Wasn't his motive for even starting the war just because he wanted to share his country's prosperity with others? He wasn't even that much of a douche prior to bringing up the idea to Roku. It wasn't until after he had already decided that we found out that Sozin was a jerk. I could understand if there was an old hatred against the fire nation had against the earth kingdom, which lead to the rest of the world joining in. but just because you want to take over the world? idk, that's kinda lame in my book.

I mean it was only one flashback episode, it's not like they could flesh out Sozin's character deeply or anything. But I thought the basic idea for the reason why the war even started was pretty decent. The Fire Nation was super prosperous, and Sozin thought the entire world would be a better place all under his rule. You know it's the whole idea that they have a moral duty to bring civilization to the rest of the world or something. One of the things I did like was that Sozin showed up to help Roku fend off the lava from the volcano. But when given the opportunity to sacrifice an old friend for the sake of his holy war, he took it without a single hesitation. What a jerk.

The whole time I was watching this, it was impossible for me not to draw comparisons to Dexter and Breaking Bad. Yeah, it's a different medium, but other than the shinigami themselves, some rare scenes in their realm, and a few exaggerated death scenes, most of the animation here was pretty low-key and it takes place in the real world, so I think it's a pretty fair comparison. All three deal with casting villains in the lead role, playing cat and mouse with their would-be enemies in law enforcement.

Like Dexter, this show is ruined in no small part by the fucking ridiculous amount of exposition. Basically the entire series revolves around Light having a battle of wits with L and L Jr., but fucking every time anything clever happens, the whole rationale behind it has to be explained to the audience via tedious voiceover. In that regard I can't help but compare it with Dexter, which suffered so much from the exact same problem. There's a reason "show, don't tell" is such a popular mantra, it seems.

Next up, and call me morbid, but the fact that there's a book out there that allows the wielder to off people in the manner of his own choosing, providing it's physically possible, and to also control the actions of the soon-to-be-dead to a really high degree, the show almost never actually had Light or anyone else actually do cool shit with the Death Note. The only really cool use of it was when he got that one criminal to hijack the bus as a means to trick the FBI agent into revealing his identity, then having the hijacker panic and run out of the bus, getting smashed in traffic. That was clever and well-thought-out, and the show needed a whole lot more of that kind of thing.

The characters were also dull as shit - just a bunch of lame mary sues. Light has no interesting facets at all and doesn't seem to grow or change as a character at all. Again, compare this to Dexter or Breaking Bad. In Dexter we've got this cold, calculating sociopath who needs to murder like it's a drug, convinced he has no emotions and that he can only survive by convincing the world otherwise, but who slowly comes to terms with his own nature and finds emotions buried deep inside himself. Walter White changes from a sad and desperate dying man who makes a bad decision to ensure the financial security of his family after his own death into a power-mad megalomaniac who has found that his real place in the world is as a ruthless criminal mastermind. Light goes from a sociopathic, "killing all of the criminals will make the world into a better place" handsome ubermensch into...ok, he literally doesn't change at all, unless you count his external monologue in the final episode of shit he has been internally ranting about the entire series as "character development" (I don't). Apart from him, L is also a lame mary sue prodigy who's basically just Batman who doesn't ever leave the Batcave and whose personal demons or baggage we never see. He's just a weird rich guy who is super good at solving crimes for some reason. Then Light kills him and he gets replaced by a little kid who's exactly the same as him. Only Mello is really different, and he doesn't even get to do all that much and gets killed as a pawn of the real ubermensch anyway. All of the "regular joe" characters are both more interesting and constantly cast aside by the bigger cast members as being ineffectual and no match for their super mary sue powers of murder/mystery solving.

And don't even get me started on the female characters - the last time I saw anything this misogynistic, it was The Man Show, but I'm pretty sure this is worse. There are basically four women in the entire series who do anything important. You've got Light's sister, whose sole function is getting kidnapped and being a damsel in distress. You've got Takada, one of the women Light was heroically? two-timing in college, who upon finding out he's Kira instantly becomes his total slave. Plus gratuitous eye-candy when she has to get naked for no reason. Then there's Misa Amane, the pop-idol/model/whatever bubbly girl who starts out as being the "second Kira" who also has a Death Note and worships Kira as well, but as soon as she actually meets Light/Kira she becomes completely obnoxious, loses all agency, is another of Light's slaves who fanatically listens to his every command, serves as male gaze shit just over and over again, and is generally just fuckin' awful. Oh and she kills herself at the very end after Light dies, of course. Finally, you've got that girl, the FBI agent's girlfriend, the ONE female character in the series who seemed like an actual goddamn human being with agency and who wasn't just something to stare at, and as soon as we find out she is such a person, Light kills her. (OR DOES HE?!?! - but this is never addressed, so we can just assume he did.)

Next up is the terrible writing. It makes no goddamn sense at all that the shinigami are apparently discouraged from interfering in human doings, but then there are like ten billion arbitrary rules governing interactions between shinigami and humans and use of the Death Note and passing it from person to person and memory loss and all of this other horseshit that makes no objective sense and was clearly only added in order to facilitate plot events. Some of them are fine, like having to imagine the person's face when you write their name, and giving a 40-second window to write the cause of death (else, heart attack) but once it got into shit about self-caused Death Note amnesia and transferring ownership of Death Notes and shit like that it just got plain silly.

And how about the fact that Kira killed probably thousands and thousands of people, maybe even more than that, and the actual impact of global murder is never really addressed at all? None of the murderers in the show ever feels remorse and only once is Light ever in a situation where he has to interact with someone who was personally impacted by his serial killing, and he doesn't care at all. I mean, ok, he's a sociopath so maybe he wouldn't care, but the show's constant avoidance of this subject kind of gave the impression that the show didn't care that much, either. I mean, shit, we're kind of rooting for Light, right? I mean, he's the main character and is always shown as being cool and likable? He's handsome, smart, successful with women - and I think it'd be pretty hard to argue against the idea that the show portrays these qualities in an admirable light (pun: totally intended).

barring the third volume being done really quickly. The manga is split into four distinct volumes (I: Light and L playing catch-me-if-you-can, II: Light wiping his memory and working with L, III: Mello's aggressive plans that cause all sorts of chaos, IV: Near slowly unraveling everything while Light gives the note to Mikami) and they're all dealt with in depth except for the third one which gets blown through in like three episodes. I'm of the opinion that I think most fans share, which is that it's exciting when L is around and really dull after he gets killed off. Pardon the videogame comparison and extra spoiler but it's sorta like when Luca Blight gets killed halfway through Suikoden II. You spend the entire game on the run from him and his sadistic insanity and the take him out on your first attempt at a counterattack. Well... fuckin now what? The rest of the game is still phenomenal but he was very clearly the most imminent threat so it really felt like the game was scrambling at points to throw Neclord and the rest of the Highland army at you when it's been definitively proven that neither of them are nearly as threatening as Luca was.

And that leads to my biggest problem with the show, which was that Near was fucking perfect. L and Light were always on equal footing, consistently outsmarting each other and keeping things tense with each new turn, then Near shows up and just constantly has the upper hand and never slips up. I sorta understand why they did that, since Light needed a worthy adversary after taking out his only real opponent beforehand, but the entire second half of the show could be summed up as Light smugly declaring "I WIN" and then immediately losing. It leads to another videogame comparison because I'm a helpless dork, but it turns him into Kefka. Kefka spends the entire second half of FFVI just sitting in his tower doing nothing while the party regroups and prepares for the final attack, and it can only logically be explained that he's super arrogant and doesn't think he'll lose anyway so he doesn't see the point in using his obviously OP planet spanning death laser to vaporize you instantly. Light constantly fucks up and eventually fails due to arrogance because that (coupled with making his adversary flawless and capable of figuring everything out in a matter of minutes) was the only feasible way he could lose since he had a massive head start on everybody once L died. I feel like he clearly wasn't the hero by at least the halfway point of the show, after killing L. Before then he's at the very least morally grey, but after he starts indiscriminately killing anybody who might be on to him (including his own family) it's pretty clear we're not supposed to root for him, just to see the story told through his perspective.

You are right about pretty much everything else though. The women are portrayed terribly and he never really did anything interesting with the Death Note after a certain point (though it could be argued that that's because at that point a sudden heart attack was a clear indication that Kira was responsible and his entire plan was about becoming a God so he loved the attention that gave him), and for some reason I never even considered how weird it was that the Shinigami had a million rules for using the Death Note despite being discouraged from ever meddling in human affairs. You definitely nailed that one, a lot of those were purely there so the plot could happen, and I've always said that nonsense rules of the universe with no rational explanation or characters making dumb decisions purely to move the plot forwards are obvious signs of bad writing.

I do have to say though that I actually loved how it spent so much time inside the characters' heads, spelling out their every move. It showed how far ahead they were usually planning and gave a good look inside their heads. Disagree with you on that point, but everything else was analyzed very well.

Overall I think I still like it despite rewatching it a few months ago and noticing more problems than the first time I read it, but it could just be nostalgia talking so take that with a grain of salt.