Death Note

I had to include this 2006 classic mystery, psychological/supernatural thriller.

I firmly believe Death Note is a strong anime for beginners. It has such a simple concept and builds on it so well giving you what is almost a masterpiece of a show.

The story follows high schooler Light Yagami, an incredibly bored and bright student. He's a straight A student, does what he is told, and lives life completely mundane. He is walking home from school one day and stumbles across a notebook titled Death Note--a book dropped by a God of Death or as they call it, a Shinigami. He wasn't going to pick it up at first but his curiosity got the best of him.

He is then followed by Ryuk, the Shinigami that dropped it.

Little does he know that this Death Note is a form of mass genocide and destruction, but what can you expect when this thing comes straight from a Grim Reaper? You write someone's name inside, and they will die.

But it obviously comes with certain rules that were actually nice enough to already be written inside! Some of the Death Note rules are:

• This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore people sharing the same name will not be affected
• If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack
• If the cause of death is written within. 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen
• After writing the cause of death, the details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds

So now what do you expect an incredibly bored and intelligent high schooler does after picking this book up? Well he definitely tries it, then he kind of goes over board.

But don't worry, Light only kills criminals, the bad people. Since more people are dying, everyone is starting to say there's an existence out there called Kira (meaning killer in Japanese) who will kill you if you do something bad. But who gets to decide who is bad and who is good?

Time goes by and many people die and because they are dying by the hands of a book, it's kind of hard to catch the culprit of all these deaths. So then we get introduced to L, an extremely intelligent and renowned detective that takes the case of finding this murderer. Obviously Light thinks he is doing this for the better of mankind so he will kill whoever tries to stop him. But the thing is, nobody knows what L looks like.

So then the chase to figure out each other's identity begins. Whoever finds the identity of the other wins. 

There is a lot more to this like Light's dad being the head of the police force, other Death Note users, new methods of using the Death Note, new enemies/obstacles, and so on. There's a pool of characters that we see throughout the show and others who have their life cut short. You may be in tears for some.

With each episode we see Light's mental stability deteriorate where he literally thinks he is a God himself. He starts to use people and throws them away when they aren't useful anymore. Whether you were on his side or not, his theory of killing every bad person to make the world a better place just leaves him being the only "bad" person left.

Now, do you think Light is right in doing all this or is he in the wrong?

Here is a quick trailer of what to expect:

And here are places to watch the show:

• Netflix
• Crunchyroll

There are 37 episodes with around 20 or so minutes each. Unfortunately the series does end so there will never be a season 2. But, due to its popularity, it has tons of movies, live actions, games, books, and even a Netflix movie (I have heard very bad things about it though). This anime is still being talked about to this day--that's how incredibly influential it is! It may not be perfect and some people may not like certain aspects of it/the direction it takes, but this anime is a show all anime watches must watch at least once, or if you're like me, you can watch it over 20 times.

Fun fact: This was one of the first anime I watched by myself waaaaaaay back in the day.

If you already watched this anime or plan on it, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!