Join the new world

The story follows Light Yagumi, a student who is about to finish high school, and hopes to join one of the best universities in Japan. In school, one day he finds a notebook on the ground, and notices it calls itself a 'Death Note'. It goes says that any person whose name is written on it will die. To avoid confusion arising from people with the same name, the person's full name must be written, and the person's face must be borne in mind for it to work.

It goes on to give a very elaborate set of rules, most important of which are:
The default death suffered is a heart attack in 40 seconds from when the person's name is written.
The writer can control the death by specifying the events leading to the death and the occurrence of the death itself (assuming the person can do it, and everyone is assumed capable of suicide), given he fills it out within six minutes and forty seconds of writing the name.
The name can be filled out later after the situation is written out, by leaving space for it and the writing it in at the end.
The Death Note shall never run out of pages.
The pages of the death note work the same even after being torn out of the book.
Each book belongs to a Shinigami, or God of death, and each shinigami can own only one note, unless he kills the owner of another Death Note.
If the Shinigami of a Note loses his Note in the human world, he must look for it and as long as a human is using it, must stay with the human. He can not return to the Shinigami realm without his Death Note.
A Shinigami can write names of humans to extend his own lifespan, by the amount of life span naturally left in the human. However, writing a shinigami's name will not add to his life, nor does a human benefit from the use of the book in such a manner.
A human can not use the Death Note to kill any Shinigami.
A human who has touched a Shinigami's Death Note can see and interact with the Shinigami, and is deemed to be using it until he forfeits the Death Note to someone else, or the original owner.
A Shinigami can see the remaining lifespan of all humans and their real names. A human can do so if he makes a deal with a Shinigami, to trade half the rest of his life for the 'eye of the Shinigami', giving him the ability. The Shinigami who completes this trade can still see the lifespan and true name of people.
In any case, no user of a Death Note can see the lifespan of another user of the Death Note.
When a human forfeits the Death Note, he also loses all memory pertaining to any Death Note.
After a human forfeits his Death Note to the original Shnigami, the Shinigami must kill him be writing his name in his Death Note.

At first, Light does not believe it, and takes it to be a prank of some student at the school. However, he continues to be intrigued by the book, and decides to give it a try. As an idealist who thinks that the worst criminals like rapists, murderers, etc. Must die, he considers it safe to use it on such a criminal. Sure enough, he finds one candidate – a murder accused whose full name and picture are laid out on his way home, in a store. He writes it down and is taken aback with shock when he realizes that his target has died of heart attack. He tries to convince himself that it was a coincidence, for such a thing cannot possibly happen. On his way home the next day, he sees a person trying to molest a girl. He seizes this opportunity to lay out a very elaborate plan to kill this person, something that absolutely cannot be mere happenstance, and watches things unfold. To his surprise, the events unfold exactly as he had written out.

Now, with the power of death in his hand, he decides to create a new world, where criminals do not exist, and he pronounces divine justice upon criminals. He then looks for criminals who have committed heinous crimes and starts killing them off. Being a very bright person himself and being the son of a detective (with some experience himself) and an interest in being a detective himself, it is not hard for him to find these names and faces.

Soon enough, the police and later the internet find that these deaths are not random, and that someone is targeting these criminals. Their clue: all of them die of heart attacks. They wish to take the help of L, the best detective in the world, whose identity and whereabouts are known to nobody, except one man, Watari, whose name and whereabouts, however, are unknown to them as well. Unsure that they will get his help since he only takes up cases of his liking, they hope for the best, and L delivers to them, when Watari announces that L has decided to take up the case.

L is a professional liar, who uses lies and deceit to catch hold of his criminals and has never failed to solve any case. Nobody has beaten him to it either. He immediately starts working on the case. Among others, one of the lies he keeps alive is the existence of two other “detectives”, who allegedly fill the next two spots on the top three detectives on Earth (the top, of course, is L). They are both actually also L, just using completely different “profiles”.

The criminal killer is called Kira, as the internet calls him, as Light chooses not to reveal his identity. The internet is split in opinion about him, with some calling him a true evil, claiming that one with such power would, even if he is good hearted, eventually become the biggest evil, while others claiming him to be a true God, for he kills away evil.

L knows Kira and Light separately, and Light hopes this gimmick holds. They both join the same university (in Light's city), being the only ones to get a perfect score in its entrance exam. They go on to face off in an intellectual battle that forms the crucks of the anime, until Light manages to kill L off. This sort of killing – of innocent policemen and detectives – has been going on for a while, and does not stop with L. Light claims that they are a hindrance on his path to become a God in a new world which is devoid of crime. However, L has assigned two young people (Mellow and Near) to ascend his legacy. They take over the case and, eventually, corner Light, who refuses to give up. In the end, he dies, however, being killed by Ryuk.

Two movies were released after the end of the anime. One follows Light's fight against L, and the other against Mellow and Near. There is some reanimation, notably Ryuk's conversations with an unnamed Shinigami, who displays many habits earlier seen in Light.


Main characters: Light Yagumi, L, Misa Amane, Near, Mellow, Ryuk.