The musical Death Note solves the anime’s biggest problem

Obituary follows a high school student named Light, who happens to be the smartest person in the world. One day, Light comes into possession of a notebook called the Death Note, which allows a person to kill anyone in the world by simply writing their name down. Light can also use it to summon a shinigami demon named Ryuk, who seems to be primarily interested in causing chaos and mischief to disrupt his boring immortality. The young genius hopes to deliver deadly justice that the police cannot, but the power soon goes to his head. He decides that a world that remains peaceful through his killings is best for everyone, so he uses the Death Note to take over the world through fear under the altar ego Kira. Meanwhile, the other smartest person in the world, another high school student named L, is tasked by the police to uncover Kira’s identity in hopes of stopping his killing spree.

The Obituary anime was first released in 2007 and proved to be a canary in the coal mine for the coming Dark Knight-ification of pop culture. Especially in the earlier episodes, studio Madhouse took all the traditional trappings of a shonen anime and used them to tell a more intricate, darker, and more serious story than almost anything else coming out at the time. The main characters, clearly in high school, still told their next move in a still image. But the story itself felt like a grounded, adult mystery more in the vein of a movie like Seven then a show like Dragon Ball.

Image: Viz Media

There’s nothing wrong with taking a slightly silly premise seriously, and in the series’ best moments, director Tetsurō Araki fully earns that seriousness.

The first 15 episodes revolve around Light and L going toe-to-toe, and are as fun and exciting as almost any anime. The whole thing is set up like a chess match, with each player setting traps, anticipating their opponent’s feints, and planning their countermoves three or four steps in advance. It’s twisty, fun, and a little bit ridiculous in just the right proportions.

Things got out of whack as the series raced toward its conclusion. The battle between Light and L added so many characters, corporations, rules, moves and countermoves that the stakes became muddy. And as often happens at the end of mysteries, characters begin to make uncharacteristic mistakes dictated by the needs of the plot and as a betrayal of their previous cleverness — which is exactly what happens to L.

The back and forth movement of L and Light is the heart and soul of Obituary. When the anime dropped L, it never really came to life. After a five-year timeskip, two new characters are brought in to investigate Kira, but neither really feels like a compelling match for Light, leading the show to a disappointing conclusion that cheapens everything that came before it.

Photo: James Dittiger/Netflix

Netflix’s first live-action version Obituary (“first” because there is supposedly another one on the way from the makers of Strange things) has avoided this in part by loosely adapting the story and cutting out the post-L story entirely, making it seem more like a high school movie in both plot and tone. In the Hollywood version, Light (Nat Wolff) lacks most of his ambition, is certainly no genius, and instead uses the Death Note primarily to exact revenge on bullies and kill a few criminals. The gruesome activity still prompts L (LaKeith Stanfield) to take up the case.

While the American version is generally derided by fans, it’s… not terrible. Director Adam Wingard leans into the inherent silliness of Obituary‘s premise and refuses to take the material too seriously, which is a welcome change from the perpetually serious anime. But this version also fails to bring Light and L’s confrontation to a satisfying conclusion, opting for a ridiculous set-piece finale instead of a steely battle of wits between the two leads.

And that brings us to the musical. Originally written as a concept album in 2014 with music by Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde), lyrics by Jack Murphy (The civil War), and a book by Ivan Menchell, the Obituary musical has since been performed a handful of times around the world, with the most recent version hitting the West End in 2023. And it’s great. Musical theatre is a perfect venue for the kind of internal monologues that shonen anime has always relied on, and the songwriting ensures that it retains the slightly more adult feel that the anime is aiming for.

The musical version is a fairly faithful adaptation of the first 15 episodes of the anime, with Wildhorn taking rock opera songs from the anime. Light’s early frustration with the legal system, L and Light’s witty tennis matchAnd Ryuk’s general amusement with humanity — complete with an incredible demon costume recently worn by Broadway legend Adam Pascal. The show ends by centering the story around L and Light, where it really should have been all along. This version gives L and Light a final confrontation that they are denied in the anime, with L being certain that Light is Kira shortly before being killed via the Death Note. After L dies, Ryuk laments that his life will be boring now that Light has no one to challenge him, so the demon takes out his own personal Death Note and writes Light’s name as the latter begs for his own life.

It’s a somber ending, to be sure, but a completely ironic way to expose Light’s arrogance in his moment of triumph. Just when he’s decided he’s now a god on Earth, something truly supernatural decides to remind him where his power came from, ending him in a flash. It’s a choice that cuts through all the cleverness and plotting of the story up to this point, a reminder that at the end of the day, no matter how smart any of the characters are, they’re still only human. At the same time, it lets Ryuk say out loud what fans and viewers have already suspected, there is no story without both L and Light. Any version of this story that doesn’t pit them against each other isn’t worth telling.

The only problem with this version of the story, of course, is that it only exists in a musical that few people ever get to see. Luckily, you can listen to the concept album recording on YouTubeand if you stop the anime at episode 15, you can imagine the better ending. Because what else is there Obituary then killing something a little too early in the service of the greater whole?