Warning: this entry contains Death Note spoilers.
Manga pilot chapters serve to test the waters for a possible new series, and often provide readers with a glimpse of what to expect from the series. Despite this, pilots can often be starkly different from the final product in many ways, from the setting to how the characters are depicted.
This time, I will look at Death Note's pilot, which shows what might have happened if someone very different from Light had received the death note.
Synopsis
The pilot begins with Ryuk, a shinigami, leaving the shinigami's realm in search of the Death Note he lost in the human world. The other shinigami mock him for his carelessness, noting that's why he's still a C-Rank shinigami. It's unclear what the ranking means exactly, but it fits with Ryuk canonically being ranked 6th out of the 13 Shinigami, a middling rank.
The scene switches to the human world, where Taro Kagami, a 13-year-old middle schooler(in his first or second year, depending on when his birthday is), who finds Ryuk's Death Note. By comparison, Light is 17 at the start of the series, and is in the final year of high school. Because of the differences in their education, Light understands the English instructions perfectly, but Tarou only knows what "Note" means, and so uses it as a replacement for his diary.
That evening, Taro feels depressed, and writes that "A-ta Suzuki" and "B-rou Tanaka" bullied him that day, strangely referring to them by their full names. Considering how generic everyone's names are, I can only assume that the abbreviated first names are to avoid resembling anyone. As Taro is called to dinner, Suzuki and Tanaki suffer heart attacks.
The next day, Taro's teacher informs the class that Suzuki and Tanaka died of freak heart attacks, and tells the class that they can go home after the principal speaks with them. On Taro's way home, some other bullies mockingly comment that he's probably glad Suzuki and Tanaka are dead, and while Taro is outwardly appalled, he mentally admits they have a point. They then proceed to bully them.
That evening, Taro looks up what "death" means in a Japanese-to-English dictionary, and writes another diary entry about being bullied in the notebook. When the teacher announces the deaths of the other bullies, Taro realizes that the notebook is real.
Taro rushes home to hide the notebook, and sees Miura, another victim of the bullies, being questioned by two plainclothes police detectives- one in his late middle ages, another in his mid to late twenties.
When Taro returns to his room, he panics upon seeing Ryuk, unlike Light, who expected Ryuk to come. Taro is about to return the notebook to Ryuk, who already has a new one, when his mother arrives to inform him that the police are stopping by. Taro does't initially know that ordinary people can't see Ryuk, but even after learning that, he's still high-strung.
The two detectives from earlier arrive in the home and ask Taro some questions. Taro asks them to verify their identities, and gets them to show them their badges. Ryuk's rather impressed, assuming that Taro wants to memorize their names and faces so he can kill them, but Taro clearly isn't thinking that far ahead.
Taro admits that the dead boys bullied him, and his mother assumes that the police suspect Taro. The older detective, Yamanaka, notes that it's possible that the boys committed suicide, so they want to find out more. Ryuk then informs Taro that heart attacks are the default cause of death when the user doesn't specify a cause (or, as pointed out in canon, if the user tries to set an impossible cause of death).
After the two detectives take their leave, Taro tries to reassure his mother. Meanwhile, Yamanaka tells the younger detective, Takagi, that Taro was acting suspiciously, but concedes Takagi's point that kids are nervous around the police. Yamanaka is convinced that there's a case, even if some cases can't be solved, and, after an epiphany, asks Takagi to work overtime with him.
Yamanaka and Takagi go to the police station's data room to do some research and call up the Takara Bank incident, in which several people died of heart attacks, starting with bank employees and leading to people outside the bank, and the last person committed suicide, a case that Yamanaka believes is similar to their current case. This is rather fascinating, since it implies that other people have received the Death Note before in this universe, whereas Light was the first in canon.
Yamanaka concludes that there will be more deaths, but decides to call it a night for now. Before then, he asks Takagi a question, one that he emphasizes is hypothetical- what he would do if he could kill at will. Takagi's taken aback, so Yamanaka decides to answer first by saying that he'd kill anyone in his way(I assume he means killing other detectives competing with him for promotions), then kill unrelated people to throw his enemies off his trail, then kill the detectives investigating him, which he concludes amounts to killing all detectives. After being surprised that this is what Yamanaka thinks about the Takara bank incident, Takagi belatedly replies that he'd kill evil people in order to create a utopia. Yamanaka cynically remarks that this would require killing most of humanity.
Meanwhile, Taro is having the same thought as Takagi. Ryuk is impressed, but reminds Taro that he has to know the names and faces of his targets. He then gives a list of the rules of the Death Note, which is only a fraction of the ones from canon.
That night, Taro has a nightmare of all the people he killed, and Ryuk says that's only natural for someone who's killed five people in two days. This is in stark contrast to Light, who kills an order of magnitude more people than Taro over the course of several years and stops feeling remorse after the first few chapters.
At this point, the most unbelievable aspect of the pilot comes into play. Ryuk hands Taro a "Death Eraser," which, by erasing the names written in the Death Note, undoes the victims' deaths as long as their bodies haven't been cremated. Compare how in canon, the rules explicitly say that dead people cannot come back to life. Wracked with guilt, Taro readily takes the opportunity.
The next day, Takagi bursts into Yamanaka's office to inform him that the five dead boys have all come back to life. After getting over his initial shock and disbelief, Yamanaka rushes over to their school, since after coming back from the dead, the boys apparently went to school as if nothing was wrong.
Yamanaka and Takagi show the teacher their badges and ask to speak with the boys. Ryuk tells Taro he saw this coming, and the moment the boys confess to bullying Taro, the police will realize he's the culprit. At that point, all five boys suddenly drop dead of heart attacks, followed by the two detectives. Taro is shocked, especially because he left the notebook at home.
As a result of the deaths, school ends up closing, and the news media are abuzz with the story. A panel discussion reveals that the second Death Note user is targeting heinous criminals, and Ryuk mentions that the other user isn't specifying the time or cause of death. It takes Taro a moment to realize, but when he does, Ryuk confirms that he dropped his other Death Note.
On the panel show, a mystery author says that if he were to write a story about this, then he would make the lead a boy with special powers, since the first to die were boys. As the panel suspects bullying, the other panelists die of heart attacks, but not the mystery author, who attended under a pen name. Taro then realizes the other Death Note user's identity and rushes to Miura's house.
Conveniently enough, Miura lives close to Taro and his room is on the first floor, so Taro easily sees him through the window. A panel showing the Death Note reveals that despite claims of heinous criminals dying, Miura has only killed nine people- Suzuki and Tanaka, the other three bullies(only Eiji Ogawa's name is shown), Yamanaka and Takagi(the latter's name is given) and two of the panelists- and is in the process of writing down the mystery author's name. Miura is about to write Taro's name when Taro tackles him and stops him.
Taro talks some sense into Miura, saying that as the one who first killed the boys, he was responsible. Miura is about to write his own name in the Death Note when Taro gets out the Death Eraser and undoes the victims' deaths.
Taro and Miura go to the police to meet with Takagi and Yamanaka, who arrive, relatively nonchalant about having been killed and resurrected. Taro tells them the entire story with one untruth- after killing the five boys the first time, he threw out the notebook and Miura picked it up. Miura then reveals that he'd killed the bullies and the inspector because he was scared of being suspected. Takagi is skeptical but Yamanaka is willing to listen.
Despite confessing to five murders, Taro convinces Yamanaka and Takagi to let him and Miura off the hook as long as they prove that the notebook is real, which they do by having Miura kill Taro and then undo his death. Miura, realizing that a heart attack is probably painful, asks Miura to write a "peaceful death" as his cause of death. After his resurrection, Taro suggests using a death row inmate to prove the note's power, but Yamanaka says that isn't necessary. He has Takagi and the boys swear to secrecy, then burns the notebook. Miura thanks Taro for bringing him to his senses, but Taro walks off without another word, and only gives a cryptic expression when Ryuk asks about how he found the land of the dead.
Seven years later, Taro hears people talking about the "real Death note." Taro reads a magazine article, polling people about the Death Note, and expresses an interest in the survey results.
Now that the plot has been summarized, let's look at the characters.
Characters
Most of the characters in the pilot have rough counterparts in the series.
First, Taro is obviously Light, even if they seem like they couldn't be any more different. Taro is a middle schooler of average intelligence, whereas Light is a genius. Taro almost immediately is overcome with remorse for his killings, whereas Light wrote the first victim's name anticipating that there was some possibility the note was real. Taro readily takes the chance to bring his victims back to life, while Light grows more ruthless and callous over time. Granted, the ending leaves Taro's motives for keeping his notebook ambiguous, but Light is undeniably evil.
As for Yamanaka, his closest equivalent is Soichiro, sans being related to Light. He's an older and experienced detective, and relatively competent for someone dealing with a supernatural mystery, just like how Soichiro is one of the smarter detectives who didn't come from Wammy's Orphanage. Yamanaka is probably the most interesting character in the manga, since he's an intelligent man with a cynical personality, and gets a chance to show that personality more often.
Takagi is somewhat similar to Matsuda, although he's far less naive than Matsuda. He's a bit of an idealist compared to Yamanaka, as shown by his answer to what he'd do with the Death Note, and a bit more emotional to boot, but he's reasonably competent.
Miura is probably a "second Kira" like Higuchi, but it's harder to tell what his motives are. If he's to be believed, he's merely scared of being accused of the killings.
As a bit of trivia, some of the names are recycled for Bakuman. Not only is Takagi both the surname o the younger detective and the writer in "Ashirogi Muto," but Miura shares a surname with Goro Miura, the protagonists' second editor. Hattori from the main series, a Yotsuba board member who ends up being killed by Higuchi, shares his surname with the protagonists' first editor.
Analysis
Now for an analysis of the plot and how the Death Note was used.
The fact that Taro is an ordinary boy with average intelligence, and his rival is a pair of relatively competent but unexceptional detectives makes for a less entertaining battle of wits than between the geniuses Light and L. In fact, the detectives lost the moment they showed Taro and Miura their badges, and only survived as long as they did because Taro wasn't willing to kill them.
The Death Note's secondary functions were highly underutilized compared to canon, since the only time a cause of death was specified was to give Taro a peaceful death. In canon, accidents are used for any deaths Light doesn't want to be identified as Kira's judgments, and he eventually plans on using illnesses and other natural causes of death to weed out lazy and unproductive members of society. Additionally, once someone's name is written in the Death Note, you can also influence their actions until their death, and Matsuda suspects that Near used this feature to control Mikami's actions in the days leading up to the final showdown with Light, considering that Mikami dies mere days later.
The Shinigami being invisible is a bit of a hand-wave to justify how no one reacts to Ryuk's presence. Compare this to canon, in which Ryuk often puts his status as an invisible being to good use, as well as once appearing before a busjacker as part of Light's plan to make the man go insane and discharge his gun at the monster.
Lastly, the "Death Eraser" is a copout so that the story can have a happy ending, since otherwise, Taro would probably have committed suicide out of guilt. It also leads in to Miura becoming the second Death Note user, since otherwise, Miura wouldn't have felt pressured enough to kill the people investigating the crime and the people who might have named him a suspect. For all people criticize the post-timeskip portion of the canon series, at least the canon events flow more logically, with each event coming as a consequence of various characters' actions.
In short, many of the developments come off as a bit contrived, and the story is somewhat rushed, which can be due to the idea not having been refined enough and/or the story being confined to a single one-shot.
Conclusion
Like other manga pilots, the Death Note pilot effectively establishes the premise, even if it doesn't use the story elements to anywhere near their full potential. Part of this is likely due to the one-shot not having the time to develop the setting, and part of it is due to the author gradually getting a feel for the concept and bringing out its potential over time. Whatever the case may be, Death Note evolved significantly between the one shot and final draft, and mostly for the better.
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