I gave the story an 8 and everything else a solid 9's across the board. The story would have gotten a 9 if I rated it on or before about episode 20, and an easy 10 if it was within the first 5-10 episodes or so. Without giving too much away, it's hard to explain why -- but I just felt that certain plot arcs were drawn out longer than they needed to be, certain characters didn't need to be introduced to the story at all, and certain others should have stuck around until the end. All in all, I still enjoyed the anime as a whole, despite absolutely dispising the opening credit song for the second half of the series.
Everything except Art could have been a 10 though (I save 10s for art that makes me actually jump out of my seat and go "OMG the art in this is AMAZING!!"), so in the end, yes, Death Note is a great anime definitely worth watching, but not enough to get 10's across the board... but it was.. so.. close.
