The obvious response is that Viz Media brought us Death Note.  Game over and cause to party right there.

However, if we can broaden our horizons for just three seconds, an even greater boon may be discerned. If you're reading from a Western nation then you have a lot to thank the company for in how it's spent those decades. Viz Media is probably the reason that you're here, or have even heard of Death Note. 

Even if only indirectly, with Viz acting as the trend-setter company that inspired others elsewhere to follow its lead, bringing Japanese pop culture into your local stores.

It barely seems possible that a time existed when the words 'manga' and 'anime' weren't mainstream in the West.  That outside Japan and its immediate neighbouring states, only Eastern ex-pats, Japanese Cultural Studies students, and a scattering of literary sci-fi geeks in any nation could have told you with any certainty what such alien terms described.  Or even hazarded a decent guess.

Yet in 1986, when Seiji Horibuchi - a Japanese ex-pat from Shikoku, then living in San Francisco - mooted to friends the notion that he could interest Americans in manga, anime and other cultural mainstays from his homeland, most people laughed.  They didn't think readers in the US would go for that at all.

Though obviously the majority first had to ask him what manga and anime were, before getting on with the general amusement and cynicism. 

Three decades later, we can say with great certainty that he wiped the smile off their faces.  Seiji's efforts through Viz Media - the company he founded to make good his idea and his dream - not only made him extremely rich, it secured a place for manga, anime and all else attached in the American heart and throughout the Western world.

Just in case you haven't already grasped the enormity of Viz Media's impact in the West, Roland Kelts is on hand to spell it out.

As an academic specialising in Japanese Cultural Studies, Kelts is an author; essayist; lecturer at Keio University, Tokyo (and the occasional TED Lecture too); journalist with regular articles and columns in such illustrious publications as Time Magazine, The New York Times, Newsweek Japan and The Guardian; and steering committee member of the Tokyo Think Tank Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation.

He also wrote the acclaimed JapanAmerica (see left), all about how Japanese manga, anime and other pop culture became so big in the USA.

In May 2016, his monthly editorial for The Japan Times was devoted to Viz Media's thirty years as the main instigator of that.

Entitled Viz's 30 Years Pack a Punch in the US (May 14th 2016), Kelts outlines how Seiji Horibuchi pulled it off - from unlikely beginnings in the 1980s through to the legacy left behind by the time he parted company with Viz Media to explore pastures new.

Comparing notes with modern day Chief Marketing Officer Brad Woods, Kelts explores how Viz Media played a key role in the changing face of manga interest and sales throughout the West; touches upon the ever-growing mainstream awareness of Japanese pop culture, and projects how that success may continue into the future.

He's rather excited about how titles like Death Note are discussed as commonplace, particularly within the glittering circles of Hollywood studios executives, telling us that, 'in all the years I’ve watched manga and anime become mainstays in American homes, I’ve never seen a moment quite like this.'

Looks like the high definition, formatted blu-ray Death Note Omega Edition will be appearing in British stores later this year.

Manga Entertainment announced at MCM London Comic Con that Death Note blu-ray for the UK is on its way. The company has just secured the licence to distribute in that format to the Britons, and the description certainly matched that of Omega.

The news was simultaneously proclaimed on Twitter via its official account (see right), though fans at the convention found out first.

In both venues, the product spec was unveiled as being the entire run of thirty-seven Death Note anime episodes on blu-ray.  Included are the two re-cut movie length features Death Note Relight: Visions of a God and its sequel Relight: L's Successors.

It's the first time that Masaya Matsukaze has stepped foot out of Asia to meet Death Note fans before. Nevertheless Teru Mikami's original Japanese anime voice actor is going to be in the USA at the end of next month.

The Death Note seiyuu will be at FanimeCon, in San Jose, California, from May 27-30th 2016, organizers have announced.

In addition to providing the voice of Mikami in Death Note, Masaya Matsukaze may also be heard as:

• Koyoya Ootori (Ouran High School Host Club);
  
• Zoisite (Sailor Moon Crystal);
  
• Gaelio Bauduin (Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans);
  
• Shin Hyuuga Shaingu (Code Geass: Akito the Exiled);
  
• Illumi Zoldyck (HUNTER X HUNTER).
  

Gamers will also know him as:

• Ryo Hazuki (Shenmue series).
  

If you're planning to go, please do report back if you meet him and/or catch anything Death Note related.

Death Note actress Aya Hirano will be at North Carolinian anime convention Animazement this May, organisers have announced.

Also in attendance is Madhouse co-founder Masao Maruyama, who produced the Death Note anime.  In 2012, after more than four decades with Madhouse, he branched out on his own again, forming a new company - MAPPA (Maruyama Animation Produce Project Association).  He'll be there to talk about his experiences with both.

It was recently revealed that Hirano - Misa-Misa's original voice actress in the anime - is moving to the United States for six months to as part of her studies.  It looks like her work doesn't completely stop for that!

Animazement runs from May 27-29th, in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.  Registration is currently open for attendees, panellists and exhibitors alike. More information on the event website.

If anyone bumps into Aya Hirano and Masao Maruyama, or else hears them talk as special guests at the convention, then do please report back!  Particularly if either of them mention anything Death Note related.

Better late than never, it's time to enter the shady world of Quillsh Wammy - sharp-shooter, collector of orphans, entrepreneur, inventor, master of espionage, international crime-fighter and, of course, handler for L.

Great man?  Or the dodgiest villain to stalk the pages of Death Note, Kira notwithstanding?  Can't wait to see where you leap with this one.

In an altered time-frame from advertised, Month of Watari will run from today until May 5th 2016.

It may cover more than the man himself - Mr Wammy; Quillsh to his friends; Watari to others - insofar as anything connected to or with him is also acceptable for publication during this event.

This means you may dig out your exposes of the Wammy House or contemplate its founder from Beyond Birthday's point of view - or any other of his kids.

Though please do keep it referring back to him if running with the latter.  All Wammy alumni are bound to feature in a month of their own anyway.

Another epic monthly event! Redeemed after a shaky start by all who flooded in with their submissions to make this a focus worthy of the character himself.

The archives will show that Death Note Month of Touta Matsuda was an unparalleled success!

Good fight all.

So what went wrong at the beginning (and most of the middle) to make this event move so slowly?  Then in true Matsuda style speed up unfathomably towards the end, and in the nick of time to save the day.

While Death Note News has a plethora of writers, columnists, researchers and the occasional guest penning articles too, it only has one person to actually press the button to publish their considerable output.

If she gets carted off to hospital in the back of an ambulance, then everything grinds to an ignoble halt.

We've spotted the obvious flaw in our administrative set up; and Matti is completely fine now.  Once back at her desk, the contributions for Matsuda Month could flow once more and fabulousness ensued.

Godzilla concept artist Shinji Nishikawa will be at California con Monsterpalooza, at the Pasadena Convention Center, from 22-24 April 2016.

Why do we care?  Other than he seems to be a lovely and rather talented gentleman?

Because Shinji Nishikawa was also responsible for setting production on the Death Note anime back in 2006-2007.

Our guess is that he'd much rather be asked about that, rather than all this Godzilla stuff he's become quite famous for in the meantime.  So we're counting on you, Californians, to nip along, question him and report back on our behalf. 

If only to find out what 'setting production' is.

Billed as a manga artist, illustrator and Godzilla series creature designer (with Death Note setting production strangely omitted), Shinji Nishikawa will be at Monsterpalooza taking fan requests for art, whilst sketching some original monsters too. 

More about the convention at Monsterpalooza's website; and check out their announcement re Shinji Nishikawa via the Monsterpalooza Facebook stream.

Across
7.   Light's opposition with L (6)
8.   Fantasize (5)
10.  Powerfully depraved said the Lord (7)
12.  Judge, jury and ? (hint Kira!) (11)
14.  Fair play (7)
16.  Delusions of grandeur (11)
21.  Creator behind an idea (10)
23. Not justice, just a ?  (8)
24. Light's envisioned perfection. (6)

Down
1.   Bored (10)
2.   Light's consumed tool of duplicity (11)
3.   Luck, or Fate (10)
4.  "I was the ONLY ONE who could have done it!" (10)
5.  Moore (or less...) of the New World (7)
6.  Kira (6)
9.  Soichiro Yagami's death (9)
11.  Light's ideology - belief in his right to righteously kill (11)
13.  Delirium (6)
15. "I will be the god of this new world!" (9)
17. Light's Fate (2)
18. Characterised by light (8)
19. Night god (6)
20. Reprehensible (6)
22. Light's glamour (4)

A collection of materials belonging to Tetsuro Araki - director of the anime Death Note - is set to go on show in Tokyo this March. 

It includes behind the scenes, never before seen production notes and other paraphernalia  from all the anime that Araki has worked on.

That naturally means Death Note too.

Tetsuro Araki was just thirty years old when Madhouse placed him at the helm of what was to become one of the biggest anime series in the world.  He not only directed the animation of Tsugumi Obha and Takeshi Obata's manga chapters, but also stepped in as storyboard artist AND the opening credits' key animator.

Items from all of these roles will be on display in Tokyo next month.

In addition, there will be exhibits from other anime that he has overseen, including Attack on Titan, Highschool of the Dead, Guilty Crown and his latest endeavour Kōtetsujō no Kabaneri (Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress). The latter begins its television serialisation in Japan during April 2016.

Tetsuro Araki Works' Production Notes Exhibition runs from March 19th to April 17th 2016, in the Mediage entertainment complex, accessible from Tokyo's Aqua City Odabia.  It coincides with a one-week only showing, in selected Japanese cinemas, of a film-length preface to Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress.

Wilkommen! Croeso! Bienvenue! Ulihelisdi! Welkom! Ongi etorri! ¡Benvido! Tervetuloa!  خوش اومدی! Velkomin! Swaagat! ¡Benvinguts! Fáilte! Dobrodošli! Velkommen! Καλώς ήλθατε! Namaste! ¡Bem-vindo! Karibuni! Wilicome! Khush Amdeed! Witajcie! добро пожаловать! ¡Bienvenidos! Gnindi ton hap! Seľami! Wöikomme! Soo dhawaw! Tashi delek! Selamat datang! S'up! Ohai!

And, of course, yôkoso - ようこそ.

Welcome to the launch of what promises to be a great and significant addition to the offerings here at Death Note News - our very first Death Note Month of... community event and on-going feature.

In particular featuring Kira Himself, as the subject of our inaugural Death Note Month of Light Yagami!

(It was so going to be Matt. I mean, it's his birthday! It should have been Matt, shouldn't it?)

So what can you do and what can you expect from this month long Light Yagami Death Note event?  Let me tell  you.  Though in some ways, you should be telling me!

I'm sure that could have been worded better.

Nevertheless if you want to see your work/thoughts/bulletin published on Death Note News for this event, then here's how:

There you will find a FileDrop box for larger content and an email contact form for text submissions.

It doesn't matter which you choose. They both pop into the same inbox.  Go for the one most appropriate for yourself.

Feel free to use the same email form to chat with Matti, if you want to kick around ideas or query some point.

Copyright - intellectual or otherwise - remains with you.

Last day of the month, if you wish it to be included in the Death Note Month of... event.

However, we're unlikely to turn down suitable content* at any other time either.

It just won't be listed in the round-up of Light Yagami Month of... articles beyond February 29th 2016.

Right now, religious leaders in France are warning Jews to not wear their skullcaps, as it renders them too visible a target.  French Jews are beginning to flee their country - as yet a trickle, in danger of becoming an exodus. All across Europe, borders are being closed to those fleeing war and arbitrary cruelties in Syria.

In Britain, asylum seekers were made to don - and keep on 24/7 - distinctive wristbands in Cardiff, thus ensuring that they were publicly identifiable at a glance. While in the north-east of England, refugees housed by the Home Office found that their front doors had been painted bright red. All the better for local thugs and hoodlums to know were they lived.

Everywhere the Far Right is gaining more ground politically than at any other time since the Holocaust.

The USA has a concentration camp, which its citizens apparently don't deem worth rising in enough numbers to pressure their government to close. Because they haven't. While momentum is gathering beyond presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose views wouldn't have been out of step with Hitler's Nazi Regime, including conceptual support for race based internment camps.

What concerned me more was the logical query following on - if Kira single-handedly averted the Holocaust through mass murder, does that make him the good guy?  Or just as bad as those he sought to destroy?

The human rights activist in me wants to say the latter.  The historian is wide-eyed and tight lipped with quivering self-horror at my sensibility's tacit assent for the former.

The philosopher of my first degree mutters on about two wrongs not making a right.

The literary critic snaps that this is precisely the sort of dilemma encountered by all within the canon Death Note universe, during the ascendancy of Kira's New World.

I'm sure we can all very keenly picture Near's sneering reaction in disdain of the question.  For him, Kira is a serial killer no matter what the underlying cause.  There is no justification.  Not even the millions consigned to the gas chambers, starved, exposed to epidemics, subjected to scientific/medical experimentation or shot into mass graves.  Even then, Light Yagami is just a murderer.

Where do you stand on the issue?

Or more pertinently put, what if the Death Note fell into the hands of Nazis?  Then and now.

How much more terrifying might our watch be?  And would we ever get the chance to say 'never again'?

Or could collusion create yet more greatly amassed clues to Yagami's own identity? To play out with deductive precision in a Wammy House mind, thus rendering Kira's capture a swifter endeavour?

Or don't you think Light Yagami would have involved himself in the Holocaust at all?  Ignoring its reality, just as so many of us continue on apathetically when faced with elements today similar to those once staged by a burgeoning Nazi regime. 

A pointless musing perhaps, but one which pays dividends in awareness on a day like this.

Over to  you.