Despite Death Note’s reputation as one of the greatest anime of all time, the adaptation of Tsugumi Ohba’s manga isn’t even the best version of the story. No no, we’re not talking about Netflix’s live-action movie either — though that one’s got a few merits over the anime, too. The best version of Light and L’s story is a stage musical that you likely haven’t seen.
Death Note follows a high schooler named Light, who happens to be the smartest person in the world. One day, Light comes into possession of a notebook called the Death Note that allows a person to kill anyone in the world simply by writing down their name. Light can also use it to summon a shinigami demon named Ryuk, who seems most interested in causing chaos and mischief to break up his boring immortality. The young genius hopes to deliver deadly justice that the police can’t, but the power quickly goes to his head. He decides that a world kept peaceful by his killings is what’s best for everyone, so he uses the Death Note to take over the world by fear under the altar-ego Kira. Meanwhile, the other smartest person in the world, another high schooler named L, is tasked by the police to uncover Kira’s identity in hopes of stopping his killing sprees.
The Death Note anime was first released in 2007, and turned out to be a canary in the coalmine for the upcoming Dark Knight-ification of pop culture. Especially in its earlier episodes, studio Madhouse took all the traditional trappings of a shonen anime and used it to tell a more complicated, darker, and more serious story than almost anything else out at the time. The protagonists, obviously in high school, still narrated their........