Death Note

As others have noticed, the ending of Death Note leaves a lot to be desired.First, the head-to-head chess match of Light and L worked because the two were in close proximity--they were handcufffed for days and still couldn't eliminate each other!! ... but Light versus Naer was never as successful because the two were never close, they were never really threatened until the showdown. Put another way, Light vs. L was thrust, parry and counter attack,, but Light vs. Naer was a direct head-on collision.The problem with the head-on collision is that the method of warfare, writing in a book, is not cinematically suited to confrontational battle. Therefore, the "gun-fight" was really not very interesting.Furthermore, Light lost not so much because he failed to out-think Naer, but because X-Kira messed up by going to the bank. It seemed a little like watching a star player lose a game on a technicality. Never satisfying.
Naer got lucky that X-Kira cracked after Mello's bold move. Naer was also lucky that Kira and X-Kira chose the same form of death for Takada. Otherwise, Light would have noticed. Naer was not smarter than Light, just luckier. Luck is kind of a dumb way to end a head-on collision of super-geniuses.(Also, I never understood Kira's motivation for killing off the sexy voice of Kira. I suppose it was to show how evil Light had become, but it didn't make any sense on his part where he already knew Mello was dead. The SPK couldn't have held on to her with the public outrage that would have ensued. Light could easily have implicated the SPK in the plot and gotten the authorities to remove Naer for him)Note I didn't want Light to win, but I wanted some idea of L.'s to be left behind to result in a victory by Naer, but LUCK!....grr. I expected more from this otherwise well-executed story.