DISCLAIMER: I have no issues with the writer or the fans of this series as I’m simply critiquing and sharing my opinions on the work itself. I go pretty in depth on most of my points so it would be best reading my explanations before disregarding them

Death Note is a title that I’m sure most people are at least familiar with as it is well-known not only to anime/manga fans but also to the general public as well. It’s influence on the popularity of anime is almost unparalleled especially in the West and the anime adaptation is, like Attack on Titan, one of the most popular gateway shows in all of anime. I’ve only ever watched bits and pieces of the show many years ago and yet I’m still watching videos about the series to this day because I’ve always thought of the concept of the death note as one of the most interesting things to come out of the anime/manga medium. Recently I’ve finally decided to consume the entirety of the story with the premise that has hooked me for years and since the manga apparently tells a more detailed version of the anime, I decided to go with that. Maybe it’s because of the expectations I had due to the overwhelming amount of praise for the series, but in my opinion, Death Note is, at best, entertaining and, at worst, a story full of one-dimensional characters, contrived plotlines and surface level explorations of it's iconic themes and premise.

This review will be extremely long and will contain a lot of SPOILERS so skip to the end if you just want to read a general summary of my thoughts on the manga

Story - 4/10
The quick synopsis of Death Note is that the student, Light Yagami, finds a notebook of death (which has the power to kill anyone by knowing their face and writing their name in it) after it was dropped to Earth by the Shinigami, Ryuk. The story follows Light as he uses the notebook to kill criminals around the world while trying to hide his identity as Kira from those chasing after him.

Light’s “rival” for the first half of the story is L while the second half is Near and Mello. I, like most people, like the first half much more than the second half but both parts of the story are filled with coincidences and, the first part especially, is filled with convenient events that are laid right in front of Light by the writer in order to progress the plot. The best way I can think of to describe the underwhelming plot is that whenever the writer wants to progress the story or to achieve certain outcomes, rather than establishing rules to the world and challenging all the characters in creative ways, plot points are randomly added throughout the manga in order to attain those outcomes. There are plenty of examples and I will give a few here to explain what I mean: Light is under suspicion and can’t write names on the death note? Here’s a smart, famous, and hot actress who no one (except L) will suspect and who will do anything Light says because she loves him unconditionally and will keep loving him even after forgetting all memories associated with the death note. Light needs a convenient way for his plan to kill L? Here’s a Shinigami who will do anything he says because she loves the actress unconditionally and will do anything in order to keep her safe, but let’s also give Light a convenient way to get rid of her later by creating a rule that love will kill Shinigami. Light and Misa both can’t write on the notebook? Here’s a smart and calculating Kira worshipper who will do anything Light says who Light conveniently finds after reading questionnaires for a few minutes. Light needs someone in order to communicate with the smart and calculating Kira worshipper? Here’s an influential, smart and hot TV announcer who also happens to be a Kira worshipper and will do anything for Light because she also loves him unconditionally. Hmm...there sure does seem to be a trend here. But you know what, I’m feeling generous and let’s just say that these aren’t horribly contrived plot points but are, in fact, Light being a super genius and using his resources to the maximum. Then the story would still be bad because the flaws and the contrived nature of Death Note's plot becomes glaringly apparent by simply looking at the events leading up to both L and Light's deaths since they both happen not because they were outsmarted by their opponents, but because they acted completely out of character and made mistakes that even a ten year old wouldn’t make because the plot needed them to.

First, let’s talk about just how ridiculous Light’s plan to kill L really is and the reason why it would never have worked. So to recap, Light’s genius plan is to make Ryuk write the 13 day fake rule, give the notebook to Rem and make her choose some random greedy person and make them write the names, then he buries Misa’s notebook and loses his memories so he can be held in captivity in order to prove his innocence. After that, he would hopefully be allowed to work together with L (and by this point, his plan would have already fallen apart but I will explain this more in the character section and let it go for now). And then after capturing the fake Kira, he will get his memories back from the notebook, kill the greedy person and the investigation team will read the fake rule on the notebook and realize that Light is innocent. Misa will then make the eye deal with Ryuk and if she doesn’t remember L’s name then Rem will write it because L suspecting Light means that Misa won’t be safe. The problem with this entire plan is that most of it hinges on the fact that everyone acts exactly the way Light predicted they would. But what if Rem found someone before thirteen days? What if L didn’t let Light in on the investigation even after the confinement? What if the ex-police officers didn’t want to keep Light captive for over a month even if he wanted it because it's messed up or simply because they didn’t want to break the law? What if the greedy person Rem found was actually smart and was able to avoid capture for a long period of time? What if the fake Kira burned the notebook before capture? What if Misa sees how well Light treats her without the notebook and decides to ruin his plan? What if nobody believed any of the rules on the notebook? The answer to these questions and more is...who knows? Because Light sure doesn’t. But perhaps the most frustrating part of Light’s “plan” is how he was able to get the notebook after they captured Higuchi. The manga seriously wants you to believe that a group of trained police officers, after obtaining a seemingly supernatural and unidentified piece of object, decides to, instead of safely containing it, let everyone touch it and look inside? What? And that L, who was supposed to be the smartest detective in the entire world, simply hands this notebook of unknown magical powers, which he believes is the tool Kira uses to kill his victims, to his number one suspect? When Light gets the notebook and says his headache-inducing catchphrase of “just as I planned”, I almost laughed out loud at the stupidity of the writing because honestly, the death note is not the source of Light’s power anymore, the ability to predict the future is.

Not only is the way Light beats L terribly contrived, but his death also feels incredibly unnatural and unreasonable because the manga is apparently unable to make the conclusions to the two most important events of the entire series even remotely satisfying. So, why is the way Light dies equally, if not even more convenient, then L just handing him the notebook? First, the idea of Near winning because of Mello’s intentional decision to kidnap Takada is completely absurd, because there is absolutely no way for Mello to predict Mikami’s actions, unless, of course, he has the power of plot progression by his side. Also why would Mikami, the smart and calculating Kira worshipper who literally calls Light “God” and has followed Light’s every word so far, even make such a crucial mistake? Because, again, the plot needs it to happen. What's even worse than making Mikami act out of character is doing the same to the protagonist at the final confrontation the entire manga has been building up to. Why would Mr. evil genius Light Yagami, who has already been making Mikami check the death note with a microscope, decide to not even bother telling Mikami to double check the notebook he brings to the warehouse? Who knows? Actually, why didn’t he just kill everyone in the warehouse besides Near in the first place and then kill him afterwards? This is something the story even recognizes but has no answer to, but let’s give the manga a break and say that Light didn’t know the names of all the SPK agents. Then, knowing the entirety of Near's plan and that this final showdown could lead to his arrest or death, why didn’t Light simply just make Mikami write everyone’s names at the warehouse besides his own as well as Near’s so that he wins no matter what? Well, don’t think about it too much because the manga certainty doesn’t want you to.

(As it is the case with any story/plot, I may have missed something and wouldn’t mind at all if someone points out my mistakes as long as they are more meaningful than comments like “Light lost to Near at the end because he was blinded by his ego” which is more of a lame excuse for bad writing than anything else).

Art - 10/10
The art is just so incredibly good that no words can do it justice and it’s by far the best thing about the manga. I have never seen art that is so consistently impressive for over two thousand pages. The details of each page/panel are fantastic and everything is so clear that there was not a single moment where I was confused by what was happening. I didn’t even talk about the character designs yet which are, in my opinion, the best part of the art because pretty much every character, including the side characters, are uniquely designed and are easily recognizable at a glance. The main characters’ designs are all so iconic and I especially love all the different designs of the Shinigami. I honestly don’t think I can find something about the art to criticize even if I wanted to and it single handedly kept me from dropping the manga.

Character - 2/10
This section is probably a pretty big change in tone compared to the previous section, but the characters in this series are perhaps the worst I have ever seen in any anime or manga, not because they had bad designs or ideas but because of the ridiculous amount of potential that they had to be fleshed out and complex but are completely squandered and replaced by the shallow and empty planks of wood the manga tries to pass off as characters. I will be going in depth on some of the characters and the ones I don’t mention are characters who I either don’t have strong opinions about or simply have forgotten because of how meaningless they were.

Before discussing all the human characters, let’s talk about all the Shinigami for a second, because they exist for the sole purpose of advancing the plot. I’ll be forgiving to Ryuk since he is supposed to, at least to a certain extent, represent the audience and is there just to be entertained which is completely fine. But both Rem and Shidoh, however, provide nothing meaningful other than to give characters convenient ways to solve their problems. First, the manga introduces Rem, whose entire character is that she is in love with Misa, along with the rule that Shinigami can die if they extend the lives of those they love. This might have actually been a pretty interesting idea, because maybe it could give further implications to its world while at the same time setting up potential motivations and dynamics between its characters. But the manga decides to say “screw that” instead, because ask yourself this: what does Rem and this new rule provide to the story? Well, nothing. This character and the idea don’t challenge the other characters in any way, they don’t force characters to adapt or grow, they don’t provide interesting conflicts or conclusions to the mysteries of the world. They exist simply as plot points that the manga conveniently forgets about and never mentions again as soon as they are no longer needed. Of course the same treatment is given to Shidoh, whose entire existence is to give Mello a way to figure out that Shinigami exist so that he can tell Near about it later. Light then gets rid of Shidoh by giving him a spare notebook that he conveniently will never need, and this plot advancer disguised as a character literally flies away never to be seen again.

I will speed run through some of the characters before I talk about the two truly problematic ones. Misa is an empty husk of a character who exists solely so that Light can have the power of the Shinigami eyes without getting it himself and so that the manga doesn’t end in the twentieth chapter. Not only is she a complete failure of a character but she also had the wasted potential to seriously impact Light as a character (I will discuss this more later). Mikami gets a little backstory which is nice but he is so stale and one-dimensional that his entire character can be described in a single sentence (which honestly can be said for most characters in this entire series). Near is just a plot advancing machine who literally comes up with conclusions out of thin air and whose plans are heavily reliant on people making dumb mistakes that they shouldn’t even be making in the first place. The only ones to get something that even slightly resembles character development is Mello and maybe Matsuda, but their roles and the development they receive are so inconsequential that it’s barely even worth mentioning.

The first major character to be on the chopping block is L, who is actually one of the better characters in the series because he is without a doubt the character involved with the least amount of contrived schemes and plotlines. The problem with L, like with most characters in the entire manga, is that he is an artificial character with no development, personality or moral ambiguity. After the manga ends, it somehow is still hard to clearly say who L is as a person. Is he a sociopathic genius who is only obsessed with catching Kira? Or is he actually justice-personified and chases after Kira because he is evil in L’s eyes? If L believes in the justice of law and order then why? What is his story? Why was he specifically chosen to be raised in Wammy’s orphanage when there must have been thousands of gifted children around the world who Watari could find? Who is Watari? How deep is his relationship with L? Why does he want to raise gifted children as crime solvers? And what is his story? Well...who knows? But, you might say, not all good characters need a detailed backstory, and I agree. However, L not only lacks a strong backstory, he also doesn’t have any concrete beliefs nor does he develop as a character. There was not a single point throughout his arc where L is shown to genuinely care about justice besides a few throwaway comments about how Kira is bad. There’s a reason why one of the most basic rules of storytelling is “Show, don’t tell”, and this series sure does a ton of telling but hardly any showing. L’s character could have developed in a plethora of different ways, and one way might be creating a situation where L starts out with a sense of lawful justice that slowly turns into twisted obsession, but the manga doesn’t even bother with any of them.

Finally, let’s now discuss the worst part of the manga, Light Yagami himself, who is, for lack of a better word, a completely garbage character and an even worse protagonist. He is terribly inconsistent, highly unrealistic, extremely unlikable, lacking in any semblance of a personality, and worst of all, utterly deprived of any character development throughout the entirety of a story that spans over four years long. Light, similarly to L, lacks any defined character trait, personality or personal philosophy. Is Light a genius with a god complex who uses a false sense of justice as an excuse to satiate his lust for power? Is he a misunderstood villain who truly believes in a perfect world where the end justifies the means? Is he a tragic character whose ideals are gradually corrupted by the thirst of power after using the death note? Nobody knows, because Light is somehow all of them while also being none of them simultaneously, making him a confused and messy character who, apparently, is whatever the audience wants him to be because the writer is too scared to or simply couldn’t commit to writing a consistent protagonist themselves.
What really makes Light’s inconsistent character as well as the writer’s lack of direction abundantly clear is when Light gives up possession of the death note and loses his memories. But first, I want you to imagine a scenario where an altruistic person, who has been helping homeless children selflessly for all of his life, is suddenly given ownership of a million-dollar company, and a few days later, instead of donating a portion of the money, decides to run a sweatshop using kids in order to save money. If this sounds completely ridiculous, that’s because it is, and so is the way Light acts after losing his memories. Light, during the majority of the first arc, is supposed to be a representation of who he is if he never discovered the notebook, but this makes absolutely no sense because the Light that we see at the beginning of the story is a completely different character from the Light who loses his memories. What does Light do when he receives the notebook? He writes down the name of multiple criminals in the same day, and yet the new Light suddenly believes what Kira is doing is wrong and that he should be taken into custody? Give me a break. The entire sequence with Light losing his memories doesn’t work because Light has always been a psychopath and decided to become the “God of a new world” literally by the end of chapter one. New Light, according to how smart he is supposed to be, should have immediately figured out that he was Kira and his whole plan would have crumpled.
Not only does his character not make any sense but he also wasn’t given any possible way to grow as a character due to there never being any stakes, therefore no challenge, nor were there ever any consequences to his actions. Light questions his own motives and philosophy for a total of two pages during the first chapter, and never thinks about it again no matter what events have transpired. He also has no feelings and loves no one which means that he literally has nothing to lose, except for his own life, if he is ever caught and doesn’t have to suffer even if his actions result in the death of someone like his father. This makes for a terrible character and story because, without stakes or ramifications, there’s nothing that would challenge or hurt him in any meaningful way nor will there be situations/obstacles he has to face that forces him to question his own beliefs and actions. It’s true that Light dies in a pathetic way by the end, but it’s really not satisfying because he is an irredeemable villain who has lost nothing throughout the entire manga and basically gets handed a free bail out so that he doesn’t have to face any real repercussions for his acts of mass murder.
Consider this; Wouldn’t it have been interesting if the story created moral ambiguity, on a more grounded level, by forcing Light to challenge his own principles when he has to interact with a broken and grieving mother who lost her wrongly-convicted son as a result of Kira’s killing spree right before he was released, but at the same time also seeing a rape victim who is finally able to overcome her mental struggles because Kira is able to create a much safer environment? But no, instead, let’s just make Light say a few lines about how perfect his world is and make up some arbitrary percentage on the drop in crime rate worldwide as proof. Wouldn’t it have been interesting if Light actually loved someone in his family like his sister, but makes a bad decision driven by his emotions when she gets kidnapped, resulting in him becoming even more ruthless after coming up with the twisted conclusion that love makes him weaker? But no, instead, let's just use her kidnapping as a way to advance the plot and then completely forget about her afterwards. Wouldn't it have been interesting if Misa was a well written character and Light actually develops feelings for her as the story progressed, but has to make the painful decision to use and sacrifice her in order to reach his vision of an ideal world? But no, instead, let's just let Light use her however he wants without any conflicts so that the plot can progress. Wouldn't it have been interesting if, throughout the first arc, Light and L both start to actually see each other as friends and, even after getting his memories back, Light becomes conflicted on whether or not it's the right thing to do to kill his friend for a "better" world? But no, instead, let's make everything "part of Light's plan" so that he can beat L without anything differing from his original plan. Wouldn't it also have been interesting if Light truly cared about his father and when he died as a result of his plan to kill Mello, Light learns the bitter truth that, in real life, he can't always win? But no, instead, let's make Light use his father's death to further prove his innocence and promptly forget about it two pages later. Sigh. Perhaps the ideas I provided are also not very good, but the point of it all is that without having scenarios where Light needs to make difficult decisions and think about his actions, the story has no tension and Light, as a result, ends up being nothing more than an empty and superficial character who stays the exact same way from page one till the very end.

Enjoyment - 6.5/10
Despite my complaints with the ridiculous plot and shallow characters, the first half of the story was actually quite entertaining with L’s deductions being the highlight of the entire manga. However, the second half of it takes everything that’s bad about the first half and expands on it while keeping none of what made the first half enjoyable. The result is a product that starts out as a flawed but fun story that becomes exponentially worse as the story progresses with an ending that is not only unsatisfying but also representing everything wrong with the manga as a whole.

Summary
After finishing the manga and reflecting on it for a while, I realized that Death Note is really nothing more than a turn-off-your-brain type of story that falls further and further apart the more you think about it. This is by no means a judgmental statement as I myself enjoy these types of stories and I certainly don’t think that all good stories are, nor should be, highly thought-provoking and “deep”. But with the amount of fame this series has and the sheer number of praise it’s gotten for its complexity and its moral ambiguity, it’s bound to be nothing but awfully disappointing when it accomplishes none of these things. Any flicker of potential the series once had is gradually smothered out by its overuse of convenient plotlines and weak characters until it finally collapses under the weight of its own popularity and falls short on all expectations. Some might say that I’ve judged this series too harshly, while others might think that I was not harsh enough, but at the end of the day, Death Note’s reputation seems to be carried entirely by its unique and fascinating concepts, and the sad reality is that the creators really missed out on the chance to craft something truly unforgettable.