The first volume in a retelling of the Japanese adventure anime, this time from the viewpoint of Ryuk, the rogue Shinigami death god who originally drops the Death Note. Based on the manga comic by Tsugumi Oba and Takeshi Obata, the story revolves around Light Yagami, a brilliant-but-bored high school student whose life changes dramatically when he finds the Death Note dropped by Ryuk. Any human whose name is written in this book will die. Light sees this book as an opportunity to rid the world of evil, but when criminals begin to mysteriously die, the police call in the help of the famous detective, L, to investigate.