According to the Fukushima Minyu Newspaper, a male teacher in his 30s used his tablet displaying an image of Death Note from the popular self-titled anime series. In the anime people whose names were put on a list eventually die.
The teacher reportedly used the image to threaten his students from the end of November to the beginning of December 2016. According to the school, he told a total of four students from fourth and sixth grades that he would write their names in a death note.
The students' homeroom teacher reported the incidents to the school principal and the teacher was reprimanded. The principal reportedly apologized to the related students' families at the end of last year.
In the Death Note manga, anime adaptation, and live-action adaptations a teenager finds a notebook with which he can put people to death by writing in their names and the way they must die.
In the United States there have been more than ten incidents when students were disciplined and suspended for writing names of their fellow students and school staff into Death-Note-styled books, according to the Anime News Network.
A Russian parents' group appealed to President Vladimir Putin in 2013 to ban the manga because of its perceived harmful influence on children.
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