DEATH NOTE (anime) – REVIEW (spoilers!!)

I’m very particular about what I watch. Sounds like a crazy statement considering my confession to liking Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda. But yes, I very rarely watch stuff that isn’t recommended to me by at least one person whom I trust.

I first heard about Death Note on the IGN TV site and read a couple of reviews of miscellaneous episodes. It sounded interesting, and I put it on my (fairly extensive) list of anime to watch. This list is kind of a wishlist, as most of the time I never get any of the stuff on it to actually watch.

But then I read more reviews of it, saying how it was an interesting psychological thriller full of cat-and-mouse intellectual games, and my curiosity grew.

And then of course a couple of friends told me to watch it. So I spent a couple of weeks getting hold of all 37 episodes of the anime, and sat down to watch them (in-between other stuff).

Synopsis

It’s quite difficult to write a real synopsis of the anime as a whole, but it revolves around the eponymous “Death Note”, a notebook that grants its owner the power to kill anyone whose name they write on its pages while having that person’s face clear in their mind. It is found by a college student called Light who, being incredibly bright and therefore a bit bored, and also being disgusted by the evil and violence he sees in the world, decides to test the notebook to see if it is true. Upon finding that it does indeed do what it says on the tin, he then devises a way to cleanse the world through Justice and, throughout the first few episodes, becomes “Kira” — from the English word “killer”.

Soon the police begin working with a famous detective called L to thwart Kira/Light’s plans, and indeed a game of intellectual cat-and-mouse begins.


Thoughts

I like programmes that make me think. Especially ones that involve some kind of moral or philosophical debate. My already confessed love for Tru Calling and, to a certain extent, the original design philosophy for Andromeda is to do with this. Any kind of musing on the extent of human good and evil, or cosmic balance, interests me. It’s a theme I draw upon in my own writing, though it’ll take a couple of novels before you start to see just what’s going on there.

Death Note is a prime example of the kind of thinking/debating I like to see explored. While, in my opinion, the end of the series seems a little bit rushed and not quite as well-thought-out as the initial 20 odd episodes, there is nevertheless not a single episode I didn’t enjoy.

(I also must admit I didn’t like the change in intro/ending music that happened halfway through the run, but I skipped through that most of the time anyways.)

Really it isn’t the actual end of the series that I have an issue with. The actual story, though a little rushed (I understand that a large chunk of the original manga was condensed for the second arc of the anime, while the first arc was played out in full) was pulled off well. It was the actual characters themselves that lost a bit of credibility: especially Light himself. He went from being a meticulous genius to an almost dull, impetuous youth. Now I can see that this might have been designed to show a descent into arrogant madness, but for me it didn’t work. Light spent the last few episodes doing nothing but waiting for Near to do something.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more the second half — the last 15 episodes or so — bug me. It was all about proving stuff we, the viewer, already knew, rather than foil and counter-foil as the Light/L storyline had been.

I must admit, I did find myself quite involved with certain aspects of the characters in the second half though. When Light kills Kiyomi Takada, the girl whom he says he wants to make a goddess of his new world, I actually said out loud “You bastard!”

With Misa, I was never entirely certain she was going to be anything except a puppet for him. With Takada, I actually believed that Light had found someone whom he would treat as an intellectual and romantic equal. This made her death a much more shocking revelation of Light’s depravity.

I suppose it’s the romantic in me that wants to find out more about Misa’s feelings after Light’s defeat too. While I felt the final moments of the series were given the time needed to satisfy the audience and absorb Light’s defeat and descent into madness, Misa looking out over the city could have worked better with some kind of final monologue from her.


Review

So, on to an actual review. Death Note is, in my opinion, a must see for any fan of anime that doesn’t just watch it for the crazy action scenes. There aren’t many in Death Note. While there are a couple of short physical exchanges between Light and L, there’s no super high jumping or lightning bolts being thrown around. It is all very grounded in realistic actions, as befitting a show whose main way of entertaining is getting the audience to think. It is character driven, not action driven.

The version I watched was a fansub, and as such had — at several points — fairly dodgy English subtitles. I don’t know what the actual English dubbing is like, but the original Japanese voices are very expressive.

The animation is fluid and very well done. The use of lights and darks, shadows, and saturated colour schemes in character’s internal monologues really adds to the design/look of the series. You KNOW when Light is being Kira, or when L’s brain is working overtime. It’s revealed not just in their words, but in their stylised character designs on screen.

One of the series’ strengths — apart from the new intro/credits music introduced halfway through — is the music. The score is very strong, poignant, and reflects the action on screen well. I must admit I can’t help but compare L’s theme to the theme for The Exorcist, but that maybe only adds to the character for me.


So over all, I give the series an 8.5/10.