Sorry to have disappeared on you all like that. I went away for a few days and it turned into a week.

However, this did give me an opportunity to look at my latest Death Note fan-fiction novel.  Writing has actually occurred.

I mentioned before that I had several partially written chapters dotted amidst the completed ones. These became my focus. I finished off early chapters (including three new opening ones), then kept going through finishing anything half-written. It's all looking much more like a solid novel now.

The action takes place two years after WCTD. In essence, I've skipped a lot of recovery time and just taken us straight into establishing their lives with more stability. 

I won't give out spoilers here, but if anyone wants to ask about it, do feel free to do so.

Lucky Death Note fans in Japan will be able to buy the re-issued manga from today.

Shueisha have published these versions to tie in with the 10th Anniversary of Death Note first appearing in Shonen Jump. But other than the the novelty value, there's nothing much to recommend it.

The story told is precisely the same as other editions of the Death Note manga. There are no new chapters nor tweaks in the original story.

However, each volume - which will be released monthly - will come with a bespoke character card.

They'll add up to seven overall. When placed side by side, those cards create a long mini-poster. The same effect will be achieved by lining up the front covers of the manga volumes too.

In addition, these volumes are available in eBook form, as well as the usual paper editions.

Anyone tempted?

I don't pretend to be a musician, or to understand musical notation. But I know a man who does.

Composer Robin B was looking at the scores for Death Note anime music. He found something very interesting in the signature of Wammy House alumni themes. They're all in uncommon time.

Common time, as the name suggests, accounts for the majority of music out there. It's the 4/4 rhythm that underlines practically every song you ever heard. That beat overwhelmingly dominates the popular download charts, and all other tracks besides.

The Death Note theme songs, plus Light's Theme, Misa's Song, Fuan and all of the themes associated with the shinigamis are in 4/4 throughout.

But it is not present in the themes of L, Near and Mello.

There the common time signature of four beats to a bar disappears under a riot of changing rhythms. It happens with such a regularity that barely two bars ever match the same beat. The Wammy House themes are ALL in uncommon time.

L's Theme begins by sampling Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, which itself was created in uncommon time. That accounts for the latter's beautifully eerie ambiance, as used to such good effect in The Exorcist.

Apparently Hidecki Taniuchi - who composed this and all the Wammy House themes - was told to wrote something akin to Tubular Bells for L. He began with a direct lifting of the opening bars, then developed those in a different direction to represent L.

The uncommon time signature starts at 7/8 (or 14/16), then alternates each bar with another at 6/8 (or 13/16), until it reaches the chorus. Suddenly we're in familiar territory with 4/4 (indicating L solving a case?), before it scoots off again into 7/8.

L's Theme chorus continues to swap 4/4 and 7/8 for every bar, until returning again to alternating 7/8 and 6/8 for the verses. As demonstrated in the sheet music published on Ichigo.com.

This exact time signature is repeated in Near's Theme.

There is little doubt that Hidecki Taniuchi wanted us to musically consider Near to be L's successor.  Their beats are identical, until Near's flies off onto a different rhythm for a single bar.

You're hearing here an alternating pattern for each measure of 6/8, 7/8, 6/8 then BAM 8/8. Songsterr has helpfully provided the sheet music for Near's Theme to demonstrate this.

Two other versions available online are transcribed arrangements for piano. Jill-Jênn Vie's version smooths it out into 27/16 time, though she explained in her notes that the meter should be 13/16 and 14/16 alternating.  Ilana-san adapted Near's Theme for duet and also opted to set the time signature as 27/16, until the chorus, where it switches to 4/4.

Two Wammy's House kids and so far, so musically identical.

So what about Mello the second of L's successors, and the only other genius detective to have a bespoke theme? 

Considering that he is Death Note's rebel extraordinaire, a Chaotic Good character who consorts with the Mafia, his theme starts surprisingly prosaic.

In short, it's nearly in Common Time. Good old 4/4, with the only remarkable feature being that it alternates with 3/4 (aka 6/8). Those 6/8 bars have been seen in both L and Near's Death Note themes, and could be accordingly viewed as the time signature pattern for Wammy's House.

Once again, I've lifted the tab score from Songsterr. This is how Mello's Theme begins.

But then, around the 1.47 minute mark, Mello's Theme goes off on one. It starts there at 4/4, switches back to 3/4, 4/4, 3/4, then suddenly stays at 3/4 for several bars until finding 4/4 again.

My friend Richard Mak just looked at the tabs and told me that this is extremely weird. Songs usually stay with one measure per bar throughout the piece. They don't alternate like this, and they certainly don't soar off into 3/4 for several bars before coming back to the same unusual pattern.

The 3/4 isn't precisely the same as the 6/8 prevalent in the other two detective themes, but it's close enough. It links Mello, at his most musically rebellious, straight back into the Wammy House stable.

These Uncommon Time signatures are so strange as to not be coincidental. Hidecki Taniuchi knew precisely what he was doing.

Edit: I've now added the Death Note music soundtracks to our goodies section.

We know him best as the artist behind Death Note, but Takeshi Obata has now taken on another project about a young man trying to outwit his adversaries.
There's a supernatural element too. However Keiji Kiriya is not armed with a Death Note. He's got a gun.

It's Friday, so let's indulge in some serious wishful thinking.

We all have our favourite characters from Death Note, and our wish that certain plot-lines could have played out differently. But what if you could do something about it, and make that canon?

Moreover, what if it was up to you what official Death Note products were released? How would you jump, if you could suddenly direct the whole franchise?

Imagine for a moment that you notice a strange notebook lying in your path. You pick it up and read the rules. Whatever is written in the Wish List Note will happen in reality within the Death Note franchise.

Always wanted an edition of the manga that retells the whole tale from the point of view of L?  No problem! One quick scribbling inside your book (with all due pauses to eat potato chips) and Tsugami Obha is about to ring the publishers with a great new idea. Takeshi Obata is independently sketching ideas for how it might look.

Got your heart set on a live action movie, which follows the second arc precisely? Scribble... scribble... scribble... It's going to happen!

Really desire an official range of cupcakes, each with a different character's picture on top? Write down the details in your Wish List Note and it shall be so.

Go on, use your imagination.  How would you use the Wish List Note to become the God/Goddess of this New Death Note Franchise World?

Now the dust appears to have finally settled on the Death Note bonanza, I thought it would be useful to have a quick check through all that was on offer.

Death Note's 10th Anniversary was celebrated, with much hype, on March 3rd 2014. The fandom received the following goodies and event notifications:

• Death Note Real Escape Game. This is what the much-vaunted website counted down towards. But it's only available in two Japanese cities.
• Online Mini-Story. Playing out over Facebook and on the website, this was just a promotional event for the above. It didn't affect the canon.
• Reissue of the Death Note Manga. 10th Anniversary editions of all seven volumes will be in the shops on March 18th 2014.
• Digital Death Note Manga. Two online (and downloadable) versions of the full story are available. One is in full colour from start to finish.
• Death Note Facebook page launched. This social networking portal is in Japanese. It keeps folk abreast of all new developments in the Death Note franchise.
• Smartphone App for Death Note fans. Play the Real Escape Game on the move.
• Death Note as a Musical Stageshow. Now Kira et all really will be all singing and dancing.

There was quite a lot there, particularly for fans in Death Note's home country Japan.  Yet I can't help concluding that there was a lot of fuss over really not very much at all.

What do you think?

The hype was immense. A website with  counter raising expectations around the world; an online plot with cryptic clues suggesting that Kira is alive.

But it pretty much turned into a damp squib, as far as the vast majority of Death Note fans are concerned.

Matsuda MomoFutoshi's 10th Anniversary Death Note storyline - which played on Facebook and the official website - led him straight into a real world event that we've known about for days. The whole 'Kira is resurrected' clue trail didn't hint at all to new chapters of the manga, nor even a live action movie. It was revealed to be merely a publicity stunt for the Real Escape Games being held in Tokyo and Osaka.

What was the use of a website countdown, when that had already been announced a week prior?

The biggest news in the Death Note fandom for years turned out to benefit only the few people willing to fork out for a staged local event.

I'm not going to lie. This is the most exciting up-date for me so far.

All of the Death Note manga have been officially digitalized and free previews placed online. We get to see the Jump Comic volumes in a choice of two formats: as published, or in full colour.

FULL COLOUR! That doesn't mean a few pages at the beginning and the end. That means every single solitary panel of each and every page.  Colourings just got canon.

Which further means that after nearly a decade of the entire Death Note fandom depicting Matt with red hair and green eyes, he's just officially become a brunette. With a red and black striped shirt.

As yet, the digital editions of the Death Note manga are only in Japanese. But that's never taken very long to sort out. Plus, let's face it, we've all got enough copies by now in our own languages, that the teams of scanlation angels hardly need to rush themselves on our account.

Anyone going to rush to get their cyber paws on these versions?  I'm counting myself as a yes there.

What scenes and/or characters are you most looking forward to seeing in colour?  And Matt fans (of which we are legion, expect us), will you be altering ten years of mental images to match his now canon black hair?

For the record, no, I am not going through ten fan-fiction novels to change his tresses. Feel free to copy them onto your own computers and run through with an editing program, if you really wish that to conform to canon. (We all ignored the anime sludge-green-brown hair colouring anyway.)

In probably the most widely foreseen up-date of the day, Shueisha has announced a reissuing of Death Note manga in 10th anniversary editions.

Whole new legions of Death Note fans will be created (and decade old ones persuaded to part with their money to maintain their collections) with the same story told over seven volumes.

As an added incentive, the books will include limited edition goodies like a 'Kira Card' (similar to that of L in How To Read Volume 13), and apparently a composite pull out poster too.

Readers will have to purchase all seven volumes in order to complete their montage poster of Death Note characters.

To my mind, this is highly unnecessary given that we've already got the original Death Note manga, plus the Black Editions, plus the limited edition reissues which came out with the collectors' items figures... need I go on?

But if you're tempted anyway, the first two 10th Anniversary Edition Death Note manga volumes will be in Japanese stores on March 18th 2014.

No doubt they will then swiftly be translated into every other language, shortly to be on international bookshelves too.

Want to pit your wits against puzzles produced by Near? Then you'll get your chance on April 7th 2014.

Shueisha is launching a Death Note Smartphone app., as part of the avalanche of goodies available to fans marking the 10th anniversary of the manga's release.

The scant information on offer suggests that the SPK in Japan is looking for volunteers to think like Kira. That means genius deduction and following clues. I'm assuming that Near wrote them, considering the source. (Unless it was one of his staff members, in which case we won't have had to graduate from Wammy's House to solve the riddles.)

Upon downloading the Death Note smartphone game, you will be presented with a cipher. You won't be able to progress until you've decoded it, then you'll venture deeper through the levels.

The whole package is framed like the crowd participation Death Note Real Escape games, which will be held in Japan from May 30th.

Unfortunately for non-Japanese speakers, there's no indication - as yet - that the Death Note Real Escape App will be translated into any other languages.

It's noon in Britain, which means that I've finally been able to see what that intriguing Death Note announcement will be.

Kira is being resurrected from the dead!
At least, that's what is implied.

In an on-going plot, running throughout March 3rd 2014, Matsuda has heard rumours concerning the fact that Light Yagami has returned from the grave. He's investigating it on behalf of the SPK. (Because, you know, Near probably has better things to do...)

The information seems to have originated with Hitoshi Demegawa, the anchorman from Sakura TV, who played such a large part in bringing Light and Misa together. As Kira's erstwhile spokesperson, Demegawa may also have been considered a great source of information.

I say 'have been', because I have a distinct recollection of this same nasty media man writing in fatal agony on the floor. Didn't Mikami kill him with a Death Note?

In the online Death Note 10th Anniversary extravaganza, actors are playing Matsuda and Demegawa. I've grabbed some screen-shots above, while the actual film can be found on Shueisha's website.

Updates will be made there, and on the simultaneously launched 10th Anniversary Death Note Facebook page.  Further information is being announced via an official Twitter stream @deathnote10th.

What do you make of it?   A publicity stunt, or the precursor to a whole new saga of the Death Note story?  There's certainly scope here. The original story finished with a strange cult meeting on a mountain top, performing some kind of ritual. It was certainly to venerate Kira, but could it have been much more than that?

Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The whole point of Death Note was that the stakes were very high. Those who touched the Death Note went to nothingness - to Mu - when they died.  Tsugami Ohba made it quite clear at the time that there was no coming back. If this is a promotional vehicle leading to a brand, new arc of the Death Note story, then it would seem to negate the principles of the previous ones.

On the other hand, these are new canon chapters for Death Note. What's not to love about that prospect?!

And, if Kira can be revived, then why not all of the others too?  Demegawa certainly seems to have made it back into the realm of the living.

Will we see a charred and steaming Mello arising from the ruins of a burnt-out barn? Perhaps Near looking startled as a giant Old English L fills his screen, and a familiar electronic voice thanks him for his custodianship of the title and code. 

Maybe a ghostly Camero running roughshod through Tokyo streets, with a bloody Matt lighting a cigarette at the wheel. Or the television screens suddenly coming alive with the half-naked figure of Kiyomi Takada, smiling mystically at the cameras.

Will we hear the creaky tones of Noami Misora, as she addresses her former FBI colleagues with a terrible rope burn etched into her neck?  And the approaching tingle of a sweets trolley, pushed by the gangling figure of Mr Wammy?

What do you think?

UPDATE:  It's been brought to my attention that a FAQ on the official site makes it clear that there will be NO new Death Note manga series.  Also Matsuda ISN'T the one we already know and love, but Matsuda MomoFutoshi, a new character created especially for the 10th Anniversary.

Why? I don't know. Matsuda Touta survived the original, so he could just as easily been used.

UPDATE TWO:  It's not at all what we thought it might be...

Death Note news is really pouring in today! Not least because we're all waiting for the official website countdown to lead us to a grand announcement later on today.

The latest is that Japanese fans can now enjoy an official Death Note Facebook page. It's been launched by Shueisha, in order to relay Death Note's 10th Anniversary news and events.

Unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese, so my best efforts with reading its promotional entries will necessarily involve Google Translate. Having seen what that program does to Welsh, I'm not filled with confidence.

If you CAN read those entries, please do report back. We'd all love you forever.