The 2006 Psychological-Thriller anime and the top 32 of the best animes in MyAnimeList, Death Note, is no exception and by far, the horrific masterpiece of the 21st century. Unlike any Detective, mystery animes out there like "Detective Conan", Death Note is the one who can make you going at the edge of your seat. It has tons of plot twists, the chase between good and evil is fantastic, logics and puzzles surrounding the story, and other good stuffs surrounds here. This is the darkest anime that I've seen thus far, and that's why, until now, this anime is still circulating the pop-culture today.
Story: (SPOILERS)
The story starts with the man named Light Yagami, a 17 High School Senior who is smart and intelligent and popular to women due to his looks. But, according to Light, he is already bored on his current situation right now, including his life, his school and even the world. Then, when he saw a notebook falls to the ground, he gets suspicious and tested it on his own hands whether this notebook is true or not. And when he use it, it was a surprise that the first guy who wrote on his Death Note dies of a heart attack, at first, it was a coincidence, but when he uses it on the second time because the group of thugs were sexually aroused by the innocent woman, one of the thugs dies. And with that, he is now currently trying to kill every single one of the criminals in Japan in order to restore the "Justice" in his own hands with his fellow Shinigami named "Ryuk", naming himself by the codename "Kira". But, when the mysterious detective named "L" interested about Light's mysterious killing behind the scenes, Light gladly accepts the challenge from L and the fight is on for who will get the right to fight for justice.
The tensions is the best in my opinion when a detective named "L" was been introduced to stop Light, AKA, Kira, from killing every single one of the criminals around Japan. Then, things are about to get a little bit interesting when Light's father, Soichiro Yagami, is a Bureau Chief of the police department and now L's Deputy Director. But, Light is also smart and intelligent in many ways, so in order to prevent L's for suspecting him that he is Kira, he do many preventable ways in order to keeping out of the limelight from L. There are so many things that I could say, this is very fantastic and smart. It was great, full of surprises, so many plot twists, and secrets behind Light's shadow as Kira. Everything in this anime is the icing of the cake with the cherry on top. Including some Logic and puzzles that could make you think what will happen next is really keeps me on the edge of my seat. And It was very fantastic to see those scenes.
Of course, because of Light, there are no happy endings, I assure you, he's the enemy of the state, so there's no such thing as "The Bad Guy Wins And The Story Ends" cliche. If there was an anime that has that cliche, Death Note has not. It was good, And bad in both ways. Why? Good because the bad guy dies, Bad because of the story's ending. And like everyone around the internet who watched this anime, this explanation fron "Knight_Sentinel" from fanpop.com has a good explaination, and according to him:
"For one thing, I never really liked Near or Mello, I always felt they were pale imitations of L. Near didn't really outwit Light he just got lucky because of Mikami's mistake. If Light had to lose, it should have been to L and it should have been because of some clever trick not sheer luck. Secondly, given how original the anime had been to that point, the issues it had raised such as questioning what was right or wrong I expected something better than the standard cliched "good guys beat the bad guys" ending. Light did do a lot of questionable things(as most great figures in history have done) but he was trying to create a better world and it would have been interesting and in keeping with the highly original spirit of the anime to see him win."
But anyways, the story is great, the only thing that it was criticized about is the ending.
Art:
Due to it's graphical nature and it's violence, the art and animation performed well in this anime. But the only animation that really caught my eye is the first opening sequence of Death Note, where Light depicted as the false god and the "Pieta" depiction of Raye Penber and his fiancee Naome Misura.
Sound:
I've watched the English Dub Version of this anime, and the thing is, it was great actually from Light, to Ryuk, to L and others. All of the voice actors is the best in this English dub version. And as for the background music, it was a tense and gives me a lot of goosebumps in every single one of the episodes out there. And as for the OSTs, the only two themes that I like are the songs, "What's up People" and "Zetsubou Billy" from the Japanese metal band, "Maximum The Hormone".
Character:
From Light's Anti-hero character to L. There are a lot of character development around here, and the characters here are perfect. I have nothing to say in this character section. So, it is a job well done for these characters here.
Enjoyment/Overall:
Like I said before, this anime will always get you at the edge of your seat, it will gave you thrills and suspense about it and the revelations about who is owners of the Death Note and the purpose of this if somebody takes control of this diabolical notebook. So it is a job well done to MadHouse Entertainment and Tetsurou Araki (currently director of "Attack on Titan") for doing this wonderful work. The anime is great and it is the best anime of the 21st century because of the famous "Death Note" Notebook that circulating around the web. Including the important rule of Death Note is "The Human whose name is written in this note shall die. This note will not take effect unless the writer has the subject's face in mind when writing his/her name. This is to prevent people who share the same name from being affected."
So my final verdict for this anime is a 9/10. The main bummer here is the ending of the story, that looks like it was in a hurry to quickly air the final episode. To be honest, it was good if MadHouse just told the fans to calmly wait for the final episode in order to set those things right. But anyways, 9/10 is enough to see this anime a well-done performance from MadHouse. It was fantastic!
And I have the moral lesson of this story, and that was: "Any gift or power can be used for good or evil, abused or praised, it's not destiny that controls those actions, it's our decisions."
