WARNING: This post will be filled with details and spoilers for Death Note. Do not read if you have not seen it and plan on watching it. Also, please keep in mind that I get very strongly worded with what I say especially when I rant.

Welcome to my second Turbo Rant GO!

Death Note, really popular anime starting in 2006. I had heard about it so much over time and never did have the chance to watch it. I seen in was on Netflix and I was thinking, sure, why not? It sounded and looked really interesting! Despite ALL OF THIS though, the show basically shoots itself with its very own Death Note. The cause of death? Absolute idiocy. I made it to episode 18 and I have given up. It is just so pointless now. Why?

Well, lets start off with the very beginning. We have our main character, Light Yagami, whom I will be talking about later in detail, who is a high school student and abruptly and for little reason, after a Death Note falls from the sky without ANYONE else noticing, he randomly decides to look in the general place at his school where it fell, he did not see it either! So right off the bat, we have something forced that makes little sense.

Okay, lets now discuss Light himself. He is perfect. PERFECT. I f*cking HATE this type of cliche in anything, but anime is where it is most common. There always has to be that one character that is magically good at everything. I get that, it is in every anime. HOWEVER, here it is just terrible beyond words.

Let me tell you why:

1. Light is a perfect student, he aces everything and is perfect at studying. He even gets into a university with perfect scores, unlike almost everyone else. How f*cking ironic.
   
2. He is a good looking hottie I guess
   
3. He is loved and popular to everyone at his school
   
4. He is a perfect son. His parents and sister love him and admire him constantly.
   
5. He is great at sports for some reason
   
6. He is somehow able to thwart the world's greatest detective constantly
   
7. He is also the perfect psychopath, putting forth his plans perfectly and conveniently thinking of everything
   
8. On top of this, he is a perfect actor and is brilliant at coming up with sh*t on the spot
   
9. And even with ALL OF THIS, he is able to maintain a perfect home life
   

There, we have established Light and his godlike existence. How many times have you seen this sh*t in an anime? Way too much. Here, it is just pathetically laughable. This character is not even remotely relate-able in any way whatsoever. Why exactly does he want to be a god on earth again? He already seems pretty godlike to me.

Now onto more reasons.

Here is another thing, after Light gets the Death Note, which is just a notebook that says Death Note then tells you all of the rules to kill someone, he doesn't believe it at all. Oh, but this perfect genius that gets everything right all the damn time, for some reason gets so stupid and curious that he actually just tries it out with the intention that is ACTUALLY WORKS. Of course, for the sake of the show, he was actually right here, but come on.

So Mr. Perfect Yagami starts killing criminals and stays completely hidden from everyone, of course. He gets a Shinigami, a god of Death that he now basically owns. Ryuk is his name and he is one of the very few characters that has any real personality because he is just a crazy demon guy. However his main function apparently is to point out obvious sh*t to Light right after it happens. OH LOOK, another anime cliche. Keep them coming writers. Ryuk is the one that dropped the Death Note in the human world, which is how Light got it. Oh but wait, it is made very obvious numerous times that he actually dropped TWO Death Notes, we have to make it obvious to set up plot points later, okay. Speaking of this, Light's dad is also chief of police, which of course further helps other plot points too. Sooooooo shocking, I know.

Another huge problem I have is the whole thing with L. L is the master detective that conveniently lives in the same exact region as Light. 75% of the show is Light and L thwarting each other back and forth. Here is the thing, L is one of the only relate-able characters in the show. Yeah, he is pretty perfect too in almost every way but he does have a very strange appearance and he does act weird. Holy sh*t, a human character that kinda has a real human trait. Even then, L is still a rich (for some reason), perfectly smart genius. He also gets into the same university (for no real reason) as Light with perfect scores. JUST LIKE LIGHT. Yeah, L was the other perfect scorer. Big f*cking shocker there. Of course we have the other students looking at them and talking about how amazing they are and blah blah more anime cliche nonsense. No no, keep doing it writers, you are going to do it anyways no matter how stupid it is.

Here is another thing, L is basically the world's GREATEST detective who has solved some of Japan's most difficult cases ever and he is the same age as Light apparently. Yet, Mr. Perfect Light is so perfectly smart that he is able to thwart the world's greatest detective NUMEROUS TIMES. So much so that the constant back and forth between gets old really fast.

That is another thing, the show constantly tries to create mystery and intrigue by spouting out a bunch of mathematics and detective jargon and this and that, yet it does it so much that it eventually makes the plot so much harder to follow. So it becomes so mysterious that we are left not knowing what the hell is even happening. This is one of the most convoluted and irritating plot's I have ever witnessed in anything, let alone anime. Constantly doing plot twists and making twists and turns only makes your story boring and painful to keep track of, if not done right and this show sure as hell does not do it right. When you don't really do much world building either, that makes it worse.

Later, Light meets Misa, a girl that has the other Death Note that Ryuk dropped (ANOTHER HUGE SHOCKER WOAH) and her own Shinigami. She also posses Shinagami eyes which lets her see the name and age details on any human. Another little convenience is that for no reason Death Note owners cannot see each other's info. Why? Who knows.

Anyways, she is nuts over Light, and eventually she meets him, a few times in fact. The first few times, people can clearly see her. No reactions. Then, a couple of days later, it turns how she is actually a model for some reason and for some reason everyone at her school just now remembers that after someone says something. If she was a damn model, wouldn't you know what she looks like??? Also, there is yet another anime cliche: The only characters that are popular or are worth a sh*t are the characters actually related to the main plot. She cannot just be some everyday teenage girl, she has to be some loved-by-everyone model.

The whole time in the show after L for no reason reveals that he is L to Light (Again no one else besides the police force and PERFECT Yagami is worthy because who cares right?), he constantly suspects Light of being the killer. Mainly because of Light's genius skills at everything. He constantly spouts stuff about how there is at least a tiny chance that Light is the killer, going so far as to put camera's in his home. Yeah, only his and another detective's house. The killer could be ANYONE else in that region but we gotta keep this connection. Of course, since Light is perfect, he figures out the camera thing and fools L there too. By the way, L said there is like a 3% chance that Light is the killer, if not less. Yet, that equals him putting cameras all through his house. That makes a whole lotta sense.

Okay, I can go on and on for hours about this nonsense show, but I want to point out something that happened in the last few episodes that I watched. At this point, the plot has already begun getting so claustrophobic and scattered at the same time that I started to get annoyed. Then, this happens; Since Light could not figure out L's real name, which he needs if he wants to kill him, because again, even after all of the stupid nonsense that has happened, Light is still determined to become the god person of the world, he needs to find a way to get L's info and kill him. He could never figure this out.

Then, the convenient second Death Note plot device comes to the rescue. See, apparently Shinigami can easily kill humans with the Death Note at all times, that extends the Shinigamia's life. Of course though, in true cliche fashion, Ryuk, the Shinigami with Light, explains early on that he will not help Light with killing others and he won't tell him names. Oh, but Misa's Shingami will kill L' for Light. HOW SURPRISING.

Here comes the best part: Light now has the way to kill L. He plans to do this at least within the next few days. The very next day, when he is talking to L (keeping his perfect act going as usual), L literally turns around, (are you ready for this?) points at Light, and says "If I die within the next few days, I am going to have everyone assume you are Kira (the killer)"

Let that soak in. He literally just said something that completely, 100% thwarts the plan that Light had made the night before without knowing ANYTHING ABOUT THE PLAN AT ALL. WHAT. THE. FAQ. He only had very tiny suspicions of L being the killer in the first place and now he is just making that crazy ass assumption on Light and ONLY Light with no real basis at all. Why? Because to hell with any real logic, we just want cliche after cliche to move the plot forward, anime style! This was the final straw for me, at that point, I was done.

Okay...I have gone on about this enough. Honestly, I do know that so many people love this show and think that it is brilliant but I just do not see how. In my opinion, this show is a perfect example to all that is wrong with a decent chunk of anime and manga. Completely unrelateable and annoying characters, cliche after cliche just to move the plot forward, constant exposition, and a plot that gets so convoluted and 'mysterious' that it eventually gets annoying.

If you disagree with me and enjoy the show, thats fine, but these are some of the things that I found to be terrible with it. I even heard it gets worse near the end. How can it get any worse than this? This show really makes me appreciate Attack on Titan even more. That show isn't perfect but it definitely is one of the best anime's I have seen in a long time.

So that is my rant. Hope you liked it or whatever, I am just tired and the more I think about this show, the more it angers me.

In conclusion: In my opinion, this how is the epitome of anime problems, tropes, and cliches. I love worldbuilding, I love great storytelling, I love great and interesting characters, I appreciate it when this stuff is done, but this show has NONE of this. NONE. Not to me at least. It isn't the worst anime out there, but for how mainstream it is, I don't see how it has gotten the popularity that it has.

I also do apologize for the sheer anger but I am very expressive.