On a seemingly ordinary day in Japan in the year 2003, both Light and Ryuk (a rogue shinigami, or god of death) were miserable and bored out of their minds. They both thought of the human world and shinigami world as rotten messes.
They were both tired of the same mundane routine. Ryuk wanted to seek entertainment in the human realm, for the shinigami in their realm mainly slept, or gambled. Thus, he dropped a black notebook, a Death Note, that was endowed with supernatural powers. From above, Ryuk dropped it to see which human decided to pick it up.
17 year old ace student at Daikoku Private Academy, Light Yagami, was simply sick of the way people acted in this world. He was frustrated about the lack of justice.
Light was the particular human who first noticed this mysterious notebook on the ground and picked it up. At first he was skeptical, thinking and assuming it had to be some elaborate prank some person conjured up. On a curious whim, he took the Death Note home and tested it, after reading through some of the rules Ryuk had written in both Kanji and English:
The human whose name is written in this note shall die.
This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person’s face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
If the cause of death is written within the next 40 seconds of writing the person’s name, it will happen.
If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.
After testing it the first two times (first a live TV news report of a hostage situation, and then out on the streets to witness the death of a sexual predator), he began to experiment and write more names of criminals, after giving some thought about whether or not to use the notebook anymore. He came to the decision that no one else will be able to bear the burden of improving the world. Light then meets the previous owner of the Death Note, Ryuk--who explained his reasons for dropping it into the human realm in the first place.
Ryuk also mentioned when it was Light's time to die, he would be the one to write Light's name in the Death Note he had strapped to his waist. Then, Light told him of his goal of getting rid of all the evil people in the world, and ruling over it as God.
At this, Ryuk was amused and responded, "It's just as I thought, humans are so interesting!"
The number of criminal deaths (both in jail and roaming free) continued to increase, this brought the attention of the world famous detective, L. L on a live broadcast in Kanto, Japan had challenged Kira, a name taken from the English word killer that people over the internet have named the mysterious and unseen force that was passing merciless judgment towards the criminals. A criminal scheduled to be executed was used as a decoy to for L to observe and conclude that Kira could kill someone without having to be near them.
The trick pissed off Light, and it soon became an epic battle of wits between them. A group of FBI agents in the middle of it became casualties. The more Light thought several moves ahead and evaded being caught, the more L suspected him.
Things became even more intense when another Death Note had fallen from the shinigami realm. Misa Amane, a teenage girl who deeply revered Kira for killing the criminal for murdering her parents, had it. She became the Second Kira, exchanging half of her life span for the shinigami sight. She could kill using the Death Note just by looking at a people's faces to get their names. Eventually, after some chaos and more death, Light and Misa had met up with each other--to which led to Misa's arrest.
The one way to save both Misa and himself was to have one of the Death Notes buried, and the other given to Misa's shinigami companion Rem (who threatened more than once to write his name down into her notebook) to pass onto a corporate company for a while. Some of the twisted and elaborate rules stated that if anyone lost or forfeited ownership of the notebooks, then they'd lose all memories of them. Also, Light had Ryuk write in some fake rules towards the back of the book to mislead the Japanese task force to believe they weren't guilty.
Once the notebook had been retrieved from a man of seven within the Yotsuba Corp. Light managed to touch the notebook. All memories he had lost returned.
After he had given Misa instructions on how to find her Death Note, events had led up to Rem having to sacrifice herself and write L's and his contact Watari's names down into her Death Note. (The one way to kill a shinigami is to develop an affection for a human then kill someone for their human of interest.)
Fast forwarding to six years after the defeat of L; Light at the age of 23 became an official member of National Police Agency task force, head of Intelligence. L's successors, Mello and Near, have been rivaling each other ever since they were young children. Kira had killed their idol, but by no means did they cease to compete each other. They began a race to see who would find Kira first, and be number one.
Light in the middle has begun to take desperate measures. As the world begun to accept Kira's judgement, he started to use them as leverage to gain the upper hand. Now, he's had to send the order to Misa to give up the Death Note (and lose her memories again) to Teru Mikami, a dedicated supporter of Kira who shared the same ideals as Light...
((That'd be a gist of Light's history up to where I've taken him from, in which is midway through volume 10 of the manga. Haven't quite covered everything though, but enough so those who are not familiar with his canon know what he's been through.))
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