One of the things I love the most about Death Note is it’s visual style. It’s intricate and there’s a fair amount of realism, although, obviously, it’s still stylised enough that everything still means something.
I’m fond of the landscapes in Death Note. It doesn’t supply lush, clean cityscapes, but neither does it show an impossibly broken world. The Tokyo landscape above is bleak but liveable. Outdoors shots as we follow Light and Ryuk around will show pleasant areas around the home of the obviously fairly well-off Yagami family, as well as the leafy grounds of Light’s. Obviously, these are as much a part of Light’s life as the grimy streets that he passes through that enable him to make that second kill.
But that view of the city shows the world as it is relevant to Light’s life with the Death Note. It’s dark and humdrum, but the colours are a little warmer than totally depressing and sunlight is indeed being cast down from the heavens by the sunset/sunrise (IIRC, this is a sunset).
Now, I usually prefer the manga, but the anime does offer, for this kind of shot, the advantage of the depth of colour and movement, and I find the kind of polluted warmth that colour allows, here, to be very evocative of the series in general. It’s a dingy world, but perhaps one worth fighting for, whichever side you might be on.
And, this, of course, quite notably, is what Misa looks out on over the ending credits, when it’s implied that she’ll jump to her death (another point for the anime, incidentally).
