Until I watched it.
D.N.Angel can't decide if it wants to be an epic story of light vs. darkness or a show about a middle school love triangle. It starts out good enough with the phantom thief angle, but that turns into a completely different story about ancient magical rivals. Which would be fine except that the pacing is way off. Instead of the thief bit being the introduction to the magical rival bit, we get lots of episodes stretching out the first part and the latter being rushed and confusing.
For the sake of a middle school love triangle.
The story has it's original aspects, but it quickly gets derivative. Our lead, Daisuke Niwa, is utterly bland. He makes up for this by having a cute furry mascot and turning into the dashing thief Dark Mousy--via a strange genetic condition--that is so good at stealing things, he sends out calling cards to the police and still gets away with the prize. And, in the history of great shoujo tropes, Daisuke turns into Dark by getting flustered by his crush or thinking about her too hard. Romantic hijinks ensue!
Daisuke is in love with one Risa Harada, who predictably has the hots for Dark. (Super Man, anyone?) Risa is, of course, the school idol and moe princess with a tsundere twin who would love Daisuke's affections if only she could stop berating him long enough. Which twin will he choose!?
Meanwhile, sickly child prodigy super detective (WHO IS IN THE SAME CLASS AS ALL THE OTHER MAIN CHARACTERS) Satoshi Hiwatari is out to catch Dark, but oh no! His body is home to the phantom Krad...who is the opposite of Dark. You know. Because their names are reverse. It turns out that even though Krad is lighter (blond, light eyes, wears white, where as Dark dresses in black, black hair, violet eyes), he's the more dangerous of the two and his family has made or collected potentially threatening objects over the years that Dark must steal to neutralize.
Things that work:
Daisuke's mom, Emiko is a fantastic character. She's hilarious, involved in the story (she has agency! Even though she's a mother!), and a competent thief herself. Because of the "family secret/trade", she's been training Daisuke since birth and possibly before and guides him along.
Dark, for being a typical "cool bishounen" is actually interesting and can be really funny when he looses that cool.
Krad and Dark obviously hate each other, what with being exact opposite beings and all, but Daisuke and Satoshi manage to form a strained but genuine friendship. Not an easy task with Dark screaming inside Daisuke's head about it.
Daisuke can only stop turning into Dark if the person he loves returns those feelings, but as I said before, love triangle. Risa is the one that triggers the transformation into Dark, so Risa is the one he needs to end up with, but what of his developing feelings for Riku the twin that actually knows he exists? There is the implication that he could be trapped into a relationship with Risa, which is an interesting take on the situation. Things get more complicated when he wonders if he wants to get rid of Dark at all, since they become close.
The theme of dark does not equal evil never gets old.
In 1997, having the boy be the protagonist of a shoujo story and turn into someone else was a cool new idea. We get a lot of Daisuke's inner monologue, which while never being shocking, it's nice to hear a boy muse about his feelings.
The art is decent. I don't care for the character designs, but the colors are bright and crisp.
The music is surprisingly good.
What didn't work:
Besides all the cliches an utter predictability, the world wasn't clearly defined. There was a lot of use of German, European type spell books, references to fairy tales, and Dark and Krad having English names, but a clear mythology wasn't revealed. The city also looked very German, but the kids attended a Japanese style school and behaved very...err Japanese. I was perpetually confused over the setting and culture.
The romance wasn't all that engaging (to moe or tsundere! that is the question!) and ate up way to much of the time.
I wasn't a fan of the character designs, especially Daisuke's weird, out of place hair.
Pacing. Pacing was a problem.
Ultimately:
I guess watch this if you like the manga? Or pretty 1990's style bishounen? Or if you're REALLY into pre-teen romance?
Don't watch it for the magic or phantom thieves though. There are better anime out there for that.
