DEATH NOTE NEWS

Bleach Quick-cast has begun!

That's right, the latest Bleach episodes from Japan are now on VIZ Anime following the same "Quick-cast" program that started with Naruto Shippuden & One Piece and which is now continuing with Bleach & Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan. And like all the videos on VIZ Anime, the new Bleach episodes will be available totally FREE to all visitors! Keep watching this space for more announcements in the coming weeks!

New Features on VIZANIME.COM

We launched another update of the vizanime.com site over this past weekend, with improvements in user comment displays, and a new poll function. Stay tuned because we're going to have fun with this new poll system over the next few months. And if you haven't caught up with the One Piece anime, our most recent addition to the site, now's the perfect time as episodes 1-114 are now up, and we continue with the current Impel Down storyline with episode 448 this week. This month also brings some exciting series into the fold, so stay tuned for those as well...

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)

FEATURED PRODUCTS