So, does it live up to the hype? Is Death Note a series worth watching? Well, the answer, as is often the case, is both yes and no.
The series' plot is one of it's major selling points. Being somewhat loosely classed as a 'Psychological thriller', the storyline is the single most important aspect of the series' success. The series certainly starts out strongly, with the first five or so episodes being an expositional roller-coaster, the series, whilst being a tale of the supernatural, remains grounded in the real world. The characters are empathetic, with the two leads sitting on different sides of a distinct moral fence. However, about halfway through, the series begins to take a turn for the worse. The frequent logical jumps made by the characters become more impossible (I know they're supposed to geniuses, but come on!), their motives and intentions become cloudier and the plot begins to lose the fast pace it had in the beginning. By the time it reaches it's climax, the plot plods along without much motivation. Reasons and motives are never really fully explained, and when they are they don't always make a lot of sense and tend to be very confused. As is often the case with series that have explosive beginnings, Death Note peters out towards the end, to the point in which you are left uninterested in the climactic final episode.
In terms of artwork, however, Death Note is sublime. The entire series is conducted in a 'realistic' greyish filter with no real bright colours. The characters are wonderfully animated, and the stylistic 'epic-writing' scenes are a wonder to behold (if not somewhat ridiculous). The audio aspect of the series, however is a bit of a mixed bag. The voice actors all do good work with their roles, and some of the music is very good indeed, the first ED in particular is excellent. However, the background music and sound of much of the series is not particularly notable, and a the second two OP and EDs are, in my opinion, far inferior to their predecessors.
In terms of characters, Death Note provides us with an interesting selection. We have the Gary Stu main character, who (one suspects) is somewhat of a wish-fulfilment character for the author, and his nemesis, L, who spend most of his spare time eating a variety of chocolates and cakes without putting on any weight. Both of which are prone to omniscient leaps of logic, jumping to the correct conclusions without any significant evidence, or even hunches. Probably the most interesting character of the series is Ryuuk, the Death God, who gets unfortunately little screen time as the series progresses. Ryuuk spends most of his time cackling, eating apples and looking gangly, a refreshing simple character in a Byzantine series.
As I have already mentioned, I initially enjoyed the series greatly, the characters were fresh and the plot interesting enough. However, the series starts needlessly complicating things around episode 15 with triple and even quadruple bluffs from the two main characters playing off against one another. The change in tone and pace after episode 25 also dampened my enjoyment of the series, with new characters being introduced that were either uninteresting or gimmicky (Melo's chocolate bar chomping and N's toys got old pretty quickly).
Despite a somewhat scathing review compared to other reviews on this site, I do not think Death Note is a bad anime. On the contrary it has a refreshingly unique concept, and the characters, despite being somewhat idealised, are likeable and interesting. However, a dramatic decline in quality and pace, as well as issues with the plot means that this anime cannot really be truly considered an all-time great
