I just watched all of Death Note.
There are NO spoilers in this review, so don't worry.
I thought it was... uh... well okay, here's my thing:
I thought the show itself was mediocre. Dialogue wasn't very good (some of it was pretty cheesy), and the general style/characters were really generic modern shallow Anime style and mediocre. A lot of elements of the show was fairly unnecessary, such as the whole shinigami realm thing. In the end it wasn't absolutely critical that this realm or these shinigami characters existed... I hate to make judgments like that, but this shinigami realm didn't appeal to me at all and it wasn't very necessary for what I was interested in.
However, some of the main themes and questions posed in the show were very interesting to me. The scenario created with the 'death note' was a fine idea, and the scenario with Light becoming the 'God' of a new world was a great set-up for the show. The question of morality is obvious, is judging the worth of someone's life 'okay'? The whole L vs. Light thing worked very nice, a sort of rivalry of different ideals. I also liked how it was never very clear (until the end of the show) what side was truly good/evil. Obviously there is the politically correct side vs. the more dangerous side, but it isn't really presented that way. The main character would normally be considered 'evil', however I found myself half-way rooting him on throughout the show (IE... thinking "damn, how's he gonna get himself out of this situation?!").
My problem with the show, however, was the presentation of these ideas. I thought the specific rules for the 'death note' made it specific to the show itself, thus detracting from the idea's applications to everyday life. However I'm not sure if the show would have worked the same if it were more of a general philosophy, so oh well. I still think the shinigami thing was relatively unnecessary, but again the show still works fine with it. I just wish that it followed up on it more (what happens to the shinigami realm after the show ends?)
OK NOW THERE IS ONE SPOILER FOR THE VERY END OF THE SHOW SO DON'T READ THIS... IT'S THE FREAKING ENDING OF THE SHOW FOR GOD'S SAKE. (copy/paste the text to read it)
One thing I didn't like about the ending is that I really saw it coming... the way I saw it, there could only be 2 or 3 possible endings: the death of Yagami Light (and the death of his 'ideal world'), or the success of his 'ideal world'. There could be other possibilities, but these were the 2 I was expecting. Unfortunately, the show took the obvious choice and killed Light. This was fine, but my problem is the way they made him look right before he died. They destroyed the ambiguity of which side was truly good/evil by making Light and his dream look like a crazy fantasy world as Light loses his mind and freaks out and confesses everything when he realizes he's been screwed. Again, my problem with the show lies in how they present things. They could have continued the grey area between good/evil while still killing Light, or even made him into a martyr of sorts, but instead they decided to make him look crazy and cowardly as he basically destroys himself. Oh well. "Good" triumphed, I guess.
Blah blah... I sure did look into this whole thing a bit much for a supposedly 'mediocre' show, didn't I... oh well. It was entertaining, for sure.
