D. Gray Man

I am an avid manga fan (bought and read about roughly 3-5 comic books per week ^^;; (the regular three were weekly release)) And one of my recent favorite is D. Gray Man.

It is the story of Allen Walker, a young man of 15 y/o with red left arm, black nail, and a cross embedded into the back of his left hand. He is an exorcist: an apostle of god destined to fight against the evil of the world which in this particular universe is a mysterious figure Millenium Earl and Noah family. Like any epic type story Millenium Earl have a grande plan to destory humanity and his method is quite evil indeed. The Earl will went to the person who just lost their love ones and offer to reunite them. But in fact it was a ploy to have the grieving person call their love ones' soul into the Earl's skeletal contraption which will captured the soul and only obey the command of the Earl. The Earl will then proceed to order the soul to kill the person, taking over that body which will then became weapon of the dark side called 'Akuma' (A Japanese word I think... I am not sure what it means but I suppose it could means demon)

The main protagonist, Allen Walker, has Innocence: An Anti-Akuma weapon embedded into his left handever since he could remember. He was an orphan and has been raise by a man name Mana whom he considered his father. At the age of five, Mana died, and The Earl came to Allen. He fall for the ploy call Mana's soul into the contrapment. The soul became enrage and leave a cursed scar on his left eye (which have special ability that if you wanna know you better read the series :)) Allen's Innocence invoke by itself and destory the contrapment which also release Mana's soul back to the afterworld. This event leave emotional scar to Allen and lead him to became determine to kill Millenium Earl to avenge for his deception and to save the world.

The illustration itself is quite unique. The design is very interesting, the setting start in Europe and now move to Chinaand now going over to Japan. But what set it apart from other manga is its uniquely dark story line. Eventhough it did have comedy part from time to time as most manga do, some of the storylines can be quite heart-wrenching (at least to me anyway :P).

My favorite page is the first page of episode 24: The story line is about a young woman who was never good at anything in her life. The image of this particular episode show the young woman's as a child, in a dark scene with one spotlight shining down on her. In the foreground and in her hand spot badly mended dolls. And also in the last frame showing her crying, with needle and tread in bandaged hands badly mending her doll. With the line "Eventhough I was never good at anything I can't stop trying. Eventhough I had given up on it but I end up regretting and try to do it again. After all, I can't do anything right, it's better if I just don't try at all. How stupid of me" The author/illustrator succeed in sums up the whole psyche of this person in one page that almost brought tears in my eye :)

The serie is still on going and show no sign of weakening. I would highly recommend it :) You can download it from this link http://www.stoptazmo.com/d.gray-man Also make sure to check out their main page http://www.stoptazmo.com/d.gray-man as there are a lot other manga for you to read :)