It all gets to be a bit much until the actual face-to-face showdown (in a neatly disturbing visual touch, when Near first appears, he's wearing a mask of the late L's face), which is handled with such a high degree of cinematic intensity by artist Takeshi Obata that all the text-heavy panels preceding it seem irrelevant. In one particularly suspenseful sequence, Light, possessing one small slip of notebook paper, attempts a last ditch move against Near, and it's a moment that crackles with Hitchcockian who-am-I-rooting-for-again? ambiguity. In those pages, Death Note's overriding story – of an amoral and too-smart young man who's been given a power he shouldn't possess – carries you through to its inevitable finish.
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Article comments
1 - chris
My favourite part (of the finale anyways) was when Near went through the long convoluted explanation of how he inserted fake pages into the notebook and I flipped the page to see Light triumphantly thinking "EXACTLY AS PLANNED!" Hilarious.
2 - Jessica
I personally think that they did awsome job on Death Note ;D