Death Note

Death Note (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese manga series written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. It was serialized in Shueisha's shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 2003 to May 2006, with its chapters collected in 12 tankōbon volumes. The story follows Light Yagami, a genius high school student who discovers a mysterious notebook, the Death Note. This notebook belonged to the supernatural entity shinigami Ryuk, and writing someone’s name in the pages leads to their death. The series centers on Light's use of the Death Note to carry out a worldwide massacre of individuals he deems immoral in an attempt to create a crime-free society, using the alias of a god-like vigilante named Kira. The series also details the efforts of an elite Japanese police task force, led by the detective L, to apprehend him.

A 37-episode anime television series adaptation, produced by Madhouse and directed by Tetsurō Araki, was broadcast on Nippon Television from October 2006 to June 2007. A light novel based on the series, written by Nisio Isin, was released in 2006. Various Death Note 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, November 2006, and February 2008, and a television drama in 2015. The miniseries 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 series is reportedly in the works. Two one-shot manga sequels, C-Kira and a-Kira, were published in 2008 and 2020; they were later collected in a single volume, Death Note: Short Stories, alongside other standalone stories, in 2021. An online social deduction game, Death Note: Killer Within, was released by Bandai Namco Entertainment for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and Windows via Steam in 2024.