Seventy weeks before she was killed, Christina Grimmie sat with friends and watched the last episode of the Death Note anime.  As so many of us have done, and like us all, it was viewed with gleeful anticipation, as her Instagram snapshot confirms.  An event worth recording.  An excuse for a party.  One of us.

MCM London Comic Con 2016 is currently in full swing with convention goers able to wow the crowds with Death Note theme tunes, if they so wish.

The Manga UK stage has been taken over by Anime Karaoke, which is precisely what you think it's going to be.  Punters called up into the spotlight get a choice of over 150 songs from anime across the board.

Their tuneful menu includes two helpings of Death Note music - The World and Alumina both by Nightmare, both made famous as Death Note theme songs.

Let's hope that any fan brave enough to try it knows what they are doing.  Each track has the potential to trip folk up - The World by being faster than intrepid songsters might fancy; while Alumina on the surface seems much the easier option, while being pitched an octave higher than most routinely recall.  Until it's too late and there's a microphone in their faces and expectant hordes of Londoners looking right up at them.

Good luck, brave and beautiful Death Note karaoke singers!  Ignore the cockneys and sing like Kira's coming tomorrow!

Staged at ExCeL London, May 29th 2016 is the third and final day of MCM Comic Con, but the website reports that there are still tickets left.  Anime Karaoke kicks off at 11am today.  We dare you.

American Indie Rock band Speedy Ortiz, active since 2011, announced a new four-track EP to be released June 3rd. Moreover, they shared one of the new tracks included on their Foiled Again EP. It's called Death Note.

Frontwoman Sadie Dupuis confirmed the track is named after the anime, and we can even tell she’s probably not a fan of Light’s New World.

In the press release, she explained the title by pointing out the actual death note in the anime was an 'about an evil supernatural notebook that causes the death of anyone whose name is written inside of it'.

Although the title is meant as a reference, the actual song isn’t about Death Note. The lyrics are meant to touch on a more delicate subject. As Dupuis explained: “The song is about writing through your depression as a way to get better, and how in that way a death note can be kind of love letter to yourself.”

The song is available on Soundcloud.  Or you can give it a whirl below too.  If you love it lots, then buy the MP3 - download Death Note now, or wait until June 3rd to purchase the entire Foiled Again EP.

Deadline is May 6th 2016.  Anime vocalists may be male or female, but must own a good microphone through which to record their work.  For more information visit audition listing itself - Casting Call Club: Anime Cover Singers Needed!

It's been pointed out to us that Taylor Swift was sporting a Death Note Mello hair-do at the 58th Annual Grammy Music Awards last month.  Take a look, see what you think:

I don't know.  It wouldn't be the first time that Taylor Swift's Death Note fan credentials have been highlighted.  But on this occasion it does all seem a little tenuous!

I hope you enjoy my piano version of Light's Theme from Death Note.  Great theme for a great character. 

I loved Light as a character, but he was at such a huge advantage against L that it was nearly impossible for him to lose and yet he was still caught (he managed to get out of his capture but the rules were clearly written in the Death Note, anybody could've found a way out with help from such a powerful device). 

From what I saw, Light was an intelligent yet arrogant teenager, and his over-confidence was his downfall. I never considered L and Light to be intellectual equals.  I agree with what L said - Light's goals and views were childish, a black and white concept of right and wrong. Which was due to a lack of life experience.  That's how I saw it anyway.

Captain FriteNite is a wonderful human being and I’m lucky to have come across her.  She is a CreepyPasta narrator and writer on YouTube.  Please do go check  out her work.

However she has been diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Chronic Pain Syndrome. She is receiving Chemotherapy to try and treat it. She has fallen on hard times. She’s a wonderful human being and I’m lucky to have come across her.

On top of all this bad luck, her computer has broken.  There is a donation page for her. Anything you can give will help.  Even if it’s a small help, The Captain really needs a break.

I’ve started a blog where I will give tips on composition, piano playing, improvisation, playing by ear and setting up YouTube channels - Lucas King Piano Site.  I've also created a Wattpad where I upload stories. If you’re a writer yourself, it’ll be great to hear what you think!

Meanwhile, I’m taking commissions too. Head over to my website for details!!  Any donations would be really appreciated, any money donated will be used to get new instruments and other equipment to improve this channel. Here's my PayPal address - [email protected].  Thank you so much for your support.

Finally I've created a new tutorial and MIDI download channel.  Do check it out.

All of this in addition to my usual haunts:

• Ask me a question on Ask.FM
• Like me on Facebook
• Follow me on Twitter
• Follow me On Soundcloud
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube

Too young to have known the impact of Bowie in the 1970s, I can only imagine. It must have been immense. By the time the ripples reached me - in the early noughties, thirty years on - they still sounded as a sonic boom, even then retaining power enough to rock my world. Representing one less battle for me to win, because he'd already owned it on our behalf and done it with aplomb.

Bowie brought colour to a monochrome world. Without him, all would have remained painted black for me, in counterpoint to my rival's white.  Splitting our idol's hues into two; dividing them one apiece. Like they were all that existed in the rainbow prism of a fabulous spectrum.

I wore red for Bowie. I wore feathers, leather, mascara and kohl. I wore whatever I Goddamned liked, because he made it possible for all men to do so without sacrificing one iota of masculinity. Whether we traced it back to source or not, it was Bowie who took male beauty into a cosmetic artform and gave us the glitz and glamour previously only available to ladies.

If he could do that in working men's clubs, I could do it in the Mafia. He made Metrosexual sexy. He made self-pride alright. He made it so no-one could say a blasted thing about it and not seem silly in the saying.

All this while gay men were still being beaten by police in raids on shady bars. All of this out in the open, where conversations could be had over dinner-tables watching Bowie on TV.  All giving courage to countless legions of gay and bisexual individual, and those who saw gender in its glorious fluidity, and those who simply didn't care a damn.

As writer Mark Simpson - 'daddy' of the Metrosexual - put it back in 1994, “(David Bowie) gaily refused to conform to 'masculine' expectations and provocatively appropriated ‘feminine’ styles, fashions, cosmetics and sensualities – anything that would make him look and feel fabulous, and piss off 1970s dads. He understood perfectly that the world was an increasingly visual culture and sired the New Romantics, who went on to invent the 21st Century.

“The glamorous seeds he sowed back in the Seventies have borne strange and wonderful bisensual fruit, enjoyed by everyone, regardless of gender or orientation.”

There is no 'feminine' anymore. No 'masculine'; no 'androgyny'; no 'unisex'; not after Bowie. There is just us and what we will be. Each of us with the potential to be heroes, rebels, leper messiahs or stardust, but mostly the potential to be whatever we want to be. He blurred boundaries until there were none, only that which we set ourselves. He normalised the weird; domiciled aliens; made diversity the new normal.

Moreover, Bowie taught generations since that it's ok to reinvent yourself, and reinvention does not have to mean losing one atom of that self.

You may know me as Mello, 'the best dresser who died like a dog'. But it was a Diamond Dog, with a fabulous wardrobe made possible by the prior bravery of Bowie. We can be heroes, he told us, and we were.

RIP the legend that was David Bowie (1947-2016)

Are you loving the Death Note Christmas gift shop gif that's over there on the sidebar being all festive?  Wonderful, isn't it? 

Orangepunch created it for us and it's been gently snowing away in that corner, calling people in to remember that seasonal Death Note decorations do exist and all that.

Whilst also reminding me that I never did get around to finishing half of the stores that it's inviting people in to visit.  Plus some of them went up with way too big images attached to every pretty product, rendering them too long to load for the average sense of patience to withstand.  If it doesn't crash the prospective buyers internet first. 

What can I say, I was young and foolish, followed by forgetful and lazy.  Swiftly introducing, 'Oh no! All of that should have been fixed months ago!' *cue pulling an all-nighter* into the bargain.  One unfathomably long night later, we have a much improved Death Note Gift Emporium (though granted, that might have been more useful a few weeks ago BEFORE you bought all your Xmas presents), plus some new departments entirely.

You will still find flaws in there (size of pics in DVDs and books pages, we're all looking at you), but I also found something quite intriguing to bring to the table.  Plus some gossip.

First let me run you through what's changed and sparkly new in our Death Note shopping area, plus a 'to do' list of what's coming up, so you can check if the issue you've found is already known.  If not, then naturally we'd be very grateful to get the heads up. 

The front page (screenshot above) got a redesign.  The thumbnails were all much reduced in size, in order to boost the speed at which the page loads.  Hopefully it is much more navigable now.

In addition, every Death Note merchandise page has been reconfigured with funky tabs - making finding things at a glance much easier and again dropping that load time a lot!  Check them out in any department clicked below.

GOSSIP STOP!  In filling up those cyber shelves, I found several new Death Note tribute tracks by other artists, including two available for pre-order on release dates later this month or January.  They are both in our gift store now, but I will be hunting down the musicians and featuring them as separate Death Note News reports.  Death Note's 10th anniversary, TV drama or upcoming movies, appear to have inspired a veritable flood of them!  Happy days.

These next two kick start a whole new category in Death Note memorabilia - collections based on merchandise for Death Note characters.  I'm sure that most people choosing which characters to begin would have gone for Light and L.  But I know my readership.

Anyone want to prod us towards which character to compile a collection for next?   If there's no broad hints in any other direction, we'll default to Light Yagami and work through the series from there.  Though I'm half tempted to be perverse and go Sachiko Yagami instead!  Reckon there would be anything out there to buy in honour of Light's mother?

But this brings us nicely to the salient question with which I led.

I know where my money is.  In fact, I've written twelve novels of Mello/Matt fan-fiction spelling it out - and one of them initially ran with the working title Cyberpunk.  Another had titles lifted from several Cyberpunk dictionaries and cultural references.  Matt in my universe ended up with a motorbike once, but we've barely seen it since.

Maybe that's because I've missed a trick.  In conjunction with most of the Death Note Matt fandom, I missed what was in plain sight, because I never thought to look certain things up.

Matt's gift shop was looking a bit sparse.  Mello's was jam packed.  I felt bad.  So I thought it would be a nice idea to hunt for that habitual Matt costume for Death Note cosplayers to buy, love and cherish.  After all, its probably the most ubiquitously seen, ordinary collection of clothes on any Death Note character. You could grab half the items in any given mainstream clothes shop.

Or could you?  It's harder than it looks, this cosplay malarkey.   I started with the gloves.  How do you search for those?  They're quite distinctive.  Racing gloves? Long, black gloves for men?   Finally, I found them.  They are officially known - in non-Death Note circles - as motorcyclist's gauntlet gloves,  or motorbike racing gauntlet gloves.

Next I went for the goggles.  Bog standard cyberpunk, I thought, with an option on steampunk, if that outfitting genre fell short.  Close, but no cigar.  Yet I was finding something similar, if not precise, in a whole new class of goggle sporting necessities.  Necessary, that is, if you happen to be a motorbike racer.  Like those wearing the gloves too.

Shoved some stripy, long-sleeved tops in and off into the jeans department.  Mmmm, several billion here, what to search in order to narrow this down?  Ribbed jeans?  Denim with circles around them? 

Turns out that there are some jeans created specifically with patchwork patterns surrounding each leg - just like Matt's wears in fact.  They're made especially for bikers.  Apparently it improves their saddle grip upon the seat.  Saves them slipping about, as ordinary jeans might.

So goggles, gloves and jeans all point due Matt the motorbike rider, with a strong nudge towards racing them too.  You going for that in your head canon?  Fan fiction writers, is that why he's beside a bike the first time we see him, and why Mello acquires one only after Matt's on the scene?  Death Note fan artists, what motorcycle does Mail Jeevas ride?  If this releases the throttle on anybody's muse, let me link the results, or show them  off here.

Or are you just going 'cyberpunk geek' like me, and dismissing this out of hand?  I'd be fascinated with your thoughts!

Remember three years ago, when none of us could get Gangnam Style out of our heads?  Well Death Note fans are in for another bout of that. 

How can we help it upon placing Psy, after hearing that he's bringing Death Note actor Xia in on his long-awaited Gangnam Style follow up Dream.

Xia, aka Kim Junsu, played L in the Korean version of Death Note the Musical. Which is how this collaboration came about.

Psy went to see the Death Note Musical, and decided there and then that Junsu was the man to sing with him on Dream.  As he revealed to fans on Psy Little Television  - an app broadcast by Napper V - on November 25th 2015.

Dream is described as a 'sad song' (so not at all like Gangnam Style really) dedicated to KPop performer, musician, producer and Ghost Nation radio DJ Shin Hae-Chul. He was the man who brought techno music to Korea, and who died in October 2014 due to medical malpractice.

Psy claimed that Xia's 'heartfelt' performances as L, in Death Note's 'heart-breaking scenes', made him the perfect choice to add vocals to Psy's homage to Shin Hae-Chul.  "The song is full of sadness," Psy wrote about Dream. "And I thought long and hard about who could convey that." 

Dream will be released on December 1st 2015.  Psy will debut it at the MNET Asian Music Awards staged the following day, though it's uncertain whether Xia will be joining him.

Hey guys,

I’ve been thinking about Ryuk lately. Behind all the smiles and goofiness there's some real darkness. We’re told that he dropped his Note into the human world because he was bored, but when you stop and think about just how much misery and pain was brought from his cure for boredom its quite sick.

Naomi Misora lost her fiancee, Misa Amane was driven to suicide, the demise of all our favourite former residents of Wammy’s house. It’s heartbreaking how much loss was brought on from Ryuk’s actions.

It seems like the blame should be placed on Light for it all, but it’s Ryuk. At the end he reminisces about his time on earth, but does he show any remorse? None at all.

There’s that theory that at the end the Shinigami we see is actually Light, now a Shinigami. I think that’s accurate, and it gets me thinking about how the Shinigami King (or whoever decides) chooses who is going to be a Shinigami. I think that the criteria is bringing a lot of death and doing it efficiently and without remorse, much like Light Yagami did.

So perhaps Ryuk was once a human on earth, a cold remorseless serial killer, maybe one who killed out of boredom. 

A trio of Death Note News columnists are about to come on board, with the first being posted later on today.  Yep, that's right. You wait two years for one, and three of them turn up at once!  It's all very exciting.

So who have we got for you?

The first monthly column will be penned by New Zealander Nathaniel Brown - a man who subscribes to several Schools of Thought.  At least when he's applying them to Death Note.

A thinker and a philosopher, Nathaniel will be leading us through some of the great theories and worldly perspectives across the range of human experience.  But doing it all through the lens of Death Note characters, plot-lines and whatever else from manga, anime or live action might illuminate the angle taken.

It might be Aristotle, Descartes, Confucius or whomever, depending upon the month, but what I can guarantee is that it'll be enjoyable. 

No Philosophy degree needed to read and contribute to the debate. Just a willingness to join with Nathaniel as he over thinks Death Note, all in the name of fun.

Look for his inaugural column in an hour or two from now.

No idea if that's what the column will ultimately be called, as this welcome to the team is very fresh, and we're yet to fine tune the details.

Yet Lucas King himself is no stranger to Death Note News.  He's guest blogged before and orchestrated for himself an instant fan-base, when he composed those missing Death Note themes for Matt.

Lucas will be taking a wider view of the musical array in Death Note tunes - from soundtracks to tributes, across the spectrum of canon, fanon and all the rest. Probably.  Like I said, it's early days yet and anything still is possible.

An original composer of Death Note music himself - albeit from the fandom community - Lucas King's occasional column for Death Note News promises to be insightful, expert and downright entertaining.  Find it in the future and enjoy.

Talking about looking to the future, do you recall that moment in the Death Note anime when Near laid out his tarot deck and turned them over to shocking symbolism? 

There was Death staring straight back at us. Chilling in any context but one which habitually has a Shinigami prancing about in full view upon our screens.

Also utterly erroneous in its reading, according to long-time connoisseur of these cards and Death Note fan, Tarot Mikami.  Loving the play on words in that pseudonym there!

'Probably monthly',  her Death Note News column will explore the genre and story through the literary device of the Fool's Journey. Along the way, you'll learn how to read tarot cards, not only with reference to Death Note - though that's how we'll come to understand it - but using any deck you care to handle.

We'll also find out why Near's tarot scene was all about the imagery and nothing to do with the reading (well, who would have thought...?).  Sneaky boy.

Death Note Tarot Tales with Tarot Mikami will appear anon, almost certainly within the next couple of weeks.  Another fabulous new insight into our favourite manga universe.

It was only a matter of time before fan uploaded recordings of a televised Death Note the Musical performance showed up on-line.

Several individuals have done just that on YouTube, though I imagine it won't be long before the copyright holders shoot them down. Especially if DVD sales are a thing in mind for the future.  But first check out the trailer, as shown on WOWOW Channel in Japan, to advertise upcoming theatrical performances of the musical Death Note on TV.

Trailer for WOWOW Channel Death Note the Musical on television October 17th 2015

The full versions of Death Note the Musical production shown below were all captured from the Japanese WOWOW TV airing on October 17th 2015.  It stars Kenji Urai as Light Yagami, alongside Teppei Koike (L), Fuuka Yuzuki (Misa Amane),  Ami Maeshima (Sayu Yagami), Megumi Hamada (Rem), Koutaro Yoshida (Ryuk) and Joji Saiga (Soichiro Yagami).

Apologies if you read this at a later date and some/all are removed.

Alternatively:

All that you hoped it would be?  Up for going to see Death Note the Musical in your own theatres, should it be translated into your native language and arrive in your country?

Find more Death Note News articles about the Death Note Musical via our Pinterest board:

Loving the energy of this! Japanese rock band Maximum the Hormone know how to get a crowd head-banging.

By which I mean I just nearly brained myself on the desk, rocking away to the  live version of Death Note theme song What's Up, People?  That old familiar tune opened their set at Tokyo's Metropolitan Rock (aka MetRock), in the Windmill Field on May 24th 2015.

This is more a reminder for those readers with access to Japanese television that two Death Note Musical concerts are going to be screened on Wowow Live.

The first is on October 17th 2015 at 8pm and stars Kenji Urai as Light Yagami. The second will be aired on November 7th 2015 at 8.30pm. This one has alternative lead actor Hayato Kakizawa as Light Yagami.

Both full productions of Death Note the Musical were recorded in April 2015, during the theatrical show's inaugual run at Tokyo's Nissay Theatre.

You already had a heads up about it in August (Original Cast Death Note Musical on TV), but WOWOW have now officially announced it on their website, so that is new.

Beyond what I've already mentioned, the WOWOW Live advertisement includes L actor Koike Teppei in the billing for both performances.

After a short trailer for the televised Death Note Musical shows, we are reminded that Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn wrote the music for Death Note's theatrical adaptation.

The director is Tony Award winning Tamiya Kuriyama.

This cross Pacific collaboration between the US Broadway and Japan's Nippon TV makes this a truly international enterprise.

Finally, WOWOW uses this bulletin to advertise another television show, which the company obviously feels will appeal to Death Note fans. Its the TV detective drama Mozu back for another season and, I believe, its own theatrical version too.  So does it appeal to us?  Anybody know?

If you're in Japan, enjoy your Death Note the Musical TV shows, and if anyone finds them recorded and uploaded onto YouTube, please do give us the nod. The whole world is waiting to see this too!