Death Note is really cool because you can use it as a litmus test for what people qualify as "good writing". In one sense, many of the deductive battles that happen in this series are gripping. The careful traipsing that Light and L do around each other make for episodes that are filled with tension, especially as L slowly zeroes in on Light. The early parts of the series are excellent and very tense.
In another sense, Death Note is a profoundly shallow and deeply cynical piece of work that takes what could be a fascinating moral exercise and devolves it into total nonsense. Very quickly, Death Note diverges from the logical actions of its protagonists and into total farce, killing all suspension of disbelief. Light's bus plan at the beginning of the series in particular strikes me as being very strange and relying entirely on contrived coincidences. I don't really have any issues with the reasons behind this misadventure (killing the FBI agent to send a message instead of letting him back off is exactly what an egotist would do), more that the convoluted nature of the setup makes Light seem intelligent in ways that border on Bat Deduction.
The truth is that it's hard to write smart characters, because you cannot write characters smarter than yourself. In many ways I started rooting for L over Light, not because I liked the morose munchkin moreso than Light (though I confess I do quite enjoy his character), but because his logical deductions were sound unto themselves. While Light dances in melodrama and concocts insane plans that break my suspension of disbelief, L carefully unravels the web of deception with decision making that are logical. The fact that L pegs Light not through weird deduction, but through profiling, also adds to this appeal.
Worse yet, Death Note spins its wheels frequently. It is clear from the minute that Light and L first meet that the series was not fit for weekly serialization. With the information that L knows and the situations he's set up to profile Light, it's only a matter of time before L inevitably finds out that Light is Kira. Okay, that's fine, nothing wrong with a time limit in the story. The problem comes from how exactly Light chooses to stall for time that bother me. The series spins its wheels for an entire arc as the focus of the show shifts completely, which really kills the pacing. Then, against all reasonable doubt, it makes one of the worst writing decisions I have ever seen in a manga and immediately killed all interest I had in the "intellectual" side of the story.
It really cannot be stated how awful the final arc of this show is. Dope final two episodes though, those are genuinely great.
Even if we ignore the series' poor treatment of women, the constant filler to prolong the plot, the weird writing decisions and the introduction of profoundly odd characters like Teru Mikami, Death Note still comes away as ironically mindless in it's mindfulness. There really isn't a lot going on underneath the surface-level actions of the characters. No characters other than Light or L have any depth, and even those two are as two-dimensional as they come. The potential moral aspects of what actually being a Death Note user is like are completely ignored in favor of Light's egomania, which feels like a huge waste. Later works by this author, such as Platinum End, would also demonstrate that a lot of these flaws are endemic to his writing style.
I enjoyed Death Note, but not in the way I was expecting. This really isn't a cerebral show, not in the way people proclaim it to be. It's an action show wearing the face of something deeper, but the pretentions to complexity it reaches for remain out of grasp.
Excellent Action, Meaningless Deduction
Death Note is really cool because you can use it as a litmus test for what people qualify as "good writing". In one sense, many of the deductive battles that happen in this series are gripping. The careful traipsing that Light and L do around each other make for episodes that are filled with tension, especially as L slowly zeroes in on Light. The early parts of the series are excellent and very tense.
In another sense, Death Note is a profoundly shallow and deeply cynical piece of work that takes what could be a fascinating moral exercise and devolves it into total nonsense. Very quickly, Death Note diverges from the logical actions of its protagonists and into total farce, killing all suspension of disbelief. Light's bus plan at the beginning of the series in particular strikes me as being very strange and relying entirely on contrived coincidences. I don't really have any issues with the reasons behind this misadventure (killing the FBI agent to send a message instead of letting him back off is exactly what an egotist would do), more that the convoluted nature of the setup makes Light seem intelligent in ways that border on Bat Deduction.
The truth is that it's hard to write smart characters, because you cannot write characters smarter than yourself. In many ways I started rooting for L over Light, not because I liked the morose munchkin moreso than Light (though I confess I do quite enjoy his character), but because his logical deductions were sound unto themselves. While Light dances in melodrama and concocts insane plans that break my suspension of disbelief, L carefully unravels the web of deception with decision making that are logical. The fact that L pegs Light not through weird deduction, but through profiling, also adds to this appeal.
Worse yet, Death Note spins its wheels frequently. It is clear from the minute that Light and L first meet that the series was not fit for weekly serialization. With the information that L knows and the situations he's set up to profile Light, it's only a matter of time before L inevitably finds out that Light is Kira. Okay, that's fine, nothing wrong with a time limit in the story. The problem comes from how exactly Light chooses to stall for time that bother me. The series spins its wheels for an entire arc as the focus of the show shifts completely, which really kills the pacing. Then, against all reasonable doubt, it makes one of the worst writing decisions I have ever seen in a manga and immediately killed all interest I had in the "intellectual" side of the story.
It really cannot be stated how awful the final arc of this show is. Dope final two episodes though, those are genuinely great.
Even if we ignore the series' poor treatment of women, the constant filler to prolong the plot, the weird writing decisions and the introduction of profoundly odd characters like Teru Mikami, Death Note still comes away as ironically mindless in it's mindfulness. There really isn't a lot going on underneath the surface-level actions of the characters. No characters other than Light or L have any depth, and even those two are as two-dimensional as they come. The potential moral aspects of what actually being a Death Note user is like are completely ignored in favor of Light's egomania, which feels like a huge waste. Later works by this author, such as Platinum End, would also demonstrate that a lot of these flaws are endemic to his writing style.
I enjoyed Death Note, but not in the way I was expecting. This really isn't a cerebral show, not in the way people proclaim it to be. It's an action show wearing the face of something deeper, but the pretentions to complexity it reaches for remain out of grasp.
Ryuk is based though. More Ryuk please!