It’s All Just as I Predicted

So here we are, at the second half of Death Note and, honestly, I wasn’t impressed. Sure, I had friends warn me as I was watching the first half of Death Note that the second half had a… noticeable drop in quality (their words). I was prepared, but in all fairness I also didn’t think that the first half of the series was all that great. I’m not an anime fan in general, and I’m not a teenager so I doubt I’m the target audience for this story anyway, but the simple fact is that I found the first half hilariously melodramatic, to the point that I couldn’t take it seriously at all. A drop in quality from there? How bad could it be?

In a word: bad. This second half of the series legitimately makes me like the first half a lot more by comparison. The first half of Death Note was bad, but in an endearing way, like it was in on the joke even as it told a story about a teenager that decides to become a serial killer when he picks up a magical notebook that lets him kill anyone he wants. (That can be comedic, right?) But there that first half felt like it understood how melodramatic it was being and played to it, finding the humor in the constant monologues from the lead characters, this second half lacks any of that fun energy. It’s serious without being fun.

And again, I understand that calling a show about a serial killer teenager “fun” seems wrong, but at the same time this was a series that you just couldn’t take seriously. It was like an anime drama that was, in the immortal words of Spinal Tap, turned up to eleven, and because of that it was easy to settle in with it and enjoy it. The series knew it was being overly dramatic and that made it endearing and amusing. The second half, though, loses all that charm. It honestly makes a number of baffling decisions that ruin all the fun of the show, making for a second section of story that’s a chore to sit through. I found myself eating up Death Note’s first half in a little over a week, at least enjoying it for what it was. But this second half, it took me longer even though there are less episodes total in the run. It’s really that bad.

After killing the original L in the first half of the series, Death Note jumps forward six years with Light Yagami having taken over the role, running Japan’s Kira investigative team as the new L. Six years of supposedly trying to figure out who Kira was while the murderer continued to strike down any criminal they saw fit, all with the goal of building a better society. Of cour\se, Light is also Kira, so it’s no surprise he never caught the serial killer. Was he supposed to catch himself in all that time? No, it was the perfect cover.

That all gets blown up, though, when Light’s sister, Sayu, is kidnapped. She’s taken to America and held in a secret location, with the kidnappers demanding one thing: the notebook under the control of the Japanese investigative team. Light’s father, Soichiro Yagami, goes to America and makes the exchange, and the kidnappers are easily able to get away, leaving the team without one of the notebooks (of the three that are now floating around). But here’s the trick: the kidnapper is Mello, one of two protege’s of L, who wants to catch the real Kira. Meanwhile, the other L protege, Near, has been working with the FBI and he already suspects someone of being L: Light Yagami. If Mello and Near worked together, they might even be able to finally catch the real Kira and hold him accountable for all he’s done.

This second half of the show is a disjointed mess, introducing a lot of characters, putting a lot of different pieces in play, and quickly rushing through its story to get to a (what some might consider inevitable) conclusion. It never comes together the way the first half did, and I think that’s all because the specific magic, the formula that made Death Note work was ruined. The second the series killed off the original L it lost the dynamic between him and Light, and despite including two new characters meant to carry on L’s work, the dynamic between them was never the same.

Part of why L worked so well was because the series took its time developing him. He went from a mysterious figure to a strange weirdo to Light’s best friend and each step felt organic. The connection between him and Light was strong, and you could tell they both knew they were each other’s best friend and worst enemy. But Near and Mello never have that connection to Light. They’re a couple of kids that have picked up a case and decided they can solve it, like a puzzle. There’s never any developed connection, a lived-in friendship, and that lack leaves the series feeling empty for its entire back half.

It doesn’t help that the series also speeds through its developments in this second half. Where the first part took its time, teasing out twists and turns as it steadily played out the case, this second half jumps around wildly. Nowhere is this more evident than in the finale, where Near suddenly reveals a grand plan he had that makes no sense in context, especially with everything we know about the journals and who has them. It’s like the creators had an ending and they rushed towards it, details be damned, and any nods towards development or making its various twists and turns logical were cast aside. They wrote for the ending and not the series.

In fairness, I’m blaming the anime here but this is really a flaw in the manga it was based on. Although I haven’t read the manga I did research the story from it to see if the anime stuck to it or went its own path and, beat for beat, it appears like the anime simply followed what the manga did first. Maybe the manga was better written and the anime rushed it, but it feels more like the series was doing just what the manga did and the flaws of the source material affected how the anime could work.

Even with that caveat in place, though, you really wish the series could have been better. If they were slavishly following the manga just to appease fans, well, they ended up losing a good part of the audience that found the anime series later (like all the fans I’ve talked to that dismiss the back half). And if they changed things to make this anime different, then they changed the wrong things and should have done better. Whatever the case, the whole back half needed to be rewritten and fleshed out to actually make it as interesting as the first.

As it stands, I almost wish the second half didn’t exist at all. If the series could have ended with L dying and Light riding off into the sunset to make his “perfect” world, it would be a downer ending but also a conclusive one. I would have respected the decision to let the villainous protagonist win. Instead we have a series that botches its ending, losing as steam and momentum the second its main character dynamic ends. Honestly, it’s an expected way this would play out because you can’t build a series on a specific relationship and then expect it to continue on just as strongly when that relationship goes away. Death Note was about L and Light and the second one of those characters was removed, the series was no longer interesting.

So yeah, Death Note might have been fun-bad but it ended up just being bad. I was hopeful I could at least recommend it as an amusing party watch, something people could put on and laugh along with as they enjoyed hanging out with friends. But this second half is so dire, so boring, and so contrived that I can’t recommend it at all. This was a series that built up a good story and then completely dropped the ball right when it counted most. Death Note could have been a fun recommend, instead it’s something I’ll caution people to avoid.