Darker Than Black

I have no idea why it took me so long to get to this series/franchise.  I’m sure if I read its premise earlier I would at least give it a try; I do particularly like characters who have ‘superpowers’ and use them creatively and strategically (like in To Aru Kagaku no Railgun).  In short, this is a series about the various political and power struggles between superpowered humans, plain ol’ humans, and various organisations.  The neat part is that the superpowered humans — called Contractors (keiyakusha) in-universe — are compelled to pay a 対価 taika; compensation/price (why is it translated as “obeisance” in some subs?) as remuneration for using their superpowers. This taika is as varied as they come, and often quite ironic (e.g. a magician’s taika being having to reveal the secret of his magic tricks; a lesbian’s taika being to kiss a man).  They also vary from simple to severe — drinking hot milk, eating flower petals, to regurgitating food or breaking your own fingers.

A lot of the politics and struggle come from the fact that plain ol’ humans discriminate against Contractors (out of fear of their power, out of fear of the unknown, and just because) and consider them ‘monsters’, or something beneath humans or altogether ‘not human’.  Even so, a lot of Contractors (almost all, really) work for humans because it’s ‘logical’ and ‘rational’ to do so, when they’re compensated for their efforts with money and status.

But of course, even though this Contractor and taika premise thing is really cool, this is the deciding factor that got me watching:

Hazuki, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

It’s like someone pried my brain open and made the perfect woman *just* for me.
Oh, and did I mention she‘s gay?  How perfect is she, really?

AND she’s voiced by Saiga Effing Mitsuki, for goodness’ sake.

How awesome is Hazuki?  Well, pretty much on par with Hisa. (Or maybe even a smidgeon better…)
YEAH, YOU HEARD ME RIGHT.

I could and would fangirl Hazuki more, but I’m not sure where to start.  If she existed in a well-written series, it would be one thing, but…

Actually, I haven’t even watched to the end (EDIT: as of writing this part, I had only watched up to ep 10 of Gemini), so I don’t even know if she’s alive by the end.  It’s really not much of a spoiler to say that people in DTB drop dead like flies; there’s almost no way to grow attached to anyone in the series.  Now that we’re on DTB as a series, I would also like to say that this show is utter crap.

It’s crap driven purely by The Rule of Cool.  And sometimes that’s enough, really.  There are times where I just want to see action movies where there are women kicking ass and being all badass, with huge pointless explosions going off behind them as they walk toward the camera stoically and calmly.  But then again, sometimes it’s not enough.  This is one of those times.

This especially holds true because of how long DTB is.  The original series is 25 episodes, with a 1 episode special, 4-episode OVA, and 12-episode second season.  You would expect something like that had more to carry it through than “Whoaaaa, this is cool.”  A movie lasts for all of two hours, but to say you want someone to invest [(25 + 1 + 4 + 12) x ~22 mins] 924 minutes or over 15 hours of his or her life to something that’s ‘cool’ but doesn’t make sense?

One thing I have to say first is that Darker Than Black: Kuro no Keiyakusha (DTB) is considerably better than its successor, Gemini (DTBG).  But even then DTB didn’t try to make too much sense in terms of a coherent in-universe consistency.  The overarching plot for season one was ehh, for the lack of a better word, acceptable, with so-so resolutions, but the in-universe details were — well, I’m not quite sure what they were trying to achieve.

In DTB, there are things called Dolls.  They’re… basically people, except they’re a) treated as objects rather than individuals, b) apparently incapable of going against their master or mistress’ orders, and c) usually given minimal ‘programming’ such that they only have enough to survive and lack even the most basic of human emotions.  Their expressions are permanently like this: (￣__￣ )

Yin. A Doll, even though she shouldn't be one by definition.

Okay, several things wrong with this in the story.

Note that spoilers abound.  It’s hard to talk about how crappy this series is without significant spoilers from ALL seasons, OVAs, and specials, so read at your own peril.

So are the Dolls robots that need ‘programming’? Or are they brainwashed people? (RE: Yin/In’s past — she’s clearly got a ‘human’ past and memories that were somehow subdued if not entirely erased.) And what’s with everyone in the show insisting “Dolls can’t feel”? Try and name even ONE Doll who had more than just two lines in DTB that didn’t show they ‘felt’ emotions in one way or another. Yin/In is obviously more than ‘just a doll’ for various reasons (the past she had with her mom and piano instructor, then later that drivel about her being Izanami); July considered November 11 and April his ‘nakama’, called for help of his own accord when he needed it, and decided on his own that he liked to be with Suou; the Doll that the yakuza guy saved showed emotion when it didn’t even have programming (?)… and so on and so forth.

And another question — so, are Dolls expendable or not? First people and organisations are all “Heh heh, you’re useless. *TOSS*” and then they’re “ZOMG PRICELESS COMMODITY”. And Dolls are expensive one minute because they’re considered great sex slaves (this is implied more than once) and expensive another because of their potential contribution to acquiring intelligence on other organisations, and yet another because they’re like the ultimate computer processors and loads of them together = one supercomputer.

So which is it? Make up your damn mind.

A supercomputer powered by things not even considered Dolls! This series makes *so* much sense.

And oh yeah, I forgot to mention Dolls have observational spectres. Yeah, it makes about as much sense to you as it does to me. Why do human-turned-Dolls have these spectre things, and why was it mentioned that Contractors are only ‘failures’ and ‘defects’ — humans who couldn’t become Dolls? If that’s the case why are Dolls the most poorly treated out of humans, Contractors, and Dolls?

And then there’s the ‘difference’ between humans and Contractors.  It seems (i.e. IS) ridiculously forced.  So for some unexplained reason some random humans can suddenly turn into Contractors for no reason (irreversible and with little warning), and after they’ve turned into Contractors they suddenly lose all emotion and are no longer able to make choices based on their feelings, whims, or ‘illogical’/ irrational desires.

They can (and will) only choose that which is most logical, either to their benefit or to their survival to the exclusion of others.  They don’t exactly get close to others since they’re basically artificially-made psychopaths who have no sense of morality and only have the innate self-preservation that all creatures have.

As helpful as saying, "As you know, water is wet, so if you touch it, you get wet."

And the same problem with Dolls (unsurprisingly) besets Contractors as well. “Contractors can’t feel”… “Contractors are logical beings”. Yeah, right. Then why are there always so many exceptions to the rule?  You would think they’d spend time observing how Contractors are like first, then decide whether they’re X, Y, or Z.  Let me talk about the number of Contractors who can feel or end up choosing something ‘illogical’:

So okay, Hei can be an exception. He’s the protagonist so he gets a free pass.  And he’s not a ‘real’ Contractor since he doesn’t have to pay any compensation/remuneration for using his powers because aparently Pai (his sister) is ‘inside him’ (???).

Amber (adult)

But what about Amber? It’s ‘illogical’ for Contractors to have ‘dreams’ or ‘goals’, as it’s said repeatedly. But she built up a whole organisation, pulled some Xanatos Gambit (and cheated a little with time manipulation), and is desperately in love with the protagonist to the point where she would rather be branded a traitor by him, just to save his hide, then leave everything for the big reveal at the end, and then sacrifice herself because the guy she loves is too much of a wuss to choose between two options in a moral dilemma, and gets an out (as all heroes do) with Take A Third Option.

And what about Suou? She’s like… ugh. I don’t even want to talk about her right now or I’ll derail my post again. Or Tanya, who hesitated to kill someone because of her memories (and perhaps a smidgeon of compassion) due to her non-Contractor past. Or Huang’s lover, who committed suicide to save him? Or Maki, who loved Amber to the point of murderous jealousy? Or Pai, who cries knowing that a bit of her brother is dying each time he kills? Or Alma, who genuinely wants a safe haven for her followers, and accepts death through indirect suicide? Do I even need to go on?

You know what this series feels like? It’s like the human-comparison equivalent of what would happen if a somewhat well-intentioned, but ignorant homophobe who is also a crappy writer, for whatever reason, tries to write a f/f or m/m pairing convincingly. His or her views would, because of the crappy-writer-ness, inevitably taint the work in a way completely opposite to what was intended.  Would probably lead to several instances that invoke the Innocent Bigot trope in the characters created, if not outright bigotry.  In DTB‘s case, the crappy writer (who, obviously, is human) has noooooo idea how to write the unfeeling, emotionless being that a Contractor is supposed to be.  What happens as a result?

Oh, nothing much, just obliterating the fundamental guideline of ‘show, don’t tell’ in writing, to fine specks of dust.  If I got a good f/f pairing EVERY time they have to tell us “Contractors don’t feel anything; they’re really logical and rational”, well, let’s just say… I’d have a lot of yuri to watch.

I really, really don’t know where to begin or end with talking about the plot holes, the storylines that go nowhere, and just… I don’t know.  I feel like I watched a cross between artsy fartsy pretentious philosophical ideals that don’t mean anything and an action flick.

DTB tries so hard (not really) to be some series with political intrigue, trying to challenge viewers on what makes humans ‘human’… well, that’s the nice way of putting it.  This series is actually kind of like making quick bread that doesn’t rise, buying a balloon that doesn’t inflate, having an ice cream cone that crumbles and falls spectacularly on the pavement before you’ve even got your first bite… and other disappointments in life.

Oh, and Hei, the protagonist, was rather sympathetic in the first season.  The whole point of the first season, really, was him acting in an ‘un-Contractor-like’ fashion — constantly doing ‘stupid’ and ‘illogical’ things out of feelings.  Like heroic sacrifices or going on death missions to save a comrade, when any other Contractor would not (due to their rationality).

This is all shot down in flames in the second season when Hei decides that being a child-abusing alcoholic hobo suits him much better.

Before.

After. -- "I want to be a hobo when I grow up."

And in case you were wondering how Hobo Hei looks like through various filters, I’ve taken the liberty of running him through two in particular.

First up is the het fangirl filter:

On TV Tropes, he's been described as a 'sexy hobo'. Here you go, ladies.

And but of course…

Now with the Arwyn filter:

Trolololololol

Now.

Filters aside, Hobo Hei, being the child-abuser that he is, thinks it’s cool to smack around a kid (Suou) who had just suddenly lost her father (dead*) and her twin brother (missing).  Oh, and the kid thinks Hobo Hei killed her father, even though he didn’t.  But he thought it would be fun to withhold that information too.

((*Well, sort of.))

Oh, and did I mention?  This is yet another harem series disguised as not.

Note one of the top comments on ep 11 of DTBG:

a young girl’s infatuation for her teacher…a police officer’s hidden crush to that vigilante she had wanted to catch for so long…a former colleague’s selfless love for the guy who thought that she was a traitor…mutual understanding between a doll and her master…oh hei, you’re one lucky guy…

^In order, those are Suou, Kirihara Misaki, Amber, and Yin.

Oh, and not to mention an in-the-closet-fujoshi who was stalkerishly in love with him (Otsuka Mayu), a random character who he tried to save (Shinoda Chiaki, from episode one), and Wei Zhijun who’s arguably all Foe Yay with him (chooses to fight him to the death, knowing well he would be the loser and Hei the victor).

Androcentric series (wow, pretty much like 95% of everything, minus the 5% of shoujo drivel that’s sexist, heterosexist, and androcentric in its own way) are just so fun.  Moral of the story: Every desirable girl will fall for you if you’re the male protagonist.  And barring that, should there be any lesbians around, they’ll either a) suddenly be If It’s You It’s Okay, or change their sexuality, or b) some stupid contrivance will make you go *smiiirk* at least — which is what happened in DTBG.  Hazuki ends up kissing Hei because it’s her taika for using her power (in order to try to kill Hei).

You want to know my theory on why most people think S2 is worse than S1?  (These are the same people who praise S1 as being some sort of masterpiece.)  It’s because of the ‘cool’ Hei turning into Hobo Hei.

The other top comment on ep 11 of DTBG:

A guy who is HOT, Totally ass-kicking, with or without his powers, emotional and sensitive, intelligent AND he can freaking cook. WTF???

^The hotness is subjective, so let’s leave that.  Ass-kicking?  Not so much really — Hazuki was evenly matched with him in their first face-off:

But because poor writing knows absolutely no bounds, in their second face-off, they made Hazuki lose miserably (when Hei had lost his powers), just because he’s the protagonist.  The lame excuse for having Hazuki fight poorly is “she just learnt her mother’s dying”.  This is a particularly lame excuse, because five seconds before this fight, Hazuki just reminded the viewers that “Contractors don’t feel anything toward their family”.  And no, Hazuki wasn’t being tsundere.

And ’emotional and sensitive’… uh huh, take note people, this is how delusional fangirls refer to child abusers. This just reminds me of how disturbing these preteen fangirls are — I’ve seen them declare countless times on forums that they would personally like to be sexually violated by awful jerks of characters just because they have a cool character design.  I find it about as unsettling as people who joke about rape.  I mean…  really.

Oh yeah, I forgot.  Hobo Hei also almost killed a woman (who has been nothing but good and righteous throughout the series — and Hobo Hei knows this as well) just because she took some of Hobo Hei’s comrades into custody (treating the comrades nicely the whole time).  He would have killed her if Suou didn’t restrain him and beg for the woman (Misaki’s) life.  Yep, murderous alcoholic child-abusers are so emotional and sensitive.  Try and see if that flies with women (or men!) who’ve been in abusive relationships.  Or really, just anyone with even two functional neurons in the space between their two ears.

(Just so you know, the Hazuki videos above have sucky subs, so take the words there with a grain of salt if you don’t speak Japanese.)

Oh, and season 2 of DTB is especially fun and enjoyable by the way, because you stick in a whiney brat — and not just any whiney brat, a whiney brat voiced by Hanazawa Kana =___= — in a series that’s supposed to be Darker and Edgier.  And WTF with Suou’s ‘transformation sequence’?  It’s like a barely veiled excuse to show a naked loli trying to be all Utena, but failing miserably.

Anthy she is not.

Classic SKU.

This is a particularly lame excuse for naked loli, because no other Contractor has a ‘transformation sequence’.  Nothing even remotely like it.

(And I know I said Hanazawa Kana has… the cutest voice ever.  But.  Please, for the love of Hazuki, just. don’t. talk.  Hanazawa screams are… like…  =___=;;  Unlike Noto and Kugimiya who were/are typecast wonders that can go against type, Hanazawa does not have the range, the talent, or believability to amount to anything more than doing heartstoppingly moemoe cute voices or voicing otherwise subdued characters for the rest of her career.  She can’t even do a wangsty little girl properly, because she. can’t. scream.  And I’m kind of sick seeing her everywhere too.  =___= )

There is so, so much wrong with Darker Than Black that it would take an episode-by-episode analysis to talk about comprehensively.  It doesn’t seem so bad in the beginning, since they slowly reveal things and you’re holding out on the belief that they’ll make it make all sorts of sense by the end.  (Something that Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica and Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (Kai) pulled off, but not DTB.)

At first this post was supposed to be a series review, but it just turned into an “Everything wrong with DTB” post.  I really wouldn’t recommend watching this series for anything other than The Rule of Cool.  I mean, I like The Rule of Cool, really.  I love superpowers.  I don’t even care if they don’t try to explain everything.  But this story has more holes in it than a superfine sieve.

And the final straw (I believe this only really applies to me, as a Hazuki fangirl) was… not knowing whether Hazuki lives or not.  Canon events seem to imply that she’s at least out of commission (in one way or another), but she’s never shown dead on screen.  She doesn’t get a happy ending in any case, because her on and off lover

is brutally tortured and then killed by a perverted jerkass who seems to be into adult women, shota, and loli.

And you wanna know when I knew DTB hit rock bottom as a series?  I was watching S2 on YouTube (the episodes are all put up by Funimation, so it’s as legal as it gets) and it automatically brings me to the next episode, see?  I apparently watched the last few episodes out of order — I watched ep 10 then 12, and then only after I finished watching it and looked at the episode number (12) did I realise I skipped 11.

Don’t you think this proves beyond a doubt that DTB is a sucky, plotless series that makes little sense… if I can skip watching ONE WHOLE EPISODE at endgame… and still know (‘know’ being a relative term) what’s going on, all without realising I missed an episode?

And to think, DTBG only made more sense to me because I watched it in the recommended order — that is, to watch the OVAs (produced after S2 had finished airing) after S1 and before starting S2.  Otherwise… yeah.

The only redeeming points in this series for me were a) Hazuki Mina

and b) the seiyuu.

I particularly liked Minagawa’s voice here.
Correction: I just particularly like Minagawa’s voice in general.  The voice clip below isn’t even 20% of what she can do to smex up her voice.

Contractor. Her power is gravity manipulation. Her remuneration is to take off an article of clothing. They often sneak in fanservice through the guise of 'compensation'. Why am I not surprised.

So yes.  To sum it up, watch DTB for the awesome fight scenes, and just skip over any part where they’re standing around talking.  That’s probably the best advice I’ve given this year.

And because Saiga Mitsuki has the coolest voice any woman can ever hope to possess, here’s a song by her:

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Food for Thought:

RE: Androcentrism

How many of the girls who are (or are arguably) romantically interested in Hei are dead compared to others? 

((Suou, Kirihara Misaki, Amber, Yin, Otsuka Mayu, Shinoda Chiaki))

Out of the six, two are definitively dead (Amber and Chiaki).  Neither die particularly grisly deaths though — Amber just ‘disappears’, and Chiaki’s just… dead.  Nothing gory, nothing bloody, nothing stabby.  Even though Chiaki was only a one-episode (or was it two?) character, she just got a face-down-floating-in-the-water dead.  You can’t even see the (possibly contorted) expression on her face.  And considering the ridiculously high death rate in DTB, a 33% ‘definitively dead’ rate is… impressively low.  Because if you randomly picked six characters — I’ll even let you include the main characters — I’m pretty sure you’ll get something like a 66 or 83% death rate.

Case in point:  The number of girls who have ‘died’ in some sense or another amongst these six is… four out of six.  The only two who don’t ‘die’ in any way whatsoever are Kirihara Misaki and Otsuka Mayu.  Kirihara Misaki because she’s one of the main characters, and Otsuka Mayu because she’s so minor of a character she barely appears more than five episodes in total, and has less than five lines each time.

Now, consider Youko, Hazuki’s on and off lover.  To characterise the Hazuki/Youko relationship, Youko definitely loves Hazuki quite a bit — she constantly mentions Hazuki even when she’s been drugged and interrogated.  As for Hazuki, I think she loves Youko as much as being a Contractor allows her to.  (Yet another reason why DTB as a whole is ridiculous — why would Hazuki, a Contractor, willingly put herself in harm’s way by seeking out the person who murdered Youko?  It’s not ‘rational’ — Youko’s already dead, and Hazuki shouldn’t put herself in situations that would endanger herself.  Even if she offed the guy who killed Youko, it wouldn’t bring her back.  In fact, the only reason why a Contractor ‘should’ hit on anyone and have a (presumably) sexual relationship with them is because they want sexual gratification.  Kind of like a long-term ‘one-night stand’ with no strings attached.  This series would be so much better if they just dropped the “Contractors are rational” crap.)

Anyway, Youko’s clearly not interested in Hei, and also clearly LGBTQ of some sort, so apparently… that makes it okay to off her in the goriest, most brutally violent way possible out of supporting characters that have quite a few lines and a name that you’re probably likely to remember if you pay attention.    (Basically, she’s a Mauve Shirt.)  You get to see Youko’s bloodied, tortured body, with drool pooling around her mouth.  Not exactly the most dignified death someone could have.  Her death probably stands out even amongst male deaths (and they are susceptible to more violent deaths than women, for obvious reasons).

I would put a screenshot to drive the point home, but I’m too saddened by Youko’s senselessly brutal death to do that.  This point on Plot Armour for girls who like the useless hobo didn’t even occur to me until now, but it’s particularly depressing now that it has.

—

And finally…

All this talk about Amber and Utena makes me miss Kawakami Tomoko so. fucking. much.  :<