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Death Note is a supernatural/crime anime series based on the manga by Tsugomi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. I don't want to spoil it for you so I'll only tell you what you'll find out in the first episode. Basically there's a notebook, the Death Note, which allows the person who owns it to kill someone just by picturing their face and writing their name. Now as I'm sure you can guess, someone gets hold of this Death Note and starts killing people with it, setting the Japanese police on a hunt for the killer. When the law enforcement agencies of various nations are stumped by the mysterious killings, they draft in an expert who is responsible for solving some of the world's greatest criminal mysteries to find and stop the killer. Now begins an incredible battle of wits between the owner of the notebook, who believes he is on a righteous path to cleanse humanity, and the eccentric and astoundingly intelligent detective leading the case against him.
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I've been watching Death Note in English on Youtube. I normally watch anime in the original Japanese but this time I decided that I didn't want to miss out on the action and the artwork by reading the subtitles, which are pretty extensive to cover all of the analysis of the situation as the two opposing characters constantly try to stay one step ahead of each other. So far I've found the voice acting pretty good. While there might be a few bits that you'll think could have been slightly better, there is no major problem, as there is with many dubbed animes, of the voices just being jarring and glaringly wrong. According to people on ask.com and similar websites, both English and Japanese are very well acted.
Death Note is pretty heavy going in terms of needing to pay attention. Well...it's certainly not something you can just have on in the background while doing something else as you could easily miss the latest plan. It's not all boring politics though, far from it. The plot twists are always very interesting and they're lightened by extremely subtle humour that will really make you giggle without appearing as blatent attempts to force comedy into the show.
The eccentricities and wit of the characters are engaging and, I think, always remain believable. It's the strong characters that give this anime its edge. Without them the plot could be carried out in exactly the same way but you'd just be watching an anime with a good plot rather than a good anime.
Oh, and the soundtrack's pretty damned good as well! The first opening and ending are songs by Nightmare and although I don't know any of the words they've got just the right rocky/dark tone for the show.
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