I am glad to see that despite the average of 9.0 from numerous voters... there are still many people here who can look at this anime series from an objective point of view and openly state its flaws.

No need for me to go into details or spoilers at all. I've seen about every Death Note there is to see (aside from the 2017 American series which I refuse to watch just on principle). Like many here I understand the Death Note concept and found the original move to be a masterpiece.

But this anime... it was like packing a 2 hour movie into a 14 hour slow-motion treadmill. As pointed out by several others-- plot concepts were repeated, concepts thrown in and then ignored, and by the 20th episode I was feeling like Ryuk... bored bored bored. Although well-presented, this felt like nothing more than someone trying to drag out the original story lines to as many episodes as they could possibly milk. But the cow ran dry long before the series ended.

Filled with gaping plot holes, lack of logic, areas of ridiculous complexity and jump-the-shark "logic"... this felt like an old Charlie Chan movie mystery where one person says "I have won because" and the other person says "Except I foresaw that and" and then the first person says "But I knew you foresaw it so I" and then the second person... well, you get the idea. Savvy viewers can only handle so much of that stuff before they start thinking "seriously?".

The gore in the very final episode was unprecedented in the series, gratuitous and totally unnecessary to ending the story. There was a strong feeling of anti-climax pretty much through the entire last half of the series (if not before). I started questioning where they were going somewhere after the 10th episode. At the 20th episode I was asking "how long are they going to drag this on?". By the time we got to episode 30 I had given up all hope and watched the rest on sheer "closure" factor-- let's get this watched and over with.

One major mistake in production which I don't understand (probably had something to do with legal rights) was the change in the theme song about halfway through. They went from a barely-tolerable beginning and end song to a total-trash, super-heavy-metal theme song that sounded like it came out of some stoner's garage band. If the purpose of that "music" was to convince us there are insane people in the world... it was a total success. I like just about all kinds of music, but that second theme song was a loser in both concept and performance and did nothing to support the series. It turned Death Note into Dead Note and was a terrible choice for theme music.

One scene especially (no spoilers) where someone was going to murder two people in cold blood to eliminate Kira-- all I can say is the writers must have been smoking weed when they came up with that lame concept. That didn't make any sense from any viewpoint, and certainly was not Death Note. They had a shark jump the shark on that one.

In the end the series was way too long, too contrived in plot, and had too many unbelievable points and logic flaws to stand up to examination. No matter how much someone may have enjoyed the original Death Note movie, if viewed honestly this anime just doesn't stand up to the standards of good anime or the Death Note concept either one. I'm a great fan of the original 2006 movie... but I was yawning 2/3 of the way through this series. The story line was forced and mediocre at best. As I've stated with a couple of other Death Note wannabe's... we don't need yet another Death Note; the original was just fine.