When I first started watching the show, I was relatively new to anime and so I believed the plot - an organization of people who use holy weapons of sorts to defeat humans-turned-demons - to be unique in nearly every way, but now I realize that the story isn't that special as far as anime goes. However, with the Noah, I feel that the story was a little more interesting and original. My rating for the story? 7/10
~Art~
The artwork in D. Gray-man is very good, there is a lot of detail in clothing, weapons, background and scenery. Each character has a different look, which makes it easy to tell them apart. The battle scenes weren't choppy and were easy to follow in my opinion. 8/10
~Sound~
The opening themes were great, I enjoyed listening to most of them (except maybe the last one). I disliked the ending themes in general. The background track was pretty good, nothing overly special, and I'd say it did a good job of setting up the mood for each scene. The voices of the characters - in both English and Japanese - were amazing; I felt that the voice actors/actresses did fantastic jobs on portraying their characters. The only thing I didn't really like was how high Allen's voice was in both, and how low Kanda's was in the English. 7/10
~Character~
I am actually disappointed in the character portion of D. Gray-man. Each character had their own personality, but while some characters - such as Allen Walker, Lavi, Krory - had well developed backstories and whose thoughts and actions were shown and explained, most were lacking. Kanda Yu, for instance, is a hugely important character in the manga, and they just start to brush on it in the anime, which I found disappointing. I also wish that they had gone more in-depth with the Noah. And then they did that super evil, satanic thing (minor spoiler alert, but no names are mentioned) where they give a character an entire episode about their backstory so you get attached to that character, before killing them off two episodes later... Anyway, I give characters 6/10.
~Enjoyment~
I enjoyed D. Gray-man very much. It stayed "on task" through out the show, with very few fillers, which is always a plus (especially if you're like me, who feels the need to watch every episode in order and refuses to skip fillers *cough* the reason I dropped Bleach *cough!*). D. Gray-man was the first anime show that I enjoyed enough to continue to watch it after they had stopped the dubs. I was only disappointed with the ending, which simply seemed cut off abruptly. 9/10
~Overall Score~
8/10.
