Death Note Makes Us Question Our Own Morality!

A game of smartness, a game of cleverness, a game of protecting the world and most importantly, a game of Good and Evil.This what Death Note is but the problem is that you never know what is good and what is evil and even when you do know the difference between them, you still get confused with what is right and what is wrong and that is the beauty of Death Note because we do not know what we think about anything that it throws towards us and when we do get a certain thought on something, it just throws that out of the window and brings in even more questions that we ask our self.

Yagami Light, a 17 year old Smart, Hardworking, Talented, Highly Perceptive and has a great of skill of easily solving even the most complex problems gets a gift that not only changes his life but starts a whole chain of events that changes the lives of everyone around him and changes the lives of the billions of people living in the world.A gift known as the Death Note that gives him the ability to kill anyone by just writing their names onto the pages of the notebook as long as he knows the faces of those people he wants to kill.A notebook that changes him from a compassionate, caring and intelligent young man to a cold, calculated and ruthless killer yet a delusional one who decides to take the law in his own hands and would go to any lengths to protect his identity and to punish those who have wronged the innocent.A simple premise that is very easy to get hooked onto and probably the most exciting part is how do we catch a guy who can kill anyone by just writing their names on a notebook.As simple as it is, it only gets more complicated when it pushes us the viewers to form our own thoughts and opinions on the events that escalate throughout the anime.The Anime really deals with the topic of Mob Justice or the concept of people taking the Law into their own hands and the whole thing is just bizarre and really uncomfortable to watch because it not only shows the Motive of Yagami Light but it also shows the reaction of the normal people and the evolution of their thought process throughout the series with brutal honesty and realism which is just scary to watch and this where we the viewers ask the hard question about what is right and what is wrong and this where the anime is very successful.We see people who support him and people who are afraid of him and most importantly,we see people who have lost fate in the law and have accepted that Light is the Law.We have a protagonist who wants to do good by removing all the criminals around the world but in the process gets obsessed with this power to kill anyone at anytime and he himself turns into a greater evil but yet we still kind of understand what he is doing and why he is doing and even thought we really hate him, we still have the question running into our head that what if he is right which again shows that how this anime so effectively messes with our own morality and the anime only makes us more crazy by showing that Light's method have reduced crime around the world by 70%.It is crazy that the Death Note it self is not the main focus at all.Infact it has certain rules and it is just an instrument that is used to carry out the narrative.These rather convoluted rules really help to give the Death Note a rather serious weight.It is really fascinating to see all the different ways that Yagami Light figures out to use the Death Note by using loopholes in all the different rules of the Notebook.This highlights the curiosity and the advance intellect of the human species and how some people can go very far to achieve what they want by any means necessary.We see the people who were once afraid of him, joining him and worshiping him.People did not care that Light would kill anyone who gets into his way even if they are innocent.

A Game of Cat and Mouse - Then there is the character of  'L' who is a detective and is also our antagonist and he is actually a good  guy(yes this anime is bonkers).The most interesting part of the story is definitely the relationship between 'L' and Light and how each of them uses their smartness to out-think each other.They do not even know each other and have never even seen each others faces and yet they are fighting each other in a game of mental chess that has deception, manipulation, tricks, wittiness, smartness, grittiness, etc and at the same time is mind-bending and soul crushing.There relationship is so complicated and yet so straight to the face and it is just fascinating to watch that conflict unfold and take unexpected turns as the story moves forward.They hate each other, they both are desperate to stop each other but at the same time they have some form of mutual respect for each other.They appreciate each other's skills and talents and all of that is just a joy to watch.

When I look at the Death Note's ability to mess with our morality and at the same time provide a very gripping narrative along with a really unique conflict between two characters, I understand why it is considered the best Anime out there.It is unique and fresh and there is nothing really out there that can be considered similar to this.Death Note is an anime that is all about Payoffs and even though it does slow down momentarily and it does often shift focus to some random and unnecessary plot points, by the end of the saga those random plot points make sense because the payoffs they offer are just amazing and heart wrenching.Also it is very disturbing to see how well it portrays the mentality of us the people and how well it shows the shift in emotions that people can have and how easily we can be manipulated.

Hail Ryuk