What if you could kill someone by simply writing their name in a notebook? You could set how they die, when they die and without it ever leading back to you. Most people might believe it immoral to even consider using said notebook. Some might throw morality out the window and use it for their own personal gain... A few might see it as a tool to punish those whom they deem wicked and make themselves the bringers of "justice".
Death Note
Studio: Madhouse
Director: Tetsurō Araki
Original work by: Tsugumi Ohba
Licensed by: Viz Media
Number of episodes: 37
Genre: Detective fiction, Mystery, Drama, Psychological thriller, Supernatural
Story:
Our story of this killer starts out as Ryuk, a Shinigami (god of Death), "accidentally" drops one of these Killer notebooks from the Shinigami realm into the human world where it is then picked up by our "hero", Light Yagami.
Naturally, like anybody, Light sees it as nothing more than some kind of hoax or prank but his curiosity eventually gets the better of him upon realizing the power of the notebook, Light goes from a respectable honor student to the rather dark protagonist of the series.
Now that we got the basic stuff out of the way, we can get to the good parts... and the many bad parts of Death Note. Let's just get the good parts out of the way first. Namely: the first arc of the series.
The Death Note itself is bound by many different rules such as you need to have the person's face you want to kill in your mind when you write down a name so you won't kill someone else with the same name, also you must write down the cause of death within 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Otherwise the person dies of a heart attack within 40 seconds of their name being written.
What's interesting is how Death Note shows all the different ways Light uses these rules to work for him throughout the first arc. Additionally the first arc explores some interesting sociological and psychological aspects. In Light's mind, he's ridding the world of criminals and horrible people that the justice systems of the world have failed to punish. Thus he psychologically rationalizes his murders as just. Sociologically, people would never outright agree with his murders at first. However, as his killings progress and the effect is felt on both criminals and regular people, general opinions towards his murders begin to shift to a more positive.
The one thing the first arc does excellently is set up an extremely interesting conflict between the two main characters. Both Light and L are extremely intelligent characters, each with their own ideas of what justice is, and they bounce off each other incredibly. In a sense the series gives off a Sherlock Holmes versus Professor Moriarty vibe, the only difference being that we follow Moriarty rather than Holmes.
At this point I would have honestly loved to continue praising this series. Unfortunately, that is all the praise I have for it.
Eventually, the series takes a drastic tone shift from a sort of Sherlock Holmes versus Professor Moriarty experience to more or less a buddy cop feel. This change takes away from the nice friction between Light and L and makes the characters feel more awkward around each other. It just generally felt off. Eventually, the story returns to its old tone but even that is short lived before for the rest of the series takes a serious nose dive in quality.
Characters:
As previously stated both Light Yagami and L are extremely intelligent characters much like say Lelouch from Code Geass or Shiroe from Log Horizon.
Light is methodical, narcissistic, takes slights against him very personally and has a bit of a god complex. The thing about Light though is that, well, he's not that likable of a character. What Code Geass did so well was how much it made me feel horrible for liking Lelouch. Light only really works as a character when he is with L who he can bounce off of as his intellectual equal and opponent.
As stated above, L is Light's equal. He is as equally methodical as Light is, far more willing to take risks then Light is and his views on what justice is are almost the polar opposite of Light's. L is rather strange in appearance and personality. He gives off a more eccentric appearance compared to Light's clean cut honor student appearance. However, it is impossible to mistake his intellect after he is able to do things like quickly deduce the exact area Kira (Light's serial killer name) is hiding within only one encounter.
Unfortunately, the series eventually decides that it has had too much of a good thing. Eventually L is replaced by two lesser versions of him, Near and Mello, neither of whom end up being that likable or are able to bounce off of Light that well. Any semblance of plans or intelligence from them feels artificial compared to L.
Though the series does try to give some more characterization to the other characters in the series, they all come off as being rather simple, more or less just tools for Light or L to use in their battle. The only exception I'd say to this is Ryuk who's more or less just an observer who just watches events unfold to entertain himself for a while.
Animation:
For a Madhouse series, Death Note is pretty underwhelming. The animation is consistent and it doesn't look bad per se but then when you compare it to other Madhuse series, the animation just feels lacking. Hell, bothBlack Lagoon and the first season of Gunslinger Girls were released around the same time as Death Note, and both of them still look fantastic even years later.
The visuals do have interesting qualities though. The main quality is that it makes some other ordinary, otherwise dreary things seem epic. Since the main plot point of the series is a notebook that can kill people, there would naturally be a lot of moments where the main character would be writing a lot in said notebook. The visuals just make these moments seem intense and action packed when they otherwise would not be.
Sound:
Death Note does a nice job of adding to the aforementioned weirdly intense moments with a lot of nice choir tracks in its soundtrack that really added to the ambiance of these moments. At times it feels like these tracks are a bit overplayed but honestly they do such a good job that I do not actually mind so much
The first opening and closing I found to pretty pleasant but it honestly felt like they veered to a more overly serious tone compared to the series'. The second opening and closing, however, nailed the goofy yet epic vibes of the series. The second opening in particular I found enjoyable because it mixes a weird kind of screechy metal track with some equally weird yet pretty visuals.
Openings
Opening 1:
Opening 2:
Closings
Closing 1:
Closing 2:
Language-wise both the English and Japanese dubbings are quite solid with the only major difference between them being that the Japanese actors give the characters a slightly more serious edge. From the English dub I found Alessandro Juliani's performance as L incredibly good as he captures the eccentricity of the character quite well. Brad Swaile did a pretty solid job as Light by hitting both the false innocence and evil psycho aspects of the character. Though I'll admit, the little I heard of Mamoru Miyano's performance of the character I liked as I preferred the more serious edge he gave the character.
Personal Enjoyment:
I wanted to enjoy Death Note a lot more than I did. The first arc more or less had me sold on it. The intellectual conflicts between Light and L were fantastic. The music and visuals had a nice weird yet epic feel to them. I just really wanted it to be good all around.
But it's kind of like having an intriguing conversation with a very intelligent person who immerses you in the conversation so much that you don't realize you've been talking for a couple of hours... And then that person craps themselves... And then continues talking like nothing's happened... And then they begin to smell... And then you begin to walk away slowly from them.
Yeah, Death Note is kind of like that...
Final Verdict:
After assigning scores to:
Story: 3.00
Characters: 3.50
Animation: 3.75
Sound: 4.00
And my own personal enjoyment: 3.50
I have given Death Note an assigned score of:
3.50/5.00
Recommendation:
Death Note is definitely a stream recommendation; in fact I kind of regret buying it myself. Death Note can be streamed from Viz Media's Neon Alleyand Hulu and can be purchased off of Viz Media's store (part 1 and part 2), Amazon (part 1 and part 2), Rightstuf (part 1 and part 2) and wherever you can buy anime DVDs/Blu-rays.
Alternative anime to check out:
Code Geass
(My review here)
Code Geass does a lot of things Death Note does such as having an Evil and intelligent protagonist who comes up with brilliant plans that usually don't go quite right. The main difference is that Code Geass actually pulls these situations off a lot better than Death Note. Also even with a few hiccups here and there, Code Geass actually has consistency in its general quality, which cannot be said about Death Note.
Attack on Titan
Another series directed by Tetsurō Araki, Attack on Titan is, well actually you all already pretty much know what Attack on Titan is. So yeah, some similar epic visual stuff in both series (Only it fits a lot more in Attack on Titanthen it does in Death Note) and a pretty nice soundtrack. You've either already watched it or heard of it already, so there really isn't much to add.
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