Currently in Britain, Orangepunch is musing over the places that she wishes to visit.

"Naturally," she said, only partly joking, "I want to visit ALL of the places mentioned in your books."

She's about the sixth or seventh person to ask me to either take them to such locations. I've had plenty more ask for directions, so they could ninja in a visit for themselves. Aberystwyth Tourist Board alone owes me big time. If indeed such a body exists.

I got to thinking. Considering that Orangepunch is a kick-ass photographer, and we're going everywhere anyway, would there be any interest in us creating an actual It Matters Guide to Britain?

We'd format it as both an eBook and in hard copy. Each location would have one of Orangepunch's picture and my blarb, plus where to find it. (Not all of them are obvious. You'd search a long time in vain for Matt's flat in Southampton. It's half way across Britain in Wednesfield.)

Because we can't get a hard copy without going through a self-publishing place, there would be a cost. But we'd keep it to the absolute minimum allowed.  Ditto with the eBook, but I wouldn't be AT ALL surprised if that ended up on Pirate Bay. (My last book mysteriously made it there before even being published.)

There would be a fair bit of work involved doing this. Not just in the putting it together and writing it, but in listing all the places actually name-checked in the It Matters novels.  The alternative for us both is just to go on fun trips, and spend time on things actually earning us a living.

But we're both up for it, if there is an interest. Is there?

Now that's what I call side-tracked.

Earlier it popped into my head that I might not have added any Death Note live action movie OSTs to the store. I had. But checking reminded me that I've meaning to tidy up that area.

That was this morning. I think we can safely say that I was thoroughly diverted into that section of the website. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that anyone wishing to purchase a Death Note related CD or digital download is now completely covered.

This happened.

I still have the rest of the store categories to do, but they'll come in time too.   I also tatted with the main merchandise page too. I think you can see where that's heading. Again, all in good time.

As always, I'd be grateful for any feedback re aesthetics, navigability, and any Death Note music that I may have missed.

We've already introduced the two actors cast as Kira in Death Note the Musical, but here they both are in costume as Light Yagami.

While I've been off gallivanting again, there's been a lot of news coming out of the Death Note Musical camp.  Fortunately Logan was on the ball, noting it all and giving me the heads up when I returned.

Most of the cast has been revealed!

I'm going to go through them one by one, so we can have a good look, starting with a very familiar face.

Death Note fans already know all about Takeshi Kaga. He is the actor who plays Soichiro Yagami in the live action movies!  Therefore it feels only natural that he will bring the same hapless parent to life on stage.

But what do we really know about Takeshi Kaga?  Well, for a start, his name isn't Takeshi Kaga!

This well-known stage and movie actor was born Shigekatsu Katsuta, in his native Kanazawa, Japan, on October 12th 1950. He was already singing in a local boys choir aged seven, but didn't begin acting until he was an adult.

His talent quickly emerged though. He was snapped up by one of Japan's top theatrical groups Shiki Theatre Company, where he was soon cast in the leading roles of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar and Tony in West Side Story. In short, there's a long history here which assures us that Kaga can sing, act and dance more than adequately for his part in the musical Death Note.

Though leaving Shiki in 1980, Kaga has returned to the stage several times during his long career, often in starring roles. He's played Jean Valjean in Les Misérables twice!  Once in 1987, then again in 1995, wherein he represented Japan in a 10th Anniversary performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London. That latter show saw seventeen Valjeans from seventeen different countries appear one after the other!

He was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in a stage adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll & Hyde.  Here he worked with Frank Wildhorn, who is now producing Death Note the Musical.

Kaga has also starred in non-musical theatrical performances, including playing MacBeth in the eponymous Shakespearian play, and Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac.

Japan 2000: Takeshi Kaga as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables.

However, for the rest of the world (and indeed most of Japan), it wasn't the stage performances which made Takeshi Kaga so famous.  That was his appearances in movies and on television.

Let's be honest here. It wasn't all of them. They just kept his name out there and his face familiar. The real biggie was his casting as Chairman Kaga in the internationally syndicated Ryōri no Tetsujin, or Iron Chef, as it was known in the English speaking world, usually with each country's name tagged on the end.

This stylized cooking show pits top chefs against one another in a crazy cook-off, all presided over by Takeshi Kaga as the loud, flamboyant Chairman Kaga. It's all about as far away as the staid, sensible Soichiro Yagami as it's possible to get. Nevertheless those two are Kaga's biggest roles in most minds around the globe.

Here he is, as Chairman Kaga, getting very, very excited about food ingredients for each cook off:

For gamers and anime fans (that's us), Takeshi Kaga is best known for his voice acting. The former group heard him as Golbez in the Nintendo DS version of Final Fantasy IV, and Dissidia: Final Fantasy for the PSP.

He was the voice of Teridax in all the Lego related media for their Bionicle line (which is credited with saving the Lego Group from complete collapse and bankruptcy in the 1990s).

As an anime voice actor, Kaga appeared as Jirarudan in the second Pokémon movie Revelation Lugia - also singing the theme song Ware Wa Collector; Dr. Kiriko in Black Jack: The Two Doctors of Darkness; and Tokimune Shochikubai in Yukan Club, amongst many, many more roles.

But for Death Note fans, Takeshi Kaga's big moment for international fame came in 2006, when he was cast as Light's dad Soichiro Yagami in the first two Death Note live action movies.

Here he is during that tense final scene from Death Note 2: The Last Name (obviously full of spoilers for anyone who hasn't encountered Death Note before, which I'm assuming isn't any of us), as the stunned father of Kira unmasked:

For many fans of Death Note, those performances in Death Note (2006) and Death Note: The Last Name (2007) have already ensured that Takeshi Kaga wears the face of a live action Soichiro Yagami.

Therefore it's no great leap to imagine him reprising the same role in the Death Note stage show. In fact, it feels only fitting.  Do the rest of you agree?  Over to you.

In fact, insofar as I can tell, the only difference is that the newer version has a different picture on the front cover, and a release date six years after the first. Anyone tempted?

Teppei Koike will be performing the role of L in Death Note the Musical, it was revealed today. The production's official Twitter also put out the above image of Teppei as L.

The 28 year old is best known as one half of the singer-songwriting duo WaT, along with his extremely close friend Eiji Wentz.  In addition to albums and singles, Teppei and Eiji also host a variety show called Ame ni mo makezu! (Fuji Terebi).

As an actor, Teppei played Hideki Ogata in the Japanese television drama Dragon Zakura. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Ijyuuin in another drama, Iryu. 

It's funny, coming back here after the news that the 10 year anniversary of Death Note was this year. Its been so long, and yet, it seems so short too. All those years, and friends and memories. It's amazing. The good and the bad. I'd probably change a few things but for the most part, it's a part of who I am. 

I remember starting the Guns and Games club on MangaBullet, and watching it grow and grow. Watching all the community come together slowly and seeing people make bonds with each other. My little team made sure that there was always something happening, that the club was in good hands, and that the love of DN and Matt and Mello stayed strong. 

I was sad when I wasn't able to keep up my duties as founder, so I handed the reigns over to Matti and Silvia who took wonderful care of my baby. If I could renew the club somehow, I would. I thought about doing it on Anipan, but I think things weren't that great with the site? 

Anyway. 

It's a nice thing to reminisce about and actually, this day that I'm writing this entry, I finally completed my DN collection. I bought the 7th volume of Death Note. I skipped it for some reason, and while comic book shopping, I decided to finally buy it. To have the collection. 

Ten Years, and One Full Collection.

Mmmm, currently, I'm on several websites and I do try to stay social! My job hours don't really allow for constant connection, so I'm usually lurking around in the early hours, or late hours. Which really bothers me because I used to spend so much time online before!

On my website, I do try to keep up with little journals and my artwork. I'd like to draw more! It's been ages since I've had a long day to sit and have a good draw.  Anyway! I would love love to sit and chat with people, even if its through email! just let me know ahaha. 

But mostly, on the sites you can find me on, I'm usually crying over the wasted potential of Supernatural, and the unexpected tear your heart out slice-of-life anime, Free! (but come on, plot and fan-service aimed at females? sign me UP, cause hot damn those muscles. Sports anime man. That came out of nowhere and hit me right in the feels.) 

Oh and a few side projects I've been doing these past years, was an English text-to-text transcript of Death Note: Another Note and I have been slowly...very slowly.............doing the same for Death Note: L Save the WorLd. Mostly because I don't think there's any pdf available for it still. ^^ People still ask for DN:AN, so I can only imagine that the second novel is still unavailable for online reading. But since everything is online, I can only wonder. 

Please don't be afraid to contact me on any of these sites! I'm always around ^^ 

Take care everyone! It was a pleasure to be your president while I was able to /bows

If you'd like to feature in Focus on a Fan, then please let me know via the contact form on this site.

It would be great to know where we can find the old gang!

My first thought was 'Oh! Come on! It's so much more than that!', shortly followed by 'Mmm, ok, it's a fair cop.'  I don't even think that she was dismissing Death Note as being particularly crap. The very fact that it factored into her piece shows that it's worthy of comparison with a story that she obviously enjoys. Moreover, it sets Death Note up as the benchmark by which the rest of the genre is judged.

One of the reasons why Death Note so captured my imagination was the 'social thriller' aspect. The notion that power is usually seen as such a distant thing, particularly by teenage schoolboys, coupled with a sudden presentment of absolute power and what happens next, that's what drew me in. The fact that we weren't given a black and white notion of right and wrong was another biggie. So much was left for the reader to determine for themselves.

Those initial dilemmas faced by Light put me in mind of something that Mark Twain said. I haven't got the exact quotation at hand, but the paraphrase is - if we knew for certain that there were no consequences, which of us wouldn't kill? 

I like to think the answer is 'most of us', but then situations and circumstances float through your mind. And if you had a Death Note in your grasp, wouldn't you scribble down a name or two?  If you thought you could avert a war, or end abuse, or... suddenly the list extends into increasingly greyer areas.

That's the appeal of Death Note, to play out our darker fantasies against a what if and maybe world.

Then suddenly it's all about this:

But that's thrilling too!  The clash between Light and L (then Near/Mello/Matt and L) belongs in that category where we also find Sherlock and John Watson. It's about a meeting of minds, clues sought and found, red herrings thrown, geniuses trying to thwart each other at every turn.

Which isn't quite the same story as when it began, is it?

I'm not sure that we have the like of the Wammy kids in real life. At least, I hope we don't, because that institution looked like serious exploitation of vulnerable children to me.  In fact, now it's ALL about the power play! The thing that attracted me to this scenario - the Mark Twain stance on ethics by peer pressure - is no longer part of the plot.

There ARE consequences for Kira. They come in the shape of the Wammy kids with whomever else each side chooses to drag along. As pretty much everyone states time and time again, it's all about winning the competition and solving the puzzle. Matters of morality seem to slip away entirely by the close of the first arc.

So maybe Ms Ekens is right, along with whomever she's quoting. Death Note is a 'power fantasy in social thriller's clothing', and we can only assume that it was Tsugumi Ohba's fantasy, in which we all merely came along for the ride.

What do you think?

As director Rico Arechiga intimated last week, this officially classifies the L movie short as 'coming soon'.  Beautiful artwork though, reminiscent of the Death Note manga cover art.

A release date of 2016 has been green lit by Wonder Works Films for their Death Note US remake.  It will be called Death Note: Year One, and the script is being penned by Yossi Bechor and Julie Paupe.

At this point in time, that is more or less all that we know, except that it's received a budget of $15m.

The bizarre thing here is just how little information there is out there! 

I can't even find a website for Wonder Works Films, other than similarly named companies (a family movie subsidiary of Disney, and a conglomerate of Bollywood stars constituting the other two). Clicking on the IMDb link to discover more about this particular Wonder Works Films produces a huge quantity of other movies, but most are at the pre-production stage too.

Checking out the LinkedIn pages for both Yossi Bechor (aka Joseph Bechor) and Julie Paupe demonstrates a long list of experience in script-writing and other movie involvement.  Yet you check out Yossi's Twitter account, and it reads like a twelve year old troll.

Moreover, Yossi claims to have recently been named 'The Most Unlikely Movie Mogul by The Hollywood Reporter'. A hunt for that article reveals that he really wasn't. That accolade was bestowed upon producer Avi Lerner. Unless that's another pseudonym.

In fact, a search on the Hollywood Reporter site for either Yossi Bechor or Joseph Bechor brings up absolutely nothing at all.

At this moment in time, all instinct is ringing 'elaborate troll'. But if it isn't, then great!  Anyone else got any thoughts on this?

Last Thursday, I had the very great pleasure of chatting with Lawliet director Ricardo Arechiga about his Death Note movie.

The image isn't really him by the way. It's a character from one of his animations, as Rico is a graphic artist by profession.

All of this came about because Logan set me on the quest to discover more about a movie about L. The initial findings were described in: Lawliet - Short Movie About Death Note's L.

On the assumption that you've already read that, I won't repeat myself here. I will mention that there were one or two minor details that were awry. With thanks to Rico for pointing them out, I've already been back to edit those into accuracy.

So now to have our questions answered!

First let me say that Rico is a wonderful conversationalist. As you can tell, I took that screenshot after chatting with him for well over an hour, nor had we finished then! Yet he's so passionate about Death Note, and insightful about the issues raised within, that it all felt like no time at all. If he's like that just discussing it, I really can't wait to view his film about L.

That emphasis on quality explains why we still don't have the movie in September 2014, despite it being due for release in July.  It is largely completed and it could be on our screens right now. But Rico isn't absolutely thrilled by some aspects. The perfectionist in him wants it to be the best he can deliver with his resources.

He felt rather bad about this, though I personally think it's a good thing. He did wish to highlight that Lawliet is being produced around his paid commissions. It's a labour of love, not profit.

I know that I'm not an official spokesperson for the whole Death Note fandom, but I'm certain that I spoke for all of us, when I assured him that we could wait. We'd prefer the moment of greatness to that of potential, and we'd like the director to be happy with his work. After all, we've been waiting forever for Shane Black/Gus van Sant to get on with it!

So what can we expect when Lawliet finally arrives?

Rico has written a script which explores the character of L. I don't mean that in the sense of 'fictitious character', though of course that is true too, but in what makes this person tick. Where did he come from? What motivates him? And most of all, how does L come to terms with the notion that he could be killed on this case?

Lawliet is a movie short, which takes place right on the eve of L's entrance into the Death Note world. He's already working on the Kira case, but has not yet revealed as much to the Interpol meeting. It captures a moment when L understands the danger, yet he is on the verge of committing to it anyway.

Most of the long conversation between myself and Rico was about the inner workings of L's mind (and, to a lesser extent, the other Wammy House kids too). I can confirm that this writer/director has contemplated the issues long and hard. He's considered the darkness that lies at the heart of the orphanage, which currently are addresses in the movie. Though that segment may not make the final cut (Rico is refining parts of the script).

With all of my fan-fiction, I thought I'd contemplated much of what there was to say about that institution. But Rico certainly introduced several elements that had escaped me. Particularly in regard to the dangers of chasing Kira. Or, as Rico put it, if the Wammy kids weren't careful, "they would become what they've been brought up to stop."

In Rico's opinion, L is a hero, who knew very well that he would die, but predicted how that would end up. He knew from the beginning that Kira would be defeated, and the entire of Death Note merely plays out L's ultimate plan. Then, at the end, L wins.

Rico tells us that his movie will be 'sweet, humorous and dark'. Pretty much what all Death Note fans love then!

He'll pop back for a proper interview, when Lawliet is ready for release. If you do have any questions for him, then leave them in the comments here and I'll be sure to include them then.

Incidentally, this is a movie by Identity Entertainment working with KA Films. Power On was just an early iteration of Identity Entertainment, but they decided they didn't like the name after all.  Bit generic...

And finally, when we do come to watch Lawliet, Rico says to watch out for Easter Eggs. He's included some for us die-hard fans. Challenge accepted!