Yagami Raito(Light) is your average high school student who just happens to hate the world (the reason, just because), one day he finds the death note a strange notebook that apparently can be used to kill people with just knowin their name, taking it as seriuosly as a chain letter he tries to prove the "functioning" of the book by writting in it the name of a criminal who saw in the news, short after that the criminal died of a heart faliure, surprised by that fact he tires the book again with a street gang member and again tha man died this time the cause of death that raito chooses is crashing with a car, after a "extremely" quick deppresion for taking the lives of another humang being he decides to bring judgement into al the sinners in the world.
after a month and with more than 100 victims of the "note" the international police starts supecting that the deaths of the criminals are the work of a serial killer with that the world's most famous detective (does that not sound like a cliché to you) "L" decide to take over the case, at the mean time Raito gets the visit of "Ryuk" the shinigami who owns the book, and thet's the begining of a the game of the cat and mouse betwen L and Raito
I'm not saying the story is not interesting it is really enyoyable at least in the beginning but the mayor problem with the series it's how the story is developed into a lame and predictable (Yes, I said Predictable) cop drama.
it appears to me that the main iterest of the author was delivering a great amount of plot twists, in an intent for making it unpredictable but this ends in a big faliure especially in the second part of the series, insteadof taking his time developing L's investigation he just pump it up with a great amout of tecnological gatgets and other stuff you must heve seen in most of hollywood spy movies (and that's not a good thing), due to this non stop bombarding of bombastic action the mental battle of our main charcters just seems a little too unrealistic and some of the conclusions of our "great" team of detectives appear to be just taken out of nowhere
I find most laughable when people label this series as "psycological" when there's no such thing as character developmet, if you don't believe me then tell me from when does Raito's hate for the world come he's the son of the chief of the police departament and he leads an easy life as a student and does not have a worry in the world, just as L, and most of the characters, stays in the shadow with no background or a true reason for their actions.
In the end the creator of Death Note tried too hard to make something new and unpredictable and end with something we could see in one of the countless and stereotyped detective series and movies that you could see everywhere. if you're looking for a well paced series with realistic characters and events and a police investigation that makes sense you probbably don't want to see this, by the other hand if you're looking for some mindless fun this might do the trick
