Death Note2006

88/100 An absolutely fantastic anime on almost all fronts...for the first half. I have my misgivings about it, but its still an epic psychological thriller with high-quality animation and art by Studio Madhouse. The main draw is of course the cat-and-mouse game between Light and L, which is executed perfectly with the engaging hook of the Death Note itself. Its entertaining and intense, and the characters themselves are interesting and flawed to the point where fan-wars are fought to this very day. Team L all the way, by the way. These moral dilemmas serve to enhance the themes the series is trying to convey, with morality, justice and power all being explored. Questions like if it's really right to kill criminals and the conflicting ideologies present within justice and vigilantism are explored well, and its very much left to the audience, which I appreciate. The only thing I didn't like is the fact that we are occasionally given more "teenage" plots. The series especially suffers from this after Misa is introduced. It doesn't intrude too much upon the story, but it does lower my interest. The second half of the story is also way worse than the first half. Best character L is killed off, and now we're stuck with two characters meant to represent the two halves of L. I guess it's true about the sum of the parts being less than the whole because Near and Mello are way less interesting than L. I was genuinely joyful when Mello died. This show had a lot of potential, and its mostly unfulfilled. However, I still think its great, and even the lackluster second half manages to still be enjoyable in its own right. Its also very short, which means there's little to no filler. This is really the best way to describe the show: great, but could've been a masterpiece. As many problems as I have with it, it's still pretty good at the end of the day.