# Death Note (2006)

> A bored genius student finds a notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it and begins a crusade to cleanse the world, pursued by a mysterious detective called L.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/12966

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 37
- Episode runtime: 22 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: animation, crime, drama, mystery, fantasy
- Network: Nippon TV
- Cast: Mamoru Miyano, Kappei Yamaguchi, Shido Nakamura, Aya Hirano, Noriko Hidaka, Nozomu Sasaki, Kimiko Saito, Naoya Uchida
- TMDB rating: 8.9/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0877057/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: brisk
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: dense
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: cerebral, dark, paranoid, tense, morally unsettling

## What critics say

Viewers widely regard Death Note as a brilliantly constructed cat-and-mouse thriller whose intellectual duel between Light and L and philosophical questions about justice and power make it one of the most acclaimed anime series.

## Synopsis

Death Note (2006-2007) is a Japanese animated psychological thriller series produced by Madhouse for Nippon Television, a single-season anime of 37 episodes. Ace student Light Yagami (voiced by Mamoru Miyano) finds a notebook dropped by a shinigami death god, and any human whose name he writes dies. Light vows to rid the world of evil, but the engine of each episode is a cat and mouse hunt against the enigmatic detective L (voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi), who closes in through deduction, traps, and misdirection. The shinigami Ryuk (voiced by Shido Nakamura) hovers over every move, while police investigator Soichiro Yagami and Touta Matsuda track the murders from the inside. Each episode builds a dense chain of deductions, feints, and reversals, so the season plays as one continuous escalating duel rather than standalone cases. Set in contemporary Japan, the series carries a cold, paranoid, morally charged tone, asking what justice becomes when it is held by one person. Fans of Monster, Breaking Bad, and Psycho-Pass will find the same intellectual menace and moral unease.

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