Critic Rating: 4/5
Overall rating: 9/10
Death Note is hard boiled. It's not a mystery, because you know whodunnit. You follow the criminal's perspective. What is an antihero? Is it a hero with villainous qualities or is it just a villain who gets the story told from his viewpoint? Both probably.
I think of Death Note as a study of narcissism induced by brilliance or just being a sociopath. In other words, we sometimes possess traits that by nature alienate us from people, leaving us to live in our own inner worlds. To some, mundanity is the death of the soul. Maybe we are such keen observers of the human condition that we can't bare to constantly see the subtext of insecurities that plague every day conversation. Maybe we are just so smart we can't stand being around other people's stupidity.
Light is a narcissist. He just is. He looks like everyone else, acts like everyone else, but this is a farce. Most guys like him are never seen for what they truly are.
We have no choice to believe that Light was born with something missing, that even a boy with a loving family, who grew up comfortable, can just be born wrong. We can't always blame the parents, or even society. Monsters are sometimes just born.
Hard boiled supernatural detective story. Light and L begin a game of one-upping that often seems like it's going to break but doesn't. It begins to seem this might be an infinite story. As Light commits his crimes; L puts him in positions that should be impossible,(and unforeseen factors intervene) but Light adapts , his plans becoming more serpentine in the process. Something has to give.
Light's God Complex contrasts with Man's Greed. Light's genius contrasts with L's genius. Light's darkness really does overwhelm any light. Any character who truly seems to solve crimes from a sense of heart, a desire to make the world better, seems quite irrelevant. Only those who coldly see crimes as puzzles cause change. The rest are pawns, serving grand masters.
I debate the second half of the series, and how I feel about the introduction of new characters. That's why I decked a point for the critic rating, but couldn't for the overall. Overall it's still just so perfect to me. Something had to change to justify the series length. Just as I was thinking Light vs. L needed to end, something happened to make the number of episodes make sense. Still, I wasn't rooting for them, and their back story needed more fleshing out for me. I was curious to their connection to a main character. While some may say the characters needed to be cut, I disagree. I think they represent the idea of cycling generations, of how nothing lasts forever and yet everything repeats. They represent how the next generation can build on the work of those that came before them, of how achievement does not often occur in one lifetime but over many. This is life. We all want to change the world, but sometimes we just pave the way for the next person to do so. You may be able to fight one person, but can you fight generations. When you've learned one enemy so thoroughly, how quickly can you adapt to another? You are the same, but your enemy suddenly changes. From a storytelling perspective, it seems these new characters have an unaffair and unearned advantage. But really, don't we all get to take something our ancestor's accomplished for granted?
I think one of the minor episodes was one of the most brilliant case studies in storytelling I had ever seen. When Light needs to get the full name of his next target to keep from getting busted, a ticking clock begins. He has to get her name before she contacts his father. The writing is like something for the stage, written in carefully controlled beats, that ratchets up the tension. No explosions, no big twists, not even a big plot point, just a slow burning pace that left me wondering who I was rooting for.
The ending wasn't predictable until it happened. That's how engrossed I became. It pushed the proceedings into opera. The detective's great reveal was more than a genre convention; it was a god's lament.
