List of Death Note chapters

This is a list of the chapters of the Japanese manga series Death Note, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The individual chapters were originally serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump, from December 2003 to May 2006, with 108 chapters in all. The series primarily focuses on fictional high school student Light Yagami who decides to use a supernatural notebook called the "Death Note," which kills anyone who is written into it, and rid the world of evil.

Death Note has been compiled into twelve tankōbon in Japan, with the first being released on February 2, 2004, and the twelfth on July 4, 2006. In addition to these, a guidebook for the manga, Death Note 13: How to Read, was also published on October 13, 2006. The guidebook has information about the series, with character profiles, creator interviews, and the pilot chapter that preceded Death Note. A one-shot story special of Death Note was also released in February 2008, and is set two years after the original story's epilogue. Death Note has been adapted into an anime with thirty-seven episodes produced by Nippon Television, and has three live action films.

The Death Note manga is licensed by Viz Media for North American distribution under their "Shonen Jump Advanced" imprint. Viz published the first volume on October 10, 2005, and the last on July 3, 2007. A hardcover version of volume 1 was also released by Viz on September 16, 2008. Viz published Death Note 13: How to Read on February 19, 2008, and collected the Death Note volumes along with Death Note 13: How to Read into a box set on October 7, 2008.

Volume list
Tsugumi Ohba stated that most of the chapter titles for Death Note were selected during the development of the thumbnails. He added that sometimes he created several choices and consulted his editor for the final selections. He and his editor often selected the final name of the following chapter while he made corrections to the one that he was currently working on. Ohba had selected the names of chapters 107 and 108 before the thumbnail stages of those chapters. After the selection of the name of Chapter 3, Ohba decided to have each chapter name consist of one Japanese word. Ohba said that around the time of the selection of the name of Chapter 4, he began to "have fun" with the chapter names and begin trying to avoid spoiling plot information through the selection of chapter names. Ohba intended for many of his titles, such as the title of Chapter 7, to have many meanings depending on how one approaches the name. Ohba says that he often discussed titles with his editor when Ohba was unable to create a title that he liked, but that this did not necessarily mean that they would find a better title.

Ohba decided to end the series at 108 chapters at the time he decided how Death Note would end, and he kept the 108 chapter limit in mind when he created thumbnails. When Kiyomi Takada was reintroduced to the plot, Ohba had already set the plot, chapter numbers, and the Yellow Box warehouse scene; therefore he encountered difficulty in having the series end in exactly 108 chapters.


 * Note: The issues of the original Japanese version of the manga are labeled as "pages" rather than "chapters." The issues are labeled as "chapters" in the English-language Viz manga releases.