Move over Netflix, it looks like the best Death Note adaptation will appear on Disney Plus instead, thanks to an unlikely assistant: The Simpsons.
The Simpsons is currently in its 34th season, and on October 30 the series’ annual Halloween special Treehouse of Horror will air. Over the years we’ve seen Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie featured in horror-filled parodies of The Shining, Nightmare on Elm Street, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Jumanji, and now they’ll be entering the world of Death Note.
Death Note is a manga, anime, and terrible Netflix movie about Japanese teen genius Light Yagami. After discovering the Death Note – a book that can bring about the demise of anyone whose name is written in it – Light dubs himself “the God of this new world” and takes it upon himself to execute anyone who he deems evil.
Not everyone believes in the righteousness of Light’s cause, however. Detective L and his task force take it upon themselves to catch Light (who they dub Kira) and end the pain caused by his warped justice.
In The Simpson’s take on Death Note, none other than Lisa Simpson is the one to discover the book – called the Death Tome in the cartoon show. Based on the short clips of the episode that have already aired, Lisa will use the tome to end the life of anyone who stands in the way of her mission to save planet earth from pollution.
If borrowing the story’s premise wasn’t enough, The Simpsons goes one further by abandoning its usual style for visuals that look like they could have been ripped straight from the anime. That’s likely because Death Note’s animators, DR Movie, are the ones who penned the episode, and we must say it looks absolutely splendid.
The only disappointment is that Marge Simpson’s iconic tower of blue hair has been shortened to a bun – we’d have loved to have seen her monstrosity of a mane rendered in Death Note’s more realistic style.
Despite that, fans of both Death Note and The Simpsons (us included) are very excited to watch the latest installment of Treehouse of Horror. The reaction is particularly noticeable as it’s in stark contrast to the response Netflix got when it announced that the Stranger Things creators would be adapting Death Note. While the Duffer brothers have proven success with horror, Netflix’s anime adaptation track record is not the best.
If you want to watch The Simpson’s Death Note parody, you’ll need to tune into traditional TV, at least for now. It will almost certainly join the other roughly 727 episodes on Disney Plus, eventually, but unfortunately for those of you who only watch shows through one of the best streaming services, it’ll take about a year to arrive in the US (based on season 33 only arriving on Disney Plus on October 5). Instead, you’ll have to tune into Fox on October 30.
However, if you have access to one of the best VPN services out there (like Express VPN) you’re in luck, as Disney Plus in Australia is already showing episodes from The Simpsons’ 34th season. It lags a little behind the latest episode on Fox in the US, but in a couple of weeks, you should be able to set your location to Australia and watch The Simpson’s Death Note episode in all of its glory.