Claim: Ryuk (Death Note) is a character in the series Death Note appearing in the manga, anime, and film versions.

is a fictional character in the manga series Death Note , created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata . He is a bored Shinigami that drops a Death Note , a notebook that allows you to kill anyone simply by knowing their name and face , into the human world in order to have fun . It is picked up by Light Yagami , a young genius who uses it in an attempt to create and rule a utopia cleansed of evil , with him at the helm as a `` god '' .   In the anime adaptation , Ryuk is voiced by Nakamura Shidō in Japanese and by Brian Drummond in the English version . Both actors reprise their roles for voicing the computer-generated version of the character in the live-action films , with Jun Fukushima voicing the CG version in the live-action television drama . In the musical , Ryuk was portrayed by Kōtarō Yoshida . Actor Willem Dafoe will voice the character in the American adaptation .