s ability in the first half were often a bit contrived, they were usually better than nothing; pretty much all evolution stops in the second half, and it only gets worse. The anime essentially loses everything that it ever had going for it, and it then stays in that inadequate stage for the remainder of the plot, all leading up to an anticlimactic conclusion that the audience knew was coming from the very beginning. The anime would have lost nothing to speak of had that conclusion come at least 10 episodes earlier than it did. Therefore, as the plot progressed, it increasingly lost its higher significance and simultaneously started to wear thin the initial appeal of its premise.


The art is arguably the strongest, or least flawed, aspect of Death Note, the character design being particularly astounding, with the exception of a couple characters introduced in the second half whose designs were either dumb-looking or recycled. The art is generally pretty atmospheric and it never skimps on detail out of convenience, although not much detail is required in the first place. The design of the main antagonist, while understated, is particularly impressive due to the fact that he manages to be very aesthetically appealing, despite the ridiculous heroin chic vibe that the audience gets from him. The animation is nothing special, but it does not really have to be; this is not an action series. I feel like the art for the manga was superior, and it could have been done better in the anime adaptation, but any complaints I have about it are relatively minor.


In the end, what Death Note did accomplish was hackneyed and not all that original; it could not be called “deep” nor was it ever cutting-edge in the grand scheme of things. The coincidences and general improbabilities that drove the plot bar it from being called “realistic,” more than the out-there premise ever could. That said, it should be given some credit for featuring a true antihero, who is still often admired by the audience, and ultimately not being afraid to portray him as pathetic. It also never used the character’s high school age as an excuse to throw light school-life hijinks into the plot. But these positive qualities unfortunately failed to have too much influence in the industry, and they are additionally outweighed by negatives in the universe of the anime itself. Code Geass, a blatant Death Note rip-off, wasted no time at all in taking every single good Death Note did and flipping it all on its head. I might recommend Death Note, if only for the first half, but only with a warning that it fell apart and that even the first half is not as great as it's often made out to be. You honestly might be best off watching the first half and simply skimming the plot summary of the second, because it has nothing of value to offer the viewer beyond that point.