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So,
as I was saying, Light Yagami is an incredibly bright student, but one
day he discovers a notebook on the campus lawns. Titled 'Death Note' he
proceeds to read what appear to be the scribblings of a madman.
Among
the initial pages, it explains that if the holder of the Death Note
writes a humans name in the book, that person will die of a heart
attack.
At first Light is sceptical of the book's
authenticity, but after adhering to the various rules the book
stipulates - the author must have a mental picture of the persons face
when writing their name - he finds out that he indeed can kill anyone,
anywhere, at anytime.
Cue the 'evil grin'.
The book itself
is the property of a Shinigami, or God of Death to roughly translate.
In this case the Death Note is 'accidentally' dropped to Earth by a
Shinigami named Ryuk.
He did so because he got bored of
gambling with his fellow demons in the Shinigami realm. Fair enough
too. Only so much yahtzee one God of Death can endure.
But even Ryuk, an immortal, is surprised with how many people
the young student kills in just a few days.
Light
Yagami has lofty notions of justice, which we later learn come from his
father, and has a grand plan to kill all the criminals that slip
through the justice system's net.
But this bizarre case of hundreds of sudden heart attacks alerts the
authorities that something is askew.
During
the second and third episodes we are introduced to the enigmatic 'L',
the world's best detective who is enlisted by Interpol to help solve
the case.
What ensues is an entirely engrossing game of cat and
mouse between the student genius Light Yagami, and 'L' the unknown
super sleuth.
But as Light Yagami is pursued by 'L' - who it
has to be said is more than a match for Light's genius - the student's
noble cause to rid the world of evil begins to unravel.
Will he become worse than the criminals he
seeks to exterminate?
There's
plenty of variety to break up the overly serious philosophical rants
that inevitably plague animated Japanese series like this one.
Ryuk
the Shinigami is a great character who only Light Yagami can
see
(others just think he talks to himself). Ryuk releases more details
about the Death Note's powers and its restrictions along the way, while
also providing some poignant wise cracks that are amusing, but also
telling.
As the Death Note
series progresses, the story's protagonist Light realises that deaths
can be intricately plotted via his book of butchery and
this leads
to some ingenious plot twists which had this hard-to-impress critic
raising his eyebrows in respect.
The production values in this anime are excellent too.
Even
if the story smelled worse than a bag of week old pigs intestines, the
artistic direction and quality of the animation would have kept me
watching. It animates well and is very nice to look at with some very
neatly drawn characters and backdrops.
The only aspect that I
didn't like so much was that only the first four episodes are released
on the first DVD from Madman. I need the whole set! It's too
addictive!
Oh,
and the title track is ghastly. The Jap-Rock track is filled with
wailing and annoying guitar riffs that suck worse than Puddle Of Mudd
B-Sides.
Overall however, Death
Note
is one of the best anime's I've seen in quite some time. I
reckon this could be as popular as the excellent Neon Genesis Evangelion
series and with almost 37 episodes spread across nine volumes, it's
going to make for quite a sitting.
If you're
looking for something dark and different, do yourself a
favour and check out this anime next weekend.
EXTRAS
Not
to much on here, as you would expect from a simple "Episode" release.
No doubt, Madman are keeping all the tasty extras to themselves until a
mega-Death Note
boxset is
released later on in the year. For now, however, it seems you'll simply
have to be satisfied with the clean reversible cover, textless songs
and the odd English voice actor behind the scenes.
Conclusion:
Movie 85% Extras: 65%
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