Anime: D.Gray-man

Enjoyment
D.Gray-man is entertaining but not groundbreaking. It’s a fun watch, and I recommend it to anyone that likes shonen anime and doesn’t mind sad anime.

Animation
D.Gray-man starts out with so-so animation, but as the series continues the animation quality goes up. There are quite a few nicely orchestrated action scenes and pretty characters, especially after episode 30 or so, that make dealing with the beginning animation more than worthwhile. D.gray-man has a sad feel, to say the least. Accordingly everything is in a dark color palette throughout from the character designs to the blood to the backgrounds. That’s a style decision, but it will lower the value for people who like their anime sparkly and bright. Another style decision is that all the characters look like girls – including the most manly of men, and again could be a positive or negative thing based on each viewer’s personal taste. Overall, I’d say the animation is above average, with the possibility of going up or down depending on taste.

Sound
The in-story songs are superb at conveying mood and extremely well written. However, there aren’t enough of them. During the first ½ of the anime, there are only about 4 of these songs. They are of such high quality that even with the amount of play they get they aren’t tiring for the first 80 or so episodes. Right around episode 50 a couple more tracks are added, but not enough to keep all the songs from being a bit overplayed by episode 103. It’s also strange because before episode 50 there were no vocal songs whatsoever (except for 1 that was necessary for the plot), but afterwards there were vocal songs a lot of the time, and it was really jarring. In short, the quality of music is superb but the quantity is poor. There are several opening and ending themes, some of which are very good and some of which were so bad that I felt it absolutely necessary to skip them.
Voice acting…there is a problem with Allen Walker’s voice actor, in that not only does he look like a girl but his seiyuu does a poor time hiding that she is a girl. It combines to make Allen completely unbelievable as a male. Eventually the seiyuu starts deepening her voice, but by then the weirdness has done its damage. This has dragged down the score considerably. Besides that issue Allen's seiyuu does a very good job portraying his character, especially his kindness and sorrow. There are several notably good performances from other voice actors and not any that stand out as bad. Tyki and Road in particular are some of the best-voiced characters I've seen, and I have to admire Komui's voice actor, because that's gotta be a tough personality to render without becoming annoying.

Story
If you don’t like watching anime that make you cry, you should skip this one. This series is a glutton for tragedy. But on another note, I’ve never seen an anime that is so uniformly tragic manage moments of humor as well as D.Gray-man does.
The initial premise is quite intriguing. However, for the first ½ of the series or so the plot is laid to the side and there are mostly monster-of-the-weeks type things going on, along with power ups. During this time the character development is being built up. After episode 50 the plot comes to the front with a vengeance, and twists come thick and fast for the remaining episodes. And then it goes and ends abruptly without tying anything up, and with the sense that the story is at best ¼ of the way through. Apparently the manga artist took one too many hiatuses for the anime makers to tolerate. What story is present is great. If you don’t want to continue with the manga though you are going to be really pissed at the end. There is also a problem in the latter half of the series with the timeline. It worked okay in manga, but when put into anime form it was so out of line that it often had to be remade in the recaps to make sense. Conversations in battle took bizarrely long, sequences of events didn’t logically fit together time-wise, etc.

Characters
Characters may not be the most original around, but they certainly do stir emotions. The enemies are the kind you love to hate. Not only that, but later on you get very human characters that are still fun to hate, which is a pretty rare find. The good guys are the kind that are easy to cheer for. It’s simple, but that’s not necessarily bad. Character development isn’t extreme, but it’s there. Interestingly, the development of some characters go up while others kind’ve backslide, which is pretty realistic and also hard to find in anime. The worst thing about the characters are that you’ve probably seen their type a million times. You’ve got the tragic but optimistic hero, the determined-but-not-quite-courageous gal pal, etc. They are very entertaining, but not groundbreaking.

Value
I liked this enough to buy it and I've watched it more than once. It's got a pretty high value entertainment-wise, and the whole is better than it sounds breaking it up into parts and talking about it like you have to in a review.

Review
D.Gray-man caught my attention because it looked pretty similar to Full Metal Alchemist. We had a darker setting with demons, sins, sad tales that ended badly, mixed with a shounen-like experience that promised to add comedy and an action-paced show. Sadly though, D.Gray-man only has a good premise. Its execution is simply far too childish to be taken seriously and it's also far too poorly made to serve as mindless entertainment.

The world is overwhelmed by terrifying creatures called Akuma, born from dead souls recalled by those who took love to a higher degree than necessary. The Evil Earl is a madman using these creatures as a tool to bring destruction, and against him stand the Black Priest Order. Within this dark-filled world, Allen Walker joins the Black Priest Order, using his gifted power of anti-Akuma to destroy his foes and oppose the Millennium Earl and his minions.

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1. A dark setting with a childish tale
   Very well, here things start to go downhill. The setting itself is awesome, filled with dark tales, horror and tension. All in an alternate Earth with a gothic theme all around and a seemingly dark and disturbing atmosphere. The story, however, doesn't fit the setting. It's very simple and used without much thought, making it sounds like it was meant only for small kids and not for the average teenager like it was supposed to be.
   
   There are no remarkable turn of events or even great moments in the story. It's just bland, making the characters go from point A to point B to find someone and mysteriously meeting all the needed characters in incredibly well-timed manners. These stupid coincidences are not the only issue though, as many times the plot will doubt your intelligence, explaining things again and again whenever someone talks about it. "Don't know what Akumas are? Here's the explanation once more". This can certainly work to remember children about aspects the show, but are never tossed aside even after long 50 episodes, making hardly tolerable to an older audience. To further do the mess, we have so many overuses of cliche's elements that you'll have a hard time to take anything as serious as the show initially proposes.
   
   Not exactly pretty too
   Long running shounens of all kind suffer from inconsistent or low-quality artwork and animation. That's understandable because many of these shows are made to last as long as it can gather money for the producers. D.Gray-man, however, is even below the standards of long-running shounen series. It has some decent character artwork at first, but after the first episodes you'll see most concepts are reused many times, uniforms are mostly used as a way to avoid variation and creativity, the monster designs border the bizarre, and almost everything lack detail. Scenarios, which would be pretty important to portrait a darker word, are very simple and non-exciting. Animation can be average considering other similar shows, but is still miles behind the average of its release year, resorting too much on static images and inconsistent drawings.
   
   It's got a cast, yet...
   They are disappointing, very disappointing. While the base characters starts strong and charismatic, they never evolve throughout their tales and become boring after the first twenty episodes. It was a shore to watch filler episodes around the middle of the series only to see that those events never contributed to evolve a character even a bit. Overall the characters are just the standard shounen stereotypes, many very cartoon-like, without much to add.
   
   Not much in the end
   D.Gray-man looks awesome and sounds awesome, but in the end is just a noisy anime with noisy characters wandering within a dark-fantasy setting. This simply doesn't match. Many times it looks like it was made for six year-old kids, with some obvious happenings never affecting its characters and many of them ignoring their own intelligence. We have dozens, if not hundreds, of shows like that and most of them are absurdly better, more complex, more mature, more fun, more addicting, more everything. A shame such a good initial premise is lost in a childish experience, because dark-filled worlds is something extremely rare in japanese animation.
   
   It is closely a safe shounen though
   Despite all its bad points, D.Gray-man is fun to watch until its half. After that its characters and story start to show their lack of quality and its filler episodes become somehow annoying. Those only looking for a random show with standard characters and some fighting may grasp the fun of the second-half of the series, but those looking for something else or expecting the characters or story to evolve will be disappointed.
   

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Comments
D.Gray-man was one of the few shows I watched fully, only to realize it was a bother and that lengthy animes are as bad as always. Those looking for random fun and maybe those who really like excessively expressive shows like One Piece, Bleach, Soul Eater, Gurren Lagann may find some fun here, but I warn you that it's not the smart type of anime.

There are many times where the show makes short of its character intelligence (and your intelligence as a consequence). At a single point, for example, the hero's party is wondering who is following them. They meet dozens of characters that weren't supposed to be in those places, these characters act in suspicious ways, the coincidences are even more abusive than the norm of the show. And most importantly, the party has met an enemy with doppelganger powers a few episodes back. It becomes pretty obvious these coincidences are in fact a play made by the foe (the show clearly shows this to the audience), but it takes freaking 10 episodes for someone in the party to REMEMBER about the doppelganger foe and make the most obvious link. Even worst, the party is still in doubt for another two entire episodes until they finally discover that the doppelganger enemy is the one following them. Hell, twelve episodes for the party to discover the only thing that it could be.

Anyway, that's just a sample, there are lot of other small and big obvious events that the cast fail to understand for more episodes than necessary, making you feel as much stupid as them while watching.

Notice: This review covers both the old series, and its sequel, Hallow.

D.Gray-man is a typical example of what happens with any fighting shonen after it gains some popularity. It’s considered amazing at first, then it begins to slow down in pacing, something similar comes out, and before you know it everybody forgets about it and moves to hype the next title. It was the same for D.Gray Man, a combo of Bleach and Soul Eater, which got overshadowed by them after the manga went on a prolonged hiatus.

There were more reasons that led to its downfall, such as TMS Entertainment being a studio with not big enough budgets to keep the anime looking slick. The gothic motif of the setting is quite remarkable as far as backgrounds are concerned, but beyond that the animation is fairly standard and there are lots of stills for saving money. The character designs are fairly eccentric, but they are only dressing for clear-cut good guys and bad guys. There is the theme of morality and sin flying around, but it’s more of an afterthought. Although everybody seems to have a lot to show at first, eventually the protagonist and the main villain are the only ones who move the plot forward, with everyone else ending up being side stories.

Speaking of the story, D.Gray Man suffers from the same problems as Bleach. The initial episodes are marvelous in themes and tension, as the bad guys exploit human grief in order to create demons out of the souls of the dead. The first arcs were great at establishing a drama between mortals and monsters, as everybody seemed to be a tragic victim of selfish love, instead of a 1 dimensional good guy or bad guy. Even the battles were cool, since they involved a lot of body horror that was very uncommon in shonen at the time.

Fast forward a few dozen episodes, and all that is gone. More and more characters keep being introduced with nobody getting enough screen time to matter, or an actual purpose to accomplish that is not simply support for the protagonist. The monsters stop having individuality and a sad backdrop story, and become mass produced mindless cannon fodder than the good guys are killing by the hundreds without any emotional attachment. The body horror is still there, but it means nothing when there is no emotional attachment with what is going on.

The pacing slows down and many episodes feel like fillers, since no matter what happens, there is zero significance once it is over. And even the canon material is not that interesting either, as a big part of it is just more character introductions and the older characters gaining powers-ups instead of character development. Before you know it, what began as a tight story revolving a small and well fleshed out cast, became a clusterfuck of hundreds of people who come and go, are defined by levels and statistics and special attacks, and do nothing to push the plot forward.

Just like pretty much any shonen, it replaces personality with fancy special attacks. Giving the monsters level ups was ok the first time, as it was giving them individuality and personality. You know, like the Menos in Bleach. Anything after that though was just leveling up for the sake of leveling up. There was no point to them other than creating fake tension that is taken away when the good guys gain extra power right when they need it the most.

There was not even a payoff for all this mess, since the manga was discontinued for many years and viewers lost interest. By the time it continued and they finally made a sequel many years later, very few were giving a damn anymore, and even they were disappointed with the changes in the plot, the artstyle, and the voice actors. It was no longer the show they used to like. It was as if the show died and returned as an Akuma. (wink-wink)

You can’t even claim it at least received a proper conclusion, since even after the sequel was over, the plot is still far from completion, lots of things have not been explained yet, and nobody cares to wait another decade for all that. The protagonist at this point is just a pretty boy that is constantly being punched around for torture porn and is given blurred memories to make his already bland personality even more insignificant, the villains are chasing mcguffins because they have nothing better to do, and there is a crazy powerful dude who is killing people for some conspiracy nobody bothers to even remember what it’s about. Bottom line, D.Gray Man is clinically dead and nobody wants more of it.

"D-Gray Man, no es mala, pero tampoco es la gran serie".

La banda sonora es pesima. En una escena por ejemplo te ponen una musica de suspenso y de repente hay un cambio a musica de humor, lo que te hace sentir como que hay algo que no encaja. El ambiente musical para los momentos de acción es muy estatico y monotono.

La historia, desde el punto el punto de vista de la innovacion, no te transmite un aire fresco, diferente, una trama interesante de la cual no puedas despegarte de la pantalla. A veces exageran con el humor, ya que un anime de la categoría de accion, demonios y suspenso no debiera estar cargado de tantas payaserias. Si tomamos por ejemplo "Death Note" y "Monster", son series que te transmite un ambiente de suspenso, donde la expectativa de que pasara, o como sera el desenlace, te dejaran ensimismado en una fantastica aventura animada."Fullmetal Alchemist", por citar otro, tiene un humor acabado, donde los autores no abusan de los cliche y los excesos de risas sin cesar, sin dejar de ser un drama de accion que te ruboriza los sentidos por lo bueno que es.

El ambiente escenografico y el modelado de personajes es quizás lo mejor de la serie. No es que sea lo ultimo en fotografias ni nada por el estilo, pero por lo menos los personajes estan bien delineados. Aunque algo muy critico es que los personajes no son que digamos caracteres unicos, mas bien son como personajes de varias series encajados en una nueva serie. Me explico. Cuando ves a personajes como Edward Elric (FMA), Light (Death Note), Johan Liebert (Monster), Kenshin Himura (Rurouni Kenshin), y muchos otros mas, te dices: "wow, estos encajan en la serie, hacen la distincion", a eso me refiero, personajes que marcan y distinguen.

Bueno, es dificil para mi intentar ver nuevamente a D-Gray Man. No es del tipo de serie que te quedas enfrascado en ella y la ves, la ves, porque aunque sabes su desenlace, aun asi no deja de producirte una sutil emocion. D-Gray Man no es de este tipo de serie que acabo de describir. Pienso que es una serie generica que no es mala, pero que es muy dificil que puedas recomendarla. Claro, para alquien que incursiona en el mundo de la animacion, se encontraria que la serie es de lo mejor.

Recomendaciones:
Death Note
Fullmetal Alchemist
Claymore
Trinity Blood
Monster
Elfen Lied
Bokura No

I first got into D.Gray Man, DGM, when Hoshino Katsura released his first chapter in the weekly Jump. Not surprisingly, I was not impressed. To me it was just another jump comic, but I still wanted to see how it would preform in anime form so i watched it. To be honest though, I liked it more than the other Jump animes. D.Gray Man has a more dark side to it than the other Jump animes which is a great refreshment from the other hackneyed Jump animes. Well here goes the review:[br]Animation: It was decent. Probably the best animated out of the current Jump animes but then again, they aren't animated very well so that's why it gets an 8. I liked how the ops and eds were animated; everything looked clear and shiny. Also, the fight scenes were well animated. In the manga, sometimes I could barely tell what was going on so I'm glad that they actually showed what was happening. [br]Sound: I liked all the ops, not so much the eds though. The BGMs fit well and were not completely overused. Personally, I thought the BGMs were nice, not nice enough to download but nice enough not to get bored of during the episode. [br]Story: Ok, it is a typical shounen plot about a guy who gains a super power and combats evil, not very original. The whole innocence concept isn't very original either but at least they pulled it off ok. The story itself is enticing at times but, of course, the fillers sucked. There were some nice plot twists here and there but other than that nothing much to praise. [br]Character: Could've seen more character development here and there but that's about it. Allen Walker is the typical shounen male lead and his allies are basically the same. Some characters were meant not to be developed such as Kanda. His whole entire life is supposed to be shrouded in mystery. He pushes other people away, why should the audience be any different, we just have to be patient and wait for Hoshino Katsura to explain. [br]Value: Not great to rewatch, i probably will never touch the series again. [br]Enjoyment: Though i hate to admit it, I enjoyed DGM. It wasn't something that I totally looked forward to watching each week but it was not a waste of time. [br]As i said in the beginning, i really liked the way DGM gave the shounen plots a darker side. It felt alot more twisted and satisfying than any other Jump anime. I say jump anime because DGM can't even begin to compare to most other animes out there. I would recommend watching it but do yourself a favor, go to wikipedia, search for the episode list of DGM, and skip the fillers. [br][br]

::::Just a small edit for roriconfan as he seems to have somewhat misunderstood the nature of this review::::

THIS IS NOT A FULL REVIEW - IT IS A PERSONAL 'BREAK DOWN' OF THE ANIME


after watching every episode this is a little break down of what 'I' personally think of the anime but at the same time it WONT be a full on review & I will explain why later. I would try to summerise the story a little but the description on the front page is more then sufficient.

Animation: the usual

Sound - the sound tracks are amazing - Highly recommended you buy/borrow/steal the soundtrack

Story/Character - Well heres where things start to get rocky.... it story starts of from when Allen Walker first joined the Black-Order & through out more or less every episode asside from a small handful. has been focused on Allen. & as you carry on watching you gradually find out who Allen is, what he does & why he does it. which totally imerses you into the story as he will talk about things which happend in his life that defines him & who he is.

The anime focuses so much on character development that they do run out of time & cut the story short with out explaining all that has happend in the last final epsodes which to me has totally ruined what would have been a great anime.

things like their 'innocense' - on the last 2-3 episodes Leena Lees innocense evolves - just when they discoverd that Leena Lee might be the 'heart' (they didnt explain what that meant either) & talking about innocense evolving - it evolves on the very last 2 episodes but theres so much their trying to push into the last few episodes that they dont explain any of it.

Alistar Krowry has finally awaked from his battle with Jaspa-devi so many many episodes ago - another thing that wasnt explained.

the story behind Kanda's tattoo & his healing abilities.- even though Kanda was always played apart from an early stage in the series - he is one of the most sidelined & undeveloped chars in the anime.

What the hell happend to Tyki Mik after the Earl saved him???

the list goes on.....

there are so many loose ends as the anime ended so sbruptly but in the end the best way to summerise the WHOLE series from 1-103 is...

Allen Walker joins the Black Order to fight demons & their leader - the Millenium Earl to prevent them from destroying humantiy - Allen walker destroys a critical tool thats used to make demons but nobody knows that the Earl has is or has or is building another tool to replace the one thats destroyed - THE END.

I can carry on telling you whats wrong with this Anime but to be honest its not worth my time.


I enjoyed it at the start - but once you find out that this anime amounts to NOTHING due to the ending totally screwing up the story. watching it becomes a totally pointless endevour.

my suggestion? go read the manga instead & avoid the animation unless your really desperate for something to watch.

Its fine if you dont agree with what i have said - I dont care - these are my personal opinions. so you can take your stupid anime & shove it up your ass