Death Note

Watched the very first episode of the Death Note anime tonight, and for those unfamiliar with it (which should be 100% of you, my 2 or 3 readers), the main character is Light Yagami.

Light is a Straight A high school student, with too much time on his hands really. One day, he finds a mysterious notebook on his school's grounds, with the words "Death Note" on the cover. The instructions on it state that if a human's name is written within that notebook, that person will die.

But there are certain rules though (from Wiki):
- The human whose name is written in this note shall die.
- This note will not take effect unless the writer has the subject's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
-If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the subject's name, it will happen.
-If the cause of death is not specified, the subject will simply die of a heart attack.
-After writing the cause of death, the details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds

Light, at first is skeptical about this "Death Note". But he experiments with it on 2 criminals with scary results, and he now believes the authenticity of the Death Note. 5 days later though, Light meets the true owner of the Death Note, a Shinigami (Japanese Death God) by the name of Ryuk. Ryuk, it turns out, dropped the Death Note into the human world on purpose because he was bored with things on his astral plane. And it ended up in the hands of Light, who is just as bored with the status quo on his own world. Episode 1 ends with Light declaring (to Ryuk's approval) that he wants to become "the God of the new world" by passing judgement on who is fit and not fit to keep on living.

In a lot of levels, this is a lot more disturbing than Gunslinger Girl. But it's just as watchable too. The animation level, the atmosphere... it's good stuff. I would recommend it if you can stomach a little "f'ed-up"-ness once in a while.