Forum - View topicREVIEW: D.Gray-man GN 12
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championferret
 Posts: 765 |
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Casey, MAJOR props for correctly identifying Hoshino's gender despite VIZ continually referring to her as 'he'.
Although as usual I just have a few nitpicks with this review. Firstly, I wouldnt call D.Gray-man 'tournament'...and I'm actually not quite sure why anyone would. The word 'tournament' implies an organized battle or sport, set up with a prize in mind, ie Shaman King. There isnt anything tournament-like in D.Gray-man, aside from the fact that there are fights. Secondly, and I seem to find this in a lot of reviews for the english release of D.Gray-man; I actually think Hoshino's battle scenes are good. I've never been confused as to what is going on...to the extent that I can only wonder if this has something to do with the english version (as I buy japanese releases). I know VIZ's english sound effects, particularly in their JUMP manga, often look rather poor and make battle scenes in particular hard to decipher as they obscure some of the original art due to their difference in shape and how they fit into the artwork to the japanese sound effects. (for example, in One Piece, alot of frames were hard for me to work out because of this) Does anyone want to shed some light on this? Does anyone else find the fight scenes even in the japanese version hard to interpret? I'm just curious. (last nitpick, although it hardly matters...you referred to Allen as a 'blond'...when he isnt really, his hair is snow-white.) |
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Big Hed
 Posts: 1607 Location: Melbourne, Australia |
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I think the problem with the term tournament is that it has become synonymous with shonen in some ways. I wouldn't consider D. Gray-Man to be tournament either, but the series incorporates enough elements of the tournament sub-genre (improving abilities, consistently stronger opponents over time, new tiers of enemies -- Akuma 1 --> Akuma 2 --> Noah/Akuma 3, etc) that it could be interpreted as such. That's just me though.
As for the battle scenes, I think they're typically very good. DGM's fights are certainly a lot easier to decipher than Tsubasa's (which are still enjoyable due to CLAMP's skill for rendering the abstract). Regardless though; as Casey said, Hoshino draws damn pretty pictures. Lines are clean, yet DGM manages a gourgeous dark, gothic look. Characters are all very distinct and a pleasure to look at; furthermore, their battle wear not only looks good, but is actually relatively believable in my opinion. Lavi's subplot was handled was handled decently as well, I think. I wouldn't expect Lavi to get emotionally wrought very guickly; aside from which, he does wind up towards the end of the volume, and rightly so. Personally, I think if Lavi had gotten more upset earlier in his battle, the whole thing might've wound up overbaked. I agree about Krory, it's nice to see that he didn't kick the bucket in that iron maiden. I would have been shocked if he had, actually. As for Lavi, I'm a little less certain that he'll live through his little head trip, but overall I still very highly doubt that Road will kill him. Now I'll go back to waiting impatiently for volume 13. |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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I'm fairly certain the fight-fight-fight set-up was there before the tournaments were introduced. In any case, a mouse is a rodent, but not all rodents are mice.
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1871 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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I find Hoshino's battle scenes to be really cluttered in my opinion. It seems like so many things are going on in one panel that it is sometimes hard to make out every last intricate detail. This is prevalent in the manga's current arc that is printing in Japan right now. Katsura's art is gorgeous, I won't dispute that. But, she really needs to put some breathing room in her panels. I also thought Crowley's battle against JasDevi was pretty cool too. 
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Big Hed
Posts: 1607 Location: Melbourne, Australia |
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So that's what it's supposed to sound like? I was wondering. Arystar - Alistair was a pretty easy leap (unless I'm wrong), but I couldn't figure out Krory. |
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manafairy
 Posts: 113 Location: My own tweaked world.... |
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I'm going to have to agree with the fight scenes. They're part of the reason I stopped reading D.Gray-man (only a small part though). The one thing that stood out to me about the story when I first started reading it was how particularly cluttered and indecipherable battles tended to be. Her art's beautiful, but as soon as her characters start really moving, her panels just become a mess of black and white. Some stories, like Trigun for example, can make up for their cluttered confusing fights with their characters, world building, psycho babble, and general panache, but D.Gray-Man just doesn't have enough going for it to excuse being a shounen action story by an artist who doesn't know how to do action. It's just something that consistently really annoyed me about the series. It's a shame to hear that it never gets better...
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Fireline
Posts: 29 |
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D.Gray-man is in absolutely no way a 'tournament' series, no matter how loosely you try to use the term.
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championferret
Posts: 765 |
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...interesting, so the impression I get is that the battle scenes are quite polarising. People either seem to think they're really good or really cluttered/hard to interpret.
EDIT=Also, his name -is- 'Krory' rather than 'Crowley'. This is the official romaji Hoshino herself used. Then again, VIZ never seemed to use any of the official romaji for alot of the characters (for example they called Toma 'Tom', and Lenalee...a whole load of things.) |
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Mr. Toto
 Posts: 139 |
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Viz uses the official romanizations, from Volume 3 on. Krory's name has always been "Krory" here. The only one they change is "Jeryy" to "Jerry." |
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KabaKabaFruit
Posts: 1871 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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Even if Katsura Hoshino romanizes the vampire's name as "Arystar Krory", it doesn't necessarily mean that his name is Arystar Krory. What kind of a name is Arystar Krory anyway? It just sounds like a garbled attempt at a name pronounciation.
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championferret
Posts: 765 |
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What kind of name is Beyond Birthday?  There's been sillier names in manga (or novels based on manga).
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Mr. Toto
Posts: 139 |
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A pun off of Aleister Crowley. It doesn't have to be a real name--Lenalee sure isn't one. |
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KabaKabaFruit
Posts: 1871 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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Did Hoshino say that the name is a pun off of Aleister Crowley?
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Mr. Toto
Posts: 139 |
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I can't recall if so, but it seems pretty obvious. The Katakana spellings are the same between the versions, but the English spellings are different to differentiate between the two. Regardless, it's what the author chose, and the pronunciation is consistent with the way it's written in Japanese. |
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SongstressCela
 Posts: 615 Location: Pennsylvania |
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Agreed. There's a point when "official" romanization doesn't need to be official no matter how much the elitists cry foul. I'm reminded of the Wellber fansubs' translation of Bergerac as "Bulgerock." Oi vey. 
That said, not a bad review. Add me to the list of people going "WTF?" over the totally improper use of the "tournament" descriptor, but I will agree with the comment on the fight scenes. I'm also one who stopped reading partially because of the fighting. I do love the series, though, I just prefer to stick with the nice, fluid animation of the tv series rather than trying to pick out what's going on in those static images. It's a shame, too, because while the anime's art is attractive, it doesn't really hold up compared to the manga. |
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