Death Note is the kind of show where you try to watch one episode, but end up losing an entire weekend to its exhaustingly-tense cat-and-mouse chase, and you aren’t even mad about it. Despite some poorly-received plot choices in the middle, it’s an intelligently written, smartly paced and consistently engrossing series that’s being made into a live-action film on Netflix on August 25, but you should probably watch the anime first (it's streaming on Netflix and Hulu) anyway, even if you don’t tend to like anime.
For those who’ve never heard of it (minor story spoilers to follow), Death Note is a 2006 anime adaptation of a 2003 manga that follows the story of Light Yagami, a high school student who happens across a supernatural notebook that grants him the ability to kill anyone, any way he likes, just by writing their name in the book. Light, considering himself a vigilante, tries to use the book to ‘cleanse the world of evil’, and effectively plays God, which leads an incredibly skilled detective to try to hunt him down. It’s not easy to find someone who can kill someone with natural causes without even being near them, but the book does have some important rules and caveats, and so the cat-and-mouse chase begins.
Aside from its near-mastery of pacing, one of my favorite things about Death Note is its somewhat manipulative ability to make me want the bad guy to succeed - something I haven’t felt quite so passionately since I first watched it, except perhaps in Breaking Bad. The slow, subtle character progression keeps you addicted to the chaos, as you watch the series’ main character evolve alongside it. Watching a simple, bored student (or, in Breaking Bad’s case, a teacher) slowly transform into a sociopath is a terrifying delight, and that journey becomes just as much of a plot point as each of the intricate twists are. If you liked Breaking Bad for similar reasons, chances are you’ll like Death Note, despite their enormous differences.
I think, by the end, I truly hated Light Yagami and was morally opposed to every decision he made, but I didn’t want him to go anywhere. I struggle to even tell you why, except that the writers made him such a delight to watch, like a slowly escalating car crash you can’t help but stare at. In that, it’s also a brilliant show to re-watch even if you’ve seen it already - experiencing the first episode over again does such a good job of showcasing just how much the world changes, which happens too subtly over the series for you to necessarily fully realize it.
Death Note adds a little more Sherlock into the mix than Breaking Bad does, though, with two geniuses fighting against one another most of the time. These are two people that, in most other series’, would be completely unstoppable. In Death Note, the unstoppable is stopped. The unstoppable is challenged, and bent, and surprised, every step of the way. One step ahead is sometimes actually less than an inch, and there’s careful effort to avoid telling you too much about what tricks either side has up their sleeve. You feel like you’re guessing just as much as the protagonists are, and every triumph is fleeting. Those moments, and the cliffhangers that follow, are hopelessly addictive, just as much as Sherlock is.
If you’re still doubting it, just know that it’s incredibly smart, but not so much that it’s hard to follow or pretentious, and very fast, but not so much that it feels rushed. Also, apparently Gods of Death really like apples, so there’s that little gem of wisdom for you to learn all about, too.
Alanah Pearce is an editor at IGN, and a worse swimmer than Marty Sliva. You can find her on Twitter @Charalanahzard.
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