It took me a while to actually get there (life keeps happening), but I'm so glad that I did. It's not the Death Note that we've all come to life, breathe and quote excessively at each other. It's fascinating for all that.
I started watching it in the early hours of the morning. I was already yawning, ready for bed. My vow to myself was simple - I'd watch until the moment I said, 'WTF?!' or got bored, whichever happened first. I was there until the end, staring stunned at the screen. Then lay awake for a while later, pondering certain scenes that I'd seen.
Particularly the ending, when our missing Mello turned up.
My advice? Go in with an open mind, forgetting all that you know of the manga, anime or live action movie versions. Treat it as a brand, new story. You won't be disappointed.
A Very Different Kind of Death Note
Light is an Everyman kind of person. He's the bloke you meet on the street. He's not the top student in all of Japan, but a young man with hang-ups and a life not without its problems. He's us from the get-go and that changes everything. He's not there to be the God of this New World Order, but to change the world.
He's a nice person. Sympathetic. Without the hubris and arrogance of the original character upon which he's based.
That alters irreparably the dynamic between himself and L - the latter displaying all the arrogance that his manga source did too, only much more noticeably here without Light's megalomania to over-shadow it.
At first, I thought L's characterisation had shifted too. It took a second watching to discern that wasn't true. He's wearing shoes and devoid of endless strawberries and cup-cakes, but everything else pings off lesser played aspects of the canon character.
It's only Light who's shifted so much. As any Physicist may tell you, when the source of illumination alters, shadows and hues cast upon others changes utterly too. Hence Soichiro seems grave without gravitas, and Sayu appears whiny without reason.
Then you get to Near. Oh wow! Do we get to Near! He was never so interesting to me in the original. Only a brief scene shows him/her at the end and it raises far more questions than it answers. Wammy's House was always sinister (which is why I focus so much of my fan-fiction upon it), but this telling makes that abundantly clear.
And there, right alongside Near, is Mello. We didn't think he'd been so much as acknowledged. But he's there.
Let me put the rest beneath a Read More break, so those not wishing to be spoiled don't have to see.