Death Note

I should probably be watching Death Note this season, but I just haven't gotten started with it yet. However, when I do invest some time in it, I have a feeling that I will very much enjoy the myriad plot twists and constant battle of one-upmanship between the two main characters.

And man does it look like a crazy ride. I haven't read the manga and I've only seen one episode of the anime, but I have waded deep into spoiler territory (I generally don't care about spoilers, as they almost never harm my enjoyment of anything) and I can say that this story takes some twists that are going to blow people away. Really, really clever stuff.

Oh yeah, summary. Well, as I said, I haven't really watched much of the show myself, but here's what I can tell you about the setup: the story is about a very intelligent but very bored young man named Raito who gets his hands on a Death Note, which is a notebook used by shinigami (Japanese gods of death) to end the lives of humans. Raito soon discovers that he can kill any person in the world by simply writing their name in the Death Note, so long as he also knows what they look like. Intoxicated by the implications of possessing such a great power, Raito decides that he will gradually kill off every evil person in the world, eventually creating a utopia that he will rule over with his command of life and death.

And so he gets to work, starting with the most prominent criminals and working his way down. As kind of a calling card, he kills every major criminal in the same way: with a heart attack (which is standard if no other cause of death is specified in the Death Note). He knows that he can't be traced to the killings, but he wants the world to know that there is someone behind the deaths.

Raito's work soon attracts the attention of two very important individuals: Ryuuku, who is the shinigami who dropped the Death Note in the human world to begin with, and the man known only as "L," who is a famous detective hired to find out who's responsible for the killings. While Raito initially fears that Ryuuku is going to punish him for using the Death Note, Ryuuku tells him that he dropped the book on purpose, because being a shinigami is boring work and he wants to see something interesting happen. However, just because Ryuuku does not kill Raito for using the Death Note, that doesn't mean he is on Ryuuku's side. He's more of a neutral observer of the events that take place, simply enjoying the ride as it happens. He does not go out of his way to help Raito, and even purposefully abstains from telling Raito all of the many rules of the Death Note, only revealing new pieces of information when he feels that it will make things more interesting or when Raito bribes him with apples, which are apparently intoxicating to shinigami.

Unlike Ryuuku, L is very definitely not a casual observer of the events at hand, and is a master detective who actually manages to put heat on Raito despite his supposed anonymity and prodigious intelligence. Much of the story (as I gather, anyway) is about the clash between the two men, who are always wrestling to achieve the upper hand in an ever-escalating battle. The closer L gets to Raito, the more Raito pulls out new tricks to throw L off his trail and hurt the people who are trying to find him.

And that's the way it starts, basically. Based on what I've learned from spoilers, the story builds quite a bit from there, and takes things a lot farther than I has initially expected when I first started hearing about it.

Anyway, the Death Note anime should be pretty good. It's kinda weird to be recommending something I'm not actually watching, but I almost certainly will be watching it at some point.