Notebooks and a God Complex - Death Note Review

Well, it certainly took me long enough didn’t it? Since 2007, Death Note has been regarded as one of those must watch animes, a classic in the community. Despite it’s run ending in 2007 and a surprisingly thin number of spin-offs/extra materials, Death Note remains incredibly popular. In fact, it remains the most popular anime on MyAnimeList.com. For some reason or another, despite being a big anime fan, I never got around to watching it. The reasons for doing so remain quite unclear to me as it sat on my hard drive for years without ever being touched. So, I finally decided to see what it was all about; is Death Note truly deserving of it’s title as an anime classic and one that everyone must watch?

The story begins with a bored Death God (or Shinigami, depending on what subs you have) named Ryuk who decides to drop his ‘Death Note’ into the Human World because he was…bored. A Death Note is a notebook wielded by Death Gods in which if you write someone’s name on it’s pages, that person will die (there’s loads of other rules as well but I won’t get into that). The notebook falls into the hands of Light Yagami, a brilliant Japanese student who, like Ryuk, is bored. Light originally thinks the book to be some kind of prank. That is until his curiosity gets the better of him and he writes the name of a criminal who’s name and photograph appear on the news. The criminal dies shortly after Light writes his name and after a few more tests Light is convinced of the notebook’s power. Light then quickly jumps to the conclusion that with this notebook it’s his responsibility to bring judgement upon criminals with the Death Note to create a ‘perfect world’ in which he will become the god of. However, as the criminal deaths begin to mount it catches the eye of the International Police and more importantly, the world’s finest detective, known as L ,who launches a large investigation in order to catch the criminal known to the public as ‘Kira’. The action then shifts to a battle of wits between Light and L as each try to stay one step in front of the other in order to accomplish their goals (L to capture Kira and Light to kill L). What results is a rather compelling and tense mind battle between the two in the first 15 or so episodes. However, this compelling and heart-pounding storyline only goes so far. Without spoiling too much, the plot is at it’s best when it’s Light against L in their battle to outwit the other. However, the second half of the series becomes boring and stale at best. The end of the series in particular is incredibly weak. Death Note promises a lot early but then drops the ball towards the end of the series (more on this later).

On the left, Light. On the right, L. Who wins this battle of geniuses?

 I thought that one of the great failings of the show was that it rarely debated the morality of the Death Note or provided a philosophical debate on the meaning of justice. That is what I came into the series expecting. However, Light rarely has to make any truly difficult decisions, everything is obscured by his battle with L. This is a huge missed opportunity for the series, not to mention that halfway through every episode a screen would inform us about certain rules about Death Gods and Death Notes. However, these rules hardly ever came into play. The series got a little too caught up in the Light vs L dynamic that by a certain point the Death Note hardly felt like a plot point. I mean, it’s only the title of the show right? I love battles of wit and intellect and the battle between Light and L was certainly interesting and near exciting at times. The show never really asks the questions that it should be asking about having the ability to kill. It never goes into the ideas about what a good person is or what make someone a bad person. It never provokes the viewer into those thoughts. These questions don’t get asked because the focus is on Light and L’s intellectual battle and the show never makes you think. It does all the thinking for you. The show never goes into who Light designated as bad people and never asked those important questions. People claim to love the show because they think it asks such questions but I failed to see their point. Things in Death Note are painted with black and white, rarely grey. However, I can’t forgive a show for losing it’s way so easily. Death Note runs for 37 episodes and by the time you reach the final episode it feels stilted and played out by just interesting enough for you to stay entertained. The show does just enough right to keep you interested and can be entertaining but the second half of the series feels lacking in direction in comparison to the first half’s fast moving and tense plot. For all the hype that I heard about this show, I couldn’t help but feel incredibly disappointed. In reality, Death Note would have been better served running for about 24-26 episodes in comparison to 37. By the end it just drags on.

Light Yagami himself is a largely a good character. I was originally put off by how quickly Light came to the conclusion of using the Death Note to make himself a god but I was willing to accept it because his descent into madness was quite interesting to watch. Light is brilliant and is meticulously well prepared for every situation. That kind of protagonist is one of my favorites to watch. However, I was really disappointed that Light never got any truly introspective moments. When we are tuned into Light’s thoughts, they’re always about how to stay in front of L, what his next move was going to be. Rarely did Light’s god complex really come in to play. Coming off of that point, from the beginning Light is hardly human. He’s emotionally detached and dare I say, kind of boring. The series would have been much better if the protagonist had more of that human element and was faced with decisions that tested his morality and sense of justice. Meanwhile, I really did not like the character of L. Like Light, I was very impressed by his intellect and his ability to keep up with Light however, the character himself was extremely weak. L is a quirky detective who has numerous odd habits and is all around strange. His only defining trait is that he’s a weird and emotionally detached detective and that’s about it. That’s his entire character. You can make the argument about how he’s supposed to contrast Light and now in a sense they’re two sides of the same coin but in the end it’s meaningless. L’s character is as shallow as a kiddie pool and only serves to be the weird detective, Sherlock Holmesesque character that has been played out in loads of TV shows. Also, I struggle to really recall any other characters because as a whole, the characters were forgettable. The policeman that work with L are so boring that they all blended together into a boring mush. Then there’s the character of Misa Amane who’s job is to annoy you and become irrelevant to the plot during the entire second half of the series. One character I did like was Ryuk the Death God. It was interesting seeing him observe Light’s use of the Death Note and his joy at the chaos he was causing. However, he pretty much disappears halfway through the series and his later appearances feel more like cameos than anything.

Light does well enough at being evil...but is that it?

Now, I’ve said a lot of things about this show so far but I feel I’ve hardly scratched the surface when it comes to issues I had with this show. Now, here’s a quick little disclaimer, by no means should someone take this to mean that it’s bad. My judgement of this show comes more from my disappointment that it didn’t live up to the expectations that the anime has set for it. It holds an 8.92 score on MAL, which is on a 10 scale and obviously is quite high. I feel that to truly express what the show did wrong I need to incorporate extremely heavy spoilers. So if you have not seen Death Note, I advise you not to read:

<Spoilers Start Here>

As I said earlier, the show loses it’s way in the middle. Through a strange chain of events, Light ends up working alongside L on the Kira case despite the fact that he is Kira himself. In addition, as part of Light’s plan, he relinquishes the Death Note and his memories in order to trick L. So, instead of a pulse pounding battle between two great minds, we get lots of Light and L ho-yay moments instead. The pace of the show grinds to a halt because now we’re left with two boring characters. At least Light was somewhat interesting before since he was a maniacal laughing evil genius. Once he loses his memory, his interactions with L become boring and the plot shifts to the hardly compelling Yotsuba group sting operation. These guys aren’t nearly as fun to watch as Light and L’s battle was.

Next, we come to the part where L dies and the show becomes even more boring. With L out of the way, it appears that Light has nobody else to stand in his way. However, we’re soon introduced to L’s successors; Near and Mello. Near is just a clone of L except that he’s even more overpowered and is able to make impossible deductions out of his ass. Mello is just an asshole who winds up being a pretty pointless character. The action then shifts to a boring battle between Near and Light, which is nowhere near as good as his battle with L was. The action culminates in one of the worst endings I’ve seen in anime history. Light ends up being outgambited by Near at the end, is exposed as Kira, and later dies at the hands of Ryuk, the very same Death God who gave him the notebook. I wasn’t surprised that Light died because that is the way that the story should end. Stories like this should end with the protagonist meeting his end because that kind of power never should of been in his hands to begin with. However, the climax of the series relies on Light being outgambited by an even weaker character then L. One, this defies everything about Light’s character that has been established so far and two, the ending makes the final 12 episodes of the series following L’s death feel utterly pointless. Light was established as being a genius who saw every possible outcome, it felt out of character for him to fail in this circumstance. Meanwhile, Near’s outsmarting him felt inorganic. L’s deductions made sense, he jumped to the logical conclusions. Near however simply pulls answers out of his ass. It was insulting to Light’s character that he was outsmarted in such a way.

I agree Light, your show's ending is a load of bullcrap

Finally, the ending made the entire story feel empty and meaningless. In the end you don’t feel that Light’s death was really a result of him using the Death Note and wielding a power nobody should have. It felt that he died because he lost a game of wits with Near which was largely unsatisfying. Everything that the series had built up to that point lost all meaning with Light’s death. There was no satisfying conclusion, no moral to be gained here. What was the point of this whole story? It would have been more satisfying to see Light achieve his objective but die shortly after becoming a god as punishment for his sins. But no, in the end we’re left with a meaningless ending. The real meat of this story was when Light was going head to head with L. Once L left, the struggle felt empty and Near was a hollow replacement. Their struggle didn’t convey the same tension as Light vs L. Like I said earlier, Death Note promises a lot early but falters in the middle and at the finish line. 

<Spoilers End Here>

I can’t say that I was exactly a huge fan of Death Note’s art style either. I does a good job conveying the dark mood of the show but as for the characters themselves it’s hardly anything special. They don’t stand out in any way. There are some interesting visual tricks here, like when the screen switches to a red color scheme when Light slips into his evil side. However, other than that, I couldn’t say that I was that impressed. The show came out in 2006 so there’s no reason for it not to look better. The dialogue between characters was done pretty well, especially during Light and L’s battles. However, it had a habit of leaning a little to much on exposition. For example, during the Yotsuba arc, there’s scenes where characters are simply spitting exposition to each other to the point of mind-numbingness. One of the Yotsuba members says something like “We are all young so we all have our sights on the CEO position”. Way to remove all the mystery and intrigue surrounding your characters. Occasionally the show would shift into a comedic mindset which, to be perfectly honest, definitely didn’t suit it. These comedic moments would be thrown into pretty serious episodes which frequently threw the tone of the show off. Overall though, the voice actors did well, even if the script failed them at times.

Death Note is a solid series but not a great one. My harsh tone in this review comes mostly from my disappointment that the show isn’t as good as promised. At it’s best, Death Note is compelling, tense, and can be downright scary good. However, it’s just so average in the rest of it’s run. Rather it just plods along at a slow pace and never makes use of the host of potential plot lines that are around. I understand that the length of the manga forced the anime to go on longer than it should have. Still, there’s little excuse for the disjointed storytelling at the end. Death Note is a fine series but it’s hardly a must-watch series or anime classic. It may appeal to you, it may not, it's no sure thing. 

My Score: 3/5