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Based on the hugely popular Manga of the same name, MadHouse Studio brings this franchise to life in animé form. It follows an high school student called Light Yagami who is academically sound yet lacking ambition and goals in life. A Shinigami in an alternate relm is also bored with his current life and drops an item into the human world. Gazing out of the window during a lesson Yagami notices something falling from the sky and within the class break he finds it. A black book with the title “Death Note” is printed on it, curious to know more Yagami opens the book and finds instructions printed out in English:

“How to use it”

The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person’s face in their mind when writing his or her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.

If the cause of the death is written within 40 seconds of writing ther person’s name, it will happen.

If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.

After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Thinking it was just a sick prank, Yagami passed it as a chain letter attempt to get attention… But his curiousity got the better of him and took the book home. To test out if this was the real thing he wrote down the name of a criminal who has taken children as hostages in a nursery. With no specific cause of death the default penalty was a heart attack. 40 seconds past and the live news report indicated that the captor died within the nursery building after collapsing.

Yagami had his doubts and concluded it was just co-incidence and thus had to try it out again to see if it was real. Sticking to the criteria that it had to be a criminal and no-one large so that their identity could be hidden, he looked around the next day after school. As Yagami looked around he starts to notice that there are many people in the world that he believes would be better without. As by chance a bike gang attacks a young lady and Yagami spots this as an ideal chance - Quickly writing his name down (after the leader proclaims it during the attack) he sets off to chase the young lady on his bike, only for a large truck to slam into him at pace. Nice.

Noticing the change of events, the Shinigami Ryuuku warps into the human world to find his Death Note book and instantly locates Yagami at his house. Yagami however is not overly surprised to see Ryuuku and is interested to learn more about its power, Ryuuku though is surprised to see that many pages were full of names in Death Note in only five days. Within those days Yagami decided that it was best to kill off all the major criminals in the world to make people notice such actions. By having notorious criminals die, people will speculate as to who is responsible. By justifying his own actions Yagami wants to become a sword of justice and a God of this new world.

The animation and art have a more serious and darker tone than your usual fluffy animés. In many aspects it reminds me of GantZ, another twisted and gritty animé with surreal undertones. The production values though look pretty high for a TV serious and its not a surprise when you have MadHouse Studios and a huge franchise that is Death Note behind it. As an introduction episode it does well to establish its roots and settings with much more to follow. Looking forward to episode 2 now to see how things advance from here on in.

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