Light Yagami is a brilliant and cynical seventeen-year-old high school student. Life bores him and the world, with its injustice, deeply disgusts him. Ryuk is a god of death, who like all his "colleagues" has led an empty and boredom-ridden existence for time immemorial. In search of distractions, Ryuk decides to abandon his Death Note in the world of men, apparently a simple notepad, but endowed with a terrible power, because writing a person's name in the Notebook means decreeing their death. After accidentally finding the Death Note, and understanding its potential, Light decides to use it to change the world, while Ryuk watches him amused.