Darker Than Black – Is the Dream that a Shinigami Has a Darkness Darker than Black?
30 September 2007
though it’s all over
times i wonder still
“what you doin’ now?”
well…
tears are all i ever get enough of here
without you in my life
Well, that’s it my friends, the very last episode of Darker Than Black. It’s almost like I’m in mourning. I can’t even bring myself to write about it. I avoid thinking about it. This page’s been open for a good forty minutes, I’ve managed two lines. Was it the fanfare, and the attention and all the big names working on Darker Than Black that made me laud it so or did I honestly enjoy it? It’s characters like Havoc, Yin, November 11 and Hei, episodes like episode twenty-three, combined with that painfully heart wrenching soundtrack, that makes me believe, yes, what I have here was indeed something…good.
Personally, I liked Hei’s little dream sequence, everyone there with him, Huang, Mao, Havoc, November, Nick even and of course, Bai and Amber. The human pretending to be a contractor, he picks to bear the burden of both, saying goodbye to all that he’s wished for, to his sister, to Amber, to everyone. Then he falls into a whirlpool of darkness, someone calls his name, Hei. He calls back, Yin, reaches out for her hand. Don’t leave me alone. And he’s back, Yin holding his sleeve. He looks for Amber and sees a pile of clothes, notices the time and realizes that Amber planned it this way all along.
without you in my life
might be time to loose you
let it go
and walk away
ain’t no use tryin’
cuz you’re too far away now
The whole Organization thing with Hourai seemed just so tangled and ridiculous and wonderfully incoherent. Apparently, Hei’s powers has the ability to change matter on a molecular level, which is probably the coolest ability. What leaves me a bit confused is when Misaki calls out to Li-kun and Hei stops, turns and tells her no such person exists anymore. Was it just for her sake that he said Li doesn’t exist anymore? Or, has he truly abandoned, well, himself? I prefer neither, if he picked both worlds, then Li-kun should still very well be there.
All of this aside, it’s still the characters that get me, who they are, their relationships, their personalities, their lives, the little things, like April leaving flowers for November 11, Guy and Kiko in the noodle shop, Kounu and Saito catching contractors, the landlady and her husband and all their tenants. Despite all that’s happened, people keep on moving. Hei, probably the brightest star in all of this, caught in the middle, finally finds his place. And, I think I just found the answer to my own question about Hei’s comment about Li-kun. It was one man’s life that overlapped with the fate of the world, if you will, and when all is said and done, only the future remains.
empty rooms that i can’t hold
silence gets cold
no one’s home
nothin’ i can do
i had it all within my reach but now it’s gone
Melancholy is the only word I have to describe the end, when Misaki steps into Li-kun’s empty apartment, no one’s home. When she steps out onto the balcony and catches a glimpse of his green jacket, frantically she chases after him, only to loose sight of him around a corner. Just an empty street, the sunset, Mao and Yin’s observation ghost under the bridge.
The ending makes me want to tear things into little tiny pieces, makes me want to cry and cry and cry and cry. I loved this series so much, and it’s one of those things you just can’t get out of your head, one of those things you blow completely out of proportion just because you feel like you have some emotional attachment to it. I’m learning to embrace the end, learning to part ways, learning to accept the fact that Misaki never caught up to Hei, accept that no one’s home.
I’m going to remember Li-kun, his button-down shirt, his jeans, his sneakers, his calm navy eyes, the way his hair parts and settles on his forehead, his enormous appetite, his smile, that naive and innocent, pained smile. I’m going to remember Yin, remember her standing in the moonlight, remember her pushing the corner of her lips to smile. I’m going to remember Mao and all his cute expressions, I’m going to remember Huang and everyone else.
A year from now, maybe I’ll look back on it and just shrug it off as a momentary obsession, or maybe it’ll still get me just as badly. At the end of everything, all this babbling and all this random mental torment, I have but a memory, one memory, because the second time around just isn’t the same.
there’s no smile in my life
there’s no you here to love me
I’m just as wordless as you…
It feels strange, from now on I don’t have to wake up at 3 pm for new EP’s screencaps at Random Curiosity, and I don’t need to carry my laptop to university to download new RAW anymore.
I din’t shed any tear during last episode, which was quite strage as I usually cry at the last episode of favourite shows. Perhaps it was the happiness of seeing Hei and Yin alive that suppressed that mournful feeling. I will miss Darker than Black, definitely, and I’m sure that it will be my second life-time obsession anime like Kino no Tabi.
Thank you for this wonderful entry ^-^
@Jellyfish Marine – I know what you mean. There’s no new subs waiting for me when I wake up, no nervous giddiness when I click play, no Hei. I didn’t cry either, and like you, I found that to be quite strange. But the more I thought about it, the more if felt like I was crying on the inside. Strange as it sounds, corny as it sounds, Darker Than Black has silent, subtle ways of killing you, and leaving you empty when it’s over. And seeing Hei and Yin alive at the end, seeing him turn around, looking over his shoulder and saying, “Let’s go,” was everything.
i feel the same way about DTB… i think i need to watch it again… i definitely need to. funny thing is that it ended like the sopranos… we all thought we knew how it was going to end with some big battle, a final boss, hei dying, contractors and humans coming together… but hell no. the show knocks us on our ass and turns the ending into an anti cliche. no good guy, no bad guy, no love love ending, no closure, just an ending thats literally darker than black. Li doesnt exist anymore. how did misaki know???
I think a year from now you will look back on this show and shrug it off as a temporary obsession. It was a show that was technically (animation, acting, music) excellent, but was ultimately hollow. It tried to create a story that was complex, but instead it became incoherent. It tried to be profound with an ending where Hei confronted the departed, but instead it seemed like an Evangelion ripoff. It tried to be melancholy with Misaki unable to catch up to Hei, but that rang untrue as it is an overused cliche. Don’t get me wrong. The show was good, and I enjoyed watching it. But it will never be remembered as a classic because it offered nothing original to the world of anime. The characters were fairly one-dimensional, and worse than that, nothing was explained. That’s not a sign of mysteriousness or originality, that’s a sign of lazy writing. This show had a lot of potential, and failed to live up to it. The artists, actors, and Yoko Kanno all deserve and A for their outstanding work. The director and writers, however, deserve remediation.
I finally found someone who thinks the same that i do. I just love Darker, every character, the wait for screencaps in random, the wait for the RAW, the i dont know what the hell happened but i love it.
Hei is my fav character, and i think in one year, i will still have some random thougs about Darker… it has a big spot in my otaku heart.