This drama had all the potential to be utterly amazing, given that it was the live action adaption of one of the greatest mangas ever written. Unfortunately, due to the ineptitude of the drama writers, it was mediocre at best. This, in my opinion, is due solely to their arrogance in feeling overconfident in thier talent and biting off more than they could chew. I really want to stress that even though I am a big Death Note fan, my opinions are not due to them changing the source material. It is because those changes they made happen to be detrimental to the story, and the changes made ended up not making sense, contridicted the story or just came across as weak and shallow. The original story is nothing less than brilliant. This adaption is like Death Note For Dummies. Even if you have never read the manga or seen the anime, it is hard to miss all the gaping plot holes scattered throughout. With all that said, I ended up rating this drama pretty high, considering. That was because of the acting. Kubota Masataka was simply phenomenal as Yagami Light. When I started watching the first episode, I admit to not really expecting much. However, after a while, I became deeply impressed by him, particularly during the last half of the drama. His descent into madness was expertly portrayed, and as I watched him on my screen, he was the mirror image of the Light Yagami from the anime and manga. The one change that was made that I ended up liking was him and his personality. Instead of the sociopathic Light from the original, they made him be a normal kid. He was friendly and good at the start, but his possession of the Death Note and his obsession with creating a new world pushed him down into a spiral of madness. It does make one think. If you found a Death Note, could the same thing happen to you? Yamakazi Kento's L, in contrast to Kubota's performance, was rather underwhelming. In fact, he was very unlikable at the start. Fortunately, as time went on, he improved. Much of that improvement is thanks to the inclusion of some of L's most poignant mannerisms. At first, none were really there. It was hard for me to see this character as the legendary L. Eventually, though, Yamazaki begin to adopt simple little things into his acting, such as L's famous slouchy posture and his wide eyed stare. Those may seem like very small things, but to me, they made a world of difference. I started to recognize the character and like him. All of the actors did a decent job. I especially liked this version's Misa. She wasn't as weak. My final thoughts are about Near. I have absolutely no dang clue what was up with that character at all. I am still unsure if he was still supposed to be a boy, just played by a girl ir if they changed him into a girl and the translation was messed up. I also have no idea what was going through thier heads when they made all the changes to that character. They were all stupid and pointless.