Ryuk (Death Note)

Ryuk
Death Note character
Ryuk, drawn by Takeshi Obata
First appearance	Chapter 1: "Boredom" (退屈, Taikutsu?)
Created by	Tsugumi Ohba Takeshi Obata
Voiced by	Nakamura Shidō (Japanese, anime and films) Jun Fukushima (Japanese, TV drama) Brian Drummond (English, anime and films) Willem Dafoe (American film)
Portrayed by	Kōtarō Yoshida (musical)

Ryuk (Japanese: リューク, Hepburn: Ryūku^?) is a fictional character in the manga series Death Note, created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. He is a bored Shinigami that drops a Death Note, a notebook that allows you to kill anyone simply by knowing their name and face, into the human world in order to have fun. It is picked up by Light Yagami, a young genius who uses it in an attempt to create and rule a utopia cleansed of evil, with him at the helm as a "god".

In the anime adaptation, Ryuk is voiced by Nakamura Shidō in Japanese and by Brian Drummond in the English version. Both actors reprise their roles for voicing the computer-generated version of the character in the live-action films, with Jun Fukushima voicing the CG version in the live-action television drama. In the musical, Ryuk was portrayed by Kōtarō Yoshida. Actor Willem Dafoe will voice the character in the American adaptation.

Ohba said that he always mentioned apples in the thumbnails because he wished to use "the dying message that Shinigami only eat apples" and therefore he needed Ryuk to hold apples and that "There's no other reason." Ohba also said that he specifically chose apples as the red "goes well" with Ryuk's black body and that the apples "fit well" with Ryuk's "big" mouth. When Obata informed Ohba that apples held religious and psychological significance and that a person could "read a lot" into the inclusion of apples and that he assumed that was the reason why Ohba included the apples, Ohba said that he did not "think about that at all" and that he believes that "apples are cool... that's it. [laughs]" Ohba added that he felt including aspects that could become later plot points was beneficial, and the apples were used as a point when Light asked Ryuk to search for the cameras in exchange for apples.