D. Gray-Man 15
November 19, 2009
Katsura Hoshino – Viz – 2009 – 18+ volumes
Speaking of series where oblique references to religion lost me… To be fair, only the Noah’s Ark stuff has much to do with this series, as far as I can see, and it seems to be used well. And none of that comes up in this volume.
What does happen here is a massive, massive fight for possession of the egg that the Exorcists claimed at the end of last volume. A whole slew of characters are introduced (or re-introduced), and I was a bit lost as far as that goes, but it doesn’t really matter, because the fighting is non-stop, and as much as I like the art… I could not tell what was going on. At all. This wasn’t even an issue of it not being clear what was going on, or not knowing the characters. There were just swords and guns and beams and elongated bodies and akuma parts flying all over the place, and I couldn’t tell who was winning or losing or what was even going on.
The commentary helps. Allen alternately seems to be the core of the battle, doing extremely well and extremely poorly. Allies are lost to akuma powers, I think, and something rather terrible happens to the egg at the end, and there’s something loose in the facility that is causing an evacuation and several last-ditch efforts. That was pretty interesting. That may mean it will settle down into the one-on-one fighting next volume, which is easier to take. The art is quite good, and I like the character designs and use of positive and negative space a lot, but a big, busy battle is not what it was meant for.
I’m still struggling along with the plot and characters, and this volume was mostly a halt because of the fight. I’ll keep reading though, because I do like Allen Walker, and I am interested to see what Lenalee is going to get up to next volume. It promises to be something plot-breaking, I think.
This was a review copy provided by Viz.
