Death Note: MANGA. ANIME. MOVIES: A Critical Study

DEATH NOTE

MANGA. ANIME. MOVIES

A Critical Study

BY JEREMY MARK ROBINSON

Death Note (Desu Noto) by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata is one of the finest manga of recent times, and the TV animated adaptation is a truly remarkable piece of filmmaking, quite brilliant, ranking up there with the best.

Death Note has become a significant franchise: it began with the very popular manga (30 million copies sold by Japanese publisher Shueisha). The success of Death Note in comic form led to an animated TV series, several live-action adaptations and spin-offs, plus movies.

Death Note features a terrific magical gimmick: a book used by Gods of Death (Shinigami) which finds its way into the real world. If you write someone's name in it, and picture their face, you can kill them. Raito Yagami is the 17 year-old Japanese, high school kid who finds the Death Notebook by accident. That's how Death Note starts - but it rapidly becomes something else. Mangakas Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata take the Magical Book concept and run with it, adding in a battery of complications and obstacles, turning Death Note into an enjoyable and creepy combination of hi-tech thriller, political diatribe and high school melodrama.

This is one of the few full-length critical studies on the Death Note franchise in English.

The book includes chapters on the manga, including every part of the story, on the TV anime, including a detailed exploration of every episode, on the live-action movies, and sections on the other manga from Ohba and Obata, including Brakeman and Platinum End.

Bibliography, filmographies and notes. Illustrated with images from the manga (and the artbooks), the TV animation, the movies and the musical, along with other comics by Ohba and Obata.

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