Mishima's Chapter: Rebirth

As the first of three installments in the New Generation prequel series, this chapter situates itself nearly a decade past the spin-off L: Change the WorLd. It introduces Tsukuru Mishima and his place within the investigative unit that still watches for killings tied to a Death Note. The title doubles as a reference, sharing its name with the very first episode of the original anime, and it signals the resurgence of Kira that drives the larger film.

Touta Matsuda screens Mishima with a polygraph, and after the recruit denies any knowledge of the Death Note, he is cleared and welcomed aboard. Mishima soon shows an unusual fixation on the old Kira case and on Light Yagami specifically, fussing over minutiae his colleagues dismiss, such as Misa Amane's taste for the consomme-flavored chips Light once favored; Sho Nanase tags him with the nickname Death Note otaku. A man soon dies of a heart attack of the sort Kira once inflicted, sending Mishima and Nanase to investigate, and they trace the cause to a local toxic flower whose paralysis can mimic cardiac failure.

The team detains Rokuro Natsugawa, who served meals at the site, and he confesses, explaining that his victim had once driven a friend to suicide and that he delivered justice himself in Kira's absence. After the killing makes the news, an unseen figure opens a notebook and starts writing. Natsugawa then begins behaving erratically, insisting he is Kira and that the Death Note has returned, and when he tries to take his own life he instead collapses from a heart attack. Soon criminals are dying as they once did, the internet erupts in celebration of Kira's revival, and it becomes clear someone now wields a notebook.

As a setup chapter, the episode functions less as a standalone case than as the spark for the sequel's central crisis, planting the return of Kira that the feature Light Up the NEW World pays off. The hidden writer glimpsed at the turning point is later identified within the franchise as Light's son, tying this small-scale investigation directly to the new generation of notebook bearers.