Death Note - Reception

Reception

As of June 2006, Death Note had sold around twenty million copies in Japan. On December 31, 2008, Comipress reported that the twelve volumes from the series had sold 26,500,000 copies. It was also nominated for Best Manga at the 2006 American Anime Awards but lost. In 2007, the first three volumes of Death Note were on the American Library Association's 2007 Great Graphic Novels for Teens Top Ten list. On ICv2's "Top 10 Shonen Properties Q2 2009", Death Note was the third best manga property from North America. During January from 2007, Oricon made a poll in which they asked Japanese fans from manga and anime which characters from any series they would most like to see in spinoff series. The overall winner from the poll was L, who also ranked first in the women's poll and second in the men's poll.

Anime News Network (ANN) writer Zac Bertschy noted that the difference between Death Note and other manga from the same genre was very big due to the murders the main character (Light Yagami) commits as well as how he hides his identity of Kira. Although Bertchy mentioned some readers from other shōnen would be surprised with the dark themes of Death Note, he praised the series for its "great art, great story, compelling characters." Julie Rosato from Mania Entertainment found the story to be very entertaining, having liked Light's development in the story and L's introduction as well as how the latter starts suspecting of the former's identity. Additionally, he praised the story as it is "building a climax" with each detail introduced in the first chapter, making the reader to look forward to upcoming chapters. Briana Lawrence from ANN liked the series' ending as most of the characters from the story were "given a chance to shine" and due to the fact the notebook and other aspects from the series had little importance in the focus of Death Note and now they play a more important part. However, she did not like how the epilogue made no mention of what happens with Misa Amane and how Near and Mello were still treated like parts of L.

Douglas Wolk of Salon said that a rumor circulated stating that the creators intended to create Death Note to last half as long as its actual run & Ohba and Obata had been persuaded to lengthen the storyline when Death Note's popularity increased, noting that the rumor "makes sense, since about halfway through the series, there's a point that seems like a natural ending". In addition he said that fans wrote "thousands" of Death Note fan fiction stories and posted them on the internet.

The anime was also commented with Tom S. Pepirium of IGN saying that Death Note's "heavy serialized nature" is what "makes the show so engaging and discussion worthy." Pepirium, saying that translating Death Note is "no small task," said that Stephen Hedley created a dub with "nothing clunky." Pepirium added that Karl Willems, director of the dub, assembled a "stunning voice cast of professionals" with a "solid tone minus some of the cheesy yelling and screaming of other dubs." John Powers of the NPR show Fresh Air finds the show "addicting" and equates its similarity to the American TV series Lost. It was also listed as the 51st best animated show in IGN's Top 100 Animated Series.

"Running over thirty-seven 20 minutes episodes, the anime sticks much closer to the manga so takes a far more languid approach to storytelling, better fleshing out the fantastic characters of Light and his nemesis, L. Light in particular is one of the most layered characters to appear in anime in a long time. -Hyper

The novelization L: Change the World became the second top selling light novel in Japan during 2008. A.E. Sparrow of IGN reviewed the novel Another Note and gave it a 9.5 out of 10. Sparrow said that the author understood "what made these characters click so well" and "captures everything that made the manga the compelling read that it is." Sparrow said that fans of Death Note who read Another Note will "find a welcome home" in the Nisio Isin's work that "adds a few more fun layers" to the Death Note franchise.