D.GRAY-MAN: OPENING (VOLUME 1)
September 16th 2010 22:40
Category: Manga
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Story & Art by: Katsura Hoshino
Translation & English Adaptation: Mayumi Kobayashi
Touch up art & Lettering: Elizabeth Watasin
Design: Yukiko Whitely
Cost: AU$12.95/US$7.99
An interesting work this, picked it up out of curiosity as I had heard about somewhere just cannot recall where. The key protagonist in the series is a young fifteen year old guy by the name of Allen Walker; he has this rather strange looking left hand, its red and has embedded within it a cross. It decidedly looks as if it doesn’t belong to him, as if it was grafted onto him in some kind of bizarre mad medical procedure undertaken in a forbidding castle run by a man who believes that lightning is the cutting edge in power supply and has a hunchbacked assistant named Igor. I seriously doubt such an individual would bulk bill...then again you never know. In fact the whole mad scientist shtick is very much at home in this manga, in fact its primary antagonist is what one could describe as the quintessential mad scientist.
What has been going on in the church is a lot more surprising than you would think...mad science abounds, quite literally in this rather seemingly ordinary church in a rather seemingly ordinary township in England. We are soon introduced to our protagonist Allen Walker who has been camped in the church as he makes his way to the headquarters of the Black Order, the organisation to which exorcists belong, Allen is a newly anointed exorcist and he is seeking to meet up with his mentor Cross Marian at the Order’s headquarters. Stopping in the church en route he becomes embroiled in the mystery of what has been occurring in its confines.
This is a world that on the surface seems to be in a period of relative calm but it is an illusion, the world is under threat from a truly dire menace although most people would not credit the existence of such a threat. They live and lead their mundane lives as if they were wearing blinkers, and let’s face it considering the nature of their lives it would be hard for them to be aware of shadowy goings on at anything more than a speculative level. And this hasn’t really significantly changed even now to be frank; we all see the trees without realising the shape of the forest of which they’re part of. So the existence of beings known as Akuma and the Millennium Earl are taken with a grain of salt by the general population.
Unfortunately both entities are very much real and very much a danger to the world. The Millennium Earl, who looks like some demented Victorian gentleman with an over large maniacal grin, an umbrella and a flower decorated oversized top hat. He looks like a caricature, which is all part of the image; he doesn’t want to appear like a villain as his efforts require that he appear as something that can slip past a person’s defences and natural suspicions. He comes to those who have suffered some tragedy and uses them to create his Akuma, his fiendish living weapons with which he is actively engaged in plunging the world into death and destruction. As he needs to work on those distraught and despairing he can’t appear like some fiendish creature...far better to adopt the guise he wears as he doesn’t seem so threatening.
We learn that Allen Walker has encountered the Earl in his early years, he made the mistake of brining back his adoptive father Mana Walker as an Akuma for which he was cursed. This curse meant that he could always see the original soul used in the process of the creation of an Akuma, thus even though Akuma can adopt a normal guise to conceal themselves in normal society Allen is capable of seeing exactly what they are. A handy talent if you’re an exorcist and your enemy is capable of hiding their nature from common methods. It was after the tragedy of having to destroy his adopted father that Cross Marian took the young boy on as his apprentice. And three years later after that event he feels his young protégé is worthy to be called an exorcist and he must now journey to the headquarters of the Black Order. Which is how we find Allen in England and why he is wandering around the English countryside getting involved in all manner of hijinks from a ruined church to a graveyard and finally at last the headquarters of the Order.
I enjoyed reading D.Gray-Man: Opening, it looks like a series that has loads of potential and a truly great background on which it’s set its story. And it’s rather spooky, there is that old school English mystery kind of feel to it, misty moors, gas lit streets, the feeling that something truly evil is lurking behind a bank of fog or a fog shrouded alleyway. The atmosphere is just right, and it doesn’t beat around the bush it drops you right into the action without having to waste too much time on explanation of why things are and so forth. Its tight, taut storytelling with a good mix of humour, horror and action aplenty. My advice if you like nineteenth century set stories involving exorcists, mad scientists and horrific creatures from beyond the grave then D.Gray-Man: Opening is the one for you.
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