If you wanted the anime version of the Death Note, then you might already be aware of the basic rules, but their are also some rules that never came up in the main series.
Mentioning these important rules could have brought some interesting twisters and more episodes that fans arent aware of. So, what additional conditions from the Death Note are you absolutely desperate to find out about?
In this article, we will talk about all the important rules which were not mentioned in the series as well as the basic common rules as well.
Death Note Rules That You Had No Idea Existed
Misspelled Names
Here is my understanding of what I find to be the most unclear guidelines. If you accidentally misspell a name four times, the Death Note won’t work, and if you do it on purpose, you’ll be the one to die. And no matter how many times you get it wrong, the victim will still die when their name is ultimately typed correctly, so there’s no point in trying to outsmart the Death Note.
- The four-times-misspelled name on intentionally doesn’t get out of a Death Note.
- If the victim’s name is misspelt four times, the Death Note will no longer work.
- A person is safe from the Death Note’s clutches if its possessor misspells their name four times inadvertently.
- However, the Death Note’s owner will Die if the name is misspelled on purpose four times.
These regulations were probably put in place to discourage users from trying to save others; after all, you wouldn’t live long enough to see the benefits of intentionally misspelling someone’s name, and even if you did, you’d still eventually die.
Writing a Name More Than Once
None of these regulations are discussed in the show proper, though the first one is given considerable screen time in Japanese live-action movies (specifically Death Note: The Last Name).
- If two or more people write the same name on separate Death Notes within 0.06 seconds of each other, it is considered that they wrote their names at the same time, and neither Death Note will take effect.
- If the same name appears on more than one Death Note, only the one that was completed first will be valid when the time comes.
To protect himself from Kira’s potential assassination, Detective L enters his name in the Death Note to expire 23 days in the future.
In passing, I think the first rule is poorly expressed because it uses an example in which a name appears on more than two notes (three in this case), although I think it’s meant to show what occurs when a name appears on two or more.
Age Limitations
Here are some strange regulations surrounding age; basically, you’re immune from the Death Note up to age two or past 124—not very reassuring.
- Humans aged 124 and up are immune to the Death Note’s lethal effects.
- Children younger than 780 days old are immune to The Death Note.
- The Death Note is not to be given to anyone younger than six years of age according to the human calendar by the deity of death (Shinigami).
While it is forbidden for a shinigami to give a death note to a child under the age of six, another law states that anyone of any age can use a Death Note, so if a youngster does manage to get their hands on one, they should be able to use it properly.
Shinigami Killing Limitations
Shinigami have various advantages over regular people, including invulnerability to Death Notes and to physical harm.
- The owner of the Death Note can only be killed by a god of death who has given their Death Note to a human.
- A god of death who lives in the world of gods of death can’t kill the person who has the Death Note.
- Also, if a god of death comes to the human world to kill the person who has the Death Note, he or she won’t be able to do so.
However, even the gods of death have their limits, and the foregoing regulations make it clear that only Shinigami who were already present in the human world can kill Death Note owners, and even then, only if doing so wasn’t their primary motivation for entering the realm.
Memory-Regaining Limits
In the main series, Light erases his own memories by giving up ownership to keep people from suspecting him. He eventually gets his notebook back and goes back to being Kira. This is a good idea, but we can see here that users can only switch ownership and memories in this way up to six times.
- When you lose the Death Note, you will forget what it is. You can get this memory back, though, if you either get ownership again or touch the Death Note.
- Each Death Note lets you do this up to 6 times.
- If the person uses the Death Note more than 6 times, they will not be able to remember how to use it again. Instead, they will have to use it without knowing how to.
You can do more, but if you do, when you take ownership of the Death Note for the seventh time, you don’t get your old memories back, even though it’s unlikely that someone would lose ownership that many times.
Breaking the 23-Day Rule
The Death Note normally has a limit of 23 days for setting someone’s death. There is an exception to this law, however, that would allow you to murder someone with a chronic illness.
- If you write “die of disease” with the name of a specific disease but no time, the 23-day rule won’t apply if it takes longer than 24 days for the person to die. Instead, the person will die at a good time for the disease.
The difficulty in employing diseases to rapidly kill someone is due to a previous guideline that states “there must be a sufficient length of time for the disease to progress.”
I’m curious if, by exploiting this sickness loophole, Death Note users may potentially use their victims for longer than the 23 days allowed by the 23-day guideline. This isn’t made clear, unfortunately.
Inability to Alter Immediate Deaths
This simple piece of information safeguards notebook users from deleting characters with fewer than 12 minutes to live. This seems unlikely to arise; if someone is going to die soon anyhow, there’s no point in killing them yourself.
- Human math says that you can’t kill a person with less than 12 minutes to live.
However, it is possible (though highly improbable) for a strategy based on this criterion to fail because only Death Note users who have sacrificed half their lifespan for the Shinigami eyes would know whether their victim is due to die.
Consider the time that Light Yagami met Naomi Misora. If his attempt at writing her name had failed, she would have had an additional 12 minutes to live, time she could have utilised to spread the word about who Kira was (Light revealed himself to her after writing her name).
Shinigami Reproduction
If you’ve ever wondered, this rule says that Shinigami, even though they have gender, can’t mate with humans or even with each other (how exactly they come into being is never mentioned).
Surprisingly, the Death Note wiki says that “despite this, Shinigami may still have feelings for the opposite sex,” which means that they can still date.
Shinigami Government
We don’t know much about Shinigami society, but here we learn about their laws and punishments. Shinigami can’t kill humans without a Death Note, and if they use a Death Note to make a human live longer, they die (which goes against their deathly nature).
- In the world of gods of death, there are rules. If a god of death breaks the law, the punishments start at Level 8 and go all the way down to Level 1, plus the Extreme Level. For punishments with a severity level above 3, the god of death will be killed. One example of the Extreme Level is killing a person without using the Death Note.
Rule says they can be killed if they break a rule, but there aren’t many details about this (after all, Shinigami are invulnerable to physical attacks, at least by humans).
6-Notebook Limit
Six is a recurring number in the Death Note laws (such as the requirement to change a death’s information within six minutes and forty seconds), and here it occurs as the maximum number of Death Notes allowed in the human world at once (not including the notebooks maintained by Shinigami).
- One god of death can only give Death Notes to up to three people at a time.
- In the human world, there can only be 6 Death Notes at a time. Obviously, the god of death’s Death Note doesn’t count. This means that only the six gods of death who have given humans their Death Notes can stay in the human world.
- One god of death can give out up to 6 Death Notes. For example, he or she could give 3 people each 2 Death Notes.
- So, one person could have all six Death Notes.
Until one of the previous notebooks is destroyed or returned to the Shinigami domain, the seventh one won’t be of any use.
Basic Death Note Rules, Which were Written
“THE HUMAN WHOSE NAME IS WRITTEN IN THIS NOTE SHALL DIE.”
Those whose names appear in Death Note are guaranteed to meet an untimely end. Unless the owner of the death note says otherwise, the cause of death will be presumed to be a heart attack. Light, who at first believed the Death Note was a bad joke, used it to kill a criminal holding hostages in the anime and manga. Light’s life was irrevocably altered when they died of an unexpected heart attack.
“THIS NOTE WILL NOT TAKE EFFECT UNLESS THE WRITER HAS THE PERSON’S FACE IN THEIR MIND WHEN WRITING HIS/HER NAME. THEREFORE, PEOPLE SHARING THE SAME NAME WILL NOT BE AFFECTED.”
This rule is a crucial story aspect in the first Death Note and explains why writing a name like “John Smith” won’t kill everyone with that name. The Death Note can’t do its job unless a name has a face associated with it. So, you need to concentrate intensely on the person’s face when you write their name. If you don’t do this, nothing will happen.
“AFTER WRITING THE CAUSE OF DEATH, DETAILS OF THE DEATH SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN THE NEXT 6 MINUTES AND 40 SECONDS.”
When Light first assumes the identity of “Kira,” he puts the Death Note to the test by attempting a variety of unusual and intriguing murders. He calculates how long it takes when this occurs.
“THE HUMAN WHO TOUCHES THE DEATH NOTE CAN RECOGNIZE THE IMAGE AND VOICE OF ITS ORIGINAL OWNER, A GOD OF DEATH, EVEN IF THE HUMAN IS NOT THE OWNER OF THE NOTE.”
The original Shinigami owners of the Death Note will appear if you touch it, which can be rather frightening if you haven’t been properly introduced to them first. In the first episode of the Death Note anime, a recurring criminal learns the hard way how precise the Death Note can be when Light conducts extreme experiments with it.
“THE PERSON IN POSSESSION OF THE DEATH NOTE IS POSSESSED BY A GOD OF DEATH, ITS ORIGINAL OWNER, UNTIL THEY DIE.”
In the original anime and manga, Light’s Shinigami friend Ryuk stays by his side until the bitter end. To put it mildly, they have a tumultuous relationship.
“GODS OF DEATH, THE ORIGINAL OWNERS OF THE DEATH NOTE, DO NOT DO, IN PRINCIPLE, ANYTHING WHICH WILL HELP OR PREVENT THE DEATHS IN THE NOTE. A GOD OF DEATH HAS NO OBLIGATION TO COMPLETELY EXPLAIN HOW TO USE THE NOTE OR RULES WHICH WILL APPLY TO THE HUMAN WHO OWNS IT UNLESS ASKED.”
At first, when Ryuk comes to Light, Light presses him for specifics regarding the note. Light is left to try out the Note’s capabilities without Ryuk’s help because he has no duty to do so.
“A GOD OF DEATH CAN EXTEND THEIR OWN LIFE BY PUTTING A NAME ON THEIR OWN NOTE, BUT HUMANS CANNOT.”
It was revealed in the original series that Shinigami, who aren’t immortal but can watch over the living world, can increase their own longevity by utilising their Death Note to end human lives. Because of distant love, one destitute Shinigami sacrifices their own life to save the life of a human. By the way, it turns out that human was Misa, a significant character who shows up a little later in the anime/manga.
“THE HUMAN WHO BECOMES THE OWNER OF THE DEATH NOTE CAN, IN EXCHANGE OF HALF HIS/HER REMAINING LIFE, GET THE EYEBALLS OF THE GOD OF DEATH WHICH WILL ENABLE HIM/HER TO SEE A HUMAN’S NAME AND REMAINING LIFE SPAN WHEN LOOKING THROUGH THEM.”
This is a very large one. In an early episode, Ryuk reveals to Light a “hack” that can reveal a person’s name just by gazing into their eyes. This is the price a Shinigami must pay for his eyesight: fifty percent of his remaining life span. Light is tempted by this hack because his greatest enemy is the mysterious L, who goes under several aliases. It would seem that not even the Death Note is without its restrictions.
The series builds to a climax where Light gives in to the want to utilise Shinigami eyes.
“THE CONDITIONS FOR DEATH WILL NOT BE REALIZED UNLESS IT IS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE FOR THAT HUMAN OR IT IS REASONABLY ASSUMED TO BE CARRIED OUT BY THAT HUMAN.”
Strangely, Death Notes do not have unlimited power. In the show, Light put the Death Note to the test by recording the details of a single Japanese prisoner’s death by jumping off the Eiffel Tower. It was a failure. Meanwhile, terminal illnesses tend to progress naturally over time.
“ONE PAGE TAKEN FROM THE DEATH NOTE, OR EVEN A FRAGMENT OF THE PAGE, CONTAINS THE FULL EFFECTS OF THE NOTE.”
Due to this rule, Light is able to destroy his foes in pivotal moments without having to lug around his entire weapon of destruction. Light puts bits of Death Note paper in a bag of chips to conceal them when he’s being watched.
“THE INDIVIDUALS WHO LOSE THE OWNERSHIP OF THE DEATH NOTE WILL ALSO LOSE THEIR MEMORY OF THE USAGE OF THE DEATH NOTE. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT HE WILL LOSE ALL THE MEMORY FROM THE DAY HE OWNED IT TO THE DAY HE LOSES POSSESSION, BUT MEANS HE WILL ONLY LOSE THE MEMORY INVOLVING THE DEATH NOTE.”
Towards the end of the original Death Note anime and manga, Light deliberately gives up control of his Death Note and, along with it, his memory of ever having been Kira. Light took a risk in order to throw off suspicion, but his efforts were rewarded.
“THE NUMBER OF PAGES OF THE DEATH NOTE WILL NEVER RUN OUT.”
In case you’re wondering, it’s a never ending book.
“IT IS USELESS TRYING TO ERASE NAMES WRITTEN IN THE DEATH NOTE WITH ERASERS OR WHITE-OUT.”
Light learns a valuable lesson at the end of the first series: don’t tamper with the Death Note.
