Shelf Life

Straining Your I"s

So there are two OVAs—a two-episode OVA that isn't directly adapted from the manga, and a six-episode OVA that does a reasonably faithful adaptation of the manga. I”s Pure, which is the six-part adaptation, is the better of the two, although it pales in comparison to the manga. It does a good job of retelling the events of the manga, but the limited runtime condenses it quite a bit. There are a few characters who don't get the screen time they deserve (such as the main character's childhood friend), but it serves as a primer to the manga series.

The story stars a rather talentless guy named Ichitaka. He's crushed on his classmate Iori for the longest time, but has never been able to muster up the guts to talk to her. Much of the story is focused on his ongoing struggle to confess his love to her, but misunderstandings keep getting in the way (one of them being the sudden appearance of a childhood friend/love interest, Itsuki). Eventually, the guy gets the girl, but it's not without a lot of bumbling. Personally, I've always found Ichitaka to be a solid lead. He's not particularly good at anything, but he cares deeply about his friends. He's always the one who saves Iori from perverts (because for whatever reason, Katsura romances have a lot of rape danger scenarios), even if it means getting a good whooping. But at the same time, he's a stereotypical teenage male, who's obsessed with panties and constantly fantasizes about seeing his love interests shyly offering themselves to him.

The big downside with the OVAs comes in the fact that you don't really get to see the characters interactions beyond the bare bones of the story. Itsuki ends up showing up for a couple of episodes, just long enough to be the “other girl,” but you don't really see why she and Ichitaka are so drawn to each other. None of the characters' emotions are really explained, beyond a few cursory “I… I guess I like [Ichitaka] best…” remarks, and it strips the show of any character development. It's a shame, because in its current state, it's more like a CliffsNotes for awkward teenage love than anything substantive.

From I”s fares even worse. Taking place during the characters' summer vacations, it tells a rather morbid tale of how all the friends happen to be in the same lakeside resort and manage to prevent Itsuki from getting raped, except there's also a death scene. It's meant to share some background about one of Ichitaka and Itsuki's childhood promises, but unless you've read the manga, you don't really know anything about their relationship (and I”s Pure does not adequately prepare you for this). Instead, it just ends up being a rather creepy story that has way too many kids singing eerie songs, and a story that's more gruesome than gallant.

Sadly, the problems with this release don't stop there. The English voice acting is wooden, and there aren't really any stand-out parts. The exclamations seem out of place, and anything beyond a dead-pan sounds forced. But that's not the problem that irks me the most. Weirdly, the images on the discs were printed wrong. So, the disc that says From I”s actually contains I”s Pure, and vice versa. It's a simple error, and it would seemingly be way more trivial than a clunky dub, but it's so obvious that it makes it worse.

I really, really wanted to like both OVAs. I tried to judge them as standalone series, but they work better as companions to the manga, because they're simply not strong enough to stand up on their own. The characters aren't developed at all (and some of the side characters aren't even introduced!), and all the meat of the relationships has been gutted. If anything, I hope it'll drive fans to check out Viz's release of the manga.[TOP]

At the core of Darker than Black is the underlying mystery of what exactly happened to make the Hell's GATE appear in Tokyo, and what purpose it serves. Since that time, the stars in the sky have disappeared, replaced by fake stars that correspond to people known as Contractors—people who can use special abilities at a price to themselves. Some of them have to let their own blood (lucky for that guy, he can use his blood as an explosive), some of them have to make their murders look like suicides. Others just have to eat flowers. It's kind of a gimmicky set up, but the series delights in pointing out all the Contractor's payments, as though viewers somehow care. Conveniently, the main character inherited his electricity-conducting powers, so he doesn't even need to pay up. This allows him to go around and help track down other Contractors without us having to watch him go through any gruesome (or silly) after effects.

Just like in the first volume, this set of episodes is comprised of a few standalone mini-arcs, usually culminating in the defeat or retreat of an enemy Contractor. This exposes viewers to some of the more unique bad guys, and presumably sets up the story for the return of some of the dangerous ones, but it still doesn't let on any secrets pertaining to Hell's GATE. As disappointing (and understanding) as that is, these episodes do provide some backstory on some of the other major characters, like the police section chief. Everything else was just action-oriented mind-fluff, which would be fine, if I weren't waiting a month between releases to figure out what happens next.

Having seen ten episodes of this show now, I can't really figure out what's that special about it. It's entertaining, but there's nothing that stands out about it. The animation isn't particularly impressive, nor is the mildly awful soundtrack mainly comprised of guitars wailing the same power chords over and over again. One thing that I'll commend the series for is the way that the battles are depicted. It's not easy to make supernatural battles look believable, but the way they use lighting in this show really draws out the action, whether it's the glint of Li's wires, or the various glowing things that everyone uses in one form or another.

Darker than Black would be fun to watch if you had absolutely nothing else to do with your time, but it's not something that would greatly impact your life if the rest of the series was never released. Maybe if it was closer to the end and viewers were closer to figuring out the whole Hell's GATE business, but right now, it's just another assassin-does-awesome-things show.[TOP]