he had promised to do the day they met, and Light dies. One year later, the world has returned to normal and the Kira Taskforce Members are conflicted over whether they made the right decision. Meanwhile, cults worshipping Kira have risen, led by a woman resembling Misa. Three years later, Near, now functioning as the new L, receives word that a new Kira has appeared. Hearing that the new Kira is randomly killing people, Near concludes that the new Kira is an attention-seeker and denounces the new Kira as "boring" and not worth catching. A shinigami named Midora approaches Ryuk and gives him an apple from the human realm, in a bet to see if a random human could become the new Kira, but Midora loses the bet when the human writes his own name in the Death Note after hearing Near's announcement. Ryuk tells Midora that no human would ever surpass Light as the new Kira. Production Development The Death Note concept derived from a rather general concept involving Shinigami and "specific rules". Author Tsugumi Ohba wanted to create a suspense series because the genre had few suspense series available to the public. After publication of the pilot chapter, the series was not expected to receive approval as a serialized comic. Learning that Death Note had in fact received approval and that Takeshi Obata would create the artwork, Ohba said, he "couldn't even believe it". Due to positive reactions, Death Note became a serialized manga series. "Thumbnails" incorporating dialogue, panel layout and basic drawings were created, reviewed by an editor and sent to Takeshi Obata, the illustrator, with the script finalized and the panel layout "mostly done". Obata then determined the expressions and "camera angles" and created the final artwork. Ohba concentrated on the tempo and the amount of dialogue, making the text as concise as possible. Ohba commented that "reading too much exposition" would be tiring and would negatively affect the atmosphere and "air of suspense". The illustrator had significant artistic licence to interpret basic descriptions, such as "abandoned building", as well as the design of the Death Notes themselves. When Ohba was deciding on the plot, he said, he visualized the panels while relaxing on his bed, drinking tea, or walking around his house. Often the original draft was too long and needed to be refined in order to finalize the desired "tempo" and "flow". The writer