Despite this anime being out for years, I've never completely watched it, so now I can check it off my list as complete since it's available on Netflix. Anyways, Death Note by Ohba Tsugumi is an anime about shinigami, death gods, and what happens when they get bored, more specifically when Ryuk, the main shinigami, gets bored. The series is 37 episodes long which is quite odd for an anime to end with from this era. Usually anime are 12, 24, 48 or 52 episodes long but this one stuck out to me all these years because it doesn't follow the norm. From the couple of episodes I had seen prior, it's a really good show and I know why it's highly recommended and revered. Moving on though, this is the story of when a shinigami gets bored and decides to drop his Death Note, which will be explained, into the human world...
(SPOILER WARNING! START)
A teenage boy, Yagami Light, notices the Death Note fall out of the sky into the school yard. He picks it up on his way home and examines it within the confines of his bedroom. The instructions on how to use the book are written on the inside cover in English. Light is able to read these instructions due to the fact that he is super smart, top in the nation and a top student in his school. Once he starts to read the instructions, he thinks the whole thing is a bad joke. I men a notebook that can kill people? Preposterous! But then, curiosity overwhelms him and he tries out the Death Note. His first two victims act as a test of the power he now holds, at first horrified by the fact that he did kill two people, he gets over it pretty quickly.
His god complex starts to show and he deems that he must clean up this rotten world by killing all the criminals and other bad people. He writes over, approximately, a hundred names of criminals around the world, all of them dying of heart attacks over the next five days. Ryuk, the shinigami who dropped the Death Note, finally decided to go down to the human world to find his notebook. Ryuk and Light meet and Ryuk is surprised with the amount of names written within the last five days. He tells Light that he didn't choose him, he simply dropped the notebook and now Light is the owner and Ryuk has to stay with him until he relinquishes to Death Note or until the end of his life span. Ryuk was just bored and wanted something interesting to happen, Light reveals that he was bored too and that he intends to reshape the world, becoming the new god.
As Light keeps using the Death Note, life starts to become more complicated. His "workings" come to light and the Japanese police are on the case with a man named L heading the investigation. Before long, the Task Force, which is assigned to the Kira case, dwindles from over a hundred officers to just about five, everyone fearing for their lives and find L an distrustful fellow. This is especially after the fact that twelve FBI agents are killed by Kira in Japan. L had them sent to Japan to investigate all the officers on the Task Force because he suspected Kira had familial police connections and so a lot of them quit. Left with only a handful of officers left, willing to carry on the investigation, L reveals his face to them in a live meeting. For safety, he has them call him Ryuzaki and has a slew of precautions to keep everyone left on the Task Force safe, including giving them fake police IDs with aliases on them.
Ryuzaki suspects Light of being Kira and invites him to join the Task Force to keep a closer eye on him. At this point, complications ensue with a Second Kira showing up and a member of the T.F. (Task Force) dies. Many things happen from here on out: the Death Note gets passed around, there ends up being like four different Kiras, L dies and the title of L is passed down. There is even a time skip that happens too. Anyways, Light does end up being revealed as Kira in the end, and dies. More happens with the series itself, the mangaka added oneshots and what nots, extending the story line and the world shinigamis and Death Notes reside in.
His god complex starts to show and he deems that he must clean up this rotten world by killing all the criminals and other bad people. He writes over, approximately, a hundred names of criminals around the world, all of them dying of heart attacks over the next five days. Ryuk, the shinigami who dropped the Death Note, finally decided to go down to the human world to find his notebook. Ryuk and Light meet and Ryuk is surprised with the amount of names written within the last five days. He tells Light that he didn't choose him, he simply dropped the notebook and now Light is the owner and Ryuk has to stay with him until he relinquishes to Death Note or until the end of his life span. Ryuk was just bored and wanted something interesting to happen, Light reveals that he was bored too and that he intends to reshape the world, becoming the new god.
As Light keeps using the Death Note, life starts to become more complicated. His "workings" come to light and the Japanese police are on the case with a man named L heading the investigation. Before long, the Task Force, which is assigned to the Kira case, dwindles from over a hundred officers to just about five, everyone fearing for their lives and find L an distrustful fellow. This is especially after the fact that twelve FBI agents are killed by Kira in Japan. L had them sent to Japan to investigate all the officers on the Task Force because he suspected Kira had familial police connections and so a lot of them quit. Left with only a handful of officers left, willing to carry on the investigation, L reveals his face to them in a live meeting. For safety, he has them call him Ryuzaki and has a slew of precautions to keep everyone left on the Task Force safe, including giving them fake police IDs with aliases on them. Ryuzaki suspects Light of being Kira and invites him to join the Task Force to keep a closer eye on him. At this point, complications ensue with a Second Kira showing up and a member of the T.F. (Task Force) dies. Many things happen from here on out: the Death Note gets passed around, there ends up being like four different Kiras, L dies and the title of L is passed down. There is even a time skip that happens too. Anyways, Light does end up being revealed as Kira in the end, and dies. More happens with the series itself, the mangaka added oneshots and what nots, extending the story line and the world shinigamis and Death Notes reside in.
(SPOILER WARNING! END)
I cannot actually say if the show follows the events of the manga very well because I have not yet finished reading the series as of this moment in time. I finished the first volume and the anime followed that to a T so I can only assume that the rest of the episodes follow along with the manga pretty well, too. This anime was really good, it's very much a detective story with a lot of suspense and drama. It is very well done and I actually would love to see more of the story with Ryuk, what he does afterwards because he's bound to get bored again. I also would love to know what happens to Matsuda, an officer who was on the T.F., he became an important character and I really liked his personality.
As of right now, Ohba Tsugumi has made a short oneshot that takes place ten years or so after the events of Light, with a new boy meeting Ryuk and handling the Death Note. The oneshot is really short and didn't leave me satisfied, I was hoping for more out of it really. But characters from the series do appear, like Ryuk and Matsuda. I'll get more into the story when I review the manga series. The anime was really good, I enjoyed it very much, but I do wish for more.
Honestly, I would like to see Ohba crossover their other work, Platinum End, which deals with angels instead of shinigami, with Death Note, like acknowledging it to have happened, making both series exist in the same world. I've only read up to volume four of Platinum End so if they do crossover later on, I have no knowledge of it right now. Thank you for reading! Did you enjoy Death Note as much as I did? I'm not one of those hardcore fans over it but I did really like the anime. Please comment down below and tell me what you think! Can't wait for you guys to read the next one!
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