Death Note is a solid series with some brilliant moments in it, but some equally ridiculous ones too. Most of it is pretty much the same thing: a long-ass cat-and-mouse game that keeps taking turns going for and against the two lead foes. Early on it's rather boring as you watching everything take it's time to pick up, and there's even an episode that consists almost entirely of two characters wandering around aimlessly that get real boring real fast. Once the big twists start happening they're mostly impressive, but you almost get kind of sick of them after they keep coming over and over and they start to get a little repetitious. The last few episodes leading up to a major character's death are really good, but after it actually happens the plot goes off the rails and just winds up repeating a good portion of everything that's just happened before. But despite getting rather ludicrous at the end, the finale is a good payoff.
The silliest thing about it is whenever the big, epic music starts playing everything is made out to be SUPER intense and over-the-top...and most of the time it's just someone writing down names, so instead of seeming super epic it just comes off as painfully cheesy.
The characters are generally pretty stiff and don't change much, and when they do it's normally pretty sudden and doesn't have much, if any, build-up to it. One of the exceptions to this seems to be Aizawa, who is one of the few characters for whom you actually get a glimpse into the outside life of, even if it is small. L is impressively intelligent and deductive, but outside of that there really isn't much to him. Light is a sociopath with a god complex and anytime that might change it just turns out to be part of a monster scheme. Near and Mello are really forced characters, and Mello doesn't even stay the same character in his short stay and ends up becoming a mess of identity (he's seriously, like, three different people in his short time on the show). When it comes down to it, the best and most interesting characters in the show are the Shinigami.
I'm not a huge fan of the overall artistic style and the general presentation, and the crazy colour changes get old after a while, but it's nothing too off-putting.
In the end, though, I did enjoy the series. I can see why it's so popular, but I do think it's rather overrated.
