News

Death Note Stage Musical Casts Misa, Ryuk, Rem

This year's 43rd issue of Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump will announce additional cast for the upcoming stage musical adaptation of Death Note on Monday. The cast includes:

• Fūka Yuzuki (live-action Shinigami-kun) as Mise Amane
• Kōtarō Yoshida (Hanako to Anne, MOZU) as Ryuk
• Megumi Hamada as Rem
• Ami Maeshima (SUPER☆GiRLS idol) as Sayu Yagami
• Takeshi Kaga as Sōichirō Yagami

Kaga is reprising his role as Sōichirō Yagami from the Death Note live-action films.

They will join Teppei Koike (Gokusen, Love*Com the Movie, Tōfu Kozō) as the genius detective L and Kenji Urai (Aoi Honō, Kamen Rider Kuuga, Sailor Moon musicals) and Hayato Kakizawa (Crows Explode, Kaiji 2) as Light Yagami.

Frank Wildhorn, an American composer known for songs sung by Whitney Houston ("Where Do Broken Hearts Go?") and Natalie Cole, is scoring the Death Note musical. Tamiya Kuriyama, a recipient of the Japanese government's Medal with Purple Ribbon, is directing. Jack Murphy (The Civil War, Rudolf, Carmen, Wonderland, The Count of Monte Cristo) is writing the lyrics, and Ivan Menchell (The Cemetery Club, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bonnie and Clyde) is writing the script. Jason Howland is in charge of musical supervision, arrangements and orchestrations.

The musical will run at Tokyo's Nissay Theatre beginning next April. It will also run in South Korea from July to August, but with a different cast.

In Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's original supernatural suspense manga, a teenager named Light finds a notebook with which he can put people to death by writing their names. He begins a self-anointed crusade against the criminals of the world, and a cat-and-mouse game begins with the authorities and one idiosyncratic genius detective. The 12-volume manga ran in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 2003 to 2006. The manga has already been adapted into three live-action films and one television anime series in Japan. Viz Media released the Death Note manga, the anime series, and a spinoff novel, while its Viz Pictures affiliate released the three live-action films in American theaters.