A person who liked shonen once told me to read a manga because it was so different from other shonen. They told me that it was mystery manga that paralleled the likes of Fullmetal Alchemist and the works of Naoki Urasawa (Monster, 20 Century Boys, Pluto) and very different from the "stereotypical shonen" faire. The first 100 chapters were decent with a standard theme of "deal with the devil". However, as the story became more arc based, I started to get progressivly more frustrated as the story's flaws became apparent. Some people have had problems with the author's recent art style changes but to be honest I am not bothered by it. Art is never as important as plot or character content. Unfortunately, D. Grayman doesn't have much of either.
It sticks to cliche manga archetypes.
Many of the protagonsists I like in manga generally tend to be flawed in some way or another. Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul switched to emotional extremes. Eren from Shingeki no Kyojin was vengeful to the point of disregarding caution. Allen, on the other hand, is optimistic to the point of being insufferable. The world is ending and people are being transformed into hideous monstrosities but let's all believe that it will be cured through love and friendship! Ugh, how did this series last so long with an unoriginal character like this? Allen's dialogue is really, really, corny. It’s so predictable what he is going to say or do at any given moment. Blah, blah, blah friendship, blah, blah, blah, peace, blah, blah, blah, understanding. Let's just form a circle and sing Kumbaya already.
Most of the time, Allen is a reactive protagonist. Actions like figure out mysteries of the Noah, try to sneak into Black Headquarters, and find out why they are hiding research, as well as figuring out effects of Innocence and how they are connected to an ultimate piece that could destroy them all if shattered, are all way too complex for our depressive hero. Instead the audience gets treated to one of a dozen scenes of Allen angsting alone in his room about my dead clown dad. In the latest arcs in the series, Allen does scarcely anything but lose, get beat up, and by some miracle, escape to get beat up again in the next conflict. Most other manga try to examine the characteristics of their main character or try to challenge the characters to be more morally flexible. That’s not the case with Allen. He just gets pushed from story arc to story arc and stays more or less the same.
Lenalee is your typical female lead in the confines of a shonen. She’s kind, sweet, and has a crush on the romantically, dense, protagonist. Beyond that, there really isn’t much else to say about Lenalee. This is a classic trap shonen tend to fall into. They introduce a strong female character and then realize they reserved all the drama for their male characters, so the female lead tends to fade into the background during important scenes. Having a powerful female character isn’t the same as having a well written female character. Lenalee could suddenly gain the power to destroy all the Noa forever, but it wouldn’t matter because Lenalee does not have enough personal conflict to justify the panels used to do it.
Kanda is the jerkish rival. He is a belligerent, condescending tool that treats Allen with no respect for 150+ chapters. Some people say his snide remarks toward Allen are funny, but I fail to see how. If anything, his verbal abuse makes Allen look like a weaker character. Rather than dedicate a few chapters to these two hashing it out, instead Allen throws ineffectual arguments and threats that Kanda promptly ignores. Some might argue
his arc with Alma
improves him for the better but that doesn’t change that readers have to stomach his anti-social attitude until then. After the arc, he graduates from a jerk to normal human being and that’s about it. The problem is when the jerk part is removed he’s just a guy who cuts things. In making Kanda no longer a jerk, the author exposes his lack of characterization.
The plot is unimaginative.
Unimaginative? How does an author make a Victorian mystery about zombie machine monsters unimaginative? By taking away from that premise and focusing a bunch of dark skinned pretty boys. The fanservice overshadows any attempt at horror. Can the author at least try to the keep the pretense that this is supposed to be a gothic, mystery, horror story?! These, bad guys, the Noah, really kind ruin any sort of tension the story has going. They are all immortal, powerful, and as of the latest chapter still impossible to permanently kill.
Only one of them has killed
within the hundreds of chapters since they have been introduced and even that
! one is eventually going to get revived.
Not that the author of this so-called horror manga, has guts to do any lasting harm to any of the main cast. So the story pits a group of villains that the author is unwilling to kill off against a group of heroes the author unwilling to kill off. What’s the result? Something akin to G. I. Joe. No, really. The Noah swoop in to cause trouble, Allen rectifies an emotional disturbance with whatever problem is occurring, and then the Noah, sort of just fly away until they can decide what bad things they’ll do next time. Rinse and repeat. Sadly, Tyki doesn’t shout “We’ll get you next time, Joes!”
As I said before, D. Grayman touts itself as a mystery. Only problem is that mysteries are only compelling when the protagonist is trying to solve them. Allen is not a proactive protagonist. Bad guys always have to provoke him or the organization he works for before he actually gets involved in situations. Instead the plot just builds up constant amounts of cryptic dialogue before simply telling the audience via expositional devices (memory melds, mind jacks). Compared to Fullmetal Alchemist which gradually answers mysteries at a steady pace and had the main protagonist Edward Elric actively trying to figure them out. D. Grayman’s pacing is an uneven rollercoaster that leaves the audience unsatisfied and motion sick at the end.
Odds are you’ll forget there is even a Victorian setting by chapter 140, as greater emphasis is placed on fighting in the hero’s enemy’s home base. By having a larger focus on the Noah and Black Order War, the story cuts out the human element of the setting, rendering it utterly pointless. Considering the DBZ level power ups the main characters get over the course of the plot, any struggles through lack of technology are easily surpassed.
** Lacks a theme. **
The commenter, Baniita wrote
“In no way is this manga religious, thankfully. It centers around religious themes, but as Lenalee so accurately addressed God, "to the God whom I hate so much" (I love that line), none of them are actually religious.”
Ironically, this story would better if it was religious because I would feel like the author would have some groundwork to add some stability to this train wreck of a plot. I struggle repeatedly to grasp what the message of D. Grayman‘s story. It can’t be about people making the wrong decisions leading them down the wrong path. Simply put, none of the main cast ever made the wrong decision in a moral dilemma.
Above all, D. Grayman is absolutely terrible at showing gray morality. The main cast is pure and selfless to the point of a lack of realism. How can a story focus on gray morality when the author never has the characters act in selfish or cruel ways? The only main character that is capable of doing something remotely uncharitable was Kanda, pre-character development, but he never did because Allen always restrained him. Rather the gray morality comes from the heads of the Black Organization. In other words, an ominous council that has no characterization whatsoever. This is your standard conflict ball trope that I have seen in a dozen other manga. One Piece, Naruto, Bleach and practically any shonen manga that has broken a 100 chapters has done this. For D. Grayman to get a gold star for doing this is absolutely ridiculous.
The same goes for the Noah. They are the bad guys, but they care for each other and have certain moral values. Again, this has been done. Tyki may be nice to the occasional human extra, but he still wants to exterminate them. Road may have a crush on Allen, but that doesn’t stop her tormenting everyone else. They understand the moral consequences of genocide, but choose to do it anyway. That beyond anything should invalidate them from being morally gray characters.
D. Grayman tries to be a lot of things, but ends up being none. The action scenes are mixed around and often difficult to comprehend, the characters stick to stereotypical archetypes with borderline fanaticism, the plot is redundant and confusing, the horror is often neglected in favor of fanservice, the mystery is just a bunch of trumped up cryptic dialogue followed by heavy exposition dumps, and the story never really challenges the characters’ moral reasoning nor does it ever pit them against each other in some meaningful way,
aside from Kanda kicking Allen around during the Alma arc like an underpaid stagehand on the Maury show.
No review I’ve seen fully describes the flaws of this manga but no one really talks about it on anime forums either. Maybe most people subconsciously realize there isn’t much to talk about. D. Grayman is one of the most generic shonen manga I have ever read. An age old relic that styled itself as being different, but too often took the safe route.
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