Darker Than Black [1st season] generic discussion

[Nightengale]

Originally Posted by wao

...Maybe he's an evil Ginko in modern times with a mission to fulfil. Yeah.

Or maybe he's closer to some non-twisted pyschos. You know, the type of people who can easily blend into society for their percieved understanding of how people emotion works, but they themselves has a twisted understanding of it where he himself can't, but can easily pretend as if he is. Not a con-man, but not mentally screwed either... The type of people who experienced both worlds, but not living in either one of them...Does that even make sense?

I think those traditional "last bosses" in detective manga genres is a close line to what I think of Hei. Not exactly the same, but he gives me the same vibes. Differences being...well, various things such as less of a pyschological outlook (( so far )) and genuine skills.

So, is this Haraguchi woman (( the club woman )) going to be recurring, or will Black/Hei dump her once he's through with her in the next episode?

Black Girls sound nicer than Hei Girls. Hei Ni, perhaps, but not Hei Girls. Sounds too much like "Hey, girls."

[ZeusIrae]

Looks like a very good thriller.

Lee-san(I don't know his real name) is creepy with his two-faced personnality.One moment he looks like an innocent foreign student,the next like a coldblooded killer.

I already like him.

Oh,and the animation is beautiful.

"the type of people who can easily blend into society for their percieved understanding of how people emotion works, but they themselves has a twisted understanding of it where he himself can't, but can easily pretend as if he is"
It's called a psychopath.We will have to wait and see but he's a good candidate indeed.

[wao]

I sort of get what you're saying.

As for Haraguchi/Shinoda she is a guest character. Although she has that important information about the Gate and all of that, watching the preview should clue you off into something.

Spoiler for episode 2 - major?:

Again I'm not 100% sure on thsi but apparently either the real Shinoda died and what they see is a Doll, or Shinoda became a Doll, or there's a Shinoda and a Shinoda-doll [and they merged?] but anyway it seems like Hei ends up dealing with a Doll.
And kills her.

There's some info on what appears to be the next bi-episodes' guest characters, from the mag spreads

Spoiler:

Mai Kashiwagi (柏木舞) [ep 3, 4??] Character voice: Megumi Nasu

• A 14 year old schoolgirl.
• Her parents divorced and then her mother died. She took on her mother's surname.
• She is in the custody of Tahara Kouzou, her father, but does not get along well with him.
• There is a certain secret about her that even she doesn't know.

Kouzou Tahara (田原耕造) [ep 3,4??] Character voice: Kousuke Meguro

• Mai's 42 year old biological father
• The only remaining survivor of a group of investigators sent into Hell's Gate
• Now he works in a relatively slack job as an advisor to a factory
• Hei and the other rival organisations are all after the research materials he brought back after going to the Gate.

Another thing about the stars and whatnot explained: if this wasn't obvious enough as it is, it's confirmed that the stars are linked to Contractors. When a new one comes about a star appears in the sky and when one dies the star disappears as a shooting star.
There's an astrology department that reads these stars and tracks the movements of Contractors by linking the stars with the right people. (And also has hawt technicians like her) However they haven't been able to find out who's behind the star labeled "BK201" (and that's actually Hei). This information is passed onto the police... so take notice in the episode when they focus on a twinkling star in the sky.
And also remember that Hei does a lot of stargazing... Memories of a nostalgic past (see first part of ep 1) or tracking other Contractors down?

So can you imagine if Hei were to get into killing-machine mode and finish off all the contractors it would be a truly dark, starless sky...

[Onizuka-GTO]

whats the name of the ending theme song?

it's stunning, and props for Yuki Nagato finding work again.

Go Yuki!

[Goofus Maximus]

Originally Posted by ZeusIrae

Looks like a very good thriller.

Lee-san(I don't know his real name) is creepy with his two-faced personnality.One moment he looks like an innocent foreign student,the next like a coldblooded killer.

I already like him.

Oh,and the animation is beautiful.

"the type of people who can easily blend into society for their percieved understanding of how people emotion works, but they themselves has a twisted understanding of it where he himself can't, but can easily pretend as if he is"
It's called a psychopath.We will have to wait and see but he's a good candidate indeed.

Sociopath. A psychopath is one who's lost contact with reality, by withdrawing (catatonic) or listening to voices in their head (schizophrenic), believing that everyone is in a vast conspiracy to get them (paranoia), or believing they live in a different world/time than they are.

It's the sociopath who has no... I guess you could call it a "Conscience Governor", with the inability to feel for others or have true guilt or grief.

[MrProphet]

I have a question.

Seems like Hei is posing as a Chinese transfer student. But is he and his team really Chinese? Hei and Huang especially reminded me of the way that Han people are usually drawn in anime.

[cyth]

Originally Posted by Onizuka-GTO

it's stunning, and props for Yuki Nagato finding work again.

If by Yuki you mean Chihara Minori, I don't think that was the case. Through the first two months of this year she was busy promoting her music single Junpaku no Sanctuary.

[7Th]

Looking at the High-Definition recently released version… I must say the animation is indeed nothing special for a Bones’s first episode, far behind Wolf’s Rain, Eureka Seven or Kurau’s premiers ground. It doesn’t look really bad to be honest, but there are a number of rough edges in basically static scenes and as a whole felt more like a decently done Gonzo production. I guess that’s the price to pay for native 720p. Everything else is fairly nice: the script was pretty much the best they could’ve come with as an introduction and what was shown in this first episode is more than enough to get a good outlook at the world crafted by Okamura, excellent thing considering they did it without resorting to annoying expository dialogs. The direction was also nicely low-key; quite the change from Code Geass’ exaggerated silly-but-fun melodrama.

[AvianWing]

As others mentions before... Ginko with black hair, WOO! If Hei (黑)-black is indeed Chinese, this will be the first time I've seen a Chinese protagonist in a Japanese made animation (excluding historical chinese shows like the romance of three kingdoms) I'm very excited.

[WanderingKnight]

The direction was also nicely low-key; quite the change from Code Geass’ exaggerated silly-but-fun melodrama.

And the relationship of this anime with CG is...?

[Jazzrat]

they had the same time slot?

[wao]

Originally Posted by MrProphet

I have a question.

Seems like Hei is posing as a Chinese transfer student. But is he and his team really Chinese? Hei and Huang especially reminded me of the way that Han people are usually drawn in anime.

Don't know 'bout the rest of his team but the director mentioned in an interview that Hei's real nationality is unknown.

[7Th]

Originally Posted by Jazzrat

they had the same time slot?

<- That, which pretty much why I mentioned the change in mood and style.

[Wosho128]

Lee is freakin' awesome!

I was really sick of the silent and tough looking archetypal guy in anime.

But he has a dual personality. One moment he's innocent; the next moment he's kickin' ass and taking names!

I'll be following this series; I'm hoping that we'll get more information about his background. DAMMIT, I can't study for tests while all of these great series are being fansubbed!

[syniel]

Originally Posted by Goofus Maximus

Sociopath. A psychopath is one who's lost contact with reality, by withdrawing (catatonic) or listening to voices in their head (schizophrenic), believing that everyone is in a vast conspiracy to get them (paranoia), or believing they live in a different world/time than they are.

It's the sociopath who has no... I guess you could call it a "Conscience Governor", with the inability to feel for others or have true guilt or grief.

The pschopath is a worse case of sociopath.


www.en.wikipedia.org has good info on both. A Pschopath is diagnosed with possessing a majority of the following characteristics

• 1. Superficial charm and above average intelligence.
• 2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking.
• 3. Absence of nervousness or neurotic manifestations.
• 4. Unreliability.
• 5. Untruthfulness and insincerity.
• 6. Lack of remorse or shame.
• 7. Antisocial behavior without apparent compunction.
• 8. Poor judgment and failure to learn from experience.

• 9. Pathological egocentricity and incapacity to love.
• 10. General poverty in major affective reactions.
• 11. Specific loss of insight.
• 12. Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal relations.
• 13. Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink, and sometimes without.
• 14. Suicide threats rarely carried out.
• 15. Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly integrated.
• 16. Failure to follow any life plan.

where a sociopath would have the following

• Persistent lying or stealing
• Recurring difficulties with the law
• Tendency to violate the rights of others (property, physical, sexual, emotional, legal)
• Aggressive, often violent behavior; prone to getting involved in fights
• Inability to keep a job
• A persistent agitated or depressed feeling (dysphoria)
• Inability to tolerate boredom
• Disregard for the safety of self or others
• A childhood diagnosis of conduct disorders
• Lack of remorse for hurting others
• Superficial wit and charm
• Impulsiveness
• A sense of extreme entitlement
• Inability to make or keep friends
• Lack of guilt
• Recklessness, impulsivity [8] [6]

As you can see they are similiar..but the psychopath is one that you would NOT want to meet on a dark night (or bright day for that matter) Hope this helped !

[Guido]

The main reason why I chose to pick up the anime was due that there was something interesting about the title which drove me to research the story.

I have to give thanks to NeoSam for posting Kuro no Keiyakusha in the New Announced Anime thread.

It is very soon for me to give an initial verdict, but what I can say is that BONES performed a good job at making the story to take off without revealing much than was necessary.

IMO, Darker than Black comprises the genres of detective story and drama setup with sci-fi mysticism. The first episode made me believe that Shanshun is your average good man with a slight naivety, that interferes in the middle of a mess to which he has no clue what he's gotten to by accident or random because he tries to save someone in trouble.

Though that plot devise may seem simple it was handled with much effectiveness to fool me.

Spoiler:

Because judging from the preview for episode two, it looks like that Shanshun is as well another player involved in the game of intrigue.

Another touching detail that grasped my taste was that right as the episode started until the episode's title was displayed, the story was told from det. Misaki's perspective, and right afterwards it was shown from a third-person POV involving Shanshun and Haraguchi.

There's a lot of territory to cover.

Spoiler:

Episode one establishes that there have been this Contractors among us for a time. Those Contractors desperately need the "thing" that is in possession of Haraguchi Chiaki.

The government is covering the existence of those Contractors so as to prevent widespread uproar and hysteria upon the public community.

There are this Dolls who watch over the Contractors and may or not interfere against them, and it is obvious they also are after the same "thing" that Haraguchi owns.

Misaki suspects and is convinced that there is got to be a link which connects the Contractors to the appearance of Hell's Gate a decade prior to the start of the storyline, and since then strange disturbance have been manifesting on town.

What exactly would be beyond the Gate?

About the black cat, I do not know if it is the icon for the series or plays a type of plot device within the show?

[White Manju Bun]

Originally Posted by wao

Don't know 'bout the rest of his team but the director mentioned in an interview that Hei's real nationality is unknown.

Good lord, he's sounding more and more like Naru....GH GIMME MY BRAIN BACK!!

Epi 1 made sooooooooooooo much more sense with subs \o/

Ummm Hei freaks me out but man that was awesome!!

[cmage]

You know, if Rui's French, shouldn't his name be Louis?

I finally got to watch the first episode! Yay~ I really like Hei, and I can't wait to see more of both sides of him. His landlady's great. I also want to see more of Yin. Pity she didn't get more screentime in the first ep. I look forward to her developing emotions and finding out how she became a doll.

I'm kind of confused about the wall. Are they inside it? If they are, how do people get in? If people can freely go in and out, what's the point of it? If they're outside of it, why are there fake stars? Sorry, I just don't really get it.

I think I'm really going to like this show, though I might have to watch it two episodes at a time so I'm not left with that awful cliffhanger ending.

[Joojoobees]

Originally Posted by Sorrow-K

Ep 1.

This isn't doing it for me, for some reason. The animation is typical Bones, and some of the attention to detail is outstanding, but all the characters at this stage seem fairly bland, and I could see the plot following a fairly cliched path. Obviously it's early days, but cop-team anime are notorious for having stoic, flat characters

Wow, I really don't see how you are getting this! This first episode didn't suggest to me that we would get a cliched plot or flat characters. Obviously to participate in a genre you have to incorporate, or at least reference, elements that recur in that genre, so I would expect to see elements that remind me of shows of the detective genre, including both plot devices and character types, but that isn't quite the same thing.

What I saw so far was quite engaging, and my curiosity is piqued. Hopefully the show will surprise you. If not, I hope you find something else you enjoy this season.

[7Th]

I know must stop being so damn analytic of anime's narration but I'm still glad to have achieved the understanding I came while writing the review from this premier for my idiotic Blog. DtB's first episode is a perfect example of Italo Calvino's literary theories in Six Memos for the Next Millennium... and I really mean it. Lightness comes across through the low-key depiction of supernatural everyday life and the lack of silly dramatic emphasis on events or developments. Quickness can be seen in the fast yet still evocative and perceptive pace. Exactitude cannot be denied due to the precise storyboarding that only shows the necessary scenes for the plot to make sense. Visibility is reflected by the subtle script that lets you fill in blanks with hypothesis that don't come out as ambiguous and as for multiplicity just look as how Misaki's and Hei's plot lines became intertwined without them actually meeting at all.

Yes, I am silly.