Rebirth

In the realm of the death gods, one named Ryuk sits restless while his kind idle and gamble. Far below, Light Yagami drifts through an English lesson, watching bored classmates and brooding on how corrupt society has grown. News broadcasts of crime feed the same disgust in both watcher and student, each convinced the world has rotted.

The following day a black notebook tumbles to the schoolyard, and Light collects it once classes end. Skeptical of the instructions inked inside, he tests them on a televised hostage taker, Kuro Otoharada. Forty seconds pass, the captives flee unharmed, and the gunman drops from a sudden heart attack, leaving Light stunned.

Unwilling to credit coincidence, Light arranges a second trial. He spares a schoolyard bully to avoid harming anyone he knows personally, then witnesses a biker gang harassing a young woman. Catching the leader's name, Takuo Shibuimaru, he scrawls several spellings to be certain and assigns a road accident as the cause. Moments later a truck cuts the man down, and the weight of two deaths leaves Light physically ill.

Back among the death gods, Ryuk is mocked for letting his notebook slip into the living world. Unbothered, he unfurls his wings and passes through the gateway between realms. At home, after handing his mother top marks from a national mock exam and brushing aside any reward, Light retreats to his room and opens the book to find pages already crowded with names.

Ryuk materializes, and Light topples from his chair in shock before composing himself and claiming he had expected this visit. The death god marvels at how heavily the notebook has been used across just five days and shares further details about it. Light reveals his design: by striking down criminals he means to convince the world that an unseen judge is watching, expecting the wicked to fall and everyone else to straighten out. When Ryuk muses that this could leave Light as the last evil man standing, the student dismisses it, vowing to rule a remade world as its god, a prospect the death god finds thoroughly entertaining.

The English dub alters the first instruction so that Light reads the victim as someone written in the notebook rather than the note. According to an official animation guidebook, a brief original scene of Light setting the book down before reclaiming it was meant to hint that the object might exert a pull on whoever finds it, though no established rule in either the manga or the anime supports such an effect.