Almost a 2.5, but if you are interested enough to read the parts that are worth reading, you can find more and better online already. Possibly a 2.5 for some audiences, and worth skimming if you can acquire a copy with no additional effort.
This is a companion volume to the Death Note series. It contains plot and character summaries, development background, author interviews, humorous Death Note comic strips that had been published separately, and the pilot issue.
Much of the page count is wasted on anyone who was paying attention while reading. You met these characters, you read the story, you know what happened. You do not need to be told that L has a sweet tooth, Light is arrogant, and Misa is less intelligent than them. You get approximately one sentence of new information per summary section.
May I save you some time on that? Mello's assistant was also in that orphanage with him; they expected his part of the operation to go better. That is not Misa in the epilogue chapter; her death date is listed in the chronology (skipping the obvious spoiler). L lies a lot.
That last one surprised me a bit because deceptions usually seem obvious. We see characters' thoughts and people explain what is going on, but no one points out that when L says, "5% chance," he means, "95% chance." This reverses the normal way of stating odds in fiction, where characters claim to be 99.9999% sure of things that are perhaps a 1 in 10 chance.
The page count is padded by describing and rating every trick in the series, down to Misa changing her outfit (simple but effective). Rating Near's toys or cataloging L's sweets is vaguely amusing. There is a similar run-down on every chapter title, most of which are clear plot references.
I was interested in the art background. I have discussed the character art, but I never remarked on the difference between L as shadowy figure in an empty room and L after he appears in full. The character concept changed. His seems the most flexible, shifting a between shadowy figure, creepy weirdo, childlike savant, and non-standard bishounen. The character art for Near and Mello were reversed early on by editorial decision; interesting.
The art and story background come together in the explanation that, no, it did not mean anything. The story was not plotted in intricate detail a year in advance, there is no intended moral theme, and the symbols just look cool. The artist knew about religious imagery relating to apples and how often they came up in the story, so he placed them prominently in the final cover art; the author used apples because he wanted something red to contrast with the black and white, and he thought apples were kind of cool. The whole thing was just meant as an entertaining story. The closest to a moral is Near's brief speech on how we're all just working through what's right; that and mu.
The best moment in this volume comes from one of its creators watching television. Paraphrase: "The program involved a serious discussion of the philosophy and morality in Death Note. I had no idea what they were talking about. I couldn't follow them."
For almost every female character, there was a note that they wish they had done more with her. They did not mention noticing that as a trend. There were a few versions of "I had no idea what to do with her." Misa comes off surprisingly strongly in their perception, but that seems to focus on her introduction, rather than the shallow tool she quickly became. I had thought to describe her look as Gothic Lolita, but it seemed to be a bit brighter except in her first few depictions; it was gratifying to see the artist's intention as Gothic Lolita but moderated a bit.
The comic shorts were amusing. The characters caricature well.
The pilot issue was disappointing. If I had read that first, I would not have read the series. The improvement between the original idea and the final execution was enormous.
collected edition
Amazon link
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