I remember about the time death note was rising in popularity, most TV shows available to the average american teenager (not me I was below average) were "about nothing", the stories were either so basic/short/trivial/generic/for-kids you might as well say the story didn't exist or were aimless and next week's episode forgot everything from last-week. If you watched cartoon network, you get the impressed to believe that animes have long-form story telling and western cartoons are for baby children, which functionally is true-enough if that distinction matters. If you were willing to watch anime with subtitles, you basically 100x your supply of good TV shows. I still like the pointless shows like lucky star and bugs bunny, but at the time, that's literally all that was available in western cartoons. Death Note was likely one of the highest quality and earliest long-form cartoons most western millennials got to see of it's style and genre.