How the New 'Death Note' Manga Fits in the Franchise Timeline

Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's iconic Death Note manga has returned with a special one-off volume, Death Note Short Stories, that even includes some tales that have never before been printed in the U.S.

The collection was released by Viz Media on Tuesday, May 10 and it contains six stories in total, each set in a different period in the franchise timeline.

Death Note follows Light Yagami, a high school student who comes to possess the titular notebook that allows him to kill anyone in the world, in any way and at any time, by just knowing their name and picturing their face.

Using the guise of "Kira" to conduct these murders, Light becomes obsessed with the idea he is ridding the world of evil and does everything in his power to stay on top, including engaging in a tense game of cat-and-mouse with genius detective L, who is trying to discover Kira's identity.

Here is how the tales in Death Note Short Stories fit into the timeline.

How the New 'Death Note' Manga Fits in the Franchise Timeline

Fans of the manga may well be familiar with the 2006 Japanese live-action films that adapt the story, Death Note and Death Note 2: The Last Name, which stars Tatsuya Fujiwara as Light and Kenichi Matsuyama as L.

These were followed by the 2016 sequel Death Note: Light Up The New World, which had an original story set 10 years after the events of the second film and sees the police try and track down five of Kira's successors using Death Notes.

Two of the one-shot stories featured in the special manga feature similar stories, as the focus is placed on a new generation of Death Note users, an unnamed protagonist in chapter "c-Kira," and Tanaka Minoru in "a-Kira."

"c-Kira" is set three years after the end of the original manga series and sees Japan be plagued by numerous unexplained deaths of the elderly that mark the return of Kira, but L's successor Near deems it an "uninteresting" case and quickly solves it.

"a-Kira" follows directly on from "c-Kira" and is set in two time periods, 2013 and 2019, and it sees Shinigami (or Death God) Ryuk as he gives a Death Note to Tanaka to relieve his boredom in much the same way he did with Light in the original series.

Ohba and Obata first released "a-Kira" in February 2020, and it was read over one million times in its first week of release alone, while "c-Kira" was published in 2008 in Japan.

Another chapter features several Four-Panel comic strips that star Light, L, Ryuk and Light's love interest Misa Amane in a number of amusing scenarios.

Originally published in Japan between 2004 and 2005, the Four-Panel chapter is set within the timeframe before the events of chapter 58, which is in volume 7 of the Death Note manga series.

Two chapters in Death Note Short Stories center around L, and both are narrated by his handler Watari.

The first, "L—One Day" follows a day in the life of the detective and the second, "L—Wammy's House," explores the character's origins and how he came to be in Watari's care. Both L-centric chapters are set before the events of Death Note.

"Taro Kagami" is the final chapter in the short stories collection and it focuses on its eponymous character, a 13-year-old boy who comes across Ryuk's Death Note and accidentally kills his school bullies after mistaking it for a diary.

It is not clear when exactly the chapter is set within the Death Note universe, but Kagami's adult self —shown seven years after the events of the chapter— has been likened to the original series' supporting character Teru Mikami, who is an avid supporter of Kira.

The short story was originally published in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in August 2003, meaning it came before the Death Note series as that only began to be serialized in the publication in Japan from December 2003.

Death Note Short Stories is out now via Viz Media, and it is available to purchase either digitally or as a physical manga.