Death Note

Brutal murders, petty thefts, and senseless violence pollute the human world. In contrast, the realm of death gods is a humdrum, unchanging gambling den. The ingenious 17-year-old Japanese student Light Yagami and sadistic god of death Ryuk share one belief: their worlds are rotten.

For his own amusement, Ryuk drops his Death Note into the human world. Light stumbles upon it, deeming the first of its rules ridiculous: the human whose name is written in this note shall die. However, the temptation is too great, and Light experiments by writing a felon's name, which disturbingly enacts his first murder.

Aware of the terrifying godlike power that has fallen into his hands, Light—under the alias Kira—follows his wicked sense of justice with the ultimate goal of cleansing the world of all evil-doers. The meticulous mastermind detective L is already on his trail, but as Light's brilliance rivals L's, the grand chase for Kira turns into an intense battle of wits that can only end when one of them is dead.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Lawliet, L Main

Yamaguchi, Kappei Japanese

Yagami, Light Main

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Ryuk Main

Nakamura, Shidou Japanese

Amane, Misa Supporting

Hirano, Aya Japanese

River, Nate Supporting

Hidaka, Noriko Japanese

Keehl, Mihael Supporting

Sasaki, Nozomu Japanese

Matsuda, Touta Supporting

Naitou, Ryou Japanese

Mikami, Teru Supporting

Matsukaze, Masaya Japanese

Jeevas, Mail Supporting

Nishimura, Tomohiro Japanese

Rem Supporting

Saitou, Kimiko Japanese

Maruyama, Masao Producer

Tamura, Manabu Producer

Nakatani, Toshio Producer

Hashimoto, Kentarou Producer

Reviews

Mar 28, 2026

ravyla

Recommended

Primeiro anime q eu assisti na vida, oq me deixou com expectativas altíssimas para os próximos q eu assisti.
Nao entendo mt das questões técnicas, ent vou pular pro q de fato me chamou atenção. Como foi meu primeiro anime, eu nao tinha com o q comparar, mas gostei mt da premissa de um caderno da morte e da estética "meio gotica".
Só tenho 2 coisas a pontuar: o final mt diferente do mangá e a escassez de personagens femininas.

(Mds achava q aq era tipo um letterboxd dos animes mas as reviews nao podem ser bobinhas😭)


Depois q assisti outros animes, percebi q a história desse aq ... é mt única e imprevisível. O estilo de animação tbm combina com a história pq tem traços mais sombrios. Os personagens nao tem uma história anterior aos eventos decorrentes ao caderno, mas nao deixam de ser personagens bem escritos com atitudes realisticas. Enfim, acho q quem gosta de animes de investigação ou q retratam problemas sociais, vai se amarrar nesse aq

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Mar 15, 2026

OrangeMann

Mixed Feelings

Death note is definitely a love-hate relationship for alot of people not excluding myself.

Adaptation:
As far as adaptations go, you couldn't ask for anything better than what Madhouse did here - expertly crafted pacing that matches and alot of times outperforms original that its adapting, seeing the story from manga like this, it was really enjoyable.
Even though there's alot of dialogue between characters and not alot of action in conventional sense, angles, music and animation work in tandem - brought such a pop to alot of iconic moments happened in original work, it felt much more impactful and voice actors did superb performance too.
First episode where ... they changed op/ed was so unexpected and hyped me up like crazy, its just that good.

Now for the mixed bag:
This is still Death Note, meaning the second half is still considerably inferior to the first unfortunately, we'll get to it.
If we're talking ending it is different from manga - i'm glad they decided to change it, although the outcome is the same it doesn't feel as bitter, i don't have any problem with moments that they changed when adapting the series, most of them make it better but there's no amount of change that can make second half engaging in any way - but thats on mangaka, not them. At least they made it last less and even then its still a drag.

Ugly:
Unfortunately adaptation also reminded me of this whole "huh this is so good so far why did i put such a low score for original piece?".
The second half is bad, its just bad and as i stated before not to a studio's fault but regardless you can't watch the show without it so it also affected my score here.
The fumble there was such an unexpected shock to me back then that i was incredibly bitter about it for couple of days as much as i'm embarassed to admit that, and the "trauma" ringed true here too ha ha.

Imagine this great battle of witts between two incredibly perceptive and likeable individuals that try to take a crack at each other seeing who breaks first while also playing make-believe friendship on outside with huge emotional rollercoasters from an episode to an episode, and then, pop.

People argued and probably argue still about whenever ending was ruined or ending was superb (Myself included) - But i think it ending the way it did wouldn't be so controversial if not for all of the buildup that was pretty poor in my opinion.

Ugly (Spoilers):
As i mentioned before - imagine going from these two incredibly developed characters battling it out, to then one of them winning and instead of ending it there we are treated to now one of them developed, "likeable", the one viewer accustomed to character - get curbstomped by new characters that appear out of thin air, have no personality, are not developed what so ever and are just these all-knowing enigmas that one step ahead all the time for no apparent reason except well the guy is autistic savant and probably cause we can't let le evil guy win, thats where i think frustration with ending comes from for many people - all of the most developed characters are killed off with the shallowest ones prevailing.
I wouldn't care less if either L or Light would have won against each other, because it was really close call over close call between them and either outcome would've made sense.
It is so stupid to the degree that it feels that second half was written by someone else completely, its that huge of a fall-off - even already established characters felt like husks of their L arc selves.
Did author wanted to punish people for liking characters that he wanted to make likeable? I don't get it, if thats the case then he succeeded.

Conclusion:
If you've read the manga and feel strongly about it i recommend you watching this - you will not be dissapointed (or will, again haha), MadHouse did Death Note justice one hundred percent.
If you did not read the manga its fifty/fifty, literally. The spectacle is superb and for that alone i would recommend you watching it.
However if you're quick to get attached to characters in fiction you might leave with having bitter taste in your mouth from this.

Death note, Its great - i hate it! Its bad - i love it!

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 6, 2026

chumchummaru

Not Recommended

Death Note, it's been 20 years since the anime was made. As always with popular anime, I wasn't interested in watching it at first, but since I was running out of manga to read, I reached for this work. The manga surprised me in the end and after reading it I quite liked it, which unfortunately I can't say about the anime. I quickly went through the reviews here on MAL and apparently everyone only knows the anime, which is why they praise it to the heavens as a masterpiece.

I'm disappointed with the anime, since I dare say that up to 30% of the overall ... plot from the manga is simply omitted or changed. The manga has a huge amount of both dialogues and monologues and MADHOUSE cut most of them out and it's no wonder when the ep. are less than 23 min long. so it's understandable that everything won't fit in there. Another thing I didn't like was the anime canon/manga ep. although there weren't many of them (ep. 1,25-26,37), but overall it spoils the key moments in the plot. I will also agree that the second half is actually unnecessary, since light is just putting on a show, catching kira. That part is less interesting and I felt the same way about the manga, but it was interesting what the author would come up with to keep the plot from ending. The drawing/animation didn't interest me that much, to be disappointed, but the OST surprised me and I heard a few songs there that I wouldn't even guess came from DN, such as the L theme, the OP/ED didn't blow me away.

So for me, the anime is a big disappointment, despite the fact that it had a "proper" ending. Personally, I strongly recommend reading the manga first. If I hadn't read it, I would have definitely reacted the same way as everyone else and I thought that since it has such high ratings, they made a point of it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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