Because Death Note, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata hit manga about a teenager who is able to kill people by writing their names in a death god's notebook, has been adapted for just about every other medium, it's now becoming a musical. And some of the English-language songs are now online.
Kotaku first mentioned over a year ago that composer Frank Wildhorn and lyricist Jack Murphy would be teaming up on a Death Note musical, making supernatural serial killers, gods of death, and the people who hunt them sing. Well, Wildhorn already wrote the music and many of the lyrics for Jekyll & Hyde, so this is kind of in his wheelhouse.
An English-language workshop performance of the play was presented last April for the musical's Japanese and Korean producers, but when the musical debuts in Tokyo this April, it will be in Japanese. A Korean-language version with run in July and August.
There's no word on the musical's website on whether an English-language run is on the horizon, but since it was originally written in English, we have English-language versions of some of the songs.
Up top, Tony Award nominees Jeremy Jordan and Jarrod Spector duet as Light "Kira" Yagami and his nemesis L. Below, Eric Anderson sings as the shinigami Ryuk and Carrie Manolakos voices his fellow death god Rem in this song about the foolishness of humanity:
And here, Manolakos again sings as Rem, singing about her newfound feelings of love: