The D.N.Angel Manga was the biggest masterpiece I’ve ever read. Then the Anime must be equally awesome, right? Sadly no.

In case you didn’t know, D.N.Angel is an unfinished Manga series that happens to be one of the best ones I’ve ever read. The story centers around a boy named Daisuke Niwa who on his 14th Birthday gets rejected by his crush Risa Harada. This triggers a hereditary gene that has been in his family for generations, and awakens the master thief Dark Mousy from within Daisuke. Because of this, Daisuke starts living a double-life as both the usual clumsy Daisuke during the day and the perfect and unbeatable master thief Dark during the night. Dark and Daisuke swaps places no matter if Dark or Daisuke wants it or not whenever either of them sees a girl they really love. Of course this opens for a lot of romantic complications in the middle of this. Daisuke ends up falling in love with Risa’s twin sister Riku, while Dark falls in love with Risa, who happens to be a devoted Dark fangirl(?). Then there’s also Daisuke’s classmate Hiwatari who is Daisuke’s friend, but leads the search for Dark. Hiwatari knows very well that Dark and Daisuke is the same person, but doesn’t let his hunt for Dark go out over Daisuke. Hiwatari also reveals himself to be the bearer of Dark’s polar opposite, the mad artist Krad, who looks like an angel but is completely insane and doesn’t care about anything else than killing Dark, no matter the price. He also sold his soul to the devil while he was still human, and is the reason he and Dark is locked inside others’ bodies. The plot is incredibly complicated(now we’re talking complexity on the same level as the Kingdom Hearts series), incredibly deep, incredibly well made, and incredibly engaging. Not to mention the beautiful drawing, which is on par with or even surpasses Love Hina. Also, this is the kind of story that is very easy to understand if you’ve read all of it, but almost impossible if you’ve skipped even a single chapter.

One of the things that made the Manga to such a masterpiece was the mysterious atmosphere. There was constantly something mysterious or unknown or both over the slightest of things, and you were constantly figuring over what exactly was going on behind the scenes. Not to mention the incredible feeling of depth and it’s ability to keep up the energy in a similar fashion to Mayoi Neko Overrun! ensuring that you were constantly completely hooked, and just had to know what happened next. Also, I’m not sure if the author is trying to imitate Beethowen by leaving an unfinished symphony, or if she is just actively trying to piss off the fanbase. If she leaves D.N.Angel unfinished, she’ll succeed in both.

Too bad none of that is in the Anime. The Anime Adaption brutally murdered the mysterious atmosphere, cut the remains to pieces, burnt the pieces and scattered the ash over the ocean from a helicopter. Not an ounce of the original D.N.Angel feel is left. Where the Manga was figuring, suggesting and implying, the Anime puts all the cards on the table, ruining the entire mystery of it. Also, the Anime is far more action-oriented. Dark now has a black feather that works like some sort of magic wand, while Krad has a white angel feather. This makes absolutely no sense at all, since in the Manga both Dark and Krad can use magic all by themselves, but Dark refrains from doing so as much as possible since it will gravely hurt Daisuke’s body should he do so. Now he instead spends a lot of time wildly blasting magic at Krad. Also, since the Manga is still unfinished, some moron came up with the idea to write a new ending. A terribly bad ending at that. They should have done like Toaru Majutsu no Index instead and left it unfinished. Or waited for the Manga to be finished.

The Anime does have it’s good spots too, however. The graphics are beautiful, but a bit un-original – especially Dark and Krad’s wings are really beautifully made and looks about as real as angel wings can look. Krad also gets a lot more screentime, and is introduced earlier. The voice acting is excellent, not as good as Hayate no Gotoku! but still great, and I especially like Krad’s voice that really sounds like an immortal insane artist (don’t ask how I know how immortal insane artists sounds) and Hio’s that is very high-pitched and loopy and sound really funny. The scene where Daisuke grows his own wings is also a lot better than in the Manga. A bit on the downside is that they cut the coolest character in the entire series, Argentine. Possibly because they thought there was a terrible lack of living artworks trying to kill Daisuke, they cut in a girl named Hio Mio, who pretends to be an exchange student from america, but is really just a doll given life for the sole purpose of killing Daisuke, but changes her mind when she sees how happy Risa is with him, and instead gives up her own life to lift the curse she laid on Daisuke and move in as a second personality in Riku, a bit like Dark is for Daisuke, but she only comes out when both her, Riku and Risa wants her to, and posesses the bodies of both the twins instead of just Riku like Dark does to Daisuke – possibly because her magic is weaker than Dark’s and she needs two people’s energy to materialise herself. A lot of the plot is changed, and a really annoying thing is that Daisuke keeps whining about that Freedert is dead for like 5 episodes after she died. Dammit, Daisuke! You knew her for 20 minutes before Dark killed here! Blame him, but don’t waste 5 EPs whining about it!

Despite all the shortcomings of the Anime version, it’s still a good Anime – just short of ‘great’. You can start watching here already, if you feel like it. The story that is left is by far enough to motivate watching it at least once.

Blogged with the Flock Browser