Death Note

***Death Note*** (Japanese: デスノート, Hepburn: *Desu Nōto*) is a Japanese manga series written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The story follows Light Yagami, a teen genius who stumbles across a mysterious otherworldly notebook: the "Death Note", which belonged to the Shinigami Ryuk and grants the user the supernatural ability to kill anyone whose name is written in its pages. The series centers around Light's subsequent attempts to use the Death Note to carry out a worldwide massacre of individuals whom he deems morally unworthy of life to change the world into a utopian society without crime, using the alias of a god-like vigilante named "Kira" and the subsequent efforts of an elite task-force of law enforcement officers, consisting of members of the Japanese police force, led by L, an enigmatic international detective whose past is shrouded in mystery, to apprehend him and end his reign of terror.

*Death Note* was first serialized in Shueisha's manga magazine *Weekly Shōnen Jump* from December 2003 to May 2006. The 108 chapters were collected and published into 12 *tankōbon* volumes between April 2004 and July 2006. An anime television adaptation aired in Japan from October 2006 to June 2007. Composed of 37 episodes, the anime was developed by Madhouse and directed by Tetsurō Araki. A light novel based on the series, written by Nisio Isin, was also released in 2006. Additionally, various video games have been published by Konami for the Nintendo DS. The series was adapted into three live action films released in Japan in June 2006, November 2006, and February 2008, and a television drama in 2015. A miniseries entitled *Death Note: New Generation* and a fourth film were released in 2016. An American film adaptation was released exclusively on Netflix in August 2017 and a sequel is reportedly in the works.

*Death Note* media is licensed and released in North America by Viz Media, with the exception of the video games and soundtracks. The episodes from the anime first appeared in North America as downloadable from IGN, before Viz Media licensed it and it aired on YTV's Bionix anime block in Canada and on Adult Swim in the United States with a DVD release following. The live-action films briefly played in certain North American theaters in 2008, before receiving home video releases. In 2015, the collected *tankōbon* volumes of the *Death Note* manga had sold over 30 million copies.

## Synopsis

A shinigami, as a god of death, can kill any person—provided they see their victim's face and write their victim's name in a notebook called a Death Note. One day, Ryuk, bored by the shinigami lifestyle and interested in seeing how a human would use a Death Note, drops one into the human realm.

High school student and prodigy Light Yagami stumbles upon the Death Note and—since he deplores the state of the world—tests the deadly notebook by writing a criminal's name in it. When the criminal dies immediately following his experiment with the Death Note, Light is greatly surprised and quickly recognizes how devastating the power that has fallen into his hands could be.

With this divine capability, Light decides to extinguish all criminals in order to build a new world where crime does not exist and people worship him as a god. Police, however, quickly discover that a serial killer is targeting criminals and, consequently, try to apprehend the culprit. To do this, the Japanese investigators count on the assistance of the best detective in the world: a young and eccentric man known only by the name of L.

## Mal Info

Score:8.62

Ranked:#59

Popularity:#1

Studios:Madhouse

Source:Manga

Duration:23 min. per ep.

Rating:R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Producers:VAP, Konami, Ashi Production, Nippon Television Network, Shueisha