Manga: symbols and fictions of power

This part of the course follows the lessons on Reiko Okano and Suzue Miuchi. We will work with premises, publishers' samples and an original fictional example to examine how an object, an organisation or a symbol can represent authority. We discuss the works' opening situations and some images without revealing their endings.

By the end, you will be able to:

• Distinguish a supernatural representation from a documented statement about its creator's practice.
• Compare two ways of representing power without erasing their differences.
• Support a visual interpretation with identifiable details and acknowledge its limits.
• Create and revise a scene in which a rule leads to a decision and a consequence.

You can read the dossier section by section and return to the workshop with an idea of your own. The final exercises include suggested answers and criteria for reviewing the result.

1 Two works of fiction that ask who gets to decide

A small object can concentrate enormous power. An organisation can present itself as a protector while depending on the very thing it claims to fight. These two situations raise different questions about authority, responsibility and fear. Death Note and Hellsing allow us to explore them through supernatural fiction and the force of their images. Their interest for this course lies in how they turn these tensions into stories and how they teach us to look at a powerful figure without automatically accepting its version of events.

The official premise of Death Note introduces Light Yagami, a student who finds a supernatural notebook capable of causing death when names are written in it. Light intends to use it to eliminate evil. The work brings together Tsugumi Ohba's writing and Takeshi Obata's artwork. This division of authorship matters: both the narrative conception and its visual realisation are part of the work we read. F6201

Hellsing, written and drawn by Kōta Hirano, introduces an organisation that fights supernatural threats and uses Alucard, a vampire, as one of its main forces. The publisher Dark Horse describes the work through a combination of Gothic horror, violent action and dark humour. We will take this premise as a starting point for studying a paradox: protection can depend on a power that also inspires fear. F6203

We do not need to know every twist in either series to understand the initial contrast. In one, access to an object allows a person to claim the right to make extreme decisions. In the other, an organised structure channels an extraordinary force. Neither premise establishes, by itself, whether a decision is just. That is precisely why they offer material for thought: the ability to act, authorisation and legitimacy are different questions.

Power, authorisation and legitimacy

We will use power to mean the ability to produce an effect within the story. Authorisation will mean the permission someone receives from a person, group or institution in that world. Legitimacy will mean the justification for considering a decision acceptable. A character can have power without authorisation. They can have authorisation and still act in ways that other characters question. Fiction becomes richer when it allows us to see these differences.

Imagine an invented key that opens any door in a fictional city. Finding it grants an ability. A letter from the mayor might authorise its use in certain buildings. Neither of these things settles what happens when someone opens another person's room without hearing them out. A story can construct a situation in which a particular use is technically possible, administratively permitted and morally questionable. Keeping these things separate helps us read conflicts without reducing them to who is stronger.

This example does not reproduce a scene from either manga. It is a course tool for transferring the comparison to a situation we can examine without memorising their plots. Throughout the dossier we will return to relationships: who obtains information, who interprets a rule, who bears a consequence and who can respond. This keeps the analysis from being limited to listing powers or deciding which character seems most impressive.

Their place in the Japanese block

The lessons on Okano and Miuchi studied documented relationships between creative work and the authors' spiritual perspectives. Here the question changes. We analyse fictional works that use the supernatural; this content is not enough to attribute magical practice to their creators. Maintaining the distinction allows us to broaden the body of work we study with precision. The course can take an interest in a spiritual statement and in a fictional vampire without treating them as the same kind of evidence.

It is also useful to distinguish a work from a particular version. This dossier draws on manga materials and their English editions. It does not attribute music, camera movements or voices from an animated adaptation to the pages. If you remember a scene from the anime, you can compare it, but you will need to identify that version. Our memories of a franchise often mix different experiences; analysis improves when we know which object we are reading at any given point.

2 Death Note and the distance between a rule and a decision

A fictional object governed by rules asks the reader to pay a particular kind of attention. Asking what the character wants is not enough. We also need to ask what the object allows and what each participant knows about its conditions. A rule introduces a limit that can create suspense. When someone is unaware of a relevant condition, a difference in information can matter as much as a difference in strength.

In his introduction to the All-in-One edition, Urian Brown highlights the discovery of the rules as part of Death Note's appeal and points to the contrast between Light, L and Ryuk. This is an editorial reading of the series, useful for situating that aspect of its reception, rather than a statement by its authors about an esoteric practice. F6204

Our reading question will be more precise: what is the relationship between knowing how to use a power and being authorised to use it on others? Knowing how something works can inspire confidence, but that confidence does not justify every use of it. A character may mistake technical mastery for moral superiority. A narrative can allow us to see that shift without passing explicit judgement after every action.

The rule organises possibilities

In an original fictional example, a bell can stop the clocks in a square for one minute. The rule explains an ability and a limit. It does not yet tell us who should ring it or why. If the protagonist wants to prevent a farewell from ending, there is an understandable motive. If someone else needs time to continue so they can reach an appointment, there is a conflict. The same ability stands between desires that cannot be fulfilled simultaneously.

We can add a condition: whoever rings the bell loses the ability to hear what happens during that minute. The rule stops being a decorative feature of the world and becomes a narrative difficulty. The protagonist can prolong an encounter but cannot hear its decisive part. Information and responsibility are now connected. The cost does not have to take the form of a spectacular loss; it only needs to affect what the character hoped to achieve.

When reading a work, it is useful to identify when we learn a rule. If it appears before the decision, the reader can anticipate a problem. If it is revealed afterwards, they can reinterpret what happened. Both approaches are possible, but they produce different experiences. A late revelation is weak when it seems invented solely to rescue the protagonist from a difficulty. It is stronger when it allows us to reorganise clues that were already there.

The decision introduces a criterion

Using a power requires selection. Even when a character claims to act for everyone, they decide what counts as a problem, which information deserves trust and which consequences they accept. We can analyse these choices through specific questions: do they listen to anyone? Can they correct a mistake? Does their decision allow a response? Who falls outside their perspective? We do not need to resolve an entire philosophical debate to notice when a choice is presented as inevitable.

A reader can admire a character's intelligence and reject the criterion by which they act. There is no inconsistency in that combination. A work can construct a fascinating figure precisely because it separates ability from responsibility. When analysing a narrative, it is useful to describe what encourages us to follow a strategy and what enables us to judge its consequences. Dramatic interest is not the same as moral approval.

In your own creative work, this criterion avoids a common mistake: making the protagonist's intelligence a guarantee that they are always right. A character can devise a brilliant plan from incomplete information. They can work out the mechanism and misjudge another person. The distance between those two abilities offers a richer source of conflict than adding a greater power every time the story needs to move forward.

3 Ryuk and the observing presence

A supernatural figure can take part in a story in many ways. It can pursue, help, negotiate, explain or watch with an interest different from that of the humans. This position changes its visual presence. An extraordinary body does not need to be attacking to be unsettling. It can also create tension when it seems comfortable in a situation that others experience as a crisis.

Two cropped images published by VIZ in Brown's article allow us to observe Ryuk. In one, his face occupies a large part of the composition, while Light appears in a narrower strip. In the other, Ryuk spreads his hands in front of some shelves and talks about the possibility of a deal. The exaggerated face and relatively conversational gesture suggest a combination of menace and familiarity. This is an interpretation of those particular samples. F6204

Watching from an unequal position

The difference between the person acting and the person watching can structure a power relationship. The observer may have information, may not share the risk or may judge the outcome by a different criterion. A scene can make this inequality visible without explaining it immediately. One figure's calm alongside another's urgency is enough to raise a question: why are they not experiencing the same event in the same way?

In an invented scene, a female guardian watches a visitor try to open a box they have spent hours waiting for. She knows the date on which the room will close, but does not mention it. The visitor takes her calm as reassurance. The reader, if they know that detail, sees something else. The tension comes from the distribution of information, rather than a continuous description of menace.

If we turn the situation into an image, we can choose who occupies more space and who looks at whom. A huge figure need not be the one dominating the conversation. A small character beside the lock may control the only exit. Size is a resource, but its function depends on the whole. That is why a visual reading should attend to relationships, gestures and positions rather than assigning a fixed meaning to each proportion.

Familiarity does not remove strangeness

An unsettling presence can perform an ordinary action: lean on a table, discuss a condition or wait for an answer. This combination brings together two registers we would normally keep separate. The effect can be more disturbing than a continuous threat, because it invites the reader briefly to accept an everyday relationship with something extraordinary. The scene uses normality as a contrast.

You do not need to copy Ryuk's design to work with this device. We can invent a figure whose appearance does not match the way it speaks. What matters is that this difference serves a purpose. If it speaks politely while preventing someone else from learning a condition, the politeness contributes to the tension. If the contrast only aims to surprise once, it can quickly lose its force. A visual decision gains depth when it continues to create relationships after its initial impact.

This analysis allows us to appreciate the artwork without reducing it to ‘illustrating the script’. The relationship between sizes, the direction of the hands and the separation of text areas shape our reading. The attribution to Takeshi Obata acknowledges this dimension of the work. Describing it precisely is more useful than piling up general praise for the quality of his style.

4 Hellsing and the monster within an organisation

Hellsing's starting point allows us to ask a different question from that raised by the found object: what happens when an organisation uses a force that does not fit a reassuring image of its aims? An institution can claim to protect while also resorting to procedures or agents that need to be examined. The interest of this tension lies in the fact that a collective mission does not automatically account for every decision made in its name.

The comparison we propose is a reading tool. It does not turn Hellsing into a political treatise or assume that every scene illustrates a single thesis. It starts from the relationship between organisation, threat and supernatural agent presented by the publisher. From there, we can ask about orders, limits and consequences when reading a particular passage. The method is to follow relationships that can be documented within the fiction, rather than imposing a moral on it from outside.

A chain of decisions

We can represent a fictional organisation through four positions: whoever defines the threat, whoever authorises the intervention, whoever carries it out and whoever experiences its effects. Sometimes several positions coincide in one person. At other times they remain separate. Separation can distribute responsibility, but can also conceal it if each participant claims to perform only one part of the task.

Imagine a fantastical archive that commissions a creature to recover lost documents. The management decides which documents matter; an office determines where to look; the creature collects them; the local inhabitants lose access to them. Nobody needs to be cartoonishly evil for a conflict to arise. The management may be thinking about preservation, and the residents about their right to remember. The creature may carry out an order and discover that the mission has consequences the brief did not mention.

This structure allows us to write a scene involving several forms of authority. An order can be clear and still be questionable. A refusal can look like disobedience while raising a legitimate question. An institutional symbol can inspire trust in one character and fear in another. A narrative gains depth when it shows that the same sign does not mean the same thing to everyone affected.

A figure can be effective and dangerous

In fiction, effectiveness is often appealing. An agent capable of solving a problem provides dramatic satisfaction. However, analysis can ask what falls outside that resolution: harm, omitted information, dependence or new inequalities. Victory in a confrontation does not necessarily exhaust what the work allows us to think about it.

For the student, the most useful application is to avoid defining an organisation solely by its name, emblem and uniform. These elements create a visual identity, but a fictional institution needs relationships: how it makes decisions, who can object and what happens when it fails. A scene in which someone challenges an order can reveal more about that world than several pages of invented ranks. Design acquires meaning when its signs play a part in actions.

The contrast with the notebook gives us two complementary starting points. One focuses attention on an individual's appropriation of an ability; the other allows us to examine its use within a structure. These are starting points for comparison, not exhaustive summaries. Both fictional works can contain individuals, objects, rules and organisations. The chosen distinction is useful while it helps us observe something specific, and ceases to be useful when it tries to explain the entire work on its own.

5 Religious symbols and compositional effects

An image can use a cross, an inscription or a supernatural figure to create an expectation. Recognising the motif is a first step. The next is to study what it does within that composition. It may indicate belonging, claim authority, create an atmosphere or bring two references into tension. None of these functions should be assumed simply because the sign is familiar to us.

The cover of the first volume of Death Note in the VIZ edition shows a large cross shape behind Light and a skeletal figure with a scythe in the upper area. The composition brings the character together with visual references to death and religion. This description allows us to study what the cover promises the reader; it does not demonstrate that the cover represents a historical ritual or declares its creators' personal beliefs. F6202

The cover of Hellsing in Dark Horse's second edition emphasises a figure with a hat, glasses and a weapon, predominantly in red and black. On printed page 200, included in the sample from that edition, the confrontation combines weapons, claims to religious authority and attacks on the opponent's character. Page 202 changes the pace through exaggerated expressions and a confused situation. These are observations of those samples, not a characterisation of real religious communities. F6205

A sign can promise something that the action calls into question

In an original fictional example, an emblem showing two hands may suggest care. If it appears on the door of an office that listens to nobody, the contrast can become critical. If the characters treat it as a guarantee and later discover a contradiction, the sign plays a part in the development of the story. Its function goes beyond identifying the institution. It also allows us to compare what it promises with what it does.

The reading should preserve that tension. Saying ‘the hands mean help’ would be insufficient if the scene shows that meaning being questioned. Saying ‘the emblem proves that all help is false’ would go too far. We can make a more precise observation: the work uses a sign of care to make the distance between a promise and a practice visible within that world.

The same criterion applies to religious references. A character's invocation of an authority is an action by that character. It may be a belief, a strategy, a justification or several things at once. To decide how it works, we need to follow its relationships with the scene. The presence of the vocabulary does not automatically make the work a faithful account of a religion.

Humour, violence and the reader's distance

Humour can change our distance from a scene. An exaggerated expression can interrupt solemnity, make an authority look ridiculous or accelerate a response. It does not necessarily cancel out the violence depicted. Sometimes the two coexist and create deliberate discomfort; at other times, a change of tone offers a respite. A reading should describe the specific transition before attributing a general purpose to the author.

In your own work, it is worth asking who becomes the butt of the joke. Ridiculing an absurd order does not have the same effect as making a joke of the person who suffers its consequences. This question does not require every story to be gentle. It allows us to recognise where stories place the reader and which relationships they encourage. The way an action is presented also contributes to its meaning.

If we analyse an isolated page, we can identify visible contrasts and propose an interpretation of that passage. To claim that a series consistently maintains a particular position, we would need a broader body of material. The scale of the conclusion should match the scale of the reading. This proportionality allows us to write interesting commentaries without turning a striking image into evidence for an all-encompassing theory.

6 A comparison that preserves differences

A useful comparison needs a shared question and recognisable differences. If we merely say that both works contain supernatural beings, the resemblance is too broad. If we reduce them to absolute opposites, we leave out everything they share. The following table organises a reading of the opening premise and the samples identified above. Its categories are course tools.

The comparison allows us to return to the sources with a specific question. For example, when encountering a new scene, we can look for who knows a condition that someone else does not. Or we can follow the course of an order and check whether anyone has an opportunity to challenge it. The analysis stops depending on a general impression of darkness and becomes grounded in observable actions, words and arrangements.

Disagreement can improve a reading

Two readers may choose different lines of enquiry. One may be interested in forms of justice; another in humour; another in how an extraordinary body is represented. This diversity does not need to be resolved through a single label. It is useful to ask which materials each reading consults and what it explains best. A comparison focused on composition does not need to become a complete interpretation of the plot.

There may also be useful objections to our table. Someone might point out that a story centred on an individual includes institutions, and that a story about an organisation depends on personal decisions. The objection is correct and reminds us of the exercise's scope. We have chosen a starting point from which to observe a difference; we have not divided the works into sealed categories. An analytical tool must be adjustable when the material exceeds its limits.

Visual resemblance does not demonstrate a line of descent

A cross, a dark coat or a book can appear in works from different contexts. The resemblance may suggest a formal comparison, but it does not prove that one author received a doctrine from another. To substantiate a specific influence, we need documentation: a statement, an identifiable reference or a historical relationship supported by sufficient evidence. Without it, we can speak of affinity or contrast, specifying the aspect we are comparing.

This criterion is important for the dialogue with Moore, Morrison, Okano and Miuchi. The course can connect questions of creative practice across their works without claiming that they all practise the same system. The strength of this section lies in making those relationships precise. A comparison becomes more interesting when it preserves what does not coincide, because it allows us to learn a new solution rather than always recognising the same formula.

7 Workshop: a rule and a responsibility

We will transfer the analysis to fiction of our own, without reproducing the characters, designs or specific mechanisms of the manga. The example is called The Office of Delayed Doors. Its extraordinary object is a stamp that can delay a door's opening for one hour. It grants no control over people and does not change their memories. Its effect is limited, and for that reason it requires us to consider what happens around it.

The initial rule states that the stamp works only if the person using it writes down a reason. An office uses it to protect rooms where delicate work is being carried out. The person in charge, Mara, believes she is sorting reasonable requests. The visitor, Tomás, discovers that the closed door leads to the only place where an association keeps its tools. The conflict is not about finding out who has greater power, but about deciding which information counts when its use is authorised.

First version of the scene

Mara applied the stamp before she had finished reading the request. The door at the back stopped vibrating. In the box for the reason, she wrote ‘preservation’. She had been using the same word all morning and no longer needed to look at the letters. Tomás placed an empty box on the desk. He had come to collect the tools to prepare a performance in the square.

‘Come back in an hour,’ she said. He pointed at the wall clock. ‘We start in an hour.’ Mara showed him the request: the room contained materials that needed to be kept secure. Tomás recognised his own signature at the foot of an earlier request. He had asked for the lock to be repaired, not for the group to be kept out. The office had turned the outstanding repair into a reason to renew the closure.

Mara looked for the review form. It was in the cupboard at the back, inside the sealed room. For a few seconds, they both looked at the door. She had followed the procedure correctly, yet the procedure did not allow her to correct what she had just done. Tomás opened his empty box. ‘We can talk while we wait,’ he said. ‘But first, write down what you think you are protecting.’

The scene ends before the problem is resolved. It already allows us to identify an ability, a permission, a piece of omitted information and a consequence. The stamp works. The request exists. The error lies in how the reason is interpreted and how a temporary measure becomes a routine that nobody re-examines. This difference between functioning and justification is the example's central lesson.

A better rule does not always mean more power

We could correct the world by inventing a second stamp that opens every door. That solution would remove the physical obstacle, but might erase the more interesting question. Another possibility is to change the initial rule: to renew a closure, the person requesting it must state who will lose access and how they can object. The change introduces information and a response, rather than a greater power.

This new rule does not guarantee a just world either. Someone may lie, an affected person may be left out or a procedure may become too slow. Fiction gains possibilities when it acknowledges these difficulties. A rule organises a relationship; it does not replace every decision. To create a solid conflict, it is enough to choose a consequence the scene can show, without constructing an entire legal system for the world.

The revised version could begin with Mara leaving the box for affected people blank. Tomás arrives before she has finished stamping. The scene changes: there is now an opportunity to respond, but both are in a hurry. The object remains extraordinary and the problem is recognisable. The reader's attention focuses on what they do with an opportunity to listen, rather than only on discovering the stamp's next effect.

How to make responsibility visible

The stamp may carry an elegant emblem, but the story must show who decides to use it. One visual solution is to place Mara's hand and Tomás's signature in the same composition, separated by the empty box on the form. The reader perceives a relationship between an act, a document and an absence. There is no need to add a threatening figure to create tension.

If the scene is presented as dialogue, the word ‘preservation’ can recur with different functions. At first it is an automatic answer; later it becomes a question about what is being preserved and for whom. The repetition is useful because its place in the relationship changes. Repeating a word without changing its function would merely add length.

This exercise draws on tools from both lines of comparison: a rule defines the scope of the action, and an organisation decides how to use it. The result is an original fictional work with a problem of its own. Learning from a work here means understanding an operation and transforming it, rather than disguising a copy of its recognisable elements with new names.

8 Review the effect before adding more symbols

A first version may be visually appealing and still fail to show what is at stake. Before adding inscriptions, emblems or names of organisations, it is useful to check whether the reader understands what the power can do, who makes the decision and who experiences its effects. If these relationships are missing, increasing the ornamentation can make the project look more elaborate without making it more readable.

We can apply three different readings to the office example. The first follows the mechanism: the stamp delays an opening. The second follows the information: a request for a repair is used to justify a closure. The third follows responsibility: Mara repeats a routine and Tomás asks for its purpose to be stated afresh. Each reading detects a different kind of problem and can guide a correction.

Fictional feedback and a specific correction

Imagine a reader comments: ‘I thought Tomás had asked for the door to remain closed.’ This fictional response points to a significant misunderstanding. We can clarify that his earlier request concerned repairing the lock. The correction does not need a paragraph about the office's entire history. A sentence placed at the moment when he recognises his signature is enough to change the relationship between document and decision.

Another response might be: ‘I am more interested in the office than in the stamp.’ That does not necessarily indicate a failure. If the object allows us to observe how the institution works, it is fulfilling its function even if it is not the most striking element. The author needs to distinguish between a difficulty in understanding and a reader's preference. Not every unexpected response requires more explanations or an attempt to restore an element's prominence.

Revision can also involve cutting. If a description of the ink draws more attention than Tomás's request and adds nothing to the rule, it is worth shortening. If the emblem is read as a reference to a real institution we did not intend to represent, we can change it or give it context. Precision includes knowing which associations we are introducing, even when they seemed to be purely aesthetic decisions.

What this dossier carries forward into the rest of the course

The transferable learning is a way of questioning signs and the power they represent. A symbol can claim authority; a rule can organise possibilities; a work can make us examine the distance between that promise and its effects. These questions will remain as we study public identity, graffiti and independent publications, even when the supernatural notebooks and vampires disappear.

Death Note and Hellsing offer different ways into this reading. We do not need to turn them into manuals or attribute their characters' beliefs to their authors. We can study their imagining of the supernatural, their visual force and the conflicts they allow us to formulate. This place in the course recognises their artistic interest while maintaining a clear boundary between work, interpretation and documented spiritual practice.

Dossier exercises

These four exercises follow the same path as the reading: refine a claim, compare, observe and create. You can complete them using the explanations and original case included here. Consulting the linked images allows you to extend your observation, but you do not need to buy the manga or know their endings. If you use the dossier's description instead of the image, say so: you will be analysing a description rather than making a direct observation.

Exercise 1 Separate the work from its author

Correct these two statements without losing the interesting question they contain: ‘Because Death Note includes a supernatural object, its authors are teaching a magical technique’ and ‘If a character in Hellsing uses a religious justification, that is the position of everyone who belongs to that religion.’ Write between eighty and one hundred and fifty words for each correction. Identify what we know, what has been assumed and what document we would need to study the question that remains open.

Simply adding ‘perhaps’ before the same statement is not enough. The correction must change the relationship between evidence and conclusion. You can propose a question about the work's creation, but you must not invent an interview to answer it.

Exercise 2 Compare without equating

Write a commentary of around two hundred and fifty words using the table in section 6. Choose two rows and explain why the comparison helps us read the works. Include one difference that should not disappear and one limitation on what you can claim from the materials consulted. End with a question you could transfer to a work of your own.

You can organise the commentary into three paragraphs: what you compare, what difference you observe and how it is useful to you. You do not need to repeat the synopses. Nor are you being assessed on how many characters you remember. What matters is that the comparison produces an idea that can be checked, rather than simply a list of similarities.

Exercise 3 Read a visual decision

Choose one of the samples identified in sections 3 or 5. Note the source, the locator and whether you have seen the image directly. Divide your commentary into three parts: description, interpretation and uncertainty. In the description, record two visible relationships, such as position, relative size, the direction of a gaze or contrast. In the interpretation, explain a possible effect. Under uncertainty, identify what you cannot decide from this isolated sample.

Then imagine a change to a single variable. For example, move a secondary figure into the foreground or reduce the space occupied by an emblem. Explain which effect might change and which would probably remain. You do not need to redraw the copyrighted work: a diagram using geometric shapes or a description of the change is enough.

Exercise 4 Create and revise fiction of your own

Invent an object or organisation that creates an extraordinary possibility. Choose an everyday context different from the deadly notebook and the fight against vampires. It could be a library that lends invented memories, a station that changes the destination written on a ticket or an association that safeguards forgotten names. These are fictional starting points; you can replace them with another.

Write a scene of between four hundred and seven hundred words. It must show an understandable rule, a decision and an affected person who can respond in some way. The response need not be an explicit protest: it could involve returning an object, asking a question or refusing to complete an action. Avoid resolving everything with a new power you have not introduced.

Then prepare a second version of an extract. Change the rule, the available information or the opportunity to respond. Add a note of around one hundred and fifty words explaining what you have changed and the effect you expect. If someone else reads the scene, ask them to identify who decides and who experiences the consequences. If you are working alone, answer these questions using only what is written, without filling the gaps with your intentions.

Criteria for reviewing your work

You do not need all your readers to interpret exactly the same thing. You do need to distinguish a well-founded alternative reading from confusion caused by missing information. This distinction will allow you to revise without overexplaining and to keep a work open without making it arbitrary.

Sources and scope of consultation

The following sources allow readers to verify credits, publishers' premises and the specific samples discussed. They were consulted on 8 October 2026. They do not constitute a complete reading of the series or an investigation into their creators' personal beliefs. The comparative interpretations and creative examples in the dossier are original teaching material.

F6201 Death Note at VIZ

VIZ, official Death Note page. English; no publication date given. The introduction and credits were consulted: Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. Used for the initial premise, not to reconstruct every event in the series.

F6202 Death Note volume 1

VIZ, volume 1 information and cover. Story by Tsugumi Ohba; artwork by Takeshi Obata. English edition dated 10 October 2005; ISBN 9781421501680. The publication information and cover were consulted, not the complete volume.

F6203 Hellsing volume 1, digital edition

Dark Horse, Hellsing Volume 1, Second Edition. Kohta Hirano — also transcribed as Kōta Hirano —; translation by Duane Johnson. English; digital edition dated 8 November 2023. Publication information, credits and publisher's synopsis were consulted.

F6204 Death Note samples and editorial commentary

Urian Brown, Death Note All-in-One Edition, VIZ. 13 September 2017; English. Editorial article and visual samples identified as DeathNote001.jpg and DeathNote004.jpg. It gives no chapter locations for these cropped images. It is not an interview with the authors.

F6205 Hellsing volume 1, print edition and sample

Penguin Random House, information on the Dark Horse edition and preview. English; 7 November 2023; ISBN 9781506738505. The cover and printed pages 200 and 202 were observed. The preview selects pages; it is not equivalent to reading the opening consecutively.

The images belong to their respective rights holders and are not reproduced here. The links lead to the publishers' samples; their availability may change. None of these consultations grants a licence to reuse the illustrations in your own publication.