Death Note (anime)

Death Note (デスノート, Desu Nōto) is an anime directed by Tetsurō Araki and animated by Madhouse, began airing in Japan on October 3, 2006, and finished its run on June 26, 2007, totaling 37 twenty-minute episodes. It begins in the year 2006, instead of 2003. The series aired on the Nippon Television network "every Tuesday at 23:34". The series was co-produced by Madhouse, Nippon Television, Shueisha, D.N. Dream Partners and VAP.

In North America, the series has been licensed by Viz for residents in the United States to use "Download-to-Own" and "Download-to-Rent" services while it was still airing in Japan. This move is seen as "significant because it marks the first time a well known Japanese anime property will be made legally available to domestic audiences for download to own while the title still airs on Japanese television." The downloadable episodes contain the original Japanese audio track and English subtitles, and is available through IGN's Windows-only Direct2Drive service. DVDs of the series have also been released, containing both an English dubbed audio track, produced by Ocean Productions, and the original Japanese audio track with optional English subtitles. Viz announced at Anime Expo 2007 that the first DVD was officially released on November 20, 2007, in both regular and special editions, and also confirmed at Comic-Con International 2007 that the first 15,000 copies of each DVD contains collectible figures.

Death Note was slated to make its North American television premiere in Canada on YTV's Bionix programming block on September 7, 2007, The Canadian premiere was pushed back to October 26, 2007, at 10:00 p.m., when it finally premiered. Death Note premiered in the U.S. on October 20, 2007, at 11:30 p.m. on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, until January 10, 2010, when the contract expired. The last episode aired on Canada's YTV channel on July 4, 2008, and on Adult Swim two days later. YTV took away the show on July 5, 2008, with the last airing being the last episode rerun at 1:30 a.m. ET, as part of YTV moving the Bionix block to a 2-hour only block on Saturdays. The show also streamed online for free on Adult Swim Video, with a new episode available every Saturday afternoon, on the day of its broadcast premiere.