We all know what the Shinigami Ryuk from popular manga series Death Note looks like: blue skin, sharp teeth, large, yellow eyes, long limbs, and black wings. He is, without a doubt, terrifying enough to give young children nightmares, making him well-suited to be a “god of death.”
This is why we can’t help but be completely bewildered by the fact that Takeshi Obata, the creator of Death Note, was originally going to make Ryuk look like a hot anime man.
In the Facebook group Subtle Anime Memes, one user shared a photo of Ryuk’s original design and a snippet of Obata’s statement revealing the initial concept.
“My original idea for the pilot chapter was for Ryuk to look like a young man similar to Light, but with black hair and wings. I had the notion that Shinigami should look like attractive rockstars,” he wrote. “But if he were more attractive than Light, Ryuk would appear to be the main character and things wouldn’t work as well. So then my editor told me that he didn’t have to look human…and I erased what I had and created the current version.”
See it below!
Yup, we can’t believe it either.
Do you wish that Ryuk’s character design stayed this way, or are you satisfied with how he ended up looking? Tell us in the comments!
(ALSO READ: LOOK: First Few Pages of New ‘Death Note’ Manga Leaked Online)
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