It appears fans of the hit manga and anime Death Note may now have something exciting to look forward to, and apparently it’s going to involve some singing and maybe dancing as well. Yes, while it may not be what you would expect from the visually stunning yet dark-themed series, the world of Death Note will be recreated on stage next year as a musical! Although the popular manga has already been brought to us in several forms, including a TV anime and multiple live action feature-length films, seeing the characters, especially the completely non-human looking shinigami (death gods), come to life and sing on stage should definitely prove interesting.
They already have a poster for the musical featuring somewhat sinister-looking artwork . If you’re not familiar with the series, the eerie shadow depicted in the middle is Ryuku, the death god who happens to love apples and whose “Death Note” the protagonist Light Yagami finds. Light’s life is turned upside down when he discovers that the notebook allows you to kill anyone whose name and face you know.
image: Musical Death Note Twitter page (@dnmusical)
The musical, which is scheduled to come to Nissei Theater in Tokyo next April, will feature music by Frank Wildhorn, who is known as the composer of the Broadway musical Jekyll & Hyde and will be produced by Tamiya Kuriyama, who just last year received the prestigious Japanese Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon (shiju hosho) for his work in theater.
▼It was also announced that actors Kenji Urai (left) and Hayato Kakizawa (right) have been double cast for the lead role of Light. It should be great just seeing either one of these good-looking men act and sing on stage.
▼Death Note already has a huge fan base, originally as a manga that was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine …
▼ … and in other forms as well. Below is a soundtrack from the TV anime.
image: AMAZON JP
▼There have also been several movie adaptations, two of which starred actor Tatsuya Fujiwara as Light.
The films actually did quite well at the box office in Japan, and it seems the public thought they did a pretty good job of recreating the manga, especially since it couldn’t have been easy to bring Ryuku the death god to life on screen, so the musical may have high expectations to meet.
▼Here’s what Ryuku looked like in the anime. You can see recreating him in the movie would have been a challenge.
image: AMAZON JP
And although it looks like details such as the performance schedule and ticket pricing information have not yet been released, they have announced that the musical production will also be making its way to Korea, at the LG Arts Center in Seoul!
So, fans interested in experiencing the Death Note world with a bit of music may want to keep an eye out for more information as it becomes available in the coming months. Oh, and if you’re worried about the dark tone of the series being expressed as a musical, don’t worry … they even managed to turn the story of Sweeney Todd into a successful musical after all!
▼Now, we suppose the important question is, if you had a Death Note, would you actually use it …?
image: gaia online
Source: Musical Death Note website (Japanese), Cinema Today (Japanese)