ToeBeans405

I went into this thinking I was going to be super impressed and blown away due to all of the hype and good reviews surrounding Death Note, however I was not. Not to say that this was a bad watch but I just think this is overhyped. 

Story:

-Really good premise

-I was satisfied by all of the "rules" that were set out, I wasn't left with many questions and to me, that's a plus. I like to know the rules of a world or a premise.

-The anime is pretty distinctly split into 3 parts. The first part was excellent, the second part was ok, the third part was bad in my opinion. 

-Part one focuses on setting out rules surrounding the Death Note, it focuses more on the Shinagami, and it develops the protagonist and his relationships with others.

-Part two is a quite different, but I still enjoyed seeing the relationship between the two protagonists and how that developed

-Part three is just lacking, the new characters introduced have no time to become likeable, the story seems like it's dragging on, just not great.

-The ending is pretty much what I was expecting, there was really only two ways Death Note really could've ended, no surprises here. So even though the end wrapped up everything pretty nicely it also was boring and a little unsatisfying.

Animation:

-I'm no expert on animation but to me this seemed pretty average as far as animation goes

-The shinagami looked pretty cool

-A lot of the characters otherwise looked fairly plain and I actually had trouble keeping a few of the police/detectives straight, they look kind of similar

-The backgrounds look fine, maybe a little lacking sometimes

Sound:

-I didn't really enjoy the first opening song, I skipped it most of the time

-I really hated the second opening song, I always skipped it

-The sounds during each episode were consistent, there's sounds that are always used

-Sometimes this dramatic opera music is used and that just made me laugh most of the time, it was just overdone for me

Characters:

-The main protaganist is relatable/sympatethic for about half of the first episode, he quickly goes off the rails for me. That being said he is still very interesting to watch. Very intelligent but also a little too confident sometimes, it's interesting to watch him grow up and also to see how he interacts with other people

-The other main character for most of the show is also a joy to watch, I liked seeing these two main protaganists interact.

-The two new characters introduced in the "third part" of the show are really bad in my opinion. Underdeveloped, no personality, I didn't care at all about them, they felt hollow. And I guess that's what should be expected when in the third act new people are introduced, I'm just not going to care.

-I know some people really hate the protaganist's main "love interest" if you will, I found her tolerable. I didn't hate her, I didn't particularly like her either.

-Some of my favorite characters to watch were the Shinagami (gods of death). Too me, especially Ryuk was honestly the most relatable character in the show, I wanted to see more of him. He added much needed comic relief and also a kind of indifferent perspective.

-Overall though, there are quite a few characters in this show that are more secondary/minor and I just DID NOT CARE about any of them. Very few characters get developed even though the show is 37 episodes long and whenever anyone semi-important died I just really felt nothing. I was not invested in these people's lives, not even the main characters. Not once in this watch did I feel sad or cry when something happened to someone and that is probably my biggest complaint. I can overlook a lot of flaws if an anime makes me feel for the characters, Death Note didn't do that for me.

Final Critiques:

-One of the other things that bothered me about Death Note was the amount of internal dialogue that happened. I would bet that over half of the things spoken in Death Note are actually thoughts from someone's head. I understand that there are a lot of situations in this show that people are saying one thing and thinking others, double-crossing, etc, but I wanted to not have my hand held through everything. I wanted more silence honestly. There was just constant action, dialogue, or internal monologuing and when there was a moment in an episode that was just quiet it felt great. I wanted more silence.

-Ultimately, I'm glad I watched Death Note to know what all the hype was about. I think I would've prefered it without the last 10ish episodes and the first part of the show was by far the best in my opinion. I would still reccomend it, but tentatively. I don't think Death Note is for everyone.