Wow, what can I even say about this! It's so much better than the manga in so many ways. It had me on the edge of my seat for the most part, especially in the latter half.

The show starts off pretty comfortable, setting the scene for Light and everybody else to slowly come in. It almost feels like we're companions of Light alongside Ryuk as we watch his antics with the Death Note, seeing who he's going to punish next. The plot follows along quite well with the manga's pacing, albeit keeping it nice and relatively compact. With the manga, I struggled to read the walls of text that some characters like L or Near speak of in the speech bubbles, becoming a quickly tiring task. In the anime, it constantly explores what is going on in the character's mind as they speak, visualizing their thoughts onscreen.

The latter half was what really had me hooked, especially when power was transferred over to the Yotsuba corporation. It was engaging seeing Light's plan fall into place with every move he made to keep his operation clandestine from everybody else around him. The way he always had the chance to pull a fast one behind L seemed comical. Even after L's death, I saw how much more action they injected into the series. Teru seemed like an interesting character who, I think, deserved more screentime. There was so much room for fleshing out his character outside of his devotion to Kira and his unique sense of justice. I could have seen him being best friends with Light in another life, a demonstration of how close their beliefs really aligned when it came to Kira. It almost feels like they could have been working together from the very beginning alongside Kiyomi: the ultimate triple trouble of anime, if you will. Light eventually coming to terms with his actions and how he could have led a peaceful life felt like a way better conclusion to the story than how the manga tried belittling him into nothing more than a discrete crook who took advantage of everyone he spoke with. With how grating the manga was for my eyes, it simply displeased me to see Light getting such harsh treatment, especially when from his companion Ryuk who had to kill him. Seeing the ending done in a more peaceful light (pun somewhat intended) gave Light a redemption moment of a sort for him to embrace.

All in all, Death Note, the anime, is in my eyes a much more fitting rendition of the original story, tweaking some things so they go down smoother and do not take so much time from the viewer. Need I repeat how much better it is than the manga? Exactly. This is a true stone-cold classic that deserves every bit of praise it gets. It may be a little too old for some people's tastes, but should nonetheless remain highly regarded as one of the best that have ever come out.