Rebirth (Death Note episode)

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Rebirth
Light gazing upon his Death Note
Episode Length:	24 minutes
Episode Code:	01
Episode Airdate:	October 3, 2006
Chapter:	001

"Rebirth" (「新生」, "Shinsei"^?) is the first episode of the Death Note TV series originally aired in Japan on October 3, 2006.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The opening starts with a fly past an old, barren, desert-like plain, moving through a tunnel-like struture of, presumably, bones. As an eerie soundtrack of coral oohs and aahs. Ryuk is sitting on the edge of a hill, overlooking the Realm of Shinigami. Shinigamis are gambling with skulls, and two (skulls) fall on their sides. One of the Shinigami asks Ryuk to join them in their game, but he refuses. Light is seen bored in class, and other students are chatting among themselves. The teacher requests Light to translate an English sentence to Japanese, and Light does so with perfection. As Lights walks home, news is being heard to be reporting about a death of a woman in her thirties and an arrest of a 35 year old man for rape and murder. Then both Light and Ryuk's face come together, agreeing the world is rotten.

Light, again, bored in class, then sees a book drop from the sky to land on the floor. After school ends, Light walks past the place the book dropped at and hesitates awhile before going to get it. He sees the book with a title written as Death Note. He opens it, reads the instruction on it, and laughs at "The human whose name is written in this note, shall die", thinking it stupid, sick and juvenile. He returns the note to its position and walks off, then after a while, looks back. He then crosses a road to go home, and the note is seen in his bag. He reaches home and reads the full list of instruction on the note in his room, still thinking it was a well thought-out prank. He goes to lie on his bed then suddenly getting up to attempt to write something on the note, then pauses, thinking that if someone died, he would be a murderer.

The news on the TV reports a man holding teachers and students of a school as hostages. They showed the face and the name of the suspect. Light wrote the suspect's name and waits for forty seconds. Just before he switches off the TV, the news reports students and teachers rushing out of the compound and the suspect is dead. Light is shocked and reassures himself that it is a coincidence. His mum then calls him to prepare to go off to prep course. Light thinks that if Death Note is real, he should test it again on a criminal that wasn't too important. He sees his classmate, Sudou, threatening another, Ryu-ji, for money, and thought about killing him, but decides not to touch someone he actually knew. As Light walks off after class, he mused about how the world is filled with people it’s better off without. He sees and hears a man, with his group of friends, harassing a lady. The person’s name is Shibuima Takuo. Light enters a bookshop and writes on the note, different spellings of Shibuima Takuo and the reason for his death to be by accident. The lady escapes and Taku chases after her by motorbike, crashes into a large lorry and dies. Light is stunned but finally realizes the note is real.

Ryuk, in the Shinigami realm, says it’s been five days since he dropped his note to the Human realm and should be about time for him to leave. The Shinigamis are surprised he dropped his note and even more so when he said he dropped it to the Human realm. Ryuk walks down a long staircase to the entrance to the Humans realm, spread his wings and disappeared. Light returns home and passes his result booklet to his anxious mum, who was overjoyed to see her son getting first in examinations, and asked if Light has anything he wanted. Light replied no, because he had gotten what he wanted. As he looked at the names he has written on the note, Ryuk arrives and scares the hell out of Light. Light told Ryuk he has been expecting him. Ryuk is surprised that Light has done so much in only 5 days. Light asks if Ryuk is here to take his soul, and Ryuk tells Light that the note is now property of the Human realm and is now Light’s. If Light should give it to someone else, then Ryuk will erase all his memories of it. There is no penalty for using the note, just that the user may experience torment it may bring and the user can neither go to heaven nor hell. When Light dies, Ryuk will be the one to write Light’s name on the note.

Light’s mum calls to bring up apples for him and Ryuk tells Light that only a person who has touched the note can see and hear him. Ryuk emphasize that he did not choose Light but it happened to land somewhere here and thus the instructions where written in English, the most popular language in the Humans realm. Ryuk also says that he dropped the note because he was bored. Ryuk then goes on to tell Light that Shinigamis nowadays don’t have much to do except to sleep and gamble. If a Shinigami was seen to write a human name on it, they would be scorned at and Shinigamis don’t die even if you write their names on it. Killing humans while in the Shinigami realm is of no fun at all and so thinks its more fun to be in the Human realm. Light says that the best thing about the note is that it kills people with heart attacks if the method is not specified and he has killed the most vicious criminals, attributing it to the drop in rates of atrocity. Soon people all around the globe will know that someone is passing sentences on the bad guys. Light was bored, therefore he killed the criminals and wants to accomplish the task of eliminating evil doers from earth, himself being the god of the new world. Ryuk finds humans interesting.