Dropped on his world by a hideously toothy, grinning Shinigami (death god) named Ryuk, who was bored with his endless, lazy life and just wanted something to happen, the book allows its master to kill anyone by writing their names and causes of death in its pages. The Shinigami use their books to steal years from human lives and extend their own; Light decides, in the first episode, that he's going to use it to become a god. After some tentative, disbelieving experimentation, he takes to it like a bear to honey, wiping out hundreds of publicly known criminals in pursuit of what he decides is going to be a better, cleaner world, with the population's decency permanently vetted by him on an individual level.

Naturally, the sudden deaths of so many jailed prisoners are quickly noticed, and the International Police Organization calls in its "secret weapon," a reclusive superdetective whose identity is a great mystery; he communicates with them only by computer and goes only by "L". These first four episodes of Death Note don't even reveal his name or face to the audience. Following general clues and arranging for a TV broadcast that generates more, L begins to narrow down Light's identity, and the two begin a deadly game. The DVD box characterizes it as "cat and mouse," but given that they're both extremely smart, clever, mentally fiddly monomaniacs, it's more like cat and cat.

Meanwhile, Ryuk sits back and watches, hovering over Light and chatting with him while eagerly waiting to see what he'll do next. As Ryuk explains, there will be no particular punishment for Light's use of the Death Note, though he won't be permitted into heaven or hell when he dies. Ryuk isn't there to steal his soul or torment him; he just wants to see new and different things happen.

Cat-on-cat action

It's going to be hard for Death Note to beat the drama and craft of its opening episode, which ties Light and Ryuk together by contrasting their boredom and hostility toward their respective worlds, showing their kinship before they even meet. And then there's the superdramatic "Light writes a bunch of names in his book for the first time" montage, which is handled with the kind of swooping camera angles, motion blurs and streaks of light that anime normally reserves for big, significant combat action. Not to mention his end-of-episode statement of purpose, where he goes from bored, sulky student to crazed god-wannabe. The name-writing montage is almost campy, but it's beautiful. The rest of the episode isn't quite as pretty, but it's dark, grim and disturbed.

The later episodes on this disc—the first four of a somewhat unpromising 37—are less driven and feature a lot of repetition as the rules of the Death Note are repeated over and over, and each episode features a lengthy, talky recap of the previous one. But they're still creepy and stylish, with highly detailed characters (particularly Ryuk) and a smoky earth-tones-plus-blue color palette making much of the story seem like it's happening in a hellish otherworldly dimension. L's crafty gloating and Light's intricate scheming similarly make them seem more like gods than people; part of the fascination of the story lies in knowing that they're operating at this rarefied level while they're still human. At least sort of.

Because the action here is confined to people talking, writing in notebooks and communicating through TV and computers, Death Note initially comes across as a chilly, claustrophobic series, without a lot of dynamic action. But the storyline is terrific—as with horror-fantasies like Boogiepop Phantom and Paranoia Agent, Death Note doesn't limit the focus to the protagonist, and it considers the effects his activities would have on society at large. As the series continues—on DVD, on Carton Network's Adult Swim and online at Adult Swim Video—the outer world does come more into play, but here the tension is admirably high as L and Light face off for the first time.