Death Note

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Death Note: The touching story of a boy and his god complex.
"The human whose name is written in this notebook shall die."
-- Rule #1 of the Death Note


In the land of the dead, the Shinigami Ryuk is bored out of his mind, so in an attempt to create some entertainment, he takes a Death Note (a death god's notebook - "note" is simply what the Japanese call notebooks) and drops it into the human world--where perfect student Light Yagami is steadily growing disgusted with the rest of the human race. One day, as he heads home from school, he finds a black notebook on the ground with the words "Death Note" written on the front cover. Thinking it's a joke, Light takes it home anyway.

That afternoon, despite still thinking it's a joke, Light wants to give the Death Note a try. Seeing a news report about a criminal holding schoolchildren hostage, Light writes the criminal's name in the notebook. Forty seconds later, the man dies.

At first, the powers of the Death Note terrify Light, but then it hits him: this is what he's been looking for all along. With the Death Note, he can turn the world into a better place by weeding out the bad elements...or so he explains to Ryuk, as the shinigami has decided to keep a personal eye on the wielder of his Death Note.

As Light begins to put his plan into action, with Ryuk observing by his side, the sudden rash of criminal deaths -- credited to "Kira", an Engrish pronunciation of "Killer" -- has thrown INTERPOL into a frenzy. Given no choice, they accept the aid of the master detective known only as L -- a young man with a mountain-sized sweet tooth, a bad case of insomnia, and an almost supernatural gift for deduction. Furthermore, nobody knows L's real name, so the Death Note won't work on him.

Thus, Kira and L enter into a cat-and-mouse game: Light keeps trying to dispose of L while keeping solid proof that he is Kira out of L's grasp. More Death Notes fall into the mix, and criminals keep dying by "Kira's" hand, which all serves to sum up Ryuk's assessment: "Humans are so interesting!"

The anime series is based on the manga of the same name, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. It also has a series of AlternateContinuity live-action films based on, but somewhat different from, the original manga.

Spin-Offs

Death Note provides examples of:

  • The Abridged Series: Death Note Abridged. Ten of them, actually, only in the page.
  • Absence of Evidence: One of Light's main advantages throughout the series.
  • Abandoned Warehouse: The finale takes place in one.
  • Action Girl: Wedy. Naomi Misora in Another Note. Also, Hal Lidner of the SPK.
  • Actually, I Am Him: L. Light also pulls this a few times, most notably, and with the worse sense of timing, at the end.
  • Adaptation Distillation: The Live Action Adaptation streamlines the series a lot in order to fit the entire story into two movies, and in doing so jettisoned a fair amount of the excessive plot-and-counterplot that made the struggle between L and Kira look less like a series of carefully played Xanatos Gambits and more like Xanatos Roulette. Particularly by removing entirely the matter of L's Heirs Near and Mello.
  • Adaptation Dye Job: Misa has black hair in the live-action movies, while Naomi Misora goes from having black hair to brown hair.
  • Adaptation Expansion: The series is based on a short story about a schoolboy who finds a Death Note and mistakes it for a diary. As a result, he accidentally kills his friends, until Ryuk helpfully gives him "The Death Eraser", which grants him the power to bring people back from the dead. Somewhere along the road to adapting it into a full series, the schoolboy became a mega-genius with a god complex, the boring Film Noirish detective became a freakish mega genius with a sweet tooth, and the Deus ex Machina ending was replaced with Xanatos Gambits by the bucket-load, and the rest is history. The short story, however, appears as the prologue to the manga it sprouted.
  • Adaptation-Induced Plothole: The anime omits several scenes from the manga, which while usually not problematic, have lead to plotholes. In the manga, it's explained that SPK member Ill Ratt is actually a spy for Mello, which is how the mafia learned the SPK's names and were able to kill them. This is not explained in the anime, but in the Relight 2 special, the mafia are cut, and Light blackmails the president to send their names to Kiyomi Takada. In this version, Light's meetings with her and Teru Mikami are moved to earlier than occurred in the anime, and they kill the SPK.
  • Adrenaline Time
  • Adult Fear: Look at the way Light exploits the public mood. All along, he plays on a reactionary tendency in public opinion -- people don't like crime, people don't like criminals, and so if someone's killing off the worst ones, who's really going to disapprove? And then he pushes the envelope, making his brand of vigilante justice more and more mainstream. Five years on, the whole world is rapidly moving towards a police state under one man's control, and it's driven from the beginning by corrupting people's need for safety and justice. That's scary, because that mechanism plays out in less extreme form in the news every day.
    • Powerful rich people like those of the Yotsuba corporation using the Death Note to kill off rivals for no other reason than personal gain.
    • How about this, parents? Light finds the dangerous notebook in the schoolyard. And the guy who left it lying around so that someone - here, Light - would find it? He followed Light home.
    • Another one for the parents: imagine having to seriously sit and consider that all the evidence indicates that your teenage son is the terrifyingly merciless mass-murderer you've been hunting all along, and that he will get the death penalty if sentenced. Now imagine thinking about having to go home and explain this to your wife and daughter.
    • The revelation that people who use the notebook can neither go to heaven or hell. At the end of the manga series, a flashback to Light and Ryuk's first meeting reveals that all people go to "mu" (nothingness) when they die and that, after death, nothing can be done to bring someone back to life. In the anime, this is only shown in one of the eyecatches revealing the rules of the Death Note.
    • Everyone who uses the Death Note tends to have their personal worst fears become true. Misa ends up completely alone without anyone loving her, Mikami realizes he became what he hates so much, the vain Takada burns to death naked, Higuchi is humiliated in public and then dies like a dog and "god of the new world" Light has his philosophy coldly rejected by Near while the latter squashes an ugly doll of him and dies without his dignity and/or a shred of respect.
  • Affirmative Action Girl: Sanabi in the live-action movie.
  • All Crimes Are Equal: Light starts by punishing the worst criminals but later stoops to culling purse snatchers.
    • Both L and Near direct this principle towards Kira himself and refuse to acknowledge him as a hero.
    • Mikami plans to start killing people for "crimes" such as laziness and being disrespectful. How Japanese of him.
  • All Deaths Final
  • All Love is Unrequited: Played 100% straight with Misa and Light, and later with Kiyomi Takada and Light.
  • All There in the Manual: In the manga, you have no idea what happens to Misa Amane unless you read the supplementary book, "How To Read". Averted in the movies and in the anime (the Japanese anime guidebook states that Misa's deathdate is unknown).
  • Alone With the Psycho: Happens to Naomi Misora in the manga/anime and in the prequel novel. Towards the end of the series, Aizawa gets this feeling when he drives Light to Takada's hotel.
  • Alphabetical Theme Naming: Kira, L, Light, Mello, Near ...
  • Alternate Character Reading: The kanji for Light's name is "tsuki", meaning "Moon", but his parents opted for it to be read as "Light" (pronounced, in the Japanese version of the anime, as "Raito") instead. Misa, at least, thinks it's cool.
    • This is actually used by Light as a mechanism to attempt to gain the real name of Detective Raye Penber's girlfriend.
  • Always Save the Girl: Played straight with Sayu. Rem forces Light to do this for Misa. Averted hard with Takada and with Shiori in the live-action movie.
  • Amnesiac Dissonance: Averted in Light's Memory Gambit in the anime. In relinquishing the Death Note, he loses all memory of ever being Kira and turns genuinely upstanding and moral; apart from, you know, not mass murdering criminals, he also refuses to manipulate Misa, in contrast to his Kira self where his manipulation practically defined their entire relationship. Upon regaining his memories as Kira, however, there's no apparent moral conflict between his "good/evil" personas, and he simply picks up right where he left off as Kira.
    • However, while fixing one plothole, said special creates another: as {{spoiler|the mafia are cut, Soichiro making the trade for Shinigami Eyes and his subsequent death]] is omitted in the process, leaving plotholes regarding Soichiro's absence as well as how Light was able to acquire Mello's true name.
  • Amnesiac Liar: Of course, before the Memory Gambit, both Light and Misa are liars. After this, they are very confused by what L tells them about the situation.
  • And It Worked: The news reports as the series progresses make it very clear the knowledge of Kira's existence dramatically reduces the worldwide crime rate, but there are some severe costs entailed when world justice is essentially dictated by one-still human-person.
  • Animation Bump: Various episodes, notably episode 25 and episode 37.
  • Antagonist in Mourning: In the anime, Light even goes so far as to hallucinate L.
  • Anyone Can Die: Seriously, all bets are off.
  • Appeal to Audacity: The anime itself is highly stylized and famously dramatic.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: Various characters initially refuse to accept the existence of Shinigami even after accepting the existence of a magic notebook that kills people. And even before discovering the notebook, you would think people would be a lot more open-minded after it's been established that the killer can remotely induce heart attacks simply by learning the target's name and face.
  • Arc Number: Four is Death. The manga has 108 chapters. Thirteen chapters in Another Note.
  • Arch-Enemy: Light and L; Light and Mello; Light and Near.
    • Near and Mello are more competing Well Done Son Guy to the extreme. They'll fuck anyone over as pawns, Mello more likely to than Near because of the type of company he keeps, but in the end Near even says he needed Mello to take Light down, and Mello was only killed off because the writer thought he was more intelligent than the other characters.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: "Tell me, Light, from the moment you were born, has there ever been a time where you've actually told the truth?"
  • Art Evolution: In How To Read Obata discusses how he got better at drawing Light as an evil bastard as the series progressed but then had to forget everything he'd learned during the Yotsuba Arc.
  • Artifact of Death/Artifact of Doom: The Death Notes.
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The FBI agents all have names that few Americans would have. Raye Penber is the one that is the most arguably normal, and even that tends to raise eyebrows. In DeathNote #13 (which is basically an encyclopedia about the series), the creator says this was intentional, as she wanted to use names that sounded realistic, but wouldn't actually exist. Apparently, she doesn't know that the names she picked don't sound realistic in the least...
  • Asshole Victim: All of Light's earliest victims are Anviliciously so. (The Attempted Rape in clear view on a crowded street comes to mind. And keep in mind that the guy who was holding a preschool hostage was stated to be a small fry compared to most of the people Light was killing that first week.) However, later, fewer and fewer of them.
  • Attempted Rape: Light's second kill was a member of a scooter gang who was attempting to rape a bystander (in the anime; in the manga, they just harass her).
    • Mikami Takada kills a man who is harassing a woman on a subway, as a crucial part of Light's plan.
  • Attention Whore: Demegawa goes from merely praising Kira to actively using Kira to promote his own career. To no one's surprises, and to the joy of everyone both in and out of universe, Kira in the form of Mikami eventually gets sick of this and kills him.
  • Awful Truth: Light is Kira, and no one who finds out takes it well. Especially not Matsuda.
  • Ax Crazy: Pretty much all the Kiras qualify when they're at their worst, but especially Mikami when he gets into "sakujo" mode.
  • Backhanded Apology: At the culmination of Light's Memory Gambit, he has manipulated events so that not only do Light and Misa look innocent but then in order to maintain good standing with the police L has to apologize to Light, which he does. This trope comes into play when he arguably gets even later during the infamous rooftop scene where he insists "let me atone for this" with a painful "foot massage".
  • Badass Mustache: Soichiro Yagami. (Except in the movie.)
  • Bad Powers, Bad People: Though Light thinks he's doing good... but Your Mileage May Vary.
  • Bad Powers Good People: Misa and Mikami believe this. Misa once scolds Demegawa with something along the lines of, "You can't buy peace and love with money, you know!" when he falls for Near's trick with the money.
    • Matsuda struggles with this idea a bit.
    • Sochiro begins to believe this from the third volume onwards. L's response underlines it very well.
      L: If Kira is an ordinary human being who somehow gained the power, he is a very unfortunate being.
  • Bait And Switch Gunshot: The mock execution.
  • Baka: "Matsuda no baka!" ("Matsuda, you idiot!") Becomes such a Running Gag that, while it's acceptable for Misa to use it at first, even L feels the need to say it.
    • Light calls Misa this a few times as well, mostly in internal dialogue.
  • Batman Gambit: When Light is incarcerated and loses his memory. He made elaborate plans that had to work correctly despite him not being able to make any adjustments for two or three months, or even make sure he carried out his part. In this, it's more impressive than a standard Batman gambit, since he wasn't able to actively manipulate anyone during that period. It doesn't count as a Xanatos Gambit because, while the plan was flexible, several aspects relied on people acting predictably.
    • Light and L do this almost constantly, especially early on. Many of their most clever moves against each other rely on the other party being smart enough to figure out clues that the average person wouldn't even consider, then acting accordingly.
  • Battle Butler: Watari.
  • Battle Of Wits.
  • The Bechdel Test: Not that Death Note is exactly the biggest champion of women on the market, but several of the plot points Rem and Misa discuss actually give the show a pass.
    • Misa's and Takada's one time encounter on the other hand is almost a satire on this trope.
  • Being Watched: Okay, there are 64 surveillance cameras hidden in your bedroom alone... now act normal.....
    • And how does Light pretend to act normal? Looks at porn. How does he find it? "Ugh, this is so boring."
    • Later, L does this to Light and Misa 24-7: Misa complains about it briefly.
  • Berserk Button: Ties into Beware the Nice Ones below: do not insult Soichiro Yagami's memory in front of Matsuda.
    • It's also not a good idea to ever suggest that what Light/Kira is doing may be wrong. Look at how big he writes Lind L. Tailor's name!
    • Light learns what Misa's Berserk Button is when he outlines his plan to date other girls to throw off suspicion. "NO WAY!" indeed.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: On learning that Light is Kira and seeing him try to write down Near's name, Matsuda, who was by far the softest policeman in the series, flies into such a rage that he shoots Light to stop him, but it almost went to the point where nearly finishes him off.
    • Misa herself embodies this trope. That cute, cheerful girl over there? Don't mess with her.
  • Beware the Superman
  • Big Brother is Watching: "It is important to teach our children that Kira is good."
  • Big Damn Villains: B.B. is one of Kira's judgments.
  • Big Eater: L is almost constantly eating candy and sweets, yet stays in a state of gaunt sickly malnourishment. In the manga, he explains that his overactive brain uses up all the calories, while in the anime he claims that "if you do it right" you can eat whatever you want, effectively outsmarting his food. Mello also seems to gobble down chocolate bars and stay rakishly thin.
  • Big Fancy House
  • Black And Grey Morality
  • Bland Name Product: "Fanasonic."
    • And the array of computer hardware that was very close to perfect reproductions of contemporary Apple hardware... except for the logo.
  • Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Slightly subverted, as Matsuda shoots his hand rather than the object; his target is also bleeding profusely.
    • Also Watari when he shoots a pistol out of Higuchi's hand to keep him from killing himself.
  • Blond Guys Are Evil: Mello, Mafia terrorist extraordinaire in his debut, described as having brought in the head of a mob boss to join the group, all while he was still in his teens.
  • Blood From the Mouth: In the anime, Namikawa, during the Yotsuba Group's mass heart attack.
  • Bluffing the Murderer: L tries this frequently with Light; later, L, Light, Misa, and the task force do this to Higuchi.
  • Board to Death
  • Bond Creatures: The shinigami in the sense that they grant humans powers and may reject (i.e. kill) a human if they don't like them.
  • Bonnie and Clyde: Light and Misa, much to Light's chagrin.
  • Book and Switch
  • Book 'Em, Danno
  • A Boy and His Shinigami
  • Break the Cutie: Poor Sayu. This is also Misa's backstory.
  • Break the Haughty: Light, can't you keep it together for two more damned seconds?
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the manga, Ryuk: "It's like living in a sitcom!"
  • Bruce Wayne Held Hostage: The bus-jacking is a subversion. "If he were Kira he could just kill this guy with a heart attack."
  • Bully Hunter: Teru Mikami, as a kid.
  • Bullying a Dragon: L's main tactic to reveal Light as Kira seems to be to just keep annoying him until he slips up...
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: L. Later, Near.
  • Burning Building Rescue: A skeptical Light tests the titular notebook on a criminal holding the children in a nursery school hostage.
  • Butt Monkey: Matsuda
  • By the Eyes of the Blind: Only those who have touched the Notes can see the Shinigami.
  • Can You Hear Me Now
  • Cape Busters: The anti-Kira Taskforce.
  • Captain Obvious: Of the Admiral Akbar kind. "Trap! This is a trap!"
    • Ryuk: "The F.B.I agents aren't criminals."
  • Cassandra Truth: In the manga, when the killings started, various tabloids put forward the Crackpot Theory that L was Kira, so it was harder for the SPK to seriously put this theory forward when it became true.
  • Cast From Lifespan: The Shinigami eye-trade deal.
  • Catch Phrase: Ryuk's "Humans are... interesting!" ("Ningen-to omoshiro!"), appears at least twice in every version of the story -- the manga, the film adaptations, the TV series. Also, variations on "I am Justice" crop up a lot. Teru Mikami also says "sakujo!" ("Delete!") constantly while he is using the Death Note.
  • Cessation of Existence: "Don't think that anyone who uses the death note can go to heaven or hell" actually means "There's no afterlife at all for anyone".
  • Chained Heat: Light and L are handcuffed together for several episodes.
  • Chains of Love: Or so some Yaoi Fan Girls would like to think.
  • Chekhov's Gun: "Hideki Ryuga." (The name but not the character.)
    • Ryuk's personal Death Note in the climax. He only uses it once.
  • Child Hater: Roger, the Director of Wammy's House, according to the manual. This is never shown anywhere else.
  • Children Raise You: Maki and "Boy" do this for L in L: Change the World although he doesn't get to find true love.
  • The Chosen One: Light thinks he's this in the first episode until Ryuk bursts his bubble.
    • Depending on how honest he was in his final Hannibal Lecture, Light might still think he was chosen to rid the world of evil---just not by Ryuk.
  • Cloud Cuckoolander: Misa. To a degree, Matsuda. L has his moments.
  • Color-Coded For Your Convenience: In the anime, whenever either L or Light are having inner monologues, they are dyed with a blue and red light, respectively. Matsuda turns out to be yellow, Mogi is a different shade of red, Aizawa is green, Misa is light blue, Naomi Misora is dark blue, and Mikami is purple.
  • Comes Great Responsibility: So in the first episode Light has an interesting moral dilemma. What's worse? To use the evil dark power to kill people or refuse the call and let the Bus Full of Innocents get killed when he has the power to stop it?
  • Conspicuous CG: Cars in the Yotsuba arc.
  • Contrived Coincidence: If Naomi Misora hadn't happened to go to the police station during the one instant that the entire Kira task force had left to meet L, and if Light hadn't been asked to deliver a package to his father at that same exact instant, and just happened to overhear what she was there for, the manga would have ended at 2 volumes, with Light soundly defeated.
    • Although when he discovers this coincidence, Light acknowledges how "another God" is on his side. Since Word of God and the manga universe have bent over backwards to say that there were no gods in the Death Note universe this means that it's just conjecture on Light's part, and the events fall in his favor by simple, improbable coincidence. (In Volume 13, Naomi is consequently stated to have the lowest possible score in the "luck" attribute.)
  • Consummate Liar: Light, all the way.
  • Contemptible Cover: The novelization of L: Change The World. If you wouldn't be caught dead with that book in public, you're not alone.
  • Continuity Nod: To Another Note. Beyond is also mentioned in L: Change The World.
  • Cool Old Guy: Here, we get two: Soichiro Yagami and Watari. Both meet untimely ends (only Watari in the movie).
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Yotsuba Group -- specifically, Higuchi.
  • Cosmic Plaything: Light ends up in possession of a Death Note because Ryuk was bored.
    • Ryuk even kills Light the moment he loses his entertainment value.
  • Couldn't Find a Pen: Light at the end. He gets shot in the attempt. And he actually pulls it off before then, too, writing Higuchi's name in blood.
  • Crazy Consumption: L's sweets, Mello's chocolate, Ryuk's apples, and Light's potato chips.
  • Crazy Prepared: Light's three different ways to tell if someone was in his room, not to mention his Porn Stash just in case someone happens to be watching.
    • Near kept millions of dollars ready to be dropped from the top of a skyscraper by the pressing of a button, just in case a Torches and Pitchforks mob attacks his secret hideout. Fridge Brilliance in that the SPK are a proscribed terrorist organization by that point, so their bank accounts would have been frozen.
  • Crapsack World: Light certainly thinks the world is one. And thus he feels that he needs to clean it up. One criminal at a time...
    • Misa and Mikami believe it, too, and willingly joining Light to "make the world a better place."
  • Creepy Child: Near, but Your Mileage May Vary on that last one.
  • Creepy Cool Crosses: Misa's necklace and earrings, Mello's crucifix. The anime adaptation of the series, however, Bowdlerize changed Misa's crosses to Fleur de Lis symbols while Mello's crucifix became a nondescript red stick.
  • Crime After Crime: The cover-up killings of an agent and his wife narrowed L's attention on Light even more. It was after this L decided to reveal himself just to keep him closer.
  • Crimefighting With Cash: L and Near.
  • Criminal Mind Games: Subverted -- the messages are solely to trick/irritate L. On the other hand, Kira does tend to take risks to show his superiority to a defeated opponent.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Misa, who can be quite devious.
    • Matusda. Compare his inane comments early on with the time he practically blows Light's hand away and then riddles him with bullets. He then goes back to being comic relief.
  • Cry For the Devil: Deserving or not, Mello, Takada, Light, Mikami, and Misa all had very sad deaths.
  • Cue the Sun: In the first episode, it is stormy and raining when Ryuk first confronts Light. By the time Light has finished outlining his master plan and declared that he will be the god of the new world, the sun has come out and he has a halo of light at his back.
  • Cute, Innocent, and Vulnerable: Misa Amane is a walking blob of moe. Pigtails, gothic lolita, Golden Thigh Ratio, squealing girlish voice, and top it all off with a Love-Struck Psycho personality. She's so cute that she even Shinigami want to protect her.
  • Cutting the Electronic Leash
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Light. He manages to anticipate and avoid just about every common villain pitfall.
  • Darker and Edgier: Than most Shonen series, some even confusing it with Seinen.
  • Dark Messiah: Light Yagami means to save the world by cleaning it with blood...
  • The Dark Side
  • The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Light pretty much completely abandoned his ideals over the course of the series.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Episode 19 is titled "Matsuda". Guess who it's about.
  • Deadline News
  • Deadly Upgrade: Quite literal in that the shinigami can give a Death Note's wielder the power to see people's names and lifespans -- at the cost of half the wielder's remaining lifespan.
  • Deal With the Devil: The shinigami eye deal.
  • Death by Adaptation: Mogi dies in Ukita's place in the Live Action Adaptation, and Takada's death is hastened (granted, because the plot itself is hastened). L's death sort of counts as it's by his own hands instead of Rem's.
  • Death by Irony: Demigawa: can you say "SAKUJO"?
  • Death is Cheap: Intentionally averted by Ohba who felt that this trope had been overused in other manga. Played straight in the pilot chapter with the addition of the death eraser.
  • Debate and Switch: The series avoids answering the morality of Kira's actions by making Light leap off the slippery slope.
  • Defective Detective: Everyone from Wammy's House.
  • Denied Food as Punishment: In the manga during confinement the Taskforce comment on how Misa being denied water for three days was too much for a young girl to take.
  • Deuteragonist: L, Near and/or Mello from are the opposing Deuteragonists to protagonist Light.
  • Did Not Do the Research: Early on, Light sets up a booby trap to keep his Death Note safe. It involves a plastic bag full of gasoline and an electric current. The problem is, gasoline dissolves plastic. If somebody tried that in real life, the bag would rip, the electricity would ignite the current, and things would get very burnt, very fast. Whoops.
    • Later on, a gun is fired that had been loaded with blanks. At point-blank range. Nothing happens to the character, but in real life it would have blinded him permanently and left him needing immediate medical attention.
    • Not to mention that L asks the FBI to investigate. The FBI only investigates domestic cases within the United States. He should have asked for help from the CIA.
    • The one-shot chapter is rather notorious, as it has Near having hit puberty at 19, which goes against biology. Of course, said chapter appears to have had no involvement from Ohba and Obata...
  • Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: It's established that if a Shinigami uses its notebook to deliberately prolong a human's life by killing someone else (i.e. the human's murderer,) that Shinigami will die. Knowing this, Light manages to manipulate events so that Misa is about to be caught by L; forcing Rem to write L's true name in the Death Note along with Watari's in order to save her. This is even Lampshaded by Rem just before she writes their names in the Death Note and she curses Light for it.
  • Didn't See That Coming: How Light met his end.
    • Played with in the manga (but not in the anime) with how Near came very close to being killed by Light. Near looks completely shocked when Light pulls a hidden piece of the Death Note out of his watch.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: With Kira as judge, jury and executioner, all crimes - even purse-snatching and embezzlement -- qualify for the death penalty, for the good of the new world.
  • Distressed Damsel: Sayu.
  • Doesn't Like Guns: Aiber.
  • Does Not Like Women: Light doesn't really like anyone, but he explicitly doesn't like women because he thinks they're overemotional and weak.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything: Putting aside the religious and biblical context of it, the dialogue and quite a few of the actions during the foot massage scene between Light and L sound awfully kinky,
L: "Hey, you Shinigami, the white thing over there..."
Matsuda: "Er.. Ryuuzaki, should you really go around calling someone a white thing?"
  • Don't Tell Mama: Light is trying to keep his secret of being Kira from his parents and sister.
    • Soichiro explicitly tells Light not to tell either Sachiko or Sayu where he's going when he agrees to help with the investigation.
  • Don’t Touch It, You Idiot!
  • Doomed Moral Victor: Years later legions of followers still mourn the loss of Kira.
  • Downer Ending: The "good guys" may have won, but most of them died tragic deaths in the process. And the crime rate returns to it's original level.
  • Driven to Suicide: Misa kills herself soon after Light's death.
  • Drunk on the Dark Side: Light, Misa, Takada, Mikami, Higuchi...
  • Drunk With Power: Light, Misa, Takada, Mikami, Higuchi...
  • Due to the Dead: The deleted scene of L's funeral. See also High Octane Nightmare Fuel.
    • In the second arc, the taskforce decides to take on the task of capturing Mello in honor of Soichiro Yagami, who died in their first attempt.
  • Dying Like Animals: Lemmings, mice, and snakes are all around. And Light himself is a mole.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Wammy's House, though it's hard to find a character who doesn't have some sort of obvious mental disorder or traits thereof.
  • Early Bird Cameo: Takeda, Mikami, Near, and Mello showed up in the 2nd openings even though it would be quite a few episodes (plus a timeskip) before their arc started.
  • Eat the Evidence: In the manga it's explained that Light swallows the Death Note scrap he used to kill Higuchi. Of course, this isn't just in order to destroy evidence; by swallowing it, he ensures he keeps his memories.
  • Eiffel Tower Effect: At one point in the anime, the Eiffel Tower, the London Eye, the World Trade Center are used as visual shorthand for Paris, London, and New York City.
  • El Cid Ploy: No pun intended.
  • Empathic Environment: The aptly titled episode "Overcast" features a brilliant and chilling example. The year's first snowflake floats into frame and past Naomi Misora's drivers license a split-second after she lets it go, handing it to Light, thereby sealing her fate. Light reads the license and jots down her name in his Death Note. Less than a minute later, when Light reveals to Naomi that he's Kira -- and thus that she's about to die -- the snowfall is already heavy.
  • End of an Age: Depending on your views on Kira, Light's death definitely counts.
  • Environmental Symbolism
  • Ethnically Ambiguous Appearance: Averted, mostly. Everyone looks Japanese. Except L, Mello, and Near, but they're white.
  • Eureka Moment: Naomi Misora gets a lot of these in the BB Murder Cases. They were planted by Ryuzaki.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Ryuk, an absolutely pitiless Death God, is still sometimes astonished by the depths Light will sink to; it's remarked several times that Light is worse than any Shinigami, something that amuses Ryuk to no end.
    • Not to mention that towards the end of the second film, Misa, who has up to this point been a remorseless murderer, is horrified and begins to cry when Light writes Soichiro's name in the Death Note.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: Misa Amane.
  • Everything's Better With Sparkles: Sparkle chips!
  • Evil Eye: The Deadly Upgrade above involves trading for "shinigami eyes."
  • Evil Gloating: Light does this a lot. And well. Of course, if he had just waited two seconds to gloat he wouldn't have implicated himself in the end.
  • Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: The jokes of the Yotsuba group are pretty bad.
  • Evil is Not a Toy:
Ryuk: "I told you in the very beginning that I would be the one writing your name in my notebook when you die.
L: "...And most importantly, we must ensure that the Yotsuba Group doesn't discover that we are investigating them."
(cut to Matsuda getting caught by the Yotsuba Group)
L: "Please, just forget everything I said. We need to rethink our plan. Matsuda you idiot!"
Light: (shaking fist) "Damn, damn you Kira! You bastard!"
Lind L. Tailor: "Kira you yourself are a hypocritical, vile, and immature criminal."
Light: "Immature?"
Matsuda: "Er... I can't help but notice you forgot to mention my name."
L: "Kira is childish and hates to lose."
Taskforce Member: How do you know this?"
L: "I am also childish and hate to lose."
"As much as I fear for my own life in saying this... this is right. Alright, my name is..."
  • Only Friend: L tells Light "I feel as though you're the first friend I've ever had" though Word of God says it's a lie, that L has no friends. This hasn't stopped the fandom.
  • Ordinary High School Student: Light is a perfect example of this trope, until it's derailed by the fact that he's both incredibly smart and mego-maniacally insane.
  • Outer Limits Twist: "All humans, without exception, eventually die. When they die, they go to Mu (Nothingness). Once dead, they can never come back to life."
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: To hear the fans talk, Misa is quite stupid. People seem to forget that she's only stupid from L and Light's perspective and outmaneuvers both Light and Higuchi quite easily when she sets her mind to it. In any other anime, Misa Misa could have been the iconic Genius Ditz.
  • Overt Rendezvous: Misa is trying to find Light, so she sends a diary page to the task force saying that they should "show off their notebooks in Aoyama" on a certain day. On that day, Light goes to Aoyama with Matsuda and meets friends whom he hangs out with expecting to perform this trope. Misa, however, finds him first and leaves before he can see her.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Light wears a hoodie and bennie when manipulating Raye Penber which renders him unrecognizable to both Raye and the investigators that view the surveillance cameras.
  • Partly Cloudy With a Chance of Death: The episode appropriate titled "Overcast" comes to mind.
  • Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Light and L are masters at this. Later, Light and Near. Misa and Kiyomi's dinner conversation counts as well.
  • Pay Evil Unto Evil
  • The Pen is Mightier
  • Perky Goth: Misa.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: The Kiras. ("The ability to commit mass murder at the wave of a hand?" Check.)
  • Pet the Dog: L: Change the World consists almost entirely of this trope for L.
  • Pieta Plagiarism: Naomi with Raye, in the first intro.
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: In many scenes with the Taskforce HQ in the second arc, Light is the only one even pretending to work... So is it any wonder the Kira case stalled?
  • Playing Drunk: Matsuda, after being caught by Yotsuba, pretends to be drunk so he can fake his death via falling.
  • Plot-Induced Stupidity: Not one of the detectives including L could figure out the last two rules were fake. Despite the fact that unlike the other rules, they sound like they were written from a human's point of view.
  • Poisonous Friend: Misa.
  • Polar Opposite Friends: Light and L.
    • Mello and Near fit the trope pretty well, except when they don't.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Part of Light's downfall, Mikami was told not to make a move before the showdown with Near. When Takada was kidnapped by Mello, he decided to be assertive and write her name down two minutes before Light did. Say the least it comes back to bite both of them in the ass later.
  • Porn Stash: Light in order to provide an explanation why he locks his door all the time, gets a porn stash for his father (and the detective team) to discover.
  • Power Walk: One each in the second intro and outro.
  • Powers in the First Episode: Light picks up the Death Note very early on.
  • Pretty Boy: Light, in a straight example. L is a rather stark inversion of this one, but still manages to be Estrogen Brigade Bait (it's probably the voice). Near's also perhaps a good example; he's actually played by a woman in the anime. There's also Mikami (who even has long hair), Raye Penber and Namikawa.
  • Protagonist Journey to Villain: Light is the protagonist who turns into a villain.
  • Psycho Supporter: Misa Amane and Teru Mikami.
  • Psychological Horror
  • Punched Across the Room: Light does this to L, who promptly returns the favor.
  • The Purge: Light's main method of creating a utopia.
  • Pyrrhic Villainy
  • The Quisling: George Sairas (President Chicken-Maggot).
  • Ransacked Room
  • [[Rasputinian Death: Light.
  • Recap Episode: The first half of "Renewal".
  • Redemption in the Rain: Subverted. At the beginning, Light is heavily rained on as he resolves to save the world, er, turn to evil.
  • Red Eyes Take Warning: The Shinigami Eyes. (Incidentally, Ryuk has red pupils.) ... Wow, we've got like half the list of Eye Tropes here.
    • Not only that, but the anime seems to make a hobby out of catching Light's eyes just right so that they look red, and the opening and closing sequences make it even stronger as part of the red/blue motif.
  • Red Filter of Doom
  • Red Herring: Many of the How To Use rules from the Eye Catch are never used.
  • Red Right Hand: By the end of Relight (everything after the funeral scene) Light seems to be sporting fangs in addition to perpetually glowing red eyes.
  • Red Shirt: Most of the minor victim characters, the most notable being Naomi Misora, who originally was considered to have a bigger role before it was decided to kill her off quickly to prevent the story from becoming more complicated (or perhaps way too simple). And Matt, the third-in-line to succeed L, who was given no backstory whatsoever and introduced solely to give Mello someone to interact with before the author eventually killed him off after his sporadic appearances in 12 panels. Despite this, both characters have an insane fan following.
  • Refuge in Audacity
  • Refused the Call: Ide doesn't join L's taskforce because he doesn't trust L. He later joins after L is killed and Light takes over.
  • Retirony
  • Retcon: While How to Read 13 states that the SPK disbanded and returned to their old jobs after Kira's defeat, in the one-shot manga special released two years later, Lidner, Gevanni and Rester are shown to still work with Near. Of course, the TO team may not have had anything to do with the one-shot...
    • If the strongly implied rule that a shinigami must follow the owner of the Death Note was observed throughout the series, pretty much nothing after the Yotsuba arc could have happened.
  • Revealing Coverup: When Light kills Raye Penber and Naomi Misora it comes to L's attention to focus the investigation on the people Raye Penber was tailing.
  • Revealing Hug: There are a few scenes where Light and Misa embrace; Misa's expression is either lovestruck or tearful, while Light's is ... not.
  • Reverse Whodunnit: The audience knows full well who Kira is. The fun is to see if L can figure it out, too.
  • Rewriting Reality
  • Right Behind Me: When Aizawa and Ide are discussing putting Light back under surveillance guess who should walk in at that very moment?
  • Rousseau Was Right: Played straight with Light, who reverts to an apparently genuinely good person on losing his memories. Averted with Misa, who jumps at the chance to be useful to Light in any way, even if it results in someone's death.
  • Rules Lawyering: Light bends and manipulates the Death Note's rules like silly putty.
  • Rule of Empathy
  • Running Gag: In Another Note, L makes Naomi destroy her computer every time he contacts her.
  • Sarcastic Confession: Unintentionally done during Light's Memory Gambit:
Light: "...to be L and have control of the police while being Kira in secret. It's ideal."
L: "Well, it would be pretty stupid of you to do that after you told everyone your plan."
Light: "If we catch Kira, then Kira is evil. If Kira takes control of the world, then Kira is Justice."


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