‘Death note’, the Japanese manga series, was written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata and was first serialised in the Weekly Shonen Jump from December 2003 to May 2006.
Light Yagami, a brilliant high school student comes across a mysterious notebook with ‘Death Note’ written on the back. The notebook can kill any human being as long as the user knows the victim's name and face. After testing its powers, Light begins to consider all the possibilities that the notebook offers. He sets out to create an ideal world with no crime. He begins to eliminate those who ruin this world. He kills many Japanese criminals, later targeting international criminals.
Five days later, he is visited by Ryuk, a shinigami. A shinigami is a god of death. They must write names of humans in their notebooks in order to survive. It turns out, Ryuk stole the death note from another shinigami and dropped it into the human world to amuse himself. Light's actions seem to satisfy his need for entertainment.
Many people prefer to call him a protagonist rather than a villain or a hero. He had good intentions, but a wrong path. It was the power that corrupted him. He let it take him over. The power changed him. Light was a good person when he didn't know of this deadly weapon.
As a large number of criminals start dying, the global media starts to suspect that somebody is responsible for all the deaths. They name him Kira, the Japanese transliteration for the word killer. The public and law enforcement agencies both love and fear him.
In hopes of catching Kira, Interpol decides to seek the assistance of an international consulting detective who goes by the alias L. He cracked multiple cases around the world. L is quite secretive, he only communicates with the world with his assistant, Watari. After he suspects that Kira is based in Japan, he stages a TV broadcast with a decoy acting as L and manages to trick Light into killing the decoy. Light swears to eliminate L once and for all.
Now, the thing about ‘Death Note’ is that it has this manipulative into rooting for the bad guy. Was Light evil? You've gotta admit that Light is egocentric. He believes those who are not with him are evil.
Light Yagami is a complicated character. The first time he killed a man, he was in denial and disgusted with himself. He killed all those criminals but it was to achieve something great. But to the Japanese Interpol, murder is murder no matter what.
Many people prefer to call him a protagonist rather than a villain or a hero. He had good intentions, but a wrong path. It was the power that corrupted him. He let it take him over. The power changed him. Light was a good person when he didn't know of this deadly weapon.
‘Death Note’ is a great anime for starters. It has the perfect length of 37 episodes. It's unlike anything else. Despite the anime being released in 2006 it still has a large and growing fanbase.
Pieta Aamara Rahman is a student of Class 6 at Auroni Biddaloy