Ryuk

Ryuk is one of the main characters from the Death Note anime and manga.

Ryuk is a Shinigami who indirectly gives Light Yagami a Death Note after becoming bored with the Shinigami Realm. In an effort to amuse himself, he steals a second Death Note and drops it into the Human World for someone to find. This Death Note is discovered by Light, who uses it in an attempt to rid the world of evil and injustice, satisfying Ryuk's need for entertainment.

Appearance
Ryuk has a fairly humanoid appearance. He is extremely slim and has light-gray skin, almost blue-ish in color, with spiky black hair; thin, blue-gray lips; and sharp, pointed teeth. His limbs are abnormally long, and he wears rings on his fingers. He has large, round yellow eyes with bright red irises and retractable feather-like wings on his back that enable him to fly.

Personality
Ryuk is different from most Shinigami in that he does not want to simply pass time away in the Shinigami Realm but find something to relieve his boredom, and he is unaffected by the mocking he receives from other Shinigami for it.

Ryuk regards Light as "interesting," specifically due to his experiments and the loopholes he discovers regarding the Death Note's rules and instructions, occasionally discovering abilities of the notebook even Ryuk did not know existed. Though he finds Light interesting, he does not care whether Light lives or dies and does not actively assist him. At times, he withholds important information from Light and only assists him when he has something to gain from it. As his only purpose in dropping the notebook was because he was bored, most of his actions are primarily motivated by wanting to see something interesting, as he sees Light's use of the Death Note and the way humans react to it as truly entertaining. Ryuk is intelligent, but Light's ability to understand his desires easily makes him able to be manipulated.

Ryuk has a great fondness for apples, stating the addiction to be an equivalent of cigarettes and alcohol for humans. Shinigami apples are withered and taste like sand, as he shows Misa at one point, which is why he prefers apples from the human world. He suffers certain symptoms of withdrawal if he goes too long without eating them, involving twisting himself up like a pretzel and doing handstands. He also states that he is shy around girls, revealed when Misa regains her memories and hugs Ryuk in excitement.

Ryuk is fond of video games, first shown in the omake eight-panel comic series, where he asks Light for a Silver Game Boy Advance SP for Christmas. On another occasion, Ryuk asks Light if he wants to play Mario Golf(changed to "video games" in the anime), but receives no answer, since Light's bedroom is bugged with microphones and rigged with cameras.

Trivia

 * Ryuk was one of the Death Note characters that were made into Nendoroid figures. Light, L, Misa, and Ryuk were the only characters made into the primary Nendoroid figures, but they were also made into Nendoroid petites.
 * Shūsuke Kaneko, director of the films, said that he chose to create Ryuk with computer graphics as it would make the aspect of Ryuk only appearing to people who have touched the Death Note "believable" and that the audience could "tell instinctually" that Ryuk is a shinigami with "no real presence." Kaneko added that if a human actor represented Ryuk, the appearance would have been "too realistic," the actor may have impacted Ryuk's "presence," and the audience may have "doubted he was a death god, if only for a second." Kaneko ordered the graphics team to design the graphics as if it was an actor "inside a rubber suit."