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During the Christmas week, as me and my siblings were busy turning our little house into an internet cafe, talk, as usual, started drifting towards mangas and anime. As a certified pinoy otaku, I was pretty pleased with myself when my younger siblings (including one adopted, loll) rattled off names of cool animus with me haughtily replying ‘read it, watched that’ every time. Until they mentioned Darker Than Black. I was stumped. They were really enthusiastic over the anime that I had to do a little research in wikipedia just to see what the fuss was all about.
According to wikipedia, the story of Darker Than Black goes something like this:
Ten years ago, an inscrutable and abnormal territory known as Hell’s Gate appeared in Tokyo, altering the sky and wreaking havoc on the landscape. The heavenly bodies disappeared, replaced by false stars. During this time, people possessing various special abilities emerged, each capable of different supernatural feats – these are known as Contractors. Each fake star has a corresponding Contractor, which reacts to their activities. As such, Contractors are usually identified by their star’s Messier catalogue number. Kept secret from the masses, these individuals are known to murder in cold blood, smothering unnecessary emotions with logic and rationale. Their incredible abilities, however, are gained at the cost of their humanity – Contractors are thus named because of an involuntary compulsion to “pay the price” each time their power is used, which can range from eating particular foods and completing meaningless tasks, to self-harm and having their bodies change in peculiar ways. Various nations and organizations around the world train and utilize Contractors as spies and assassins, resulting in violent battles for valuable objects and information.
This piqued my curiosity so I made a mental note to read the Darker Than Black manga once I’m back in Manila.
After having gobbled up the latest chapter of my favorite manga of the moment, Fairy Tail, I started reading Darker Than Black. What I noticed first was the color of the scans. As an avid manga reader I am used to reading scans in black and white, sometimes there are scans that are in full color but those are very few and far in between.
The Darker Than Black manga however has a predominantly faded jeans blue background. I’m thinking that it could be for dramatic effect, sort of like manga noir or something like that. The scenes unfolding were the usual stuff of generic manga, sorry to say that, but still with all my siblings reactions, I decided to plow through, hoping that I could get hooked once I’m in the middle of the story.
Unfortunately, I was so distracted by the blueness of the scans that in the middle of the second chapter, I just gave up reading the Darker Than Black manga altogether. I guess that noir stuff is not for me after all.
However, I did not immediately lose hope. I tried looking for the anime version hoping that surely, it wouldn’t be as blue as the scanlations. And it was not! I’m still starting out but it looks like the graphics are awesome. If my internet speed holds, I may be able to finish everything before the year ends. Wish me luck!
See more of my anime and manga adventures over at Proud Otaku!
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About the Author
3WG has written 377 articles for Third World Geek.
Darker Than Black anime is one of my favorites! :-) I haven't seen the manga yet. (Not so much time on my hands these days…)
you probably read the first dtb manga… creepy adaptation, try reading the second manga once u finished the series =D its much, much more better than that.