Death note, one of the most popular anime ever. There are an incredible amount of people saying it is a masterpiece and declare it as the best anime ever, others say it's proper shit and a waste of time. So today I'll be talking about some arguments from both points of view. This review is not spoiler free but I will tell you before I get into major spoilers if you don't want to hear them if you have not already been spoilt to it already. This is the Youtube video version of my review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx7kIMEew30
Beginning.
The great thing about Death Note is that you don't have to wait 5 episodes before it get's interesting and all of your questions from the beginning regarding how the death note ended up in Light Yagami's, our main character, hands and why are answered immediately. A shinigami got bored and dropped his notebook into the human world to get some amusement out of it. The names that are written into it will be killed when you picture their face whilst writing it. Shinigami are in some ways just tools for the plot that is proven by the fact that the writers of the manga originally designed the shinigami to be a goodlooking guys with wings but changes that to not distract the viewers and readers from who the real main characters are. At the beginning of the series when Light picks up the Death Note he pretty much doesn't know much more than we do at this point so for us this is very convenient because we're finding out what this death note really is by him finding out and asking the shinigami the questions we as an audience are also having. Sometimes I think it's better to let the story do the telling instead of having this Q and A between characters but in this story it works out in it's favour because they're presenting us with this game. The facts are given to us, you know the rules now let's play.
The story.
Even though Light turns into this self proclaimed god of justice and turns into a power lusting maniac he doesn't start out this way. Once he gets how the notebook works he starts killing off all the big criminals shown on tv. At the beginning he shows remorse in some ways or at least he's not entirely sure if what he's doing is really okay. He still had some standards and morals that made him unable to eat or sleep and made him have nightmares. But he quickly gets a change of heart when he starts looking at the world and his actions from a different angle self justifying what he has been doing and will continue to do. He genuinely wants to make the world a better place. But you can ask yourself can the world really become a better place when it's coming from one person's perspective? I found it interesting that Ryuuk tells Light: Once all the criminals are killed off in the world the only bad person left will be you. When Light gets a taste of praise and finds out people are worshipping him as a God and savior he gets even more into it.
People call him Kira which comes from the word Killer only Japanesed up. In the meanwhile the police are wondering why all these criminals are suddenly dying. They have no idea why this is happening or even how or whom. This is when they decide to rely on the best investigator ever, L, who solved countless seemingly impossible to solve crimes. It's then announced that L had already noticed all of this and was already looking into this himself. L is never seen by anyone and no one knows his full name. He only works on investigations he's interested in. We already knew the rules of the games but now we know the players too and it's time to get started. L has a hunch that Kira is from Japan so comes up with the idea to broadcast on Japanese tv only in different regions at different times while making it seem it's a global broadcasting. So that he knows when the person speaking in front of the camera is killed where Kira is from. Light falls for this and kills the spokesperson who is pretending to be L's real identity. At this point Light seems to be an amateur but he wasn't careful enough because he didn't have to be yet but L added fuel to his tank by saying that he will find him and kill him. Light's father is working on his case which is both beneficial to him as dangerous as he gets certain classified information about how far they are with the investigation and how close they're getting to him but this also makes him more suspicious by using this information. Light however, is ready to kill his family if he has to. L and Light play with each others minds as they keep provoking each other as to say just come out and play just one misstep and I'll have you. They tend to not only think one step ahead but think a whole march ahead. Instead of bending the plot to the convenience of the story we always get to see beforehand what the set in stone rules are of this Death Note. Like this one example when Light tries out different ways of killing people with it we find out what exactly is possible and where the Death Note is limited. When Light gets pushed into a corner he starts killing off innocent people as well when absolutely necessary and we see his personality slide down to a darker and darker state. We're never really sure if L or Light will win because it's not clear who's in the right or wrong because Light might be a maniac for killing so many people without as much as blinking an eye, fact is crimes are getting fewer.
This anime and manga chooses to pay more attention to suspense than flashy action sequences. This is a bold move by the mangaka's who wrote this since it was published in Shonen Jump that has an audience that mostly consists out of younger boys around the age of 15, at least that's what it's aimed at. This story is a lot more mature than most stories in it and may seem boring for people who just read it to see action sequences without having to use their brains. Light is a smooth operator manipulating people whether they are close to him or complete strangers he always gets out of the bad situations and suspicions because he always tries to solve his problems by looking at it from every possible angle while L is very blunt but still a genius who thinks everything through deeply. L starts suspecting Light to be Kira after he comes to the conclusion that Kira probably has some close ties to the team working on the Kira case and he starts to keep track of the movements of two of the families of the people working on the case. Light figures out they're watching his every move and tricks them into thinking that he's a perfectly good student while still killing new criminals. L finds the suspicion in him being a little too perfect. So then L decides to reveal his face to Light and ask him to help work on the Kira case. Light agrees to it to an extent since he has no other choice if he doesn't want to be found suspicious and it holds some benefit for him as well as he gets more inside information and could get to mislead them. L of course benefits from this because if Light is Kira he's bound to mess up somewhere along the line, no matter how small he's sure to notice it. And on the other hand if he isn't Kira he's brilliant enough to help them getting closer to the real Kira and help with the progress of the investigation.
More Kira's.
Another Kira shows up. This one is a lot more amateurish though. Second Kira finds a way to contact the real Kira and shows up at his house one day. Her name is Misa and it turns out Light had killed the murderer of her parents no one cared to take care of. She's so thankful she would literally do anything for him even die. She asks him if she can be his girlfriend. Misa made a deal with her shinigami. She gave away half of the span of her whole lifetime to get shinigami's eyes. This means she can kill people by just seeing their face instead of having to find out their names because she can already see them. Light finds an opportunity in this and he agrees to play the role as her boyfriend only to use her as a tool to realize his own twisted dreams. He also plans to kill her once he doesn't need her anymore so she doesn't get in the way. Light thinking to himself he can't develop any feelings for her tells us Light is not completely frigid. Killing her might prove to be more difficult than initially thought because Rem, Misa's shinigami claims she'll kill him if he kills Misa. Misa is personally my favourite character of the whole series. I see why some people hate her guts because she's obnoxious and tends to get in the way a lot but she has a moodlifting personality and she gives it a lot more colour. She's very pretty but also a lot smarter than she looks. She may not be a genius on the level of Light and L but she's certainly not stupid by any means. She may have developed an obsession with Kira in the time she wasn't able to put a face to him yet but once she's met him in real life and find out he's young too she really seems to love him. When Light tells her they're trying to make the world a better place she even tells Light he is more important to her than the world. Her love for him is out of the ordinary but beautifully loyal. Right when Misa has finally found out L's true name and it would've been easy to kill him she gets captured because of some evidence she left by some slip ups she made, making it clear she's the second Kira. She then gives up on the ownership of her death note and loses her memory of all that comes with it. So even if they keep questioning her she can't possibly give them an answer because she simply doesn't know any of it anymore. Light then reports himself and says he may be Kira on some subconscious level and wants to rule that possibility out by being in a cell with strict surveillance for a while. While he's in confinement he makes Ryuk dispose of the death note and then he also doesn't remember a thing. This makes him have a clear conscious as well. Meanwhile Rem gives the death note to a third person to make sure people will still be dying in the meantime. Light and Misa get released after a long while but still aren't completely in the clear. They however still have no memory of the death note whatsoever. By this we get to see the contradiction of Light after receiving the death note and after. When L asks Light to get close to Misa to gain more information Light refuses because he doesn't want to play with her emotions like that. Then follows a part in the story where the death note stays in the hands of the other person who's actually a business man and uses the death note for his own profits. He's also bribing the government so that the government demands the police department to stop investigating the Kira case. Light is working on the Kira case together with L genuinely wanting to solve it and the team keeps helping too even though they were told to stop and are no longer getting paid. Aizawa is the only one who steps out because he can't afford to quit his job because he puts his family first. So then we're left with only Mogi, who hasn't really been in the spotlight very much, Matsuda, who is basically the clumsy and dumbsest one of them all, Light Yagami, the evil genius himself, his father, the goodhearted trustful leader and L the brilliant detective working on this case together with the occasional interruption by Misa. Two con artist come and help too. To me this was just irritating like it were fillers and I was just waiting for the death note to return to Light's hands. It was like they wanted to show us that when you give a man power they become a monster but to drag it out like this really isn't necessary. In the beginning Rem states that humans are ugly beings. I think that statement was enough to make that point. People will do a lot to have people look up to them and get influential and rich. Eveything that is going on is all in Light's brilliant plan and they go through a lot of trouble to have the notebook landed in Light's hands again. I do appreciate the effort and thoughtfulness and tight writing that went into this idea even if it's hard to be considered believable to me they could've come up with a way more simple solution like have Rem give the death note to someone who was going to die soon anyways and then have him return it to Misa and have Light dig up the other note. Instead he had to go through a lot of extra trouble because when they capture fake Kira a lot of others touched the notebook resulting in them being able to see Rem. I will now get into majoy spoilers so feel free to leave or skip to the “ost” part. Now Rem has to be killed. The only way to kill a shinigami is have them fall in love. If a shinigami ends someone's life to extent the life of the one they love they die giving the remaining time of their life to the one they love. Light sets everything up in a way it's likely Misa will get captured if L stays alive. Because Rem can see L's name it's easy for her to kill him. And then Rem does kill L. Which is kind of heartbreaking since Light causes L's death and even though they're each others enemies Light was L's first friend ever.
L's death.
The thing about L's death is that it was right on time. It was still in a point of the series where you're still curious for what's going to happen next in this battle between L and Light. Even if the whole arc of Light not remembering the Death Note was somewhat boring it did serve a purpose and it felt all the more satisying to have him regain the death note. If L's death would've happened any later in the show it would have felt like it had dragged on for a little or like they milked it. When a show gets boring and one of the main characters dies it tends to feel unnatural and unrealistic. I know this is an anime about people killing other with a notebook and that's not realistic either but you can either take the aspects of a fantasy fiction and make it dull by making it too unrealistic so that it's not even relatable for anyone anymore at one point because you can bend the show any way you want it to and label it under plot armor but is basically plot convenience or you make a show with fantasy aspects but you convey them in a way that you almost start believing it could've been a real thing, so much that you start rooting for certain characters as if you crawl into their minds and connect the dots they haven't made yet for them. Getting back on the subject of L dying if he would've died in a later stage of the show when it starts getting less interesting, like, even if the writers didn't run out of ideas there's only so much you can do to a plot to make the people who already like it keep liking it without it getting either repetitive or too different than the start. If L would've died later on it would feel like the writers were like: Oh this is getting boring there's no need for this character anymore let's just kill him off. Luckily they didn't go for this option. The downside of L dying is all the fangirls shipping L and Light are dying as well on the inside. No seriously I don't care about them I mean you have an anime full of ideas and reflection of society and the fine line, the tiny barrier between what is right and wrong and all you can think of is what a great yaoi fanfiction could be born out of this? I would be lying if I said I wasn't kind of sad about L dying. Light is an arrogant prick but I found him interesting because of his ideas and his outlook on the world if a little twisted. It made me wonder what made him to turn into this person and if he just was this way because if a man gets the power to control the world by killing off bad people or people that are bad in his eyes or the media he turns into a monster. Or are there deeper lying emotions in him a deeper sense of justice or maybe a twisted judgement that has grown into his heart. So if I were to choose sides between L and Light I would've picked Light's side because to me this was the most interesting one to follow but in terms of overall personality my personal preference was with L because I really liked his personality as a whole. The fact he likes cake and other sweets and playing with his food and sits in his chair in an oversized shirt thinking. The manga of Death note was actually written by a team. According to the creator of the art of this manga the writer is always sitting in his chair the way L does for a long time while thinking deeply and making up stories. I don't know if this directly means the character is loosely based on this mangaka but thinking so makes him an even more interesting character since no one knows what this mangaka looks like since he keeps his face, real name and even his gender although assumed male private. Even if it wasn't based off of a real person, these characters feel real. L may be a genius in an unrealistic way his humanly traits make him a real person instead of an overpowered machine, like Kirito. So when L died it was really saddening and felt like an actual loss.
Life after L
When L dies it's so easy for Light to manipulate the remaining members of the investigation team because they're so eager to trust in him. It's almost too easy. Light kills the two con artists with the death note. Light takes L's place and Aizawa joins heir team once again and Ide who's been working with Aizawa on the Kira case on their own when Aizawa initially left joins the team too. Light then continues to rinse the world of evil and many people start to actually stand of Kira because they think the world is in fact becoming a better place. Crimes are lessened and people start being friendlier towards each other as a result of the fear of getting the punishment of death. Then L's successors come into play. Near and Mellow are both chosen to be L's successor. Normally L would've been the one to choose one out of the two but since L isn't alive anymore they are both chosen and they are told to work together. Mellow doesn't agree to this because ever since he's known Near and him had always been competing and had always been on the losing end. So Near gets a team of investigators to help him and they start looking for Kira. Mellow on the other hand goes into more illegal grounds and also tries to find Kira using somewhat unorthodox methods in order to beat Near to it. So now it's a game of three. Kira, Near and Mellow. I must say this is way less exciting because L was presented to us as an incredible mastermind and got so close to revealing Light as Kira so whoever would've taken his place would be a downright weaker version of him. There are some things in the second half that I do find interesting though even if the show as a whole kind of disappointed me by the second half. Like at the beginning of this new arc Mello kidnaps Chief Yagami's daughter. He'll give her back to him if he gives him the death note. He now has to decide to either save his daughter and give the notebook to an unknown person which could possibly resolve in thousands of innocent people dying or let his daughter die with in mind that the person who wants the death note only needs it for research. So he has this inner battle of what he should do if he should act like a man, a police officer or as a father. There comes a point in this anime where even Light's father owns a death note and tries to kill Mello. At least that was the plan. He has the shinigami eyes an gets the chance to kill Mello but instead of listening to Light he then asks Mello to drop the bullshit in exchange for not writing his name in the death note. His sense of justice and the desire not to kill anyone gets the best of him as he gets shot in the back and Mello stays alive. Light was willing to sacrifice his father but the fact he didn't write Mello's name in the death note is what really angers him. He doesn't even pay mind to what his father says to him at his death bed. He doesn't even care his father is happy because he thinks Light is not Kira. No remorse whatsoever. I must say this part got me pretty emotional. Another thing I found interesting was when Matsuda starts doubting if Kira really is all evil. If Kira is fighting evil he can't be that bad right? When on the other hand people he cared about died to solve this case so he has to be against Kira. Other than that the plot becomes a little shaky and very chaotic and overall just not as interesting.
The ending.
The more we get to the ending of this series the more people actually support Kira and start worshipping his as a god. At the same time some of the people who are close to him start suspecting Light to be Kira and together with Near and Mello they slowly start closing him in. Light passes Misa's death note onto Teru someone he has especially chosen. We get to see Teru's reason for worshipping Kira and we understand his motives for wanting to support him and carry on the work of Kira. He had always been one to fight for justice ever since he was little but every time he did he got many people against him, beating him up and justice was never gained. Up until Kira came into the picture. Unlike the first time there was a fake Kira this is makes for an interesting development since this person also has the Kira ideals so the plot could go anywhere instead of it being doomed to fail from the start. He's also very OCD which makes him very systematic but that also leads to his downfall because the patterns in how he lives his life become predictable which makes it easier to find a hole to catch him. Because Teru is always carrying his notebook and bringing it it would've been to obviously stupid and was merely bait. When Teru wrote down his names he contacted someone else to do the actual killing. Near figured as much and figured there had to be a real notebook too. So then he takes that notebook and changes the notebok pages with normal pages. Then Near tells Light he wants to meet him face to face in real life. Light agrees and tells Teru to secretly come as well and write the names of the whole SPK team as well as Near and the investigation team he has been working with all that time in the real notebook he never used before. With that he would've killed everyone who knew about the notebook that were opposed Kira and he would've been able to keep on being Kira without having them all on his heels. Light assumes Near replaced the pages of the fake notebook while Teru brought the real notebook. So when Near tells them to not pay mind to Teru writing their names because they won't die Light thinks Near stepped into his trap. When the 40 seconds are almost over Light declares that he has won with an evil smirk but then no one dies and they capture Teru. It is then shown that Light is the only one who wasn't written down by Teru and Teru refers to him as God so all of them know that Light is in fact Kira. Then the desperation begins. I think it's not very cool how Light is found out by Near who's a far lesser version than L but it's forgiveable sine Teru is the one who messed up by not noticing the difference in the notebook. Light would've noticed it for sure. Other than that I absolutely love the ending more than anything in this series. We get to see someone who's always keeping his cool and is as cold as ice when it comes to killing hundreds and thousands of people screaming in desperation. We see him begging for help. He tries to convince the others the world is better with Kira in it. People are rotten and the only way a new clean world can be achieved is by Kira taking care of all criminals. And the criminality has reduced 70% since Kira started killing. But on the other hand Light has become nothing more than a self righteous cold blooded murderer who is feared by people. People would always have to live in fear of Kira. And one person would never be able to change the world by himself. History of human reigning has already shown us just that. When Light takes the little piece of notebook he has inside of his watch at all times out to write Near's name in it it is Matsuda who stop him by shooting him multiple times. Seeing Matsuda do this is something that seems right out of character especially since Matsuda had never really been sure if he was 100% against Kira. But the fact that Light let his own father die in cause of finding Kira when Light himself was Kira was all Matsuda needs to see the bad in Light. Even Teru turns his back on him saying he's not god but just scum. Everyone turns his back on him, even Ryuk. Ryuk writes Light's name in his death note because Light has lost the game and it's time for him to die. Light screams out that he doesn't want to die as he dies. In the manga we see Misa together with a lot of people walking up a mountain like pilgrims lighting candles and praying to Kira their savior. In the anime we don't really get to see what happens next to Misa and it is open for interpretation but it seems like she's about to commit suicide. The music used in the last scene those last minutes give you that lonely feeling as if you're the one losing.
Plot holes.
Okay so I'm gonna go into some spoilers but before I do that I must say that the script is pretty tightly written so even if there are a few things that don't make sense that is inevitable. Although it sometimes seems too unrealistic too be believable Ohba's ability to remember everything he's written down so far and tying all those knots together is very admirable. Now let's get to the plot holes supposedly plot holes. In the beginning when Light gets his notebook he can see Ryuk. When he comes into contact with Misa he can only see Rem by touching Misa's notebook because a shinigami can only be seen when the notebook owned by the shinigami in question is touched. Later we find out Ryuk didn't give Light one of his own death notes but it belonged to another shinigami named Sidoh. So how can Light see Ryuk? Maybe Ryuk touched Light with his own Death Note but that still doesn't explain how Misa would see him after touching Light's Death Note. Something you could also ask yourself is why does Light when he doesn't own the Death Note ask someone with the shinigami eyes his life span so he'd know when he'd be killed and worm himself out of it. But a shinigami's eyes can only see the original life span not the one effected by the notebook and since Light is using the notebook on pretty much a daily basis it'd be no use to know. I know that's not a lot but it was all I could think of.
Ost.
The first opening is okay. It's nothing too flashy but the visuals really give a true impression of what the show is like and the song had the ability to be stuck in my head for a good while which might be considered both a good or a bad thing. The first ending is okay too nothing too impressive, nothing earbleedingly bad. The second opening of this anime though… I don't have any words for it to be honest. It was like it was trying to be a metal but it didn't sound like actual metal but more like Japan is in serious need of anger management. Like seriously what's is it you have against white people? I much preferred them to stay with the first opening with different visuals but others think it's a good way to cue the audience that shit's about to hit the fan. The second ending is less bad but it still feels like it's trying way too much. The ost used in the anime itself is incredibly good though. The dramatic vocal choirs and classical music attached to it give the scenes a lot more emotional depth and sometimes help keep you on the edge of your seat.
Art.
The manga and anime mostly rely on conversations and monologues so we'll see a lot of talking. In the manga the artstyle that goes with this story fits perfectly. Even though there's a lot of dialogue it's never the case that the drawings aren't of any importance this is also proven in volume 11 chapter 97. There's about 8 pages without any dialogue or monologue going on at all it's just telling the story by showing us. The dialogues are always interesting and sometimes it feels like reading a novel instead of a manga but it would never had the same impact without Obata's drawings. He's amazing at drawing and the different angles he uses all the time even in dialogues is impressive and makes it more interesting. He doesn't show off how amazing he is by drawing unnecessary details that would distract us from the story but it's not overly simple either. It's a pleasure for the eyes to say the least. The anime adaptation was done by studio madhouse who have produced some awesome anime over the years. Lots and lots of them. The dark themes in this anime go well with the dark colours used in this anime. The scenes are done overly dramatic but it's not a bad thing. Despite all the talking in the anime the art never gets boring making everything look mysterious or epic. Up to the point that even eating chips seems like the darkest thing you could do. Even though I personally prefer the art in the manga madhouse never changed too much. I thought Misa was a little cuter in the manga but my judgement could just be clouded since I couldn't really stand her squeeky voice in the anime.
Dub.
The dubbed version is okay. For me to say that is kind of a big deals since I always think art is supposed to be enjoyed in the language it was created in. If a book is written in german I'll read it in german, if a book is written in dutch I'll read it in dutch, if a book is written in french I try my best to read it in french and if a book is english I read it in english. That's how I learnt to speak english in the first place. So I like my anime in japanese. But in all honesty I think that L's voice was better in english. Light's voice however was just aggravating for me to see in english. The Japanese version is done by Miyano Mamoru and he's brilliant at it especially if he goes nuts and laughs. No one in the world could do it like he does. The way he changes his voice on different occasions is brilliant.
Bakuman?
There was a murder case with a copycat murder of murders in death note and in belgium was one of them. The killers wrote “Watashi wa Kira des” on a piece of paper. The desu was written wrong which is really stupid. And that also gives us a hint that these murders weren't committed out of passion for the manga or anime itself. Later on they confess it was something that happened after they had words with someone and after they failed to dissolve the body or couldn't hide it they went with this cheap solution. They hoped t would distract them to find out how and why the person was killed so they probably didn't have a very high IQ. It reminded me of what happened to the characters of bakuman. Bakuman is a manga written by the same artists that wrote and drew Death Note. It gives you a look into the world of making manga. We can assume that some of the aspects in the manga also happened to these mangaka's themselves. So let's assume they also used this particular incident in their Bakuman manga. In the manga Bakuman the main characters come up with a detective story called PCP and this gets a series. At one point people start copying the crimes in the manga and it shocks the main characters and depresses them a little because they're bringing something bad into this world instead of just being entertaining. They then make a good solution by using the next chapters to write about a copycat criminal but then inform it could only be a fake because the real ones would never do something that is an actual crime an always keep it innocent. In Death Note when a second Kira appears they start killing innocent people too and the manga reassures us that it has to be a fake because the real Kira wouldn't do that unless he really had to. The authors probably felt bad about the copycat murder but they didn't actually influence the murderer to do this crime so it's all good. In some places of China Death Note was banned because students started altering their notebooks to look like Death Notes and they would write teacher's or other student's names in the book because they wish they'd die. But that could hardly be considered a real crime even if a little harsh.
Conclusion.
All in all Death Note is not a bad show. It might not be to your liking, you may find it boring but it isn't bad. I wanted to put all the bad and good things next to each other more clearly but I didn't have enough bad things to talk about other than my own preferences. Death note was not my favorite anime ever. And yes there is a lot hype around it but for once the hype isn't around something mindless like Naruto so I'm okay with the hype. If Death Note is the only anime some people know it's a lot more acceptable to me than having them just watch Attack on Titan and think they know everything about anime. I dislike it when simpleminded anime get way too much hype for their own good. Ohba and Obata are people who really deserve this hype though. They've worked hard on making a tight plot that is easy to understand for everyone but still make it complex and bring out themes to think about. I actually went in making this a negative review because the last time I watched it I remember not really liking it for it's second half and thinking that it's a great concept with poor execution but upon rewatching it, reading it and reviewing it I have come to the conclusion Death Note is good!
