Have some unorganized, hastily written, and unedited thoughts on Death Note. Fair warning, there are spoilers in here, though I feel that should've been obvious.
Death Note is such a good anime. I love it so much. I've seen it 4 times in my life now. Once when I was young, once a few years ago when I was curious how well it held up, once over the summer with a friend who'd never seen it, and once over the past month with my roommate. I've also read the manga through once and seen the Netflix adapted movie. Each and every time I saw the anime, it went hard.
First off, the anime is just incredibly well made. The use of cinematography is great, strange angles and shaky cam perfectly matching the decaying sanity of the characters. The use of darkness and shadow drape the whole affair with a melancholy and ominous air, the perfect pair to the moods of the plot. The voice acting (I've only seen dubbed, come at me) is incredible. L and Light's actors especially do amazing jobs, anchoring the whole show together between L's quiet and thoughtful nature versus the absolute batshit insane rants Light delivers as his ego climbs higher and higher.
The soundtrack is incredible. In particular, L and Near's themes are beautiful and iconic pieces of music that deliver moods of wonderment. But the rest of the soundtrack goes hard too, dancing from ominous rock beats to ominous latin chanting to vaguely electronic themes at the drop of a hat. The first opening theme is good, but the second is incredible, somewhere between punk and metal, a wash of chaotic noise over random images. It should not work, by all rights, but somehow it does, the husky howls of the singer conveying the madness that infests the second part of the show. He screams of "fucker" sneak past the sensors and almost sound like he's yelling "faggot", something which my queer friends always find hilarious, especially given the strong homoerotic undertones of the show.
The actual plot and themes always grab me wholeheartedly. A surface level reading might suggest it's about capital punishment, the ethics of law enforcement, of judgement, of tyranny. But the story repeatedly refuses to engage with these topics seriously, never really considering if Kira might be killing innocents, if a conviction in the legal system actually doesn't mean anything, if there are biases in Light's methodology. And that's because the show is really about ego. The show doesn't need to engage with these things because it yells outright that Light is wrong. Any reading of the anime that starts by suggesting that maybe Light has a point is factually wrong and has misunderstood what is going on. The point is not that Light is wrong, it's that he has convinced himself that he cannot be wrong. Showing him being wrong would be counterintuitive. Him being wrong is the backbone of the show.
The crux of the show, of course, is the intense relationship between Light and L. And it's brilliant because they are the same person. Both are brilliantly intelligent, skilled, and spent their whole lives honing themselves to be a tool for a purpose. Both have similar values. Both are imbued with a driving insanity, a madness that the other, more grounded, characters see and fear. Both possess the same driving ego. It's that ego that really controls the show, that takes a professional rivalry personal, that makes them both unable to ever move past each other.
They are the same person. The show goes to great lengths to show this, from how innocent Light is when he first gets the book, to how well they cooperate during the amnesia arc, to how seamlessly Light adopts L's whole identity after his demise. In one way, nature vs nurture is a theme of the show. L is withdrawn, reticent, prone to naval gazing, and often afraid. His childhood was rougher, pushed to the point of abuse by a school trying to train the next Sherlock Holmes. He lacks social skills and graces because when would he have practiced them? Light, by contrast, is a social butterfly. Charismatic, confident, intelligent, he has it all. And it makes his god complex all that more engaging, seeing exactly where it would derive from. He's a golden boy with a bright future who can do no wrong. Has he ever truly faced consequences?
Their relationship borders on the intense in part because of this similarity between them. It's what drives the almost romantic energy between them. If L had been the one to find the Death Note, would he have used it the same way? Would he have come to the same conclusions as Light? It's repeatedly established that the only thing that turns Light evil is the means. He's otherwise an upstanding and ethical guy, and this itself functions as a criticism of how easy it is to claim to be good in a vacuum. The question is how you act when you have the means, not in the absence.
Ego is really what drives the show. Light's mounting god complex pins the entire show together, excellently delivered through batshit insane rants and a constantly crescendoing soundtrack. His madness sells the show, convincing you that this is the kind of fucked up idiot who would use the Death Note. Further, his ego climbs steadily, driving his increasing mistakes. He starts off paranoid, demonstrated by spending several minutes gleefully hiding the note in a drawer that can catch fire, a plot point that never actually comes back. But it does show off his paranoia. His ego climbs to unmatched levels throughout the show, especially after what he considers his ultimate victory, and thus the second half is riddled with his mistakes, ending with a plan that Near easily outwits because he never considered the possibility of factors outside his design.
The second part of the show, after L's death is often criticized. But I think it's actually essential to holding the show together. In part, because Light had to die. He could not survive past the end of the show. He is the villain and he has to lose. But L could not defeat him, because L is shackled to the same petty ego as Light, just in different ways. L cannot abide being wrong, cannot even risk it. And this causes him to play cat and mouse games, to dance around the truth he knows in his heart, to choose to reveal Light through subterfuge instead of putting a bullet through his heart. Both of them accept the game as presented instead of playing outside the lines, cheating through other means of murder. L knew that it was Light for many episodes before his death. But he refused to act. He could not act. L had to die because there was no way for him to defeat Light as he was.
And this is the fundamental theme of the show, the way our flaws shine through and shackle us down. L's flaw was his ego and it brings him down. And Light too, is ultimately defeated by his ego. This theme is echoed throughout the second half of the show, through Near and Mello. Neither could defeat Light on their own. Near refuses to get his hands dirty, to take aggressive action. Mello is nothing but aggressive action, no consideration or hesitation. On their own, these flaws would bring them both down. But together, they cover for each other's weaknesses, and deliver a team effort to bring Kira down.
Near is often criticized as being a budget L, and I think this is certainly a true way to look at it. But I think that actually, this is a compliment to show, not a criticism. See, L realized he could never defeat Light. He was too close, too in love with his only friend. So he took steps to ensure Light would fall after his own death, providing his successor with all the tools he would need. Near should be read as L reborn. He is merely finishing the dance that L started, a return to the objectivity that drove L's early victories. In the end, L won.
There's a joy to the madness of the show. While sometimes campy, the overdramatic dialogue effectively adds to the building insanity. And, honestly, "I'll take a potato chip... AND EAT IT" is just a spectacular line that never fails to make us laugh. The show perpetually hovers between dark urban fantasy and almost a comedy with how over-serious it can be, and this too is a strength. You can go from laughing one minute to serious the next. Light's melodrama simply sells his character, his steadily building delusion of divinity.
The intensity with which L and Light approach even just a simple game of tennis further underscores their feelings about each other, the way they feel only they can understand each other. And they're right. The onlookers all miss the point of the match, furthering the distance from society that locks the two of them to each other. Yeah, it's funny. But so are Light and L, two caricatures of a person, each an almost relatable mess of issues and insecurities. We all see ourselves as the smartest person in the room, never understood properly, and in this we see ourselves in them both. We all see ourselves as afraid to act, afraid of being wrong, and in this we are L. And we all see ourselves as invulnerable, unable to lose, and in this we are Light.
This driving madness peaks in the second half of the show, when the serial escalation climbs even higher. Death notes swap hands like no ones business, characters drop like flies, SWAT raids go off, missiles are launched, the US president is threatened, and so on. It is not inaccurate to call part 2 a three-way deathmatch between a group of Japanese vigilantes, the entire mafia, and the whole motherfucking US of A and it is played to the hilt. But this is really just echoing the escalation of the first half of the show, which started off with simple games of words and ended with month long schemes driven by amnesia. And then, in the end, it all comes down to a simple notebook switch, the same trick Light used against L played back against him.
Many of the side characters are incredibly simple, driven by a simple role and maybe a character trait or two. Most are only defined by their relationships to Light and L: friend, confidant, enemy, ally, lover. This often works to the show's advantage. It's a lot easier to see how L and Light start to manipulate everyone when they're that predictable. Of course Light could predict everyone's actions for weeks, they're not complicated people. But also, this further underscores the distance between them and our intrepid main characters.
Light and L don't pay attention to the people around them. They don't respect them or care about them, and accordingly, the show never explores their rich inner lives. Why should it? The show is fundamentally from Light and L's perspectives. Peaks of deeper personalities repeatedly show through. Naomi figures the whole scheme out despite never being given much characterization. It is occasionally hinted that Misa is a lot sharper than she presents, such as when she outwits Kiyomi in the battle for Light's affections. The cops start to doubt Light's persona towards the end of the show, and ultimately, it is sweet Matsuda who shoots Light. Is Matsuda presented as stupid because he is or because that's how Light and L view him?
Ryuk and Rem especially are fascinating characters. Ryuk is a necessary addition, providing Light a place to exposit. Me and my roommate often described him as "the most useless shinigami", after his complete inability to do or know anything. But it's not incompetence. It's apathy. Ryuk doesn't know anything because he doesn't need to know. Ryuk also gets a lot of the best lines, providing a lot of needed levity to balance out the darkness of the series. His boredom is what drives the plot and that couldn't be more perfect. As Light becomes increasingly convinced that the notebook found him specifically, that he has a fate, Ryuk stands as a reminder that that couldn't be further from the truth. Light's refusal to acknowledge such, despite being told it, is merely another facet to his growing madness.
Rem gets my instant appreciation just for being a lesbian. But she also exists to show off something else important: how a shinigami dies. And I think that's really important for the ending of the show. A shinigami dies if they extend the life of a human. And that's kind of weird.
It's explicitly stated in the show that if a human uses the note, they don't go to heaven or hell, but are locked out of both. However, there is also no afterlife, according to one of the advertisement break facts, which states that humans just go to an infinite void. This would seem to be a discrepancy? It's possible it's a translation error, but still difficult to explain. Here's how I see it. Humans go to the void when they die. Death note users become a shinigami. See, I think being a shinigami isn't laudable. It's a punishment.
The shinigami are all miserable, bored out of their minds. There's no colour, no life, no sensory inputs to their world. They cannot interact with or meaningfully change the human world, nor do they have any drive to. They are all incredibly bored and miserable. It's a punishment. But they get to live eternally, and this seems to be the only desire any of them have, to avoid death at all costs, the same as Light. And the only way to free themselves from this hellscape? To save a human, to prove that there is more in their twisted hearts than apathy or malfeasance. It's no wonder most of them never stop being shinigami. It's a realm full of the Light's of the world.
Even the way that final confrontation plays out is the series in a nutshell. They both sit in a warehouse and wait for the actions of others, both their moves played in advance, both committed to courses of action prepared earlier. The series was always about how well L and Light could manipulate others and it shows. Light is useless but for his power and he gave that away a long time ago. There's nothing he can do to struggle against his fate. It's all over.
Light ends the series outwitted, failed by his own ego. He stands, surrounded by the people he has been tricking for years, the people he was too confident to actually remove, and has his whole plan stripped apart by Near, who is acting for L. He stands up to affirm his godhood and is rigidly denied. Near shuts him down hard and for good, calling him out as a flawed man, a tyrant with delusions, a paranoid freak. He's just a psychopath in the end. And in a way, this is a final jab, that the only person who ever understood Light is dead, and now he's surrounded by people who know the truth, that he's a fucking monster. He dies pathetically, his life taken by Ryuk, as promised. Of course Ryuk wouldn't save him. There's no other way it could end.
There is a lot you could criticize about the show. The pacing of the second half is not quite right, a bad adaptation from the manga. Female characters are one dimensional and rare. It is often silly and that is just not some people's cups of tea. Some of the characters sometimes make stupid mistakes. Some of the plots are unnecessarily complicated. The Netflix adaptation is one of the worst fucking movies I've ever seen (but is a flawless masterpiece if you're into watching bad movies).
I love Death Note to death regardless. Every time I watch it I get sucked back in and I'm already craving that next rewatch, that next effort to introduce someone to it. Watching Light's descent into madness is always fun and I always spot more hints towards his eventual downfall. It's a good anime.
So at the end, I just have this to say: would Kira watch Death Note? I think he would.
Also Light, L, Ryuk, Misa, and Rem are in a polycule. Fight me.
Link of the day! A easy to implement comment system for static sites, that won't track you the way that say, Disqus will.