The story is pretty complicated to begin with. Some explosion occurs five years prior and we lose Latin America(might be the other way around though 'cause I'm forgetful)and then the sky disappears and they build a gate around Tokyo to keep them away from some forbidden area. Oh and some supernatural beings that look like humans appear that are called "Contractors".We enter the life of one; Hei and his adventurous of fighting and killing pretty graphically other contractors.
I can say it's pretty interesting, the episodes are in arcs and only midway to the show they start to have some little consistency and follow some story. Other than that it's just Hei going along with the orders he is given to "eliminate" some useless material.
Pros:
So let's start with the art. The art is pretty, it's obviously on a low budget but however it manages to be nice to look at.Character design is nice and very beautiful.The art's a bit strange though since they supposedly lost their sky and have a counterfeit which at nighttime is green.Yes people,green,the sky is green at night with lots of fake stars.
There is one element I really liked that I only noticed it when it actually started to happen it real life.The element of rain.It rains a lot for a large amount of episodes of this series and not for dramatic reasons,it just rains. Like Hei steps out of his house to go buy some groceries and it starts raining.The rain added a very mysterious and cool atmosphere to the show.
It has very enjoyable action, nice movements,interesting opponents. The opponents actually have a personality here other than the usual we see in such genres and most of them are very likeable.
The characters are fairly interesting,Hei is shady,literally,he shows a different personality according to whom he speaks to.He really is this gloomy,serious dude but to most he is this shy,clumsy and polite fellow who always says hello.Yin is promising but we don't get much about her. Huang is much more likable then at first.The cop lady is forgettable and rather annoying.Her presence serves nothing at all to the show.To be honest all the contractors are much more interesting then the "normal" people.
The music is okay, the OP is nice, done by the Abington Boys School,they usually have nice tracks.The EDs are forgettable.The OST is okay,it has a variety of music from jazz, to pop to rock.
Cons:
There isn't much explained,ever.Like you watch the whole thing expecting something to happen but it doesn't.Even the last episode is like...totally random.I mean literally, it's just random.
There is some comic relief by a detective and his secretary?(I'm not sure what she was).They were pretty random too, like you have all this gore and fighting going on and then them who look like they came out of Lucky Star or something.They added nothing to the story either,it seemed that the plot was aiming for something more serious but these guys just blew that away.
The use of CGI is annoying.It's used for the cars, but you see a lot of cars here and everytime I just wanna bang my head against the wall it's so bad.
The characters are ALL promising but none of them get the attention they deserve.Okay Hei does,but you really don't understand anything by what they give you!
Overall you have this promising plot that looks likes it's going somewhere but doesn't(and I heard the second season is just a different arc) and promising characters that are left hanging on a cliff.This story tried to be good, it succeed in many things but failed in many others.It really is all over the place, like the final episodes are so darn complex, it's like the writer wanted to say all these things but didn't have the time so tried to explain everything is one episode of 20 minuets.
Darker than Black is enjoying and if you choose to watch this you will be entertained there is no doubt about that.But don't expect anything too deep and don't expect any conclusion 'cause nothing is ever concluded or explained.
