Death Note - The Complete Series (9 Discs) (Review)
Saturday, 3rd October 2009, 12:40

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Right – now for the near impossible. An indication of what the narrative is and who the principal characters are without spoiling it for those who want to watch it. And this is a show with twists and turns that, if described, could easily spoil it. So bear with me!

Light Yagami is a bright student who, when walking through the streets, discovers a mysterious looking notebook – the ‘Death Note’. The instructions claim that if a human’s name is written in the book, they will die. Naturally, he thinks it’s a hoax but when he witnesses the near rape of a girl in the streets by a brutish gang he gives it a go. By touching and ‘owning’ the notebook he and he alone can see the previous owner, a monster-styled ‘shinigami’ who advises and escorts Light as he starts to wreak havoc on the criminal population of his city.

To begin with, the killing is easy and seems to be morally justifiable. But the soaring death rate of criminals in prisons attracts the attention of a brilliant but highly secretive detective known only as ‘L’ who works for the International Police Organisation.

The serial killer (actually ‘Light’) becomes something of a cult hero, feared by most and worshipped by some and he soon becomes known as ‘Kira’. ‘L’ realised that Kira can kill without ever laying a hand on his victims but at first he cannot figure out why. When Kira appears to always be one step ahead of the investigation team, ‘L’ suspects that it must either be someone on his task force or someone related to them.

It turns out that he is right. L’s Dad is one of the team leaders and he has been accessing his secure computer files. And thus starts a game of cat and mouse between L and Light, both equally brilliant, with ‘L’ never quite giving up his suspicion that Light is Kira, even when Light joins the investigation team.

To add to the complexity, a young model called Misa Amane, who worships Kira as he killed her parent’s murderers, finds a death note of her own and becomes a second ‘copycat’ Kira.
From here on in, the plot twists and turns with Light utilising his knowledge of all the nuances of how the Death Note works to achieve his end – to become a ‘god of a new world order’.

Despite the plot complexity, spread out across 37 episodes it all makes perfect sense and anyone from teens to ...well, a hundred and twenty will be able to follow. Picture quality looked excellent to me (despite probably being sourced from an NTSC original) and audio was top notch with a great soundtrack. I should warn that half way through the series, the opening title track, an upbeat grungy pop song is replaced with what is, I suppose, something close to ‘death metal’ but I got used to that eventually too.

As I said earlier, the US dub was great and there’s a nice little video extra on one of the early discs where you get to see some of the characters being dubbed in the studio. It’s a subtle and clever job they do.

All in all, I would wholeheartedly recommend the set. Despite a mid-season lull, the overall package is superb and is certainly a show that I’ll return to again before long.

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