Death Note (stylized in all caps) is a Japanese anime television series based on the manga series Death Note, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. It was directed by Tetsurō Araki at Madhouse and aired in Japan on Nippon Television every Wednesday (with the exception of December 20, 2006, and January 3, 2007) shortly past midnight, from October 4, 2006, to June 27, 2007. The plot of the series primarily revolves around high school student Light Yagami, who decides to rid the world of evil with the help of a supernatural notebook called a Death Note. This book causes the death of anyone whose name is written in it and is passed on to Light by the Shinigami Ryuk after he becomes bored within the Shinigami world.
A two-hour "Director's Cut" compilation television film, titled Death Note: Relight – Visions of a God, aired on Nippon Television two months after the anime series concluded. Although advertised to be the "complete conclusion", the popularity of the series inspired the release of a second TV film, titled Death Note: Relight 2 – L's Successors nearly a year later. These films summarize the first two parts of the series' narrative, but they alter the plot by adding and omitting scenes.
Cast and characters
Character Japanese English Light Yagami Mamoru Miyano Brad Swaile L Kappei Yamaguchi Alessandro Juliani Ryuk Nakamura Shidō II Brian Drummond Misa Amane Aya Hirano Shannon Chan-Kent Near Noriko Hidaka Cathy Weseluck Mello Nozomu Sasaki David Hurwitz Teru Mikami Masaya Matsukaze Kirby Morrow Soichiro Yagami Naoya Uchida Chris Britton Touta Matsuda Ryō Naitō Vincent Tong Shuichi Aizawa Keiji Fujiwara Trevor Devall Kanzo Mogi Kazuya Nakai John Murphy Hideki Ide Hideo Ishikawa Brian Dobson Hirokazu Ukita Hidenobu Kiuchi Jeremy From Watari Kiyoshi Kobayashi French Tickner Kiyomi Takada Masumi Okamura (Part I)Maaya Sakamoto (Part II) Heather Doerksen Raye Penbar Hideo Ishikawa Michael Adamthwaite Naomi Misora Naoko Matsui Tabitha St. Germain Kyosuke Higuchi Issei Futamata Andrew Kavadas Rem Kimiko Saitō Colleen Wheeler Sachiko Yagami Ai Satō Saffron Henderson Sayu Yagami Haruka Kudō Kelly Metzger (Part I)Kristie Marsden (Part II)
Production Tetsurō Araki, the director of the anime series, said that he wished to convey aspects that "made the series interesting" instead of simply "focusing on morals or the concept of justice". Toshiki Inoue, the series writer, agreed with Araki and added that, in anime adaptations, there is a lot of importance in highlighting the aspects that are "interesting in the original". He concluded that Light's presence was "the most compelling" aspect; therefore the adaptation chronicles Light's "thoughts and actions as much as possible". Inoue noted that to best incorporate the manga's plot into the anime, he "tweak[ed] the chronology a bit" and incorporated flashbacks that appear after the openings of the episodes; he said this revealed the desired tensions. Araki said that, because in an anime the viewer cannot "turn back pages" in the manner that a manga reader can, the anime staff ensured that the show clarified details. Inoue added that the staff did not want to get involved with every single detail, so the staff selected elements to emphasize. Due to the complexity of the original manga, he described the process as "definitely delicate and a great challenge". Inoue admitted that he placed more instructions and notes in the script than usual. Araki added that because of the importance of otherwise trivial details, this commentary became crucial to the development of the series.
Araki said that when he discovered the Death Note anime project, he "literally begged" to join the production team; when he did join, he insisted that Inoue should write the scripts. Inoue added that, because he enjoyed reading the manga, he wished to use his effort.
Release The Death Note anime television series, directed by Tetsurō Araki and animated by Madhouse, premiered on Nippon Television on October 4, 2006, and concluded on June 27, 2007, running for a total of 37 episodes. The series aired every Tuesday at 0:56, which is effectively every Wednesday at 12:56 a.m. JST. It was produced by a production committee consisting of Nippon Television, , VAP, Shueisha and Madhouse. In North America, the series was licensed by Viz Media for American viewers to use "Download-to-Own" and "Download-to-Rent" services while it was still airing in Japan. This release was seen as "significant because it marked the first time a well known Japanese anime property was made legally available in the United States for domestic audiences to download while the title was still airing on Japanese television". The downloadable episodes contained the original Japanese audio and English subtitles, and were made available through IGN's Windows-only Direct2Drive service. DVDs of the series have also been released, containing both an English dubbed audio track, produced by Ocean Productions, and the original Japanese audio track with optional English subtitles. Viz announced at Anime Expo 2007 that the first DVD would be released on November 20, 2007, in both regular and special editions, and also confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con in 2007 that the first 15,000 copies of each DVD would contain collectible figures.
Death Note was originally slated to make its North American television premiere in Canada, as part of YTV's Bionix programming block, on September 7, 2007. However, the show was removed from the schedule at the last minute and the Canadian premiere was pushed back to October 26, 2007, at 10:00 p.m. Thus, it instead premiered in the United States on October 20, 2007, on Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim and reran until January 10, 2010, when the syndication license expired. The last episode premiered on YTV on July 4, 2008, and would later premiere on Adult Swim two days later. The show also streamed online for free on Adult Swim Video, with a new episode available every Saturday afternoon, on the day of its broadcast premiere. On July 26, 2017, Starz announced that they would be offering episodes of the series for their video on demand service starting on August 1 of that same year.
An animated two-hour compilation TV film titled aired on Nippon Television in Japan on August 31, 2007, at 8:00 p.m. It is a recap which takes place after the series end, where a approaches Ryuk in the realm in order to learn more about the human world. Instead, Ryuk tells him of all the events leading up to the final story arc, about Light Yagami and his rival L. Originally, this special was advertised as a retelling told from Ryuk's point of view, but it does not give a different point of view from what was originally told. However, it does contains updated dialogue, as well as a few additional scenes not featured in the original series run.
Nippon Television also aired a second compilation film titled on August 22, 2008. Like the first film, this compilation summarizes the second part of the anime series. Specifically, it recounted the final half of the suspenseful supernatural story, including the investigators Near and Mello's confrontations with the vigilante Kira. This version features more scene additions than the previous film and omits the mafia subplot.
Tropics Entertainment licensed the series in South and Southeast Asia for streaming on its Tropics Anime Asia YouTube Channel, releasing each episode daily from August 1 to September 6, 2026.
Episodes Part I
Part II
Relight TV films
Home media release Japanese + VAP (Japan, Region 2/A) Volume / Title Discs Episodes Release date 1 1 1–3 December 21, 2006 2 1 4–6 January 24, 2007 3 1 7–9 February 21, 2007 4 1 10–12 March 21, 2007 5 1 13–15 April 25, 2007 6 1 16–18 May 23, 2007 7 1 19–21 June 27, 2007 8 1 22–24 July 25, 2007 9 1 25–27 August 22, 2007 10 1 28–30 September 27, 2007 11 1 31–33 October 24, 2007 12 1 34–35 November 21, 2007 13 1 36–37 December 21, 2007 Relight 1 TV film 1 March 19, 2008 Relight 2 1 TV film 2 November 21, 2008 Blu-ray Box 7 1–37 October 19, 2016
English + Viz Media (North America, Region 1/A) Volume / Title Discs Episodes Release date 1 1 1–4 November 20, 2007 2 1 5–8 December 18, 2007 3 1 9–12 February 19, 2008 4 1 13–16 April 29, 2008 5 1 17–20 June 24, 2008 6 1 21–24 August 26, 2008 7 1 25–28 October 28, 2008 8 1 29–32 December 30, 2008 9 1 33–37 February 24, 2009 Box Set 1 5 1–20 November 18, 2008 Box Set 2 5 21–37 April 14, 2009 Relight 1 TV film 1 June 23, 2009 Relight 2 1 TV film 2 October 27, 2009 The Complete Series 10 1–37 + 2 TV films November 18, 2014
Music
Five pieces of theme music are used for the series. The first opening theme, titled "", is performed by Nightmare. Nightmare also performed the first ending theme, , which reappears as the ending theme in the television film Death Note: Relight: Visions of a God and as an insert in episodes 12 and 19. Both songs appear on their album The World Ruler. The second opening theme from episode 20 onwards is "What's Up, People?!" and the second ending theme is , which also appears as an insert in the TV special Death Note: Relight: Visions of a God. Both themes are performed by Maximum the Hormone and appear on their album Bu-ikikaesu. The final episode's ending theme is "Coda – Death Note" by series co-composer Yoshihisa Hirano. "Misa's Song", performed by Misa's voice actress Aya Hirano, is heard as an insert for episode 25. The English version of the song is performed by the character's English voice actress, Shannon Chan-Kent.
Several soundtracks for the series have been released. The music from the anime was composed by Yoshihisa Hirano and Hideki Taniuchi, while the CDs were also published by VAP. The first one was Death Note Original Soundtrack, which was released in Japan on December 21, 2006. It contains music from the series with the first opening and ending themes are sung by the Japanese band Nightmare in the TV size format. Death Note Original Soundtrack II was first released in Japan on March 21, 2007. It features the new opening and closing themes by Maximum the Hormone in the TV size format. The third CD, Death Note Original Soundtrack III was released on June 27, 2007. Tracks 1–21 were composed and arranged by Taniuchi, while tracks 22–28 were composed and arranged by Hirano. The album features one track sung by Aya Hirano, who was also the Japanese voice actress of Misa Amane in the anime series. Also appearing on this soundtrack is the ending theme Coda – Death Note, which can be heard at the end of the final episode of the anime as the credits are shown.
Reception
The anime was commended by Tom S. Pepirium of IGN, who said that Death Notes "heavy serialized nature" is what "makes the show so engaging and discussion worthy". Pepirium, saying that translating Death Note is "no small task", stated that Stephen Hedley created an English dub with "nothing clunky". He added that Karl Willems, director of the dub, assembled a "stunning voice cast of professionals" with a "solid tone minus some of the cheesy yelling and screaming of other dubs". On the NPR show Fresh Air, John Powers said that Death Note is "at least as addictive as a show like Lost". Hyper wrote: Jacob Hope Chapman from Anime News Network praised Teru Mikami's role as bloody and flashy and even better than that of Near, Mello, and Misa. The Daily Telegraphs Henry St. Leger wrote, "What starts as a moral fable about the corruption of power becomes a slow-burning game of cat-and-mouse as Light is chased down by the world's greatest detective. Some droning voice acting leadens what is otherwise a brilliantly terse noir." Vulture's Maya Phillips wrote, "Beyond its deft twists and turns, Death Note also addresses questions about morality, justice, and capital punishment. All this, plus beautiful animation and well-written dialogue and plot, makes Death Note the cream of the animated crop."