Otaku USA Magazine
Simpsons Writer Shares How the Death Note Parody Was Made
by Danica Davidson October 31, 2022

During The Simpsons‘ parody of Death Note on last night’s Treehouse of Horror, The Simpsons‘ writer Carolyn Omine live-tweeted Easter eggs and behind-the-scenes information on how the episode came to be.

In the sequence, Lisa takes on the role of Light Yagami, and uses her Death Tome (instead of Death Note) at first to kill Jailbird and prevent him from hurting a cat. After this, she turns to killing off people whose actions are destroying the planet and worsening climate change. Anyone who’s watched the Death Note anime will notice the care that went into the scene of Lisa writing names in the tome (from the music to the camera angles to the action-packed writing). But then Lisa, like Light, has to deal with L on her trail. The Death Note parody has a happier ending than the original Death Note (Lisa does, after all, have more of a moral center than Light) and while some things have been altered, the episode was clearly made by people who knew and appreciated the original.

Omine was not listed as the writer of the sequence, but explained that she was behind the pitch. And that we can thank her son and niece for the idea of Death Note!

The Simpsons used South Korean studio DR Movie — a studio that worked on Death Note — to animate the sequence, and Omine was very complimentary of the studio’s work.

She also made sure we noticed which characters had been turned anime style:

The infamous notebook-writing scene:

One of the changes in the parody was the fact that Lisa had to come up with a new way for people to die each time and couldn’t repeat herself.

She admired the ending shot of the sequence:

And there was plenty more to share.

The Death Note parody also had some Easter eggs for past Simpsons episodes, like the one with Mr. Sparkle:

Here’s some stuff you may not have caught:

How the house combined Light’s house and the Simpsons’ house:

How Homer became an anime character:

Some concept art for Marge:

How they stuck in more references:

Here is Lisa confronting “L.”

And getting in on the fandom, she also shared some fanart:

Source: Carolyn Omine Twitter

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Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.

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