ZONE by Katsura Hoshino

[Guido]

The cover for Katsura Hoshino's one-shot manga predecessor to D.Gray-Man




This is it!! What every D.Gray-man fan out there craved and wished for the most!!!

ZONE is Hoshino-sensei's first published manga one-shot work.

This is sort of a starter prequel/companion piece to D.Gray-man, as the characters of the Earl and Cross Marian are introduced.

As well as the Earl's creation of Akuma luring naive people into tricking them to call out for the souls of their recently deceased, precious persons.

However, ZONE acts more like the template or prototype springboard to the more elaborated D.Gray-man manga.

For starters, the protagonist is named, Robin (family name not given). The Japanese text makes "her" gender ambiguous, since in the same one-shot Robin is addressed as a "boy" while appearing on-screen at some panels wearing a french-maid outfit.

The girl to Robin's left-side is called Lenali, and she's a French-Japanese girl.

The only exorcists that appear in the one-shot are Robin and "her" Master, whose face is totally obscured but his body, build, attire, and excentric mannerisms correlate to those of Cross Marian.

Furthermore, the setting for the one-shot takes place in Japan in the 19th century but after the Meiji Revolution.

The manga suggests that maybe Robin's French, since the Exorcist's HQ are located somewhere in France.

The Lv. 0 Akuma are radically different from their D.Gray-man counterparts:

Spoiler:

-They look like mummies wrapped in bandages and with a cloak wearing creepy masks, giving off the appearance of mummified dolls.

-The grieved victim receives a letter from the Earl himself, addressing that he accepted the "contract". The one-shot never addresses how exactly the Earl contacts the victim.

-The contract is a literal one, as the victim previously has signed a contract in paper with the lost person's name written on it. This contract is sticked into the Akuma's lifeless body but remains motionless.

-Then, once the contract is formalized, the unsuspecting victim is brutally stabbed on the back by the Earl himself with a claymore...., no, I mean a broadsword.

-The victim's blood incites the Akuma to begin to move, then the Akuma proceeds to absorb the soul from the deceased victim's body taking on the victim's appearance in the process.

-Akuma in ZONE are revealed to sport horns in a similar fashion to those of the oni creatures from Japanese mythology.

-A motionless Akuma can be destroyed before the creation is completed by simply ripping and destroying the piece of contract, but this has to be done only by the victim itself since it was him or her who agreed to the contract in the first place.

If you want more information about ZONE, feel free to pm me.