DEATH NOTE NEWS

Death Note: The Best-Laid Plans

Don't you love it when a clever plan works out just the way you want it to? Well, Death Note has plenty of mind-twisting strategies and secret plans, and they're all carried off in style! Watch our picks for some of our favorite schemes that were carried off in the Death Note series (warning, some spoilers ahead)!
 

Episode 2 - Light hides the Death Note in his desk drawer, with amazing precautions!

Episode 4 - Light gets Raye Penbar's name thanks to his masterful handling of an incident on the bus.

Episode 24 - As the conclusion of what might be the most successful scheme of all, Light regains his memories of the Death Note!

Episode 25 - Light manuevers the Shinigami Rem into killing an important character!

Episode 36 - Near tricks Mikami into using a fake notebook, in an act which might determine the winner of the Light-Near battle!

Best Anime Series of the Decade? We Got Three of 'Em

About.com just came out with their list of the top anime of the decade from 2000-2009, and three of our series made the list: Naruto, Bleach and Death Note. Fortunately for you, dear viewers, we have all three series here in the Shonen Jump section of this site, so if you haven't had a chance to see the best, now's the time!

A couple of other anime series that made the top 10, Black Lagoon and Fullmetal Alchemist, are also available in their original manga format through the VIZ store, so be sure to check those out too.

Death Rules
As much as we keep advancing in medicine and technology, death is still a step ahead of us. It is the final frontier, and one we still know very little about. That’s why, throughout the ages, we’ve created figures like the Grim Reaper, Anubis, and the Shinigami. If death has a form, we can find a way to understand it. We also create realms of death that are bound by rules and laws much the way our living civilizations are. Whether it's the Egyptian afterlife or the show Dead Like Me, it’s calming to think that death will be the same as life. There will be no surprises after that last big surprise. 
 
One of the reasons Death Note is such a delightfully uncomfortable story is that it corrupts that reassuring idea of the rules of death by breaching the boundaries between the realms. Light doesn’t just have the simple power of life and death, which is something any human can gain against another. He has the power of Death, something preternatural that shouldn't exist in our reality. With normal death, you can at least try to fight it. With Death, there’s nothing you can do.
 
But Light is just borrowing the power of Death and doesn’t fully understand it, and so he’s not invincible. He is stretched between the rules of both realms, given an awesome power, but still limited by his mortality. He refuses to make the deal for the Shinigami eyes, and so he has to discover people’s names the old-fashioned way. But unlike most Shinigami, he is devious and finds ways to work around his humanity. He wants to create the perfect world, the perfect life for the good people who live on it. But by relying on powers that originate beyond our human realm, his endeavor is corrupt before it even begins. 
 
And so Light is fated to lose from the beginning, and not just because Death Note started as a shonen manga, and such stories always end with good triumphant. This story isn’t just the battle between Light and the police. It is the epic battle of Life versus Death, of order against chaos. In our own lives, death is inevitable, but in our fiction we can prevail. Whether we imagine facing a Ryuk or a Hades at the end of our journey, being able to bind death up in rules and form can give us peace.
 
-- Pancha Diaz (Death Note manga editor)
Holiday Manga Sale

The VIZ Media Store is having a special holiday sale on manga -- buy three volumes of any VIZ Media manga under $9.99 and get a fourth for free! Head over to the store and check out what we have!

Death Note and Anime Magic

Here’s a question: can a manga series based on heavy plotting and conversations withstand being animated? Would it be ridiculously boring? Madhouse Animation Studios was given this challenge with Death Note, and as it turns out, even a story that heavily depends on dialogue can be action-packed.

The creators of the Death Note anime have creatively and cleverly placed some pretty fancy animation into this series, with scenes that are impressive to look at yet also unexpected, making it all the more enjoyable. Scenes that you might have expected to be ordinary are swept up in movement. Pages from the graphic novel flourish in the anime. Everyday actions prove to be artistic.

This appears right from Episode 1, skillfully hooking in the audience as if to prove that a dialogue-based anime series can still keep up with its flashy action genre competition. Notably, Episode 25 delivers a beautiful scene that is not illustrated in the manga (check out from 04:37-06:27 in the episode), boasting excellent direction, music, and perspective that could only have been displayed through animation. This magic reoccurs yet again in one of the final episodes (Episode 36, 13:45-15:40), sealing it off with a dazzling finish.

So there you have it—great music, pace and direction, along with excellent voice casting, and Death Note becomes a feast for the eyes and ears as well as for the head. With sometimes extremely intricate and complicated scenarios that you have to be very alert to understand, the anime has a lot of flashy movement, music, and emotion-packed voices to keep us awake and paying full attention—and liking it, too.

-- Danielle Forward

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