L: Change the WorLd is a novel adaptation of the live action film L: Change the WorLd. The novel is notably similar to the film. However, there are a number of major plot changes in the novel that were made to keep the novel faithful to Death Note's canon. One of the changes to the novel is that Near is no longer a Thai boy but the same Near who appears in the manga. The book also reveals more information about L and his past.
M
The stylized "M" used by the author.
M is the pen name used by the author of the novel. The style of the letter "M" the author uses to represent themselves is written in Cloister Black/Old English Text MT font, which is the same font used for Death Note characters who use a letter to represent themselves, such as the "L" for L and the "W" used by Watari.
Note from M
"I am deeply grateful to writer Hiroto Kawabata and Toshihiko Komatsu of the NPO Biomedical Science Association for their invaluable guidance. This work is a novel adaption of the film L: Change the WorLd as well as an homage to the original comics, novel, and live action films that preceded it. While it is loosely connected with the previous works, I hope you'll enjoy reading this novel as an L story from an alternative continuity. M."
Typos
- On page 53, line 3, the word "feeling" is misspelled, being spelled out "feeing".
- On page 99, line 20, a quotation mark is missing, making the sentence say, "A young woman with a coffee cup rang the bell on the counter of the internet cafe. Excuse me, you're out of sugar," she called out."
- On page 16, line 13 and page 151, line 3, "Lawliet" is misspelled, being spelled out as "Lawleit".
- On the contents page, the chapter "Pirates" is spelled "Piratess".
Trivia
- The design of the pages in the novel were designed to bear resemblance to pages in a Death Note.
- According to the timeline on each page of the novel, L was stated to have 272 days left to live prior to writing his name in the Death Note. This leaves some fans to believe that at the end of the 272 Light was "supposed" to have killed him or he would have died of some other unknown cause since the number of days appear to be roughly one and a half years later.
- In the title L: Change the WorLd, the L in "WorLd" is capitalized; this is presumably done in order to represent L.
- It can be speculated that "M" might stand for Mello, though neither Ohba nor Obata have confirmed or denied this.