Death Note

Information of Anime

Light Yagami is an ace student in his school.  One day, he finds a notebook labeled Death Note which is dropped by a shinigami.  With the ability to kill someone based on the writer's decision, Light uses it to create a perfect world without any crimes.  However, the number of deaths of criminals increases at a deadly pace & creates a stir with the police force.  The legendary detective L takes the case in tracking down the killer known as Kira.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

It's about a battle of wits between Light & L.  In order to use the Death Note properly, the writer must know the person's name & face in order to do the job.  Although Light & L attend the same school, Light doesn't know L's true name nor does L know that Light is Kira.  With L figuring out if Light is Kira & Light finding L's real name, both sides try to defeat the over with their brain power in this battle for justice.  Things getting interesting as a second Kira appears & Light & L teaming up trying to track down the second Kira.  Because the second Kira, who turns out to be Misa Amano, has the shinigami eyes, she manages to find out that Light is Kira.  Because of her strong affection for him, she willingly wants Light to instruct her to do anything he wants as long as he becomes her boyfriend.  Light accepts the proposal but states that he can't be her real boyfriend.  Although the two carefully plan to find a way to kill L, Misa gets caught but refuses to admit in being the Second Kira under heavy interrogation.  To save her, Remu, her shinigami, makes her give up her ownership of her Death Note & pass it to Light who already has the note in his possession.  However, Light makes a bold move.

To save Misa, Light decides to turn himself in saying that he might be Kira.  However, Misa's lost ownership of her Death Note causes her to forget about her killings & who Kira & the Second Kira is.  At the same time, Light discards his ownership to his Death Note after being thrown into confinement & forgets the fact that he was Kira.  In the meantime, more Kira-related killings appear even though Light is in jail.  Now, L doesn't know what to do after all these events.  After testing Kira & Misa of whether they are Kira, L sets them free after being convinced they aren't.  But Misa is kept under surveillance by the team & Light is handcuff to L 24/7 as they work on the case together.  Although he doesn't have memories of being Kira, Light thinks he was Kira.  However, the new Kira is working for a cooperation that is killing criminals & their competition as well.

Seeing how a big organization is doing well as their competitors' head people are dying, L's team suspects Kira is working for them.  After getting proof, they make their move.  Thanks to Misa's efforts with the returning help of Rem who uses a piece of the Death Note to see her, they manages to narrow it down to Kyousuke Higuchi as the current Kira.  As this is all going on, Light is starting to think that he was once Kira when he thinks about how the past Kira made his move.  The thinking pattern is very similar to his own.  After catching Higuchi with evidence, Light would later return as Kira by regaining his memories as he touches the death note.  However, Rem is put into L's custody as some team members touch the death note & see her.  Thanks to Light planning ahead, he manages to have Ryuk & Rem add additional rules to the Death Note which makes Light & Misa innocent.  But Light's plan goes beyond as his creation for utopia would create more problems & continues his mission on killing L.  However, L thinks ahead as he knows that there are two death notes out there because the facts of the Second Kira.  But, it would cost him his life as Light manages to trick Rem into killing L & herself.

With the death of L, Light now becomes the second L as time passes & him joining the police force.  However, the existence of Kira is still around thanks to him & Misa.  But, two new people named Mello (aka M) & Near (aka N) appear & challenge each other to catch Kira.  Thus, it turns into a three-way battle of wits.  Light tries to outwit Near by passing the Death Note around to others & using them as his pawns to clear himself from N's suspicions.  However, the long battle ends when Light's plans made a critical mistake that revealed himself as Kira & losing to M & N.  The story wraps up with Ryuk writing Light's name in his notebook as Light dies in a place without the law around.

My Personal Review

Death Note is truly an interesting series.  First spawning from manga to an live-action movie, it attracted a lot of attention in Japan & Asia.  If you like some drama & something with wits, I recommend watching this.

Animation

The character designs aren't too bad.  It's not drawn as a cartoon as it has some realistic features.  The faces are thin & long with small to medium eyes.  Light is a bit plain & L is weird & wild looking.  The shinigamis are drawn ugly & matches their appearance well as death gods.  Pretty good character designs overall.

The backgrounds are pretty good.  They are pretty dull & creates a good image of the situations the scenes are in.

The colours are mainly dull.  The outlines of the characters are pretty thick & heavy.  It's quite noticeable on the faces.  They are times where the colours are too dark to see.  The characters are viewable at least.

The animation movements are pretty realistic & fluid.  Pretty smooth, even with the death parts.

Sound

The sound effect aren't too bad.  Pretty clean & clear.

The seiyuus aren't too bad.  Quite a nice cast.  They fit their characters very well.

The music here is a mixture of orchestral & rock.  They aren't memorable or great, but they create the mood quite well.  Sometimes, I don't notice the music being played as a lot of them are just mixture of sounds almost.

Story

Mainly a battle of wits between Light & L for a good heavy chuck of the show.  It's quite interesting to see how the two of them try to defeat one another like L putting Light into embarrassment by testing him to see if he's Kira.  Plus, the way Light tries to deceive L is interesting.  However, some of the tricks & puzzles are a bit too simple as they are quite easy to figure out.  There are times where the solver solves the mystery a bit too easy.  Also, they can be a bit complicated or unusual such as how Light puts his door handle at a certain angle or how he sets up the trap on securing the death note.  Luckily, there is some action scenes here & there to keep the show lively.  This show uses the mind very heavily.  Even when Light loses his memories, the show still uses a lot of brain power.

With the two geniuses working together, it is interesting to see how Light tries to think who the past Kira was & starts to suspect himself.  Another interesting element was how Rem goes back to Misa in protecting her & telling her everything about her past Kira life & Light being the real Kira.  But, it almost becomes a recycle process as Light becomes Kira again to buy himself some time & prove his innocence from N.  Even though it's a bit more intense, the story seems to go back to square one.  However, the script is a bit weaker & messed up.  It's not very intelligently written to clarity in how the geniuses find out each other's tricks.

As for the ending, it's a bit open ended.  It ends the story very well, but it kind of feels empty.  You'll understand what I mean when you watch the ending yourself.  It involves the Death Note.

Overall Conclusion

Death Note is a great action show for the brain.  Witty & doesn't involve a lot of violence to solve things.  It's a great show to watch during the Fall 2006 anime lineup.  However, the brain battle gets a little sloppy with the M & N arc.

Death Note gets an eight out of ten in my notebook.  The show is brilliantly done in the mental battle department.  Some of the puzzles & traps set may be very simple or a bit extreme, but the show is well done overall with the exception of the last arc.  The story ends well, but feels something is missing in the end as if it's missing an episode.