Death Note (2006 film)

This 2006 release opens the live-action Death Note film series, serving as the opening installment of a two-part tale, and its sequel Death Note: The Last Name brings the story to a close. Shusuke Kaneko directed both halves, drawing on the manga that Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata created.

A gifted but jaded Tokyo college student, Light Yagami, comes upon a dark notebook on his way home, its pages promising death to anyone whose name is written while their face is pictured. Doubtful at first, he tests it on a criminal, sees that it works, and after a second victim meets the notebook's former keeper, the shinigami Ryuk. Embracing the power, Light starts striking down felons across the globe and is both worshipped and feared under the name Kira.

The killings draw the reclusive detective L, who pins Kira to Japan and, through a televised stunt using a decoy named Lind L. Tailor, baits Light into exposing his region and his ability to kill from a distance. As L closes in on the task force led by Light's own father Soichiro, Light engineers the deaths of an FBI agent shadowing him and, more painfully, his girlfriend Shiori, manipulating the former agent Naomi Misora into a fatal confrontation. Feigning grief, Light worms his way onto the investigation hunting Kira, while a closing scene introduces the actress Misa Amane as a second notebook drops beside her.

The film opened across Japanese theaters on June 17, 2006, then held the top box office spot for two weeks, edging The Da Vinci Code down to the runner-up position. It went on to play across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and a limited North American run, its Hong Kong debut being the earliest such premiere there for any Japanese film. Earnings reached around forty-one million dollars in Japan alongside roughly two million in Hong Kong. Home editions followed on DVD and Blu-ray, among them a fifth-anniversary box paired with The Last Name and later reissues from Viz Media and Funimation. Director Kaneko built his approach around the psychological dread of death, wanting the picture to dwell on the suffering its source material only brushes against.