Many anime series fall into the sophomore slump, where the second volume is much less engaging than the first.  Bucking that trend is the second installment of Death Note.  If anything, this volume is even more engrossing than the first, with Light and L both coming up with some brilliant strategies to out-wit each other.

Series Background:

Light Yagami is a brilliant high school student.  He's at the top of his class, and on the practice college entrance exams he routinely places first in the nation.  One afternoon while staring out the window, he sees a notebook fall from the sky.  After class he picks it up and finds some odd instructions on the inside front cover, instructions that tell him how to kill people by simply writing their name down while picturing their face.

A few days after getting the Death Note, Light is in his room when a shinigami, (a Japanese demon,) named Ryuk appears.  Ryuk was the previous owner of the Death Note and dropped it in the human world on purpose because he was bored.  He wanted to see what would happen and is quite surprised by the results:  Light has filled up pages and pages with names.  The young man has decided that he'll craft the perfect world, one without crime.  To do that all he needs to do is let people come to the realization that all criminals will end up dying.  After all, who would rob a gas station if they knew they'd end up dead in a day or two.

With criminals in prison all over the world dropping dead of heart attacks everyday, it's not long before the governing bodies, and the public who dub the mysterious killer "Kira" start to take notice.  Obviously outside of their league, they agree to let the mysterious figure "L" take over the investigation.  L communicates only through a laptop computer, and no one knows his real name or what he looks like.  With a razor sharp intellect, L soon starts to track Light down.  With one genius pitted against the other.  Which ever one discovers the other identity first wins, and the stakes are incredibly high.

This volume:

Though Light knows the name of the FBI agent following him, he can't just kill him.  That would be way too suspicious.  Having a secret group of American Feds in Japan working on the Kira case is much too dangerous though.  With the Japanese police not knowing about their existence, it would be impossible for Light to discover how many agents are in Japan, much less find out what they look like as well as their names.  Or would it?  Light comes up with a plan that just might take care of his FBI problem.

When the Japanese task force working on the Kira case discovers that American agents were sent to Japan without their knowledge they get angry.  Not only are they risking their lives working on the case, but L doesn't seem to trust them.  People start resigning left and right, until there're only 6 members left, including Light's father.  It's at this point that L has to make some sacrifices himself if he wants the cooperation of the police, so he agrees to meet the remaining members face-to-face.  He's not what they were expecting, but he's worked out a lot about Kira's abilities and who he could possibly be, and decides to put a few families under strict surveillance, including the Yagamis.  With 36 cameras in his room alone, how can Light still carry on as Kira without raising suspicions?

If anything, this volume was better than the first.  With the characters having been introduced in the first disc and Kira's abilities fully explained, now the writer can get down to the nitty-gritty of the battle between L and Kira.  This volume shows both characters at their best, making brilliant deductions based on the known facts and setting often elaborate and well-planned traps.  The series gets its strength from the cat-and-mouse game that L and Light are playing.  With the stakes incredibly high one false move could lead to either one's death.

The animation is also high caliber.   There aren't a lot of flashy effects or space battles, but the quick cut montages used when Light is writing names in the book are quiet effective both from a visual and narrative point of view.  They don't cut a lot of corners either.  Nothing gets tiring as quickly as an anime show where pans and zooms on static images takes the place of real animation and thankfully that doesn't happen in this show.

Audio:

This disc comes with both the original Japanese audio track as well as an English dub, both in stereo.  I alternated language tracks with every episode and found them both equally good.  The English voice actors do a good job and don't ham it up as sometimes happens.  Given the nature of the show, mainly dialog based without any big action sequences, the mix is adequate.  There's some use made of the front sound stage, but not a lot.  The voices are mostly anchored on the screen, but that's not really a problem.  A solid sounding show.  One thing I did notice is that there isn't an option for translations of the signs only.  This was a pain when watching the dubbed version since there are notes and such that move the plot forward that are never read aloud.

Video:

The 1.78:1 anamorphically enhanced image looks very good.  A lot of the story takes place in Light's dark room, and the image is intentionally a little soft, but this only serves to enhance the mood of the story.  The colors in the daylight scenes are bright and solid, and the wide range of grey tones are well defined.  There isn't much in the way of aliasing or banding, making this a very nice looking show.

Extras:

Viz has a nice assortment of bonus material for this disc.  First off is the second behind-the-scenes featurette where the English voice actor who plays L, Alessandro Juliani, and the series director talk about the role and the show in general.  It wasn't that exciting, but worth watching.  Next is an interview with the Japanese Animation Director as the person who did the Character Designs which was a bit more interesting.  Then there's also a commentary on the seventh episode with the English associate director and voice actress Tabith St. Germain.  It's no secret that I don't enjoy commentaries on anime by the English cast and crew (who are not involved in the decisions that give the show its look and feel and consequently rarely have anything interesting to say) and this one was about average.  They talk about the look of the episode, describing it as looking like 'film noir', but a lot of the time is taken up with either silence, stating what's happening on screen, or making small talk-like comments.  "I love that the characters are drawn so realistically then the demonic character is so clown like."  While it wasn't as bad as some anime commentaries, it didn't add to my enjoyment or understanding of the show.

There's also a 16-page production art gallery and trailers to other Viz anime series.

Final Thoughts:

The second volume of Death Note is just as strong as the first.  The battle between L and Light has begun in earnest, and each one is risking their lives to discover the identity of the other.  Wonderfully engaging and stimulating too, this is one of those shows that you'll want to tell all your friends about.  Highly Recommended.