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What if the Death Note Was Real?

How Would a Real Life Death Note Play Out?

By Jade M.Published 3 years ago 3 min read
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Light holding the Death Note

Recently, I imagined what a Goosebumps series for adults would look like. Writing about that franchise got me thinking about other franchises that I love. One of my favorite franchises is Death Note. I love it so much that I even named my dogs after the characters. Death Note is already a property meant for adults, so how else could I reimagine it?

Well, what if Death Note were real? What if that little black notebook existed in this modern world. A lot of theories on this are quick to point out that we have new technology and how the internet has changed since the original series run, but they don’t take into account how hard it would be to prove that a single person is responsible for the heart attacks. The investigators also wouldn’t know the notebook had any magical properties without touching it, and likely wouldn’t believe the rules without using it themselves. Also, Light didn’t see Ryuk until he had filled multiple pages, I know the reason for this was because he was still traveling to the human world but Ryuk could also sit back and wait to see what happens before revealing himself. The investigators might blame Ryuk for the deaths and not look into the deaths any further.

Ryuk and Light

One of the other things to consider is that Light also killed many criminals who were in jail for their crimes. They live in close quarters where a virus could easily spread. The investigators would likely think it was a virus causing the criminals to suffer heart attacks, but Light could also take the easy way out and write the name of an existing virus in his notebook. Most wouldn’t question Covid-19 taking out criminals, especially since many of the criminals lived in Japan (in the original series).

What if the Death Note existed and Light wasn’t the one to find it? It would be unlikely that the average person would blindly believe the notebook was anything more than a joke or something an ‘edgy’ teenager may have dropped. If they did believe it, they wouldn’t have to use it. If they did decide to write a name or two, they probably wouldn’t use it in the same way as Light. Sure, there’s a theory that Light was possessed by the Death Note (or Ryuk), but one look at the other Death Note users proves that to be false. Misa has a Death Note that was given to her for her personal use, but she only wanted to use it to help Light. Maybe if she’d received it sooner, she would have written the name of her parent’s killer, but the Misa we’re presented with is lovesick and depressed. She isn’t interested in the Death Note.

There are also many other times in the series when the notebook is passed to someone who is already corrupt, and we see them using the book for their gain. This is how most would use the book, and how I’d be most interested in seeing the book being used in future Death Note media. The only part of the American Death Note movie that I found myself interested in was when Light flipped through the Death Note and we got a glimpse of the things written in there before. I wish that adaption had been about those stories and not Light’s.

One could also argue that Light got caught because of his personality type. Yes, he was smart and played a highly entertaining game of cat and mouse with L, but he also liked to make his presence known. He made some of his victims do things like write on the walls with their blood and leave clues behind for L. He enjoyed toying with the detective, and he enjoyed getting credit for his work. It’s likely that someone other than Light wouldn’t have been dubbed Kira and would have been easily dismissed as a widespread illness.

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About the Creator

Jade M.

Jade is an indie author from Louisiana. While her first book failed, she has plans to edit and republish it and try again. She has a senior min pin that she calls her little editor, and a passion for video games and makeup.

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