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All the latest information about Death Note: reports, gossip, releases, analyses, speculation and discussion.

Death Note news articles

Movie Matsuda is Back! Sota Aoyama to Reprise his Role as Tōta Matsuda in 2016 Death Note: Light Up the NEW World Live-Action Film

19/5/2016

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Tōta Matsuda actor Sota Aoyama in Death Note: Light Up the NEW World
Warner Bros Japan has confirmed that Sota Aoyama will return to play Tōta Matsuda in the latest live-action Death Note movie, due for release in October 2016.

This will be considered fantastic news by many fans, for whom he IS Matsuda in any live-action capacity.

Aoyama last wore the face of that young, irrepressibly enthusiastic and famously foolish police officer ten years ago, featuring in the cast of Death Note (2006) and Death Note: The Last Name (2006). 

The role also earned him a place in the spotlight starring in Spin-Off Matsuda - a movie short, little known outside Japan, released in conjunction with L: Change the World (2008).

It seems that this live action Matsuda is a glutton for punishment, as a decade on from all that trauma, he's pictured apparently back on the Kira Task Force taking on another six Death Note owners scattered across the world.

Though his presence could also be in a mere advisory/consultancy role.  It's impossible to tell from a couple of still photographs, issued as teasers without context (see below).

The news that Sota Aoyama is reprising his Death Note acting role comes on the back of two other announcements, similarly regarding actors familiar from the first movies.  Erika Toda is also on her way back - signing up to return to her role as Misa Amane - while Shidou Nakamura will be voicing the newer, darker, scarier CGI shingami Ryuk. All in glorious continuity of those earlier, decade old Death Note films.

Death Gods aside, Matsuda constitutes the only remaining person privy to insider information about Kira the first time around and able to share it now. It can be presumed that Ryuk won't be taking sides, finding it more amusing (and diverting) to observe the action as entertainment from the sidelines.

While in the movie timeline, Misa's memories of the whole Kira case (give or take her love for Light Yagami) were wiped at the end of the last main instalment.

Sota Aoyama's Matsuda in Death Note (2016) Movie Stills

Death Note Counter Measure Headquarters Special Team Death Note Light Up the NEW World 2016
Sota Aoyama's Tōta Matsuda is seen amongst those watching Wammy detective Ryūzaki (Sousuke Ikematsu) highlight something seemingly perturbing on a computer screen.  Also looking on, wearing varying expressions of shock and concern, are police Kira archivist, investigator and expert Tsukuru Mishima (Masahiro Higashide) and his colleague within the Death Note Countermeasure Headquarters Special Team, Shō Nanase (Mina Fujii).  Plus two others - anybody recognize the gentlemen flanking this ensemble?
Death Note Counter Measure Headquarters Special Team
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.
Death Note Countermeasure Headquarters Special Team
Death Note 2016 Task Force HQ desk Tsukuru Mishima
Someone's desk.  In shades of black, white and just a hint of orangey-red.  Probably belonging to one of the pair here getting all testosterone-y with each other - Ryūzaki and Tsukuru Mishima.  Actually, undoubtedly so, as one of the pictures above shows Mishima standing behind that desk, as he almost is here too.
Ryūzaki and Tsukuru Mishima Death Note Light Up the NEW World 2016 movie still
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.
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Light Up the New World - Death Note 2016 Gains an Official Title for Release

22/4/2016

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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:
Death Note: Light Up the New World first poster
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.
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Tsukuru Mishima: New Photographs from the Set of Death Note 2016

31/3/2016

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A couple of officially released stills from the Japanese live action Death Note 2016 have been circulating about the internet.

They depict actor Masahiro Higashide in his role as Tsukuru Mishima, main investigator with the Death Note Counter Measure Headquarters Special Team.

This was a sub-set of the Japanese law enforcement authority that was created by Soichiro Yagami in the aftermath of events shown in the previous movies.  Following his death - sometime during the intervening years - Mishima took the lead.

His character is known as such an expert on all things related to Shinigami notebooks that his nickname on the force is Death Note Otaku.  How many of us have previously claimed that particular accolade as our own? 

While we have no context for the pictures, we do know that six Death Notes will be falling on the Earth in this next movie.  Presumably that accounts for the grim expression worn by their chief researcher, investigator and all round know it all.

Perhaps in the image below, he has found some kind of lead revealing the enormity of the task ahead, or else demonstrating the horrors that one or more Death Note owners are set to unleash.

Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata have intimated that this will be the darkest Death Note story yet, one which puts firmly in the shade that surrounding Light Yagami.

Death Note 2016 (working title) will be released in Japanese theatres on October 29th 2016, just in time for Halloween.  There is no word as yet about the live-action movie being subbed or dubbed for foreign audiences. Though we can assume that will be a thing, given time and patience.

Any thoughts on it at this juncture?


Images courtesy of Warner Brothers Japan.
Death Note 2016 Masahiro Higashide Tsukuru Mishima
Masahiro Higashide in his role as Tsukuru Mishima Death Note 2016
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Death Note Movie Makers Gearing Up for Filming

6/2/2016

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We have two Death Note films coming this year.  The proof is in the Tweeting.
(Incidentally the actual date for Japan's Death Note 2016 movie release is September 13th 2016, according to IMDb.)

Japanese movie Death Note 2016 starts filming

'Death Note 2016 begins! Thank you' reads this Tweet
from the official Japanese Warner Bros account
on January 6th 2016 - presumably referring to filming
Meanwhile, over on the official Death Note 2016 website:
Death Note 2016 lead actors
 The recently announced stars of Death Note 2016 - Sōsuke Ikematsu, Masahiro Higashide and Masaki Suda - have been commenting on their new roles.

Masahiro, who is playing Death Note researcher and investigator Tsukuru Mishima, notes that he's grown up knowing this story.  Therefore it's difficult not to be influenced by what has gone before; nor to avoid the pressure in getting it right.

He views the latest story as a three-way, intertwined battle between geniuses. He is enjoying making the movie and hopes that we enjoy watching it, including those discovering the story for the first time now.

'New L' Sōsuke - aka Ryūzaki - is also feeling the pressure: to live up to the legacy left by Ken'ichi Matsuyama in the earlier movies. He feels excited about filming and notes that every day the cast are directed in exceeding the standard of the day before.

This new Death Note story, he feels, contains the central message that human beings are weak and foolish creatures.

Masaki equally remembers when he was in the audience watching earlier Death Note live-action films. That makes it all the more thrilling to be starring in one now.

He sees in his own legacy a hint of Mello and Near in the original manga, insofar as his cyber-terrorist Kira worshipper character Yūgi Shion - plus the parts played by the other two - represent the successors, heirs or children of Light and L.  This is the movie equivalent of a Death Note second arc.

He hopes that their 'second half' story will surpass expectations laid down by the first wave of Japanese live-action Death Note movies ten years ago.

Personally they would have had my (tentative) vote straight out, if they'd just HAD Mello in one of these live-action movies.  And I don't mean disguised as a young schoolgirl.  We're all looking at you, L: Change the World and Maki.
Reading Death Note Adam Wingard Director

US live action Death Note director Adam Wingard,
re-reading the Black Edition,
as per his Tweet on December 10th 2015
Adam followed his with this Tweet, also dated December 10th 2015:
Death Note director Adam Wingard Black Edition luggage Tweet Dec 10th 2015
Death Note Black Edition I
Death Note Black Edition II
The complete Black Edition Death Note, as read by Adam Wingard,
is available in our Death Note Books and Manga Store

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Live Action Movie Cast of Death Note 2016 Revealed

4/2/2016

0 Comments

 
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:

Ryūzaki


Also known as L mark 2 (or should that be mark 4, seeing as we have to account for Near, Mello and Matt), Ryūzaki is a world famous, top-class detective lured into the spotlight by the emergence of no less than SIX Death Notes.

Shinigami are getting very careless these days. Or bored.

However, Ryūzaki isn't merely a Wammy kid grown old enough to get chucked onto the front line.  Like all the rest.  He's legitimately an heir of L, bloodline, genes and all.

No, this isn't a secret love-child that we've uncovered here. It's much worse than that.

Apparently L left behind a sample of his DNA, so that he might be cloned, into a global detective, called Ryūzaki.

This new Death Note character will be played by Sōsuke Ikematsu, known to the cinema going public as Higen in The Last Samurai and Kazuhiko Shingai in MOZU.
Sōsuke Ikematsu as Ryuzaki in Death Note 2016
Masahiro Higashide as Tsukuru Mishima in Death Note 2016 movie

Tsukuru Mishima


Ryūzaki is aided and abetted in this endeavour - and no doubt given the heads up re a sudden epidemic of Death Notes - by police researcher and archivist Tsukuru Mishima.

The spiritual (as opposed to genealogical) successor to Soichiro Yagami and his crew, Tsukuru Mishima specializes in artefacts from the Kira case that went before.

Ten years previously to be precise.

Therefore the investigator is well placed to recognize the reality of each new notebook dropped by a Death God in various locations around the globe.  He becomes the go to expert for all other authorities within stricken nations.

Or more likely, he does whatever Ryūzaki ends up directing him to do.

Tsukuru Mishima will be played by Masahiro Higashide.  The actor's other roles include Hideo Shimada in Parasyte and Kō Mabuchi in Ao Haru's Ride.

Yūgi Shion

And what's a Death Note story without a Kira?  Or in this instance, a Kira worshipping cyber-terrorist and/or hacker named Yūgi Shion.

Me and popular media don't often agree upon what constitutes a 'cyber-terrorist', but this time we may be in accord. 

Yūgi Shion uses his computing skills and internet presence to not only locate all fallen shinigami notebooks, but also has some role in co-ordinating events.

He may or not be the individual already announced - in a snippet from the Death Note 2016 movie trailer - as being cloned from a shard of Light Yagami DNA.  Though how anyone got that is anybody's guess, particularly as they had to get through Near to reach the corpse.

Unless it was Near.  In fact, where is Near in this movie plotline now?!

Oh.  Movies.  He's an infant maths genius just entering Wammy's House as L was killed.  Not manga instigator of the Yellow Box pwning at all.  He should be just about old enough to be, well, Ryūzaki by now. Because the new L isn't a ten year old either.

Back to the actual plot - Masaki Suda will be playing Yūgi Shion; an actor also known as Karma Akabane in Assassination Classroom and Kuranosuke Koibuchi in Kuragehime.
Masaki Suda as Yūgi Shion Death Note 2016
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?
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