One anime that I am dying to get into is “Death Note.” I saw one or two episodes on Adult Swim (before it started eliminating animes from their lineup), and I was intrigued. After watching the endings of other animes, I decided to start on this one. I popped over to my Netflix, and I was flabbergasted to find out that there is a movie that was made, so I added it to my account.

This past weekend I popped the movie in the DVD player and sat down to watch it. The movie was made by Shusuke Kaneko in 2006. He did segment #2, “The Cold,” in H.P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, Book of the Dead. It stars Tatsuya Fujiwara, who starred in one of my favorite films of all time “Battle Royale.”If you haven’t seen that movie, stop what you are doing and watch it first.

The story is about a high school boy, Light Yagami, who finds a mysterious notebook labeled “Death Note” on the street that has the ability to kill whoever’s name Light writes in it. Light becomes a vigilante who kills all criminals, and L becomes the detective who is trying to find out who he is and stop him.

The characters mirrored the ones in the anime series. They had the same eccentric personalities and physical features. The acting was on point and didn’t make me think twice that they were the characters. The Shinigami Ryuk looks exactly like in the anime. The people who were in charge of the special effects should get applauded for making Ryuk look real and not phony like the special effects seem to look like nowadays.

The plot seems to coincide with what happened in the anime and didn’t deviate like some other renditions seem to do. I was captivated the entire time and was desperately waiting to see what would occur next. It definitely made me move the anime in the top position, and I am excited to watch all of the episodes. I also want to see the two sequels of this.

Definitely watch it if you haven’t.