Mind you, the Japanese National Police Agency's Death Note Countermeasure Headquarters Special Team seems rather more populous than its counterpart from a decade earlier, the Kira Task Force.   The new base doesn't look too shabby either, as the two pictures below may attest.  Still in that Death Note de rigour colour scheme of monochrome with a touch of red, so beloved of every version ever.

These movies stills from Death Note: Light Up the NEW World were sanctioned by Warner Bros Japan, but made it into the public eye via an intrepid Death Note fan and writer for Natalie.mu, who 'sneaked' onto set - in an undisclosed Japanese location - on May 18th 2016 and witnessed the above scenes being filmed.  In addition to managing a quick interview about the movie and their roles from the two actors seen sizing each other up in character above, Sousuke Ikematsu and Masahiro Higashide. 

Read more about that here:  映画「デスノート」対策本部に潜入、東出昌大と池松壮亮がプレッシャー語る (Natalie, May 18th 2016)  If, of course, you read Japanese or can stand Google Translate's attempt at a native transcription.  Otherwise one of our Japanese translators will hopefully be along soon to tell us all about it.

Ready to know the name of the movie that we're all going to see in October 2016?  (Or as close as it may be coherently located within our own neck of the globe.)  Ready?  *Drum-roll*  Death Note: Light Up the NEW World.

Until now, this Shinsuke Sato directed Death Note movie has gloried under the working moniker of Death Note 2016.  We always knew it would change with the only bets being about how bad that final title might be, for this live-action sequel to the earlier trilogy of Japanese movies.  All things considered, Death Note: Light Up the New World isn't too bad.  Not when compared to some that we'd contemplated here ourselves.

Perhaps a little cheesy, with the strong potential for disappointment, as we doubt very much that we'll see much of Light Yagami beyond reference or the occasional flashback.  Probably just the former.

Warner Bros Japan announced the film's final and official retitle with a poster featuring its three main cast-members:

This poster announcing a name-change for Death Note 2016, first appeared in the Japanese press on April 8th 2015, trickling out across the world thereon.

It depicts new characters Yugi Shion, Tsukuru Mishima and Ryūzaki perched on chairs above a scattering of six death notes, topped by that fruity shinigami favourite - a shiny, new, red apple.

(Be still your immortal beating heart, Ryuk.  If we put together to get you a whole basket of the stuff, would you go and be bored somewhere else instead?  Like another planet or plane of existence entirely, please. A few Granny Smiths really aren't worth the wanton destruction of humanity, with a theatre of war on a global scale enacted in genocide; forced rendering of all our civil and human rights; terror; and enslavement.  Do it for oil, like everybody else.)

Reflected within the polished floor-tiles, we see the faded, pixelating visages of their predecessors - Light Yagami and L - both deceased with ten years standing between their stories told in the first movies, and the present day recounted in this.

Death Note: Light Up the New World will open in Japanese cinemas on October 29th 2016.

A whole group of us are already pinning our Wammy's House and Mr Wammy related items of interest over on Pinterest.  You can too!

Do you have a group, forum, community, fan-club or other website dedicated to Watari, Wammy's House or anything connected with the Wammys?  Let us know via our submission page and we'll big it up for you during this Month of Watari on Death Note News.  Help us get the community connected with like-minded members of the same fandom!

Death Note 13: How to Read gives us an insight into the character of Quillsh Wammy, at least insofar as his author saw him.

The older man scores highly for versatility, talent, initiative/willingness to act, motivation and emotional strength.  Not far behind are his only slightly lesser scores for creativity, social skills and intelligence.  That he doesn't reach the topmost figure for creativity is a little surprising, given that Wammy made his fortune as an inventor.  The ultimate creator, one might think, this side of actual divinity.

We do get a hint of the kind of things that Wammy invented, when he turns up in the Death Note manga with belts containing panic buttons.  Not exactly Bond's Q, but in the ballpark.

As befits a man whose wealth and life has become devoted to raising children, his pet hate is 'dirty rooms'.  Presumably plenty of those at Wammy's House. I can't quite see the like of Beyond Birthday, Mello and Near running around with a duster.

This is an attribute taken to extreme levels in the Death Note TV drama, wherein guests are sprayed with disinfection at the door.  The interior of L's headquarters is kept pristine in its cleanliness, with Watari hurrying in to exchange L's shirt should a mere splash of food stain hit upon it.  In most tellings of the Death Note story, it's also inferred that Wammy is a fabulous cook.  At least there doesn't seem to be any travelling caterer providing all that confectionery for L that his handler regularly delivers.

Though it's nowhere stated that Wammy is an Englishman, it's implied in the location of his main orphanage for the training of gifted and talented orphans - Winchester, in England.  A further clue is given in his most favourite thing in the world - Earl Grey tea.

It's never truly explained how Watari managed to become such a crack marksman either.  His sharp-shooting is such that, in the Death Note manga and anime alike, he's able to fire a bullet which blasts a gun from the hand of Yotsuba's Kyosuke Higuchi, far below him on the ground. Wammy himself hovering over the scene in a helicopter at the time.

Nor do we learn where Quillsh Wammy acquired such skill in espionage, though he puts that to good use in Death Note, infiltrating various organizations to gain or deliver information.  Not least a gathering of Interpol.

Nevertheless he passed on all this knowledge, and the thinking/morality behind it, to the children in his care.   Maybe more clues to Watari's character reside in those he raised - how they turned out and what became of them.

Genius children taken from wherever they lived around the world and installed in Wammy's House, Winchester.  Here their 'special talents' were cultivated with a top class education, whereupon they were sent back out into the world to put those skills into practice.  All of these individuals were nurtured by Wammy - or at least had their upbringing and training overseen remotely by him, as warden Roger Ruvie took orders from above.

Each skilled Wammy kid set loose on the world was assigned a letter by Watari.   In L: Change the World, it's stated that this only occurs with the greatest, most intelligent of the Wammy's House outcrop.  Kujo is according stunned to belatedly realise that she was afforded the letter K.

Dotted across various adaptations of canon, we've practically got the entire alphabet in Wammy Letters.  With Watari himself indicated by the Letter W, only H, I, O, S and U are missing.  However, some known Wammy alumni never divulge their letters.  We don't, for example, know which Matt was assigned, despite him being third in the Wammy House rankings.  Nor yet do we know which letter Ryūzaki will take in the forthcoming movie Death Note 2016, assuming that he takes one at all.

Meanwhile, by the end of the manga/anime Death Note stories, Near interchangeably uses both N and L.  The latter earned post-Kira.  Thus giving an insight into the fact that letters can be taken from their peers by successful rivals/successors from the same Institution.  This is a system that Wammy himself must have set up.

Along with a code of ethics that apparently accounts for serial killers, abductors, biomedical scientists bent on mass destruction and the propensity of Wammy graduates to think it proper to die - or be killed - for want of a puzzle's solution. 

Giving hope to all of us global audience types, that Death Note 2016 will quickly migrate from Japan to our own screens, is a rather random movie magazine cover from Great Britain. 

Dominated by a mostly monochromatic photograph, the front of Screen International's special February 11th 2016 edition features next generation L clone Ryuzaki (Sousuke Ikematsu), in what appears to be a pristine prison cell.  He is slumped on a closed-lid toilet seat, wearing a hyottoko mask - as previously donned by his genetic forebear L in the first two Death Note movies, when the detective sought to conceal his own identity from Misa Amane.

The legend slanted on the floor is in English and reads, 'The new saga begins.'  Whilst a larger one, in the familiar Death Note font and a more than familiar first rule, floats alongside the actor telling us, 'Death Note.  The human whose name is written in this note shall die.'  The implication is clear. L's biologically cloned successor isn't going to make it to the closing credits either.

Though none of us believe it. The danger point is too blatant and too premature.

This wasn't a British magazine found generally upon the shelves of newsagents.  It was a private marketing magazine circulating at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival.  Only 10k were ever printed and they were distributed to attendees of the opening day on February 11th 2016.

The clue to why lies in the logo of Death Note 2016 copyright holders Nippon TV prominently displayed in the bottom right hand corner, alongside details for enquiring about world sales.  Ryuzaki may look slumped, but that merely serves to turn his whole body towards the lower logo and its missives.  His bulging hyottoko eyes are trained upon it.  The floor legend leads the eye straight into said inquiry details for the international distribution of Death Note 2106.

After all was is a marketing fly cover (wrapped around the film magazine's actual cover), which must have knocked NTV back a pretty penny! Therefore knowing that a representative was waiting - at booth 111 of the European Film Market in Martin Gropius Bau - was the actual point. 

Now all we need to know is whether anyone from our own respective countries nipped on over to stand 111, and if a deal was struck.

Incidentally, Screen International has its Feb 11th 2016 Death Note Berlin Film Festival cover - plus contents - online for us all to read.

In other related news, new casting Rina Kawaei has been Tweeting herself (February 24th 2016) on set, during filming of Death Note.  She was basically telling her fans that she was playing Sakura Aoi, and it had just been publicly announced by the studio.

While four days previously, on February 20th, her actor colleague Masaki Suda celebrated his 23rd birthday.  He was surprised at his desk, while performing his role as hacker and Kira worshipper Yūgi Shion, with something which obviously delighted him.  Unfortunately we can't get a decent enough translation to find out what!  Paper lanterns, perchance?

The three stars of the forthcoming Japanese movie sequel in the Death Note series have just been announced. Following on from Death Note, Death Note: the Last Name and L: Change the World, this latest film outing is tentatively called Death Note 2016.

It will feature three brand new characters to add to the canon dramatis personae:

Directed by Shinsuke Sato, the fourth in the Death Note trilogy (as was) is confirmed for theatrical release in Autumn 2016.  It is currently being filmed in Kobe - with one or two sneaky night shoots in the middle of Tokyo and occasional suburbs.  Moreover, there will be some international scenes, which will be filmed actually in the relevant foreign parts. 

Any tremors of excitement building over this out there?