Death Note Logo

Death Note is a Japanese media franchise that started in 2003. The initial manga was authored by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata. The full manga consists of 108 chapters, serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump between 2003 and 2006. It was then accompanied by an eponymous 37-episode anime, created by Tetsurō Araki and following a similar plot. Death Note universe has millions of fans across the world due to its unique style and catching story.

Meaning and history

Light Yagami is a highly educated student who hates corruption, violence, and criminality and desires to create a utopian world with the rule of good. He doesn’t know how to improve the world until he finds a mysterious black notebook that kills anybody whose name is written in it.

It leads him to an idea to become ‘the God of the New World’ with no moralless people by typing their names in this book, called Death Note, which then results in a worldwide slaughter of criminals who die in unexpected and unexplainable events.

In this background, the mass media proposes that there is a single person standing behind the deaths and nicknames him ‘Kira’ (‘Killer’ from Japanese). Light starts receiving attention from the special forces, and it leads him to new ideas and occasions, described in the further story.

What is Death Note?
Death Note is a Japanese manga, anime, and film line that began with a manga authored by Tsugumi Ohba and pictured by Takeshi Obata in 2003. The plot tells us the story of Light Yagami, a remarkably educated young man who wants to build a world without violence, crime, and cruelty. One day he stumbles across a mysterious black notebook called ‘Death Note’. He learns that this notebook can almost instantly kill any name mentioned in it by its owner. Realizing the power of this notebook, Light chooses to form a utopian world, simply by killing all marginalized people, and becoming ‘the God of the New World’.

2003 – 2006

The manga utilized a logotype showing the nameplate in a custom uppercase font. Most of the letters in this wordmark are vertically oriented, but the ‘a’ and ‘t’ characters are laid on a side, so they look horizontally oriented. What’s also notable, the first ‘e’ symbol faces left, not right as usual.

2006 – today

The anime and the further movies each had another typeface, presenting the wordmark as well. The letters here all look vertical, and they look thin, scribbled, and even horrific.

Font

The manga’s text caption has an uppercase typeface, presenting semibold letters with a slim contour. Many letters have prominent sharp serifs. If fact, it’s a classic typeface, looking like the slightly modified Times New Roman. As for the anime’s nameplate, here the designers chose extra slim uppercase letterforms with somewhat wavy lines. The ‘t’ look rather like crests, while the ‘h’ has its central bar coming out of the letter’s borders. Finally, the ‘d’ and ‘o’ symbols each contain a small dot centrally inside.

Color

The branders of both the anime and the manga colored the inscription white, so it fits the dark backgrounds of the posters and manga covers.