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"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. Attempting to get 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 its front. Thinking it's a joke, he takes it home anyway (translation: Old Grim chucks his clipboard at some kid to see what happens.)
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 it, 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.
But as he 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 L — a man with a sweet tooth, a bad case of insomnia, and a gift for deduction. And since nobody knows his real name, Light can't kill him.
Thus they enter into a cat-and-mouse game — Light trying to find some way to dispose of L while scrambling to keep clinching proof that he is Kira just out of reach. As more Death Notes fall into the mix, and criminals keep dying by "Kira's" hand, it all serves to sum up Ryuk's assessment: "Humans are so interesting!"
Based on a manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, who are both currently working on Bakuman. Also has a series of Alternate Continuity live-action films based on, but somewhat different from, the original manga.
This series has a character sheet.
Death Note provides examples of:
- The Abridged Series: Death Note Abridged.
- Adaptation Displacement: "Death Note? Man, I love that anime...what, you mean there was a comic book?!?"
- A Day In The Limelight: Episode 19 is titled "Matsuda". Guess who it's about. Hint: It's not about Ryuk.
- A God Am I: Light is one of the definitive examples of this trope.
- A Million Is A Statistic
- Abandoned Warehouse
- Action Girl: Wedy
- 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(-and-countercounterplot-and-countercountercounterplot...) 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 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 morally ambiguous mega genius, the boring Film Noirish detective became a freakish teenage mega genius with a sweet tooth, and the Deus Ex Machina ending was replaced with Xanatos Gambits by the bucketload, and the rest is history. The short story, however, appears as the prologue to the manga it sprouted.
- All Crimes Are Equal - Light starts by punishing the worst criminals but later stoops to culling purse snatchers and… anyone that disagrees with him.
- All Love Is Unrequited
- All There In The Manual: In the manga, you have no idea what happens to Misa unless you read the supplementary book, "How To Read".
- Averted in the movies and in the anime
- Alone With The Psycho: happens to Naomi Misora in the manga/anime AND the prequel novel.
- Along Came A Spider: 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.
- Amnesiac Dissonance - Done purposely as a part of Light's Memory Gambit
- And Zoidberg:
Matsuda: Er... I can't help but notice you forgot to mention my name...
- Animation Bump: Various Episodes
- Antagonist In Mourning
- Anyone Can Die
- Artifact Of Doom: The Death Notes themselves.
- Asshole Victim - Light's victims (anviliciously so- the Attempted Rape in clear view on a crowded street comes to mind).... at least at first.
- If you read the manga, the Attempted Rape never occurred. The guy was attempting to flirt with her and said his name. She left and he got killed by a truck. If Light didn't know his name, the guy wouldn't have died. On the other hand, that was before Light really believed in the Death Note's powers, so perhaps he can be excused that one. (Later killings, not so much.)
- Ass Pull: Mello and Near also come almost entirely out of the blue, in contrast to the usual pains the story takes to show the plans in action from start to finish.
- Attempted Rape: Light's second kill was a member of a scooter gang who was attempting to rape a bystander.
- But that was only in the anime - in the manga, the scooter gang only flirted with the girl who became very distraught and Light only chose him since he was the closest.
-
Mikami Takada kills a man who is harassing a woman on a subway, as a crucial part of Light's plan.
- Ax Crazy: Teru Mikami, especially toward the end.
- And Light.
- Some would say Misa would fit into this description as well, considering her careless and casual murder of many people on Light's orders.
- ...and on her own, remember all the newscasters and police officers killed by the second Kira in order to provide the "Death Note dating service."
- Bad Powers Bad People
- Badass Mustache: Soichiro Yagami.
- Badass Normal: Once again, Soichiro Yagami.
- Baka - Matsuda no baka / Matsuda, you idiot!
- 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.
- 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 full of bullets, and nearly finishes him off.
- Beware The Superman
- Big Damn Villains - B.B. is one of Kira’s judgements.
- Big Eater: L is almost constantly eating candy and sweets, yet stays in excellent shape. 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.
- Bishonen: 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.
- Black And Grey Morality: Matsuda is the true hero of the story and Soichiro is his Obi Wan.
- Bland Name Product: "Fanasonic"
- Blasting It Out Of Their Hands
- Blond Guys Are Evil: Mello, mafia terrorist extraordinare 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.
- Don't forget Aiber the con man, who was killed by one of the Kiras (most likely Misa on Light's orders after the first season.
- Blood From The Mouth: Namikawa during Yotsuba's Group Heart Attack in the anime
- Break The Cutie: Poor Sayu.
- Break The Haughty: Light, can't you keep it together for two more damned seconds?
- Breaking The Fourth Wall: Ryuk in the manga- "It’s like living in a sitcom!"
- Bully Hunter: Teru Mikami according to Back Story
- Bunny Ears Lawyer: L, and Near by extension.
- By The Eyes Of The Blind
- Cape Busters: the anti-Kira Taskforce.
- Captain Obvious: "Death Note... as in a notebook of death..."
- I wouldn't call this obvious. You have to remember that the Death Note is written in english and Light speaks Japanese, so though it may sound weird in the dub, he isn't stating the obvious, he is translating it.
- Trap! This is a trap!
- "The Mafia can influence people"... no, really?!
- Cassandra Truth – in the manga various tabloids put forward the Crackpot Theory that L was really Kira when the killings started, so it was harder for the SPK to seriously put this theory forward when it became true.
- Catch Phrase: Ryuk's statement above, rendered in Japanese as "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 (eliminate) constantly while he is using the death note in the anime (in the manga and English dub, he says "delete").
- Rem makes a variant on Ryuk's statement later on. Instead of "Humans are...so interesting!" she decides that "Humans are...such ugly creatures."
- Let's not forget Light's "I will be the God of this new world!" ("Boku wa Shin-sekai no Kami da!")
- Chained Heat: Light and L are handcuffed together for several episodes.
- Character Alignment (very vague for almost all characters; Word Of God is that "only Soichiro is good.")
- Children Raise You: Maki and "Boy" do this for L in "L: Change the World" although he doesn't get to find true love.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Misa. Also, Matsuda to a degree.
- 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, I'm pretty sure Mogi is a different shade of red, and Aizawa is green.
- In the final couple of episodes, Near's hair turns a light blue, probably in emulation of his precursor, the deceased L.
- The Live Action Adaptation contains a subtle Shout Out to this: at the end of the first movie, as L and Light face each other in person for the first time, L is standing in a shaft of blue light, while Light is standing in orange.
- 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?
- Consummate Liar: Light.
- Continuity Nod: To Another Note.
- Cool Old Guy: Here, we get two: Soichiro Yagami and Watari. Both meet untimely ends.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Yotsuba Group— specifically, Higuchi.
- Cosmic Plaything: Light ends up in possession of a Death Note because Ryuk was bored.
- Couldnt 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 Awesome: Movie-L has a high-tech getaway car. And it's a bright pink Angel Crepe van.
- Creepy Child and Cute Shotaro Boy: 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, changed Misa's crosses to fleur de lis symbols while Mello's crucifix became a nondescript red stick.
- There is a distinct cross motif to the covers of the manga volumes as well.
- Crimefighting With Cash- L and Near.
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome: "Exactly as planned."
- It has its own page.
- In addition, the events immediately following the death of Lind L. Tailor firmly establish L as a Bad Ass.
- For this troper, Light's eventual demise by the hands of Ryuk was a CMOA as well. Your Mileage May Vary, of course.
- Light's father, after seeing a fellow task force member die trying to enter Sakura TV, escaped from his hospital bed, commandeered a bus, and rammed the station's entrance to get in, despite the fact that he was recovering from a near-fatal heart attack.
- Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: In "L: Change the World", "You're a good girl. I believed in you.", and "Maki, welcome home. Make tomorrow a good day too."
- Crowning Music Of Awesome - The opening and closing credits. Your Mileage May Vary, depending on how much you like metal.
- Low Of Solipsism, which plays whenever Kira is on a killing spree, and Death Note, which plays at various moments in the series, both qualify as well.
- Cursed With Awesome - subverted. L and Souichiro come to the conclusion that this power to kill people is a curse. Later Light comments to Ryuk "I've never once considered finding that notebook and gaining this power a misfortune... In fact, it's made me happier than I've ever been."
- Dangerously Genre Savvy: Light. He manages to anticipate and avoid just about every common villain pitfall.
- You forget the moral event horizon, which Near uses to his advantage.
- He was doing so well until the end where he basically confessed to everything before he knew he had won.
- To be fair to the man, he was screwed either way
- The 'Near staged it all' gambit could have brought him some time if he had waited two seconds.
- Dark Messiah: Light
- The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Light pretty much completely abandoned his ideals over the course of the series.
- 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
- Death By Irony: Demigawa: can you say "SAKUJO"?
- Defective Detective – Everyone from Wammy’s House.
- Did You Just Scam Cthulhu: Light manages to manipulate events so that Misa is about to be discovered 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 out for it.
- Didnt 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.
- Die For Our Ship: How DARE Misa and Takada get in the way of L and Light.
- And how DARE Halle Lidner come between Mello and Matt. Or Mello and Near (though the same goes for either boy for fangirls when it comes to shipping involving Mello).
- There may be a touch of Het Is Ew involved here, much to the dismay of those of us who just want some good Halle/Mello fic.
- Discontinuity: Many, many fans would like to forget that Rem kills L. Others like to ignore the bits involving Near and/or Mello. Some even take that a step further and pretend the second season as a whole never happened. And there is yet another group of fans who would very much like to believe that Light won and/or lived.
- Distressed Damsel: Sayu
- Doesnt Like Guns - Aiber
- Light and his father: "Guns aren't allowed in Japan."
- 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?
- Draco In Leather Pants: Any of the series' protagonists, to varying degrees, with the Kiras probably being the most egregious case. The mind boggles at seeing people refer to Light as a 'good guy'. Just no.
- Driven To Suicide: Misa kills herself soon after Light's death.
- Drunk With Power
- Due To The Dead: the deleted scene of L's funeral- see also High Octane Nightmare Fuel
- Dying Like Animals (Lemmings, mice, and snakes are all around. And Light himself is a mole.)
- Dysfunction Junction: Wammy’s House. Full stop.
- It's time once again to play "Spot the Looney." Try and find a character that DOESN'T have some sort of obvious mental disorder or traits thereof.
- Eat The Evidence - in the manga it's explained that Light swallows the Death Note scrap he used to kill Higuchi.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: At one point in the anime, the Eiffel Tower and the London Eye are used as visual shorthand for Paris and London.
- Ending Fatigue: The second arc. Protip: it's worth it just for the finale.
- Ensemble Darkhorse: Despite having fewer than 20 panels in the manga and serving only as someone for Mello to interact with, Matt has become insanely popular.
- Another example in two words: Beyond Birthday.
- A lesser example, but still an example: Naomi Misora.
- In Death Note, the popularity of the darkhorse seems to be inversely proportionate to the amount of "screen time" they get. Matt was only a few panels. BB wasn't even in the manga or anime at all. Yet, if fan art search results and youtube video tributes indicatre anything, they both seem to be far more popular than Naomi, who at least managed the better part of volume 2.
- Environmental Symbolism
- Eureka Moment: "Ryuzaki" plants these for Naomi Misora in the BB Murder Cases.
- Even The Girls Want Her: Misa Amane.
- Evil Eye: The Deadly Upgrade above involves trading for "shinigami eyes."
- Evil Has A Bad Sense Of Humor
- Evil Is Cool
- Evil Is Not A Toy:
- Evil Is Sexy: Light Yagami is quite the good-looking teenage sociopath. I also have a feeling he'd have no problem using sex/his body to advance his scheme.
- He doesn't. He's quite happy to Vamp Misa and Takeda into serving him.
- On that note, Misa's on the bad guys' side. She's also Ms Fanservice and Light's very dedicated sex pet and hatchet woman. (Too bad Light doesn't particularly care about the free sex...)
- Evil Laugh: Light has a few evil chuckles scattered throughout the series, but there is a full-blown Evil Laugh in the final episode (at which point he's pretty much gone off the deep end) that is extremely psychotic and creepy.
- Evil Versus Evil: Mello is hunting Light. Mello is also one of the few individuals in the series who is as bad as Light.
- 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.
- Uh, Higuchi? That Evil Laugh of yours is scaring the Shinigami...
- 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.
- Face Death With Dignity — Whether a character can do this depends on their moral fiber. Soichiro, the most moral figure in the series, goes out with the most, while L and Watari, who are noticeably greyer though still recognizably good, each die with some, and the Villain Protagonist, Light, dies crying, whining, and cursing in a puddle of his own blood.
- Face Framed In Shadow
- False Gunshot - the mock execution
- Fandom Nod: The interstitial factoids in the manga
- Fetish Fuel: Misa's wardrobe choice, L's feet, lots and lots of bondage, etc.
- Five Man Band: The Japanese taskforce from part 1. Soichiro is The Hero, Aizawa, and later Aiber and Wedy are The Lancer, Mogi is The Big Guy, L is The Smart Guy, Matsuda and Misa are The Chick, Watari is a Mentor and Ukita, Ide, and Light are The Sixth Ranger or Sixth Column.
- Fleur De Lis
- Foe Yay: Light and L — to say nothing of literally being chained together, L gives Light a foot massage in the final episode of season one. It's supposed to be a reference to Jesus giving Judas a footrub, but if you don't catch the reference, it looks like Fan Service in the extreme. Also, to a lesser extent: Near and Mello.
- That's really just a misinterpretation of the scene. .
- For Doom The Bell Tolls
- Four Is Death: The Death Note kills in 40 seconds, and if a cause of death is written, the user has 400 seconds to add details.
- Foreign Sounding Gibberish: 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 Death Note #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...
- Changed in the first Movie, in which Raye's last name is Iwamatsu due to being played by a Japanese actor...yet he's still an FBI agent and has the same America-centric backstory.
- This is even worse in the prequel novel, where it broke the tension in the worst way possible, especially when Misora had to double-check whether anyone shared the name. In fact, the only realistic name in the novel is Blackberry Brown — considering names such as Believe Bridesmaid, Backyard Bottomslash, Quarter Queen and Blues-harp Babyspit, "Blackberry Brown" really does sound normal in comparison.
- Maybe they were all the children of celebrities.
- Freak Out: Light at L's grave in the Director's Cut. Also Light and Mikami in the finale.
- From Nobody To Nightmare: Light.
- To a lesser extent, Higuchi
- Functional Genre Savvy: Strange how when people living in the same conditions all started suffering heart attacks, everybody started thinking "supernatural serial killer"...
- Funny Afro – Aizawa
- Funny Aneurysm Moment: A certain pratfall toward the end of the first season plays very differently by the end of the second.
- Genghis Gambit: The final episode revealed that Near and Mello, who were individually trying to succeed where L failed, finally agreed to work together to defeat Kira. It works.
- Girlish Pigtails: Misa
- Ghost Planet: The Shinigami World
- The Glomp: Not only the below quote, but in the manga at least, Misa does this to Ryuk.
- Glowing Eyes Of Doom
- Go Karting With Bowser: L and Light throughout the first arc.
- A God Am I: Light wants to use the Death Note to create a new world, with himself as...you guessed it.
- ...Yes, so much so that we mentioned it twice!
- Gorn: Not in the original manga, but present in the anime's series finale. Mikami attempts some kind of poor man's seppuku, either out of despair or to distract the police so that Light can escape. Unfortunately for the audience, it works a little too well. Then again, if gore is your thing...
- In the Director's cut, the deaths of three Yotsuba Group members, featuring a Gross Up Close Up of Midou lying on the sidewalk after falling or jumping from a tall building
- Gratuitous English: The Japanese title "Desu Noto" (Death Note), and "Kira" (Killer).
- Green Lantern Ring: The Death Note, once Light figures out imaginative new ways to use it.
- The Grim Reaper: Ryuk and many other shinigami.
- Goggles Do Nothing - the Shinigami from Relight
- Good Eyes Evil Eyes: Used deliberately in the manga.
- Hacker Cave
- Have You Told Anyone Else: Light asks these exact words (at least in the fan sub) of Ray Penbar's fiancée Naomi, who is investigating Kira. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't live much longer after answering no.
- Hero Antagonist: L, Near, the police.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Souchiro, Rem.
- Hey Its That Guy / Hey Its That Voice: Chairman Kaga is Light's dad!
- Hidden Eyes: Light
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel - The ending of the anime. The deleted scene where Light stays in the graveyard after L's funeral, starts laughing madly, proceeds to crawl on top of L's grave and shouts "What do you think, L? I have won. I HAVE WON!!!! This is my perfect victory!" with a crazed look on his face... and looks suspiciously like he's humping L's grave. See for yourself.
- High Pressure Blood: In the last episode of the anime, a fairly simple stabbing (with a pen) initiates a fire-hose like blood jet.
- Hook Hand: Zellogi, one of the minor Shinigami, has one.
- Hostage For Mc Guffin: One of these is used to begin the second major arc of the story.
- How Dare You Die On Me: Light when his father dies
- How Do You Like Them Apples: Ryuk has an addiction to them.
- How Unscientific: When L finds out shinigami are real, he has an uncharacteristicly loud freakout.
- In the manga this was just him falling out of his chair. Word Of God says that he was startled because of the way things came together, and that the manga-ka wanted to see L fall over.
- Ho Yay - Mello and Matt.
- In the manga (Volume 2 chapter 16 pg 185) there is an ambiguously flirty exchange between Light and a male classmate who replies "Sorry Light, I only give cards to girls."
- Hypocritical Humor - Any scene like this:
Light (shaking fist): Damn, damn you Kira! You bastard!
- Also "I'm evil? I'll KILL YOU!"
L: I hate it when people's cellphones go off when I'm talking. I find it very distracting... *ring* Excuse me, I have to get this.
- Humans Are Bastards "What's up people?!" When you start judging where exactly do you draw the line?
- I Have The High Ground: The battle of wills between L and Light is often symbolically represented by them staring at each other on very, very thin skyscrapers.
- I Have Your Wife - Light successfully bluffs this to Raye Penber in order to ensure his cooperation.
- and Mello actually does this when he kidnaps Sayu.
- I Know You Know I Know: And how!
- I Know Your True Name: If you write someone's true name into a Death Note, they die.
- I'm Standing Right Here
- ILLKILLYOU
- If I Can't Have You
- Improbable Aiming Skills - when Higuchi is cornered and trying to kill himself, Watari shoots the pistol out of his hand.
- Ironic Echo: Used in the Grand Finale.
- Irony:
Light: I will create a new world, free from evil.
Ryuk: If you do that, you’ll be the only one left with a bad personality.
Desk clerk: Hi Light, remember me?
Light: Er... sorry. I’m really bad with names and faces.
- and (from the Director's cut):
Ryuk: No Light, you weren’t a God. Not back then anyway. Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique - used by L and the taskforce when Perp Sweating Misa.
- Jonas Quinn: Near.
- Judge Jury And Executioner - "I AM JUSTICE!"
- Jumping Off The Slippery Slope: Light, oh God Light. Seriously, if Light doesn't look heroic at some point in the series, you have no heart (or were just spoiled too early). If he doesn't fall into the Moral Event Horizon somewhere in the series (Your Mileage May Vary as to exactly where), you've made a Draco In Leather Pants.
- Just Between You And Me: Subverted — Whenever Light reveals his identity to a rival, he is very sure they are already in their death throes or otherwise under the effect of the Death Note. This subversion is then subverted exactly once leading to Light's downfall. Two seconds, Light. That's what killed you.
- Kid With The Leash: Anyone possessing a Death Note and thus a shinigami qualifies, although Light is perhaps a subversion in actually being more dangerous than Ryuk.
- Killed Mid Sentence: L and Matt.
- Kill Em All: How many major characters in a cast of around 20 survive? Three of the original police task force, plus Misa, Ide, and Near. A few more if you count the minor SPK task force members.
- The companion book How To Read 13 reveals that Misa dies a year later, probably suicide.
- Knight Templar - any of the series protagonists.
- Large Ham: as soon as Light starts monologuing, his speech becomes utterly bombastic in no time.
- Laughing Mad: Light, when he is cornered by Near and revealed to be Kira
- Laser Guided Amnesia: Forfeit ownership of a Death Note, and you forget everything specifically pertaining to the Death Note.
- LEGO: In the manga, Near uses LEGO minifigs to represent the other characters and their interactions.
- Letter Motif: L.
- Light Is Not Good: Although some fans disagree, nyuk nyuk nyuk.
- It really depends on the situation actually. Sometimes Light looks like the perfect fit for this trope, while he has some moments when he appears quite demonic. Then again, red eyes are still shiny...
- Little Black Dress: Mello, if to a lesser extent than most examples.
- Live Action Adaptation: Two main movies, and one spin-off, to be precise.
- Living With The Villain: Light and L not only go to the same college, but also work together on the team to catch Kira.
- Locked Room Mystery: Deconstructed in the spinoff novel Another Note, where L points out that the killer simply having a spare key can solve the majority of cases, and that there is never any need for the killer to lock the door in the first place, especially since the deaths never resemble suicides.
- Lonely At The Top
- Loners Are Freaks - subverted and played straight.
- Looks Like Cesare: L.
- Loony Fan - The Stalker With A Crush that tries to kill Misa.
- To a lesser degree, Matsuda acts like this towards L and Light.
- Love Makes You Dumb: Subverted. Misa is noticably less "airheaded" when around Light, especially when she tries to manipulate things so that she can be with him. From tricking the third Kira to trying to find the first Kira.
- Made Of Iron - Souichiro 1) rams a truck through a building while still recovering from a near fatal heart attack. 2) Shot in the shoulder while pursuing Higuchi.
- Then there’s Light’s Rasputinian Death. It's implied he would have survived if Ryuk hadn't written his name...
- Magic A Is Magic A: The Death Note's rules apply strictly, although Light finds ways to stretch them to their limits in almost every storyline. Light actually subverts this by creating fake rules to divert suspicion from himself.
- Mama Bear: Rem to Misa.
- Mass Oh Crap: The taskforce members when Light is outed as Kira in the finale.
- Meaningful Name: Done three times, ironically every time. Mello is a complete loose cannon, Near spends most of his time in another country from the protagonist, and Light Is Not Good.
- According to Death Note: How To Read 13, the graphic encyclopedia, Mello and Near were originally going to have regular Meaningful Names; Mello was going to be Near, since he was always close to but not at the other's level; and Near was going to be Mello because he was calmer. If I understand correctly, Ohba got the characters mixed up, so....
- Also Bilingual Bonus "Kira" Engrish for Killer also means "sparkling," "shining," or "glitter" in Japanese.
- Memetic Mutation:
Just Exactly As Planned. (Katta! Keikaku doori.)
- Memory Gambit: The "Exactly As Planned" Xanatos Roulette.
- Missed Moment Of Awesome: In "How to Read" Ohba stated that he originally intended to use Mogi for something big and incredible, but could never come up with anything. The anime crew couldn't either.
- Money To Throw Away - Near. It's raining money!
- Moral Event Horizon: Nothing like killing off the fan favorite to lose sympathy.
- Or Raye Penber. Or Naomi Misora. Or even Lind L. Tailor, his very first (as far as he knew) non-criminal police murder.
- Or Misora, which was especially chilling in that Light did it by plunging her into a suicidal depression. And just for extra gloat value, he revealed to her that he was Kira before this happened. Or Kiyomi Takada, who was scared, cold, and utterly devoted to Light
- The live-action movie has this in spades, after Light uses the Death Note to not only kill Naomi Misora in an even more twisted fashion than in the original series, but also his own girlfriend. Such is his monstrosity than even Ryuk could only refer to him as "a demon than is more shinigami than shinigami themselves".
- And even Misa was horrified when Light wrote his father's name in the Death Note to get the other one back.
- Killing Takada was particularly despicable, as she wasn't a criminal (by his standards) and wasn't a police officer, but was on his side The method (suicide by fire) didn't help.
- Moral Myopia - yep!
- Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls: The YKTTW was originally called "Death Note Syndrome" for a reason.
- The Movie: Two live-action movies based on the original comic and one L spin-off.
- and Warner Brothers recently bought the rights to remake the Live Action movie in America...
- Murder Is The Best Solution
- My Death Is Just The Beginning (apparently, L planned for Kira's capture even after his death by informing Wammy's house and setting certain events in motion that would prove Light to be Kira and solve the case).Probably.
- My Sister Is Off Limits
- Name That Tune: Misa and Matsuda both have the first ending song as their mobile phone ringtones, and the 2nd ending theme is used in the Director's Cut of the car chase in episodes 22 & 23.
- Narm: "I'll take a potato chip... AND EAT IT!"
- The extreme facial expressions in the last episode and Mikami stabbing himself with a pen in an anime-only scene producing High Pressure Blood
- More from Mikami in the final episode where he shouts 'GOD I DID WHAT YOU ASKED ME' and gets into a shouting match with Light
- "I will be GOD OF THE NEW WORLD!"
- National Stereotypes: Parodied, in "L, Change the World", Suruga attempts to disperse a crowd surrounding the truck he's driving by showing his F.B.I. badge, but everyone thinks its fake because he's Japanese.
- Neat Freak - L and Light both exhibit mild OCD like tendencies.
- Never Hurt An Innocent (Light. Very briefly)
- Next Sunday AD
- Not So Different: One of the series' main themes — Light and L are both Well Intentioned Extremists who believe that the ends justify the means. This is semi-lampshaded by Naomi, who points out that Light reminds her of L.
L: "Kira is childish and hates to lose."
FBI Agent: How do you know this?"
L: "I am also childish and hate to lose."
- Not So Fast: the anime; see Walls of Text below.
- Not So Fast Bucko: Lind L. Tailor
- The Nothing After Death: Humans who use the Death Note go to neither Heaven nor Hell, but to Mu (nothingness); this could be the case for all humans, depending on ones interpretation. This is explicitly stated in the manga, but is left ambiguous in the anime.
- The Director's cut could be interpreted as suggesting that Light became a Shinigami himself.
- And the second director's cut, which changed the plot of the second arc a great deal, depicted L and Watari as ghosts in a featureless black void, with L relating the series of events that got them there. Though it seems it was done for a more fourth wall-breaking convenience for viewers, since he tells them to enjoy the special
- Obviously Evil: Light in the live action movie.
- Odd Couple: Light and L.
- Oddly Small Organization: Semi-justified as nobody wanting to get killed by Kira and you only follow a small group in Japan, which isn't used to a bunch of murder cases. Still doesn't explain why the FBI and CIA don't start a massive manhunt for Kira.
- Off Model: The one-shot "sequel" chapter smacks of this.
- Oh Crap: A common reaction whenever a character's opponent gains the upper hand. Light does this in absolutely epic style when he's exposed as Kira and eventually killed.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Dies Irae being the most prominent.
- Ominous Multiple Screens
- One Scene Wonder: This reporter:
- 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 megomaniacally insane.
- Paper Thin Disguise - Light wears a hoodie and baseball cap when manipulating Raye Penber which renders him unrecognizable to both Raye and the investigators that view the surveillance cameras.
- Paranoia Fuel: Your life can be ended at anytime just by having some Japanese god write your name in a notebook. Moreover, it's implied that this happens all the time. And, the only fate that awaits you or anyone, for that matter is eternal nothingness. They don't even have to leave the comfort of the Shinigami realm to do this. And if one of them does get bored enough to venture into our world, things get a whole lot worse.
- And any one of them can make it so you kill yourself. In fact, they can make you do almost anything they want for twenty-three days before you go. That doubt in the back of head, saying none of this is true? Are you sure that's what you think?
- dude, you’re really freaking me out now.
- Don't worry. The whole concept is ridiculous. Now please excuse me while I drop off this crate of apples behind my house...
- Taking into account that Death Note is a work of fiction, of course detective agencies wouldn't really bug your entire household if they find you or your family even the least bit suspicious. Or would they...?
- Pay Evil Unto Evil
- Perky Goth: Misa.
- Person Of Mass Destruction: the Kiras. ("The ability to commit a war crime at the wave of a hand?" Check.)
- Pet The Dog: L: Change the World consists almost entirely of this trope for L.
- D'awwww. Light takes a break from committing mass murder to help his little sister with her homework.
- Pieta Plagiarism: Naomi with Raye, in the first intro.
- Poisonous Friend: Misa
- Mikami counts somewhat, although he doesn't actually work with Light in person until the very end, he is VERY fanatically devoted to him.
- 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.
- Also Light does one with the Taskforce in the finale (looking like The Sopranos in their business suits).
- Psycho Supporter: Misa Amane and Teru Mikami.
- The Quisling: George Sairas (President Chicken-Maggot)
- Rasputinian Death: Light.
- Real Women Never Wear Dresses: The series doesn't portray ladies that well, yeah, but fandom makes it even worse by bashing Takada and Misa for being "whores" because of their behavior towards Light.
- Recap Episode: The first half of "Renewal".
- 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 Oni Blue Oni: Light and L.
- Mello and Near fit the trope pretty well, except there it's Orange Oni Teal Oni.
- Are you kidding? It actually fits them better than Light and L. Mello is a borderline loose cannon, and Near seems to be L Jr.
- 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.
- 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
- Rooting For The Empire
- Rule Of Empathy
- 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.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Soichiro's glasses often function this way.
- Schmuck Bait - Pretty much what causes Light to pick up the notebook and cause the series to happen.
- Scholarship Student: Referenced and inverted. When L and Light both give the entrance ceremony speech, Light is said to look like a normal private school student, "pampered and brilliant." L is said to look like a "crazy genius," though one of the conclusions (based on L's physical appearance) is that he's a poor scholarship student. It's an inversion, because L is rich from all of the cases he's solved and received money for.
- School For Scheming: Wammy's House exists in order to find a successor to L
- Screw The Rules I Have Supernatural Powers
- Screams Like A Little Girl - "Shinigami? Am I supposed to believe that they really exist?"
- Seasonal Rot: The second part of the series, that is, everything after L's death, is almost universally considered to be inferior to the first. Whether this means "quite good, just not as good" or "so bad it never happened" depends on who you ask.
- See You In Hell: Used effectively in the episode "Execution" (at least in the English dub).
- Selective Obliviousness - Misa never seems to get a clue that Light hates her guts.
- "My son is not capable of being Kira!"
- Serial Killer Kira
- She Is All Grown Up: Sayu after the Time Skip.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend
- Ship Mates: Most fans ship Light/L with their Mello/Matt or Mello/Near.
- Shout Out: in the manga Light's friends at school speculate that the work of Kira is being done by "some superhero brigade, like X Men or something." (Yeah, and this (and the Kira fansites) doesn’t go to his head at all...)
- In Volume 3 of the manga Light buys some apples at a produce stand with the address NCC-1701.
- In Another Note Mello makes a snarky reference to Holden Caulfield when he can't keep up the narrative tone he started with.
- Shut Up Hannibal: Near's rebuttal to Light's Motive Rant at the end.
- Sidekick Ex Machina
- Sinister Scythe - Light on the cover art of the manga and as a Shinigami in the Relight movie.
- Sliding Scale Long Name - there should be no doubt in that this series is firmly on the cynical side.
- Slouch Of Villainy - Mello.
- Somebody Else's Problem - as pointed out in Death Note Abridged "in this footage you can see various pedestrians who clearly don't give a $h!t that somebody near them just collapsed and died."
- Someone's Touching My Butt
- Somerset And Mills: Sort of an aversion. Chief Yagami and Matsuda were first introduced like this, but were developed very differently, especially since Matsuda became a mere Comic Relief character.
- Spanner In The Works: Teru Mikami.
- Spell My Name With An S: Putting so many "L" and "Th" sounds in a Japanese series was just asking for trouble.
- Spy Speak
- Stalker With A Crush - the obsessed fan that tries to kill Misa, Misa becomes one herself pursuing Kira/Light, and of course L for putting 1 camera in every other room of the Yagami household and 64 in Light's room.
- Stay In The Kitchen: Raye pulls this on Naomi.
- Stepford Smiler: Light.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Light and L tend to finish each other's thoughts / inner monologues between cutaways.
- Surprisingly Good English
- Surrounded By Idiots
- Tastes Like Diabetes - "Let's all be friends together!"
- This Troper can't help but crack up when she watches that section, mainly because L's "Yay...Fun..." sounds so incredibly unenthusiastic.
- Teens Are Monsters (and with their faces, you'd never even suspect at first without being like L)
- Thirty Xanatos Pileup: And how! The entire plot of the series is basically a sequence of overlapping gambits.
- This Is Unforgivable: Matsuda has had enough of Light at the time of the final confrontation with Near. The results are quick, well-deserved, and quite scary. Ryuk almost couldn't keep up with him.
- This Is Your Brain On Evil
- Time Skip
- Tomato In The Mirror: Kinda... sorta.
- Too Dumb To Live - Naomi the American detective who figures out crucial information on the Kira case and then decides to trust Light after he’s been acting creepy, following her around, and asking “Have You Told Anyone Else?”
- Someone who uses the name of Kira to pad his own pockets, knowing that Kira is a vengeful god of justice without much sense of mercy. Demegawa? Can you say "SAKUJO?"
- Trope Overdosed
- Try Not To Die
- Tsundere: It's mentioned in Another Note that Naomi tries not to be seen as one during her time in the FBI. The definition given in-text matches up with Type A.
- Twist Ending The second Death Note movie, where the audience expects L to die just like in the manga and anime. Instead, surprise! L is alive (for 23 more days) and Light is utterly screwed.
- Tyke Bomb - arguably, the Wammy's kids.
- Ubermensch: Light is a textbook case. Or nothing more than a sociopath with a serious god complex, it all depends on your viewpoint.
- Unreliable Narrator - Mello tells the story in Another Note.
- Urban Fantasy
- Utopia Justifies The Means: Light's motivation.
- Victorias Secret Compartment (Takada kills Mello with pages of the Death Note hidden in her bra. Shouldn't have let her have that blanket, huh?)
- While we are on the subject, where exactly did Takada keep that second cellphone that Light told her to keep on her person?
- The manga explicitly states that it's in her pocket, but set so Mello can't get any information off of it, although the anime does make you wonder about that and the pen she uses...
- This troper was almost a hundred percent sure that Takada stole Mello's phone from his dead body after she killed him with the Death Note piece... Huh.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: Mello, at least in the manga (while the the anime tried remedying this by giving him an overly-masculine voice and slightly less effeminate features), and Rem (who even was voiced by a man in the second film adaptation and her true gender not mentioned within it, much to the further confusion of fans).
- Villainous Breakdown: Light's is certainly one of the more famous ones, and has become somewhat of a Memetic Mutation in its own right.
- Villain Protagonist: Light.
- Visionary Villain: Light.
- Walls Of Text: The manga, partially because of the very nature of the story, partially because Ohba made sure it had 108 chapters.
- Well Intentioned Extremist: Light who starts out with killing only prominent murderers, but then jumps off the slippery slope and begins killing anyone who gets in his way. Though he does state his intention to get around to killing people who harass others or are 'immoral' in the first episode.
- Also applies to Kiras X-, a lawyer who not only kills criminals but extends his punishment to people who have atoned for their crimes and "those who do not use their potential" — that is, lazy people and C-, the aforementioned unseen Death Note writer in the manga sequel who kills adults over the age of 70, later 60, in order to unburden the youth of Japan.
- Also, while L is the leader of the good guys while he's alive, he does some morally dubious things during his quest to stop Kira.
- And then there's Mello, who wants to be L's successor in the worst way. His actions (which include joining the Mafia, kidnapping Sayu, and indirectly getting Soichiro killed) are so ruthless that he's not much better than Light.
- And then you have the debate over whether Near controlled Mikami with the Death Note or not, based off of Matsuda's theory in the final chapter. Word Of God also states that Near is a "cheater" and less innocent than he seems compared to Mello
- What An Idiot: Naomi Misora giving Light her real name. "God, this woman is stupid! I can't believe she fell for this."
- Light did use some convincing and elaborate lies...and, well, his charm.
- Word Of God has it that it's more due to bad luck than stupidity. If Ray had mentioned that Light was the person he was tailing at the time of the busjacking, she might have figured out he was Kira.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome: Justified on occasion — writing in a notebook deserves amplification when it kills someone forty seconds later. Also, those were probably some really good potato chips.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: L washes (and massages) Light's feet shortly before dying.
- What The Hell, Hero?
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity
- The Woobie: Rem.
- Souichiro as well, seeing as he's the character with the most decency who happens to be involved with a battle against his own son.
- Xanatos Funeral Light's rival L pulls one of these off when he sets his computer to text Wammy's house, telling them of his death, if for some reason he doesn't check in every few hours. He knows this will set Near and Mello to task with catching Kira, and he probably knew that they would race each other to catch Kira and that Near especially was almost but not quite as smart as he was. It's not too much of stretch to say that he planned on Light catching on to this and on Near and Mello inadvertently cooperating (without Light realizing it), leading to the showdown in the warehouse and Ryuk's writing Light's name in his death note. Just before he dies, Light sees L (whether its a hallucination, vision, or ghost is left for the audience to decide) standing over him much the same way he, years before stood over L when the latter died (also killed by a shinigami with a death note.
- Xanatos Gambit
- Xanatos Roulette: Trainloads and trainloads of people get mercilessly Xanatosed all the time. The "Exactly As Planned" one is arguably the most (in)famous.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: L is a master of it.
- Xanatos Sucker: Higuchi, both to L's plan and to Light's master plan
- Xanatos Planned This Anime: Let's just sum it up as this.
- Yandere: Misa rather firmly vetoes the idea of Light taking up a playboy reputation, even for the sake of the plan.
- You Get Me Coffee: L pulls this on Matsuda when he asks how he can better pull his weight.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Light does this all the time, as does Mello. Ryuk returns the favor to Light at the very end.
- You Kill It You Bought It
- You Meddling Kids - Light would have gotten away with it too (or at least had been able to realistically argue his innocence)...if he had waited two freaking seconds!!!.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! Say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
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