Death Note

Death Note is a shōnen manga about a high school student named Light Yagami who discovers a supernatural notebook, the titular "Death Note", dropped on Earth by a shinigami death god named Ryuk. The Death Note grants its user the ability to kill anyone by writing the victim's name in the notebook with a picture of the victim in his mind, since there is the possibility of several people having the same name. The story follows Light's attempt to create and rule a world cleansed of evil using the notebook and in doing so gets the nickname Kira, and the complex conflict between him, his opponents and the detective L.

Death Note consists in 108 chapters serialized by Shueisha in the Japanese manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 2003 to May 2006. The series was also published in tankōbon format, with a total of 12 volumes.

Light Yagami
Main article: Light Yagami

The main character of Death Note, Light is an extremely intelligent but bored 17-year old student. When he finds the Death Note, dropped in the human world by the shinigami Ryuk, he decides to use it to kill all criminals and earns the title Kira. His ultimate goal is to cleanse the world of evil to create a world without criminals and then reign over this new world as its "god."

Novel
A novel adaptation of the series has been written by Nisio Isin, called Death Note Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases. It serves as a prequel to the manga series, with Mello narrating the story of L's first encounter with Naomi Misora during the Los Angeles "BB Serial Murder Case" mentioned in volume 2 of the manga. Beside Naomi's character, the novel focuses on how L works and one of the criminals L has to chase down. Insight was given into Watari's orphanage (named "Wammy's House") and how the whole system of geniuses such as L, Mello, Beyond Birthday, Matt and Near were put to work. Viz released the novel in English on February 19, 2008.