One of the more intriguing mysteries about Son Goku from Dragon Ball is how he may be killed given the immense power he possesses. We are aware that Goku has experienced multiple deaths but has always been brought back to life. He is currently healthy and alive. Now, if we venture a little beyond of Toriyama’s world, we can investigate even more options. The Death Note from the corresponding manga and anime is one such option. We will provide you with a response to the frequently asked issue of whether Goku could be killed by the Death Note.
Because it is unclear how the Death Note’s laws would operate in Toriyama’s universe, it is unclear whether the Death Note can genuinely kill Goku. Because Goku is a Saiyan and the Death Note only affects humans, some people believe that it cannot kill Goku. However, some believe that if all the requirements are followed, the Death Note can kill Goku.
Two sections will make up the remainder of this article. The first one will provide you a rundown of all the Death Note’s acknowledged formal regulations, as certified by its authors. The second one will examine whether or not Goku could be slain by the Death Note and why our conclusion is that way.
Table of Contents
What are the Death Note’s rules?
The Death Note 13: How to Read encyclopaedia is a complete list of the Death Note’s known and official rules. There, all the many rules that were dispersed throughout the original manga have been gathered and are arranged in the correct sequence. Four main chapters—How to Use It; Ownership; The Shinigami Eyes; and The Shinigami Rules—are used to organise them. Considering that not all of these guidelines apply to using the Death Note as an object, we will just mention those that do. They are as follows:
The person whose name is on this note will perish. If the subject’s name is not written with the subject’s face in mind, the note will not be effective. To shield those with the same name from being impacted, this is being done.
A victim’s name that has been spelled incorrectly four times will never be affected by the Death Note.
The Death Note that was utilised first, regardless of the time of death, will take effect when the same name is put in two or more Death Notes.
The entry is treated as simultaneous if the same name appears in two or more Death Notes within 0.06 seconds; as a result, neither the Death Notes’ effects nor the person’s demise will occur.
Four occurrences of an unintentional misspelling of a person’s name will prevent the Death Note from killing that individual. However, the owner of the Death Note will pass away if they purposefully misspell the name four times. The person whose name was intentionally misspelt four times won’t escape death by a Death Note.
If a victim’s name appears on multiple pages, the Death Note will not be activated. The front and back of a page, however, are regarded as one page. For instance, even if the victim’s first name is on the back page and last name is placed on the front, the Death Note will still be effective.
It will occur if the cause of death is written less than 40 seconds after the subject’s name.
The individual will have a heart attack if the cause of death is not given.
The details of the death should be entered within the next six minutes and forty seconds after the cause of death has been noted.
The time of death can be changed and can take effect within 40 seconds of writing the name of the cause of death, which is a heart attack, if the time is given within that time frame.
If the requirements of death cannot be carried out by that human physically or cannot be reasonably assumed to be done by that human, they will not be accomplished.
Death Note owners must research the restrictions that apply to the circumstances of a death on their own because the Shinigami are unaware of them.
Prior to entering the person’s name, you might enter the cause of death and/or other facts. Ensure that the name appears before the cause of death. According to the human calendar, you have roughly 19 days to enter a name.
Suicide is a legitimate cause of death for everyone because it is believed that everyone has the potential to commit suicide. As a result, it is something that one may infer about a person.
Whether suicide or an accident caused the person’s death, if it resulted in the deaths of more people than the intended victim, the person will simply pass away from a heart attack. This is to protect other people’s lives from being harmed.
The time and circumstances of death may be amended as often as needed once an individual’s name, time of death, and conditions of death are put in the notebook, provided that changes are made within six minutes and 40 seconds of when the information was originally entered. Of course, this can only happen before the victim passes away.
The victim will pass away in a natural accident six minutes and forty seconds after the time of admission if you choose “dies of accident” as the reason of death.
Even if the Death Note only contains one name, a heart attack will be assumed as the cause of death if the victim’s passing results in the deaths of further people who are not listed in the Death Note.
There must be enough time for the sickness to develop if you write “dies from disease” and specify which disease and the moment of death. If the deadline is missed, the sufferer will experience a heart attack and pass away six minutes and forty seconds later.
The victim will pass away from a believable disease if the cause of death is listed as “dies from disease” but only includes the moment of death and not the actual ailment.
There is a 23-day timeframe in which The Death Note can be used (in the human calendar). It is known as the “23-Day rule.”
If you write “dies from disease” and don’t specify the disease or the time of death, the 23-Day guidelines won’t apply and the person will pass away at the proper time based on the disease if the disease’s course takes longer than 24 days. The time of death cannot be changed, regardless matter how quickly it occurs; however, the cause and/or other facts of the death must be changed within six minutes and 40 seconds.
The victim’s name must be written on one page for the Death Note to take effect, however other pages may be used to record the cause of death and other details. This will work as long as the person writing the Death Note remembers the victim’s name when describing the circumstances of their death.
Multiple names may be written as long as they are entered within 40 seconds and the reason and circumstances of death are not impossible if they are written before the victim’s name. Only the cause of death will have an impact on the sufferer if the cause of death is possible but the conditions are not. That victim will experience a heart attack and pass away if both the cause and the circumstances are unattainable.
The reason of death will be applied to all the names you have put in the Death Note if you write down one cause of death within 40 seconds of writing the name of the first victim. Additionally, even if the conditions of death are written after the cause of death within the human time limit of six minutes and forty seconds, only the victims for whom they are possible will be affected by the conditions. Those who cannot meet the requirements will only pass away from the listed cause.
Even without the owner’s explicit purpose, a Death Note-caused human death can indirectly increase another person’s initial lifespan in the human world.
If the Death Note, or the portion of the note used, is destroyed before the time of death, the death will still occur once the victim’s name, cause of death, and circumstances of death have been recorded in it.
The victim will experience a heart attack 40 seconds after the name has been input if the Death Note is destroyed while the reason of death is being written. The victim will be killed within six minutes and forty seconds by the given cause of death if it is possible within that time frame, if the victim’s name and cause of death have previously been written. Otherwise, a heart attack will kill the victim.
You must first rule out the characters you want to delete with two straight lines if you want to edit anything you’ve written in the Death Note within six minutes and forty seconds of when you wrote it. Although the circumstances of death can be altered, once the victim’s name has been recorded, that person’s demise cannot ever be stopped.
It is pointless to make an effort to white out or use erasers to remove names that have been inscribed in the Death Note.
There will be no impact on the death of the original victim even if a new victim’s name, cause of death, or circumstances of death are written on top of the original victim’s name, cause of death, or conditions of death. The same rules will apply if you want to white out or erase something that was written with a pen or pencil.
Those under the age of 780 days will not be affected by the Death Note.
The Death Note cannot be used to kill people who are older than 124.
Humans cannot be killed if they have fewer than 12 minutes to live (in human calculations).
A death date that exceeds the victim’s initial lifespan is not permitted. If the victim lives longer than expected, even if their death is recorded in the Death Note, they will pass away before the appointed time.
This note’s user is unable to enter either Heaven or Hell.
The entire power of the Death Note can be extracted from only one page, or even just a little portion of it.
Any writing implement or medium (blood, makeup, etc.) is acceptable as long as it can directly write on the note and produce readable language.
The Death Note’s pages will never run out.
A small percentage of Death Notes have front covers that are red or white, however this does not affect how effective they are compared to Death Notes with black front covers.
A human cannot write human names in a Death Note to extend their life, but a Shinigami may. By using the note, a person can only reduce the length of their life.
Death Notes are so obscure that not even their original Shinigami owners are familiar with them.
Shinigami are required to possess a minimum of one personal Death Note, which may never be given out or used by a human.
Shinigami are able to swap and add to each other’s Death Notes.
The life of the victim will be prolonged if a Shinigami decides to use a Death Note to kill the person who killed the person it favours, but the Shinigami will perish. The Death Note will endure, but the Shinigami will vanish. The next Shinigami who touches this Death Note generally inherits its ownership, yet it makes sense to give it back to the Shinigami King.
Sometimes the original life span of a human can be extended by manipulating the death of a human who has control over the life of another human. A Shinigami who does this on purpose will perish; nevertheless, a person who does the same thing won’t perish.
As you can see, the Death Note has a fairly detailed set of guidelines that determine how a life is taken. Although not all of these principles will apply to our study, they do describe the internal workings that apply to this situation as well as all other cases. Let’s now consider how Goku might be affected by it.
Can Goku die from the Death Note?
The owner of the Death Note is assumed to be familiar with Goku’s name and appearance at the outset of our story. We are aware that this is a crucial requirement for any Death Note to function, therefore discussing this matter without addressing that element would be pointless and absurd. This is the reason we began our analysis in this manner. It has been suggested by some fans that the Death Note should contain Goku’s birthname, Kakarot, or Son Goku, as he is more well known. However, this is unimportant for our research, as does the fact that Goku doesn’t actually have a surname. We are attempting to determine whether the Death Note has any impact on Goku, regardless of whether it is Son Goku or Katarok, so that we can proceed with our investigation.
Now that we are aware of it, the Shinigami primarily employ the Death Note to kill people. But since the Shinigami are believed to have limited knowledge of the Death Notes themselves, it is likely that there are further uses and abilities for the books that have gone unexplored. Whether the Death Note can be used on all living things or only humans is a key issue in this case. The hard part comes at this point.
Specifically, since Goku is a Saiyan and not a human, the Death Note cannot affect him because it only affects humans. The effectiveness of the Death Note on half-Saiyans would now be called into question, but that is not something we can explore in this post if we want to keep on topic. If the Death Note does, in fact, only function on humans, it is clear that it is not a particularly potent tool and that its range of use is extremely constrained. Goku would then be wholly immune to it, and the conversation would finish there.
What about the alternative, though? Specifically, the Death Note is a tool used by the Shinigami, also known as the deities of Death, who use them to carry out their missions. If these notes had such a narrow focus, it wouldn’t make much sense, would it? That implies that there is just one species of Shinigami in the cosmos (Hell, on Earth! ), which suggests that they are not particularly significant in the great scheme of things. The Shinigami are the only deities controlling death in the universe, despite the possibility that there are other such deities for other species that haven’t been mentioned in the Death Note universe. To be honest, Death Note didn’t actually address alien cultures, but while we’re at it.
In that case, the Saiyans and all other non-deities from the Dragon Ball universe would also have perished at the hands of the Shinigami (so, Beerus and Zeno, for example, are not under their jurisdiction). No matter how powerful he is, Goku is not a god since he is a Saiyan, an alien race that is similar to the Kryptonians from the Superman myths (but with a twist!). This indicates that the Shinigami are in charge of him.
Now, despite what the laws say, if the Shinigami use a Death Note and are above Goku—who is unquestionably mortal—then the Death Note is unquestionably capable of murdering Goku. Namely, it doesn’t necessarily mean much to use the word “human” just because the rules say it. First of all, as you can see in the source we have given you, the word’s use is not exactly consistent across all of the regulations. Second, Ryuuk wrote the rules expressly to test a human (in a setting that did not address alien civilizations), suggesting that Ryuuk may have modified them to suit his needs and that the Death Note does, in fact, apply to all non-deities.
If you ask us, this theory makes great sense. What use would such a book serve if it only applied to a small percentage of the entire cosmos? Simply said, it doesn’t make sense. Dragon Ball fans will always argue that Goku is invulnerable; heck, you’ll even find arguments claiming that the Death Note can be applied to Goku, but that he is too powerful to die, which is complete nonsense because Goku did die on multiple occasions in the series and is most definitely not powerful enough to overcome death; however, this is an argument that they might not be able to win.
Non-deities are unable to survive death. It appears that only Zeno is genuinely immortal in the Dragon Ball universe, proving that Goku will undoubtedly die. And the Death Note is nothing more than a tool used in the process of Death. This is the reason why we believe that Goku can be killed by the Death Note, and that it most certainly does apply to him as well as the majority of the characters from Dragon Ball.
The question of whether or not the owner of the Death Note could do it easily is entirely different. He would first need to learn Goku’s name, which isn’t particularly difficult but is a need. Then, he would have to do it covertly because Goku is undoubtedly quick and strong enough to stop him mid-sentence, before he could enter his name in the book. The approach is complicated by all of these factors, but we genuinely believe that Goku would be able to use the Death Note because doing so wouldn’t make much sense in terms of the Death Note’s concept.
Of all, this is all just a theory. Both of our arguments and the opposing side’s arguments are equally valid. The worlds of Death Note and Dragon Ball actually operate at very different levels. The first is a grounded, real world with magical components, whereas the second is a fantastical world that only vaguely resembles the one we are familiar with. They are simply not compatible, and there is little that can be done there, which is why an objective comparison is so challenging. All we have are our theories, our proof, and our arguments because it is unlikely that the respective authors will ever work together on a story that would provide us with an official response. And this article was a compilation of all of them since we wanted to give you a different viewpoint.