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Reviewed by Joy Kim In this installment of D.Gray-Man, teenage exorcist Allen Walker teams up with beautiful Lenalee Li in a new Innocence retrieval assignment. To recap for those just joining the story, D.Gray-Man is set in an alternate nineteenth century where a mysterious substance called Innocence has the power to defeat demons known as akuma. The exorcists of the Black Order are the select few with the ability to accommodate a fragment of Innocence, either within their body or via a weapon, and to synchronize with its power. Volume 2 explained more about the nature of Innocence and akuma while highlighting a major supporting character, Kanda. Volume 3 follows much the same model: it features Lenalee as Allen’s partner of the moment, but also expands the world of the series through key revelations about the Millennium Earl and his allies. The volume begins on a humorous note, as a comic interlude involving a science experiment gone awry provides an opportunity to introduce Lenalee's anti-akuma weapon and to highlight the close relationship of the Li siblings. After the bittersweet ending of volume 2, this provides a welcome respite for readers, while still laying the groundwork for the mission to come. Allen and Lenalee's subsequent assignment takes them to a town where time is rewinding, repeating the same day over and over again. Their mission is to identify the cause of the phenomenon and to retrieve any Innocence fragment that might be present. At times this mission drags on too long, mostly because a key supporting character is presented as a one-note joke that quickly grows old. Nevertheless, the mission arc still has some memorable moments. Haunting flashbacks of Lenalee's childhood show her and Komui's history with the Black Order and add much to the reader’s understanding of her character, while Hoshino comes up with some inspired visuals to convey the rewinding of time throughout the arc. During this mission, Allen and Lenalee encounter the series’ first recurring antagonists, aside from the Earl himself who appeared briefly in volume 1. Up to this point, most of the villains that the exorcists have faced have been disposable, encountered in one chapter and finished off a few later. Here things begin to grow more complicated. The group of villains presented in this volume, some only very briefly, promise to be a thorn in the Black Order's side for many volumes to come and suggest that the Millennium Earl’s schemes run deeper than previously suspected. On a final note, this volume of D.Gray-Man features some of the worst editing that I have ever seen in a licensed volume of manga. The spelling of characters' names is not consistent with their presentation in previous volumes, and in more than one case is inconsistent within the volume. In one particularly atrocious instance, Lenalee's name is spelled three different ways (Lenalee, Linali, and Rinali) on a single spread. Such editing does not inspire much confidence in the rest of the re-versioning; the final review grade was dropped a bit because of this sloppiness. Here's to hoping the editing improves in subsequent volumes. Comment on this review of D.Gray-Man v3 on the Manga Life Forums. |
7 May 2008
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