I'm beginning to notice an unfortunate problem with mangas. No matter how brilliant and imaginative a premise, no matter how creative, authors can never follow through on it or do its idea justice. Either they blow it with a cheap resolution or play the premise out in the most generic, tedious and cliche way possible.

Death Note is one of the worst examples of what I mean. It started off with a great idea--a high school student, Light Yagami, discovers a book that shinigamis (reapers) use to end peoples' lives with. The epitome of self-righteousness and arrogance, he decides he will play "God" and kill evil people. A "super detective" named "L" then goes after him.

So far, so good, right? The problem is that after Light and L meet, Death Note becomes one long tedious, repetitive and boring drumbeat of all the characters constantly contemplating what the other characters are thinking (i.e., "brain picking"). I am not exaggerating. 95% of the book is every character going for pages on end, "He thinks I'm about to do Y. But if I do X, he'll figure out that I'm onto him. So I'll do A. But then he will figure out that if I do A, he'll know that I know B, and then he'll try C. In which case..."

This "brain picking" reaches the height of the absurdity in the Yotsuba story arc. In one chapter, almost every line of dialogue contains the word, "if" several times. For example: "If Kira does A, that must mean A is true. But if Kira doesn't do A, then B is true. However, if Kira does C, then neither A or B would be true. But if C is true, doesn't that mean D is also true? No, if D is true, then F is true. But that's if Kira does A first. Otherwise, G is a possibility."


Again, it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but this is the bulk of the dialogue. It's as if the author just learned "Logic" in math class in school and was very excited to show off how much he learned.

Things get even more confusing later on because Light technically stops acting as Kira for awhile and makes other people act as Kira under his direction. So, when he joins his father's investigative team, he contemplates scenarios in front of them by giving false information about what Kira might do to cover his tracks. It then becomes a chore to make sense of what he's saying because while he does have another person acting as Kira, he is still technically Kira the entire time. No, he doesn't have the book at that point but since he's manipulating the fake Kiras, he is still technically "Kira."

This is not the least of the manga's problems. Light is a despicable character, yet we're forced to experience most of the story from his perspective. Takada and Mikami were equally as disgusting as Light, so made reading the manga even more unbearable when the two characters joined in as protagonists.

Most of the side characters were useless wastes of ink and contributed nothing to the story (like Misa and Matsuda, both annoying, stupid clutzy comic relief characters). The Euro male and female crooks who L hires to help him came out of nowhere and didn't fit the story at all. Aizawa was completely wasted as a character.

The story arc involving Mello and his motivations were convoluted. And there was no explanation as to why all the genius kids had an obsession with eating and stacking stuff. (90% of the time, Near, L and and Mello would be eating something or building things with their food.)

Lastly, the idea that teenagers and children would be the center of such a dark story is far-fetched, even for a manga. I don't care how "ingenious" a child is; there's just no way he would become an internationally famous crime fighter or be entrusted with such a difficult case.

Because of all of these issues, I disliked Death Note so much that I was this close to quitting halfway through. I forced my way through it because I hated the Light character so much I wanted to see if he'd get his comeuppance in the end. The ending wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but slogging through so much "if...if...if..." wasn't worth it.

So all in all, a 5/10 for me, the 5 being for the great art work and character designs of the shinigamis.