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Death Note  
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Description
Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects--and he's bored out of his mind. But all that changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami death god. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and now Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. But when criminals begin dropping dead, the authorities send the legendary detective L to track down the killer. With L hot on his heels, will Light lose sight of his noble goal… or his life?

Type
Manga

Related Series
Death Note Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases (Novel) (Spin-Off)

Associated Names
Тетрадь смерти
デスノート
死亡笔记
สมุดโน๊ตกระชากวิณญาณ
데스 노트
Cuaderno de la Muerte
Death Note - A halállista
Desu Nôto
Quyển Sổ Thiên Mệnh

Groups Scanlating
Aku Tenshi
Binktopia
Ice-Master Scanlations
KEFI
More...

Latest Release(s)
v.13 c.2a by mD-xD (1782d ago)
c.Special by Binktopia (1929d ago)
v.13 c.1b by mD-xD (1952d ago)
Search for all releases of this series

Status in Country of Origin
12 Volumes + 1 Extra Volume (Complete)

Completely Scanlated?
Yes

Anime Start/End Chapter
Starts at Vol 1, Chap 1
Ends at Vol 12, Chap 108

User Reviews
Death Note by Rune71
Death Note by torrentchan
Death Note by Rashid

Forum
17 topics, 563 posts
Click here to view the forum

User Rating
Average: 8.7 / 10.0 (2557 votes)
Bayesian Average: 8.68 / 10.0
10
 35% (903 votes)
9+
 28% (710 votes)
8+
 21% (528 votes)
7+
 9% (218 votes)
6+
 4% (94 votes)
5+
 2% (50 votes)
4+
 1% (23 votes)
3+
 0% (6 votes)
2+
 0% (5 votes)
1+
 1% (20 votes)

Last Updated
May 14th 2013, 5:48pm PST

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Genre
Drama  Horror  Mystery  Psychological  Shounen  Supernatural  Tragedy 
Search for series of same genre(s)

Categories

Category Recommendations (beta!)
Usogui (weight: 233.9)
Sherlock (weight: 213.16)
One Outs: Miwaku no All-Stars-hen (weight: 203.96)
One Outs (weight: 201.54)
Gin to Kin (weight: 200)

Recommendations

Author(s)
OHBA Tsugumi

Artist(s)
OBATA Takeshi

Year
2004

Original Publisher
Shueisha

Serialized In (magazine)
Weekly Shonen Jump (Shueisha)

Licensed (in English)
Yes

English Publisher
JManga (Defunct)
Viz (13 Volumes & 6 Omnibuses - Complete)

Activity Stats (vs. other series)
Weekly Pos #512 increased(+26)
Monthly Pos #602 decreased(-397)
3 Month Pos #187 decreased(-34)
6 Month Pos #130 decreased(-49)

List Stats
On 1256 reading lists
On 553 wish lists
On 5714 completed lists
On 323 unfinished lists
On 323 custom lists

Note: You must be logged in to update information on this page.

Forum Posts
Light or L:who do u like better? 494 days, 10 hours, 59 minutes ago
Favorite Death Note character 549 days, 16 hours, 29 minutes ago
if you had a death note 549 days, 16 hours, 33 minutes ago
AMERICAN REMAKE OF DEATH NOTE IN THE WORKS 549 days, 16 hours, 39 minutes ago
Site Poll - Chat Box 92 - What to do with a Death Note? 663 days, 10 hours, 42 minutes ago

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User Comments [ Order by usefulness ]
 

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avatar
 Disappointing   
Rating: 5.0 / 10.0
by crazyboutcute
May 20th, 2011, 1:54pm
If you’re looking to read a pulp-like detective thriller that’s only charm is that it will make you feel smarter by the end of it, look no further than Death Note. If you’re like me, however, and would prefer to read a series with complex, well-developed characters and an immersive plot, then I recommend you skip this one.

I read the entire manga (a painstaking effort on my part), watched the anime, and even saw the three live action movies (which are, admittedly, much better than the manga). I was still unable to relieve the sensation of crushing disappointment I felt with this series. The premise is great – ingenious, really, constructed of a nice, intricate framework with the potential to be used for exploring morality and the human condition. The protagonist Yagami Raito finds a notebook called the death note that allows one to kill an individual simply by writing their name within its pages. There are certain rules that the owner of the death note must follow (for example, one must know the victim’s face as well their name in order to prevent people with the same name from being killed). With the death note, Raito intends to kill criminals and create a perfect world, and this naturally leads to the start of a long game of cat and mouse between Raito and the mysterious detective known only as L, who is determined to track down the killer (nicknamed “Kira”) and bring him to justice. While the concept is certainly an interesting one, the series ultimately falls flat because of its unlikable, unsympathetic, and two-dimensional characters, of which there are many.

Raito is introduced as a bored genius who is the top of his class and who really has no passion for life or anything in it. This is honestly the only look at his original character we get before he discovers the death note about two pages in. After that, he decides to kill criminals, not because of any moral obligation he feels to humankind to rid them of the scum of the Earth so that all may live in peace but rather… because he’s bored. His initial motivation is completely unrealistic for an individual of his intellect and is more akin to a troubled teenage boy’s obsession with living rather than playing Grand Theft Auto than anything else. Apparently, the author expects us to believe that an insanely intelligent high school student with an immensely promising future decides to become a mass-murdering serial killer, thus dedicating his life to completely eradicating the world of evil (a task that I hope we all know is perfectly impossible) and in the process forever condemning himself as a criminal… simply because he was bored one day and couldn’t think of anything better to do with his life. In fact, the author goes out of his way to reiterate that Raito only used the death note because he was bored even though the former very easily could have pinned the blame on a more fervent (and believable) desire to improve human society. Why he chose to do this, I have no idea. A lot of people argue that Raito had good intentions. Certainly he could have, at least at first, but I can hardly consider boredom (i.e. selfishness) a “good intention,” especially when it was made explicitly clear that his desire to rid the world of crime was only a secondary motivation. There was a part in the first chapter, a very short scene of about two pages, in which we see our antihero pathetically dragging himself along an alleyway, essentially freaking out because he’s just committed a murder. Quite frankly, it is the most interesting scene in the manga because it’s the only real character development he ever gets throughout twelve volumes that are almost entirely about him. Afterwards, he begins to devolve from a potential three-dimensional character to a blatant two-dimensional cardboard cutout of a baddie. When he (rapidly, I might add) gets over the initial shock of having become a murderer, he resumes killing criminals, this time at exponential rates as if the word “conscience” were merely another part of his undoubtedly large vocabulary. People may argue that the death note drove him insane. I won’t deny that it’s very likely that it did… eventually. There is no evidence in the series to suggest that the death note held any such power over him. It was, in fact, his own god complex that encouraged him to keep killing. Though I didn’t agree with it, it was understandable to me why he was killing off criminals. What I would have liked was for him to eventually come to realize that he was morally wrong in what he was doing, but no such development occurs.

Raito completely crosses the line for me when he
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
kills off all of the innocent FBI agents tasked with tracking down Kira because it is their job. Any way you dice it, that’s completely sick, cowardly, and unjustifiable. How can one feel sympathy for a person who murders innocent people because he’s afraid for his own hide?
A particularly annoying inconsistency in Raito’s character (or rather lack thereof) occurs when
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
he gives up possession of the death note and thereby loses all his memories of it. I feel like the personality that then emerges is how the real Yagami Raito ought to have acted, but since we see so little of his personality pre-death note (thank you, careless author), we have no way of knowing if this is the case. Regardless, he has a lot more passion and emotion in the memory-loss arc and is also much more personable. He actually cares for the ditzy and intolerable Misa and is not a complete manipulative womanizer as he previously was. His entire character does a perfect one-eighty; he is disgusted by Kira’s killings and aims to stop him no matter what. Yet when he regains his memories of the death note, this side of his personality disappears completely as if it had never existed. I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy it.
Unless Raito was clinically insane from the get-go (of which there is no mention – thanks again, careless author), then this creative writing major simply cannot convince herself that a seemingly normal, law-abiding human being with a good upbringing and no evident psychological disorders could bring himself to do half the things of which Yagami Raito is guilty and subsequently feel no remorse whatsoever.

The ending of the manga is, put bluntly, disgusting. I won’t detail it here, but honestly, it made me physically ill just reading it, and I’m appalled that it was even allowed to go uncensored in a shounen manga geared towards young boys. It almost made me feel as if the author
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
was simply sick of his protagonist just as much as I was.
And I guess that should be expected, considering the author admitted himself in an interview that he wrote the series purely for the entertainment factor without taking into account at all the morality of the issues he explored. For the sheer intelligence of some of the maneuvers in this series, I give it two stars. The art is lovely and gradually gets better towards the end, so I’ll add three stars for that. The bishounen protagonist is the weakest link in this series, and I think that if it weren’t for his pretty face and astounding brainpower, his fan base would drop by perhaps ninety percent. If you’re curious, try out the live action movies. If you want to read a series by an author who clearly hates women and honestly doesn’t care a whole lot about his characters or morality, then this series is for you. Otherwise, leave this one on the shelves and opt for a better-crafted shounen series with convincing and relatable characters and real elements of tragedy such as Fullmetal Alchemist, Pandora Hearts, or the Record of a Fallen Vampire.

... Last updated on May 20th, 2011, 2:21pm
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avatar
 Awesome...   
Rating: 9.9 / 10.0
by MatrixM
May 13th, 2011, 3:03am
I think i first started reading this in 2005, when i was in grade 6 [maybe i started in grade 5]. I stopped reading at one point because the company arc was getting tiring for me. in Grade 7 my friend told me that literally a few pages after i stopped, the arc ends. So, stick with it all the way lads/lasses.
I'm not sure what to put in this review, as i was 12/13 when i read this so i'm not sure if i would have felt the same if i had read it at my current age. But when i did read it, it was undoubtedly my favourite of all the anime/manga i had seen/read at the time [this is including FMA-the first series adaptation].
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avatar
 Good but the ending sucks   
Rating: 7.0 / 10.0
by kiron216
April 25th, 2011, 1:53am
Anyone who thinks that you can change the world without sacrifice is an idiot. I keep hearing things like L was awesome and Light was evil and yet as we speak there are illicit dealings going on such as a secret weapons program in the fukushima reactor which prevented a timely response and worsened the disaster as well as a coverup of the corrupt nature of the industry in general.

Right now one of the two major parties in the United States is advocating cutting 4 trillion dollars from medicare and medicaid to pay for yet more tax cuts for the rich and the ignorant plebians who support them are gobbling up their oversimplified reasoning. In general corporate america is sucking the nation dry and warmongering abroad and yet we have a justice system that not only allows them to get away with unforgivable atrocities but actually rewards them for it.

Looking at a justice system like this do you think that it is possible to judge the moral righteousness of a person using this system as a standard? I don't and yet that is exactly what L does. He pursues the case because of misguided idealism and self interest (he took on the case because he was interested in the case). The police and L make me sick. They just did what was best for themselves all along.

Other than that it was good. The ending was so horrible that im lowering it from a 9 to a 7. It was seriously that bad.
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avatar
 It's amazing.   
Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
by strawberriez880
April 18th, 2011, 10:41pm
Well, I'm going to ignore some of the comments here that say DN is unnecessarily complex or emo or whatever. Death Note is one of the best shounen manga I've ever read. I even bought the box set for it (truth be told, I only buy manga that I really, REALLY like).

Why is it so good, then? (If you don't agree, fair enough. These are my opinion.)

1) The main characters are very intelligent and their ways of executing their plans are amazingly neat.
2) Storyline is consistent.
3) Supernatural plays a big role in this, yet it doesn't completely take over and makes everything magical. (Does that even make sense? o.O)
4) The ending is perfect (I'm talking about the manga, not the anime). Enough said.

Cons:

1) Minor characters are too stupid and one dimensional.
2) Intelligent characters are killed too easily by Light (SPOILER example: Naomi).
3) The story drags on for a little bit after a certain character's death, but it picks up the pace quickly enough that I didn't lose interest.

Art style: I love the art. The characters body and facial features are very proportional. You can easily tell the character's age by looking at them (in some manga, especially shoujo, everyone looks the same, even if they're supposed to be mature/old). You can even tell their race by their facial features, which I think is remarkable. Also, as far as I noticed, there are no two characters that share the same style of eyes (besides Mello and Near, I think).

Anyway, enough of me rambling.

If anyone is looking for a good manga with a dark, intriguing story with awesome (for the lack of a better word bigrazz ) main characters, Death Note is the way to go.

... Last updated on April 18th, 2011, 10:44pm
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avatar
 Ohba Tsugumi's serious problem   
Rating: 6.5 / 10.0
by Kamugin
April 1st, 2011, 4:31pm
I've devoured this manga and, to say the truth, I found it very good initially. But after I calmed down my enthusiasm, I started to acknowledge its many flaws. Besides Light and L (and L sucessors) everyone else are very stupid characters, mainly the women. Even the most intelligent ones are nothing but toys in the hand of Yagami Light. The ex FBI female agent (killed very easily when I was expecting she would have a main role to disclose and arrest Kira) and the Light's university ex colleague (later his lover and Kira supporter). Useless to mention Misa, Light's play thing, and the most stupid character in the whole manga. Now I think the author, Ohba Tsugumi, must have a personal grudge against all women. Perhaps his mother was bad to him, or he was rejected by every girl he confessed to, or his school female colleagues bullied him or everything of that at the same time.

... Last updated on April 1st, 2011, 4:55pm
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avatar
 Loved it   
Rating: N/A
by iheartramen
March 20th, 2011, 1:03pm
I read this quite a long time ago (a couple years) but I still remember how much I loved it. I'm not really into shounen manga, however this manga kept me hooked. I especially like how it attacks one of the biggest and most common philosophical questions around. I recommend this manga to everyone!
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avatar
 worst manga   
Rating: 1.0 / 10.0
by onixspace
February 27th, 2011, 7:56pm
I would have to say the manga is better than the anime, way better, but the manga is also a pile of shit, it shouldn't even be read, it's emo, boring, and the same plot over and over, I'd really recommend that any body willing to save their brain to stay away from this manga, especially the anime, glad i could help u poor souls
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avatar
 Better than I expected!!!   
Rating: 10.0 / 10.0
by samanthaknd
December 19th, 2010, 4:33pm
Not being a fan of shounen, my brother gradually persuaded me to watch the anime (after telling him time n time again its not my thing, but he is never one to listen to anything i say) liked it that much I just had to get a hold of his manga version of it too, Really enjoyed this series and all the twists it had to offer, As a female I highly reccomened this to just about anyone who's into a good read!!
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 Murder of Rodger Ackroyd meets Supernatural Manga   
Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
by booknik
November 18th, 2010, 10:48am
I've heard some people say the completely hate the main character, oddly though I actually root for him. True he's twisted, but there's something that even his battle with L/N never destroys.
Yeah you know the end was coming, but I'm left with a question
Spoiler (highlight to view)
Does Light ever truly go insane or did N finally out play him? There's the missing page to account for. Also I can't say that N completely won and Light lost. The legacy of Kira still stands in the end as well as the question of Light's ideals.
There's a lot contained in the end of this series, as well as many loose ends. It stays with you after you finish.

... Last updated on March 7th, 2011, 11:35am
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avatar
 Clever   
Rating: 4.0 / 10.0
by PepperPia
November 10th, 2010, 11:29am
Spoiler (highlight to view)
I like the amount of thought that goes on at the beginning, but i find it's all abit too good. I though the characters were well developed and I really liked L, but after he died it wasn't quite as good....
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