I recently stumbled across someone on the internet who had taken it upon themselves to try to transcribe my Death Note audio drama Pattern Recognition. I figured it would do no harm to put the actual script online for curious readers, rather than lead to the usual drifts in meaning and intent. I’d rather you saw what I actually wrote, rather than what someone thinks I did.

I wrote the 12-part audio adaptation of Death Note in 2017-2018. It was released by Audible in both German and French, and although I was contacted two years ago by an Audible producer looking for casting advice for an English version, I have heard nothing since, so I have no idea what’s going on there. But for those who might be interested in seeing the script for the first episode, here it is. I’m not sure I can get away with posting all twelve, but you get the idea.

This first episode is a good indicator of the changes that I started making to the original in order to reflect a different time and different medium. My Death Note is more of a police procedural than the anime (and yes, it was specifically an adaptation of the anime, not the manga), and also deals with certain changes in technology that would have otherwise ruined some elements of the original story — this is played for laughs in episode two, when Light goes in search of a “pocket television” and has to deal with a salesman determined to give him a smartphone. It also gender-swaps some characters and introduces some new ones, specifically Paula Virilio, the head of Interpol, who is parachuted in to help staple some scenes together, but also to add a stronger female voice to the sound mix.