Customer Reviews

Dark Edge Volume 1 (v. 1)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

With the death of his mother, high school student Kurou Takagi is left on his own in the world, that is until he is told his father runs the exclusive new Yotsuji Private High School. Up until this point, he didn't even know who his father was! While the school has a good student to teacher ratio due to its small enrollment, there is one rule all students must follow. They must never be on school grounds after dark. The school is surrounded by five story tall walls with immense metal gates being the only exit. When they shut at night, there's practically no way to escape. At night a lot of the faculty become flesh-eating zombies or even vampires, sucking the life out of anyone foolish enough to stay after dark! When Kurou and some of his new schoolmates go looking after one of their friends, they get locked in and have to fight for their lives.

Dark Edge is a book that suffered from dumb as rocks characters and a completely ludicrous plot that was only compounded by instances of half-hearted humor. After the first night when Kurou and pals get locked in the school and find out the truth about the faculty and the monsters that roam the halls disguised in the daytime, you would think they would never come inside its gates again! Wrong! This bunch of idiots show up the next day for school like nothing ever happened for various moronic reasons. The zombies are just fighting for civil rights! And then they get locked in again! And what possible motive do these monsters have for opening a school, and then feeding on the students. It just seems like they could do something a bit more subtle and less risky. This story would've worked fine just from a comedic viewpoint, but Aikawa's attempts to infuse actual horror amid the retarded script comes to naught. So what you get is a mix of horror that isn't scary and humor that isn't funny. Which adds up to one dead duck of a manga. The art too, seems at cross purposes, trying to infuse horror elements with a shojoesque style that looks a bit strained. All in all, a poor choice of a book to spend money on.

I loved this book and have continued with the series. Unfortunately, only about half of the books are translated into English. To this day, I have not found the rest of the books in English. The ones here on Amazon say they can be delivered but when tried, they cannot find the stock and will refund you. If you cannot stand not knowing the rest of the story for an unknown time or possibly never, I would advise AGAINST getting it.

I can't really remember when I got into this series, but I re-discovered them on my shelf the other day. I remember being underwhelmed the first time I read them, yet wanting to read more for some strange reason. Upon a second reading, I can appreciate the story a little more but the feeling of being underwhelmed is still there. The story? Well, there's really not a lot of story here. In fact, the story here is so slim that most reviews on the net review 3-4 volumes at a time because the story is stretched out so far. In any case, I'm doing somewhat of the same here, giving any potential readers my impressions on the series up to volume 6 (which is where I finally cried uncle & stopped collecting for the time being.)

Kuro thinks that he's just an average rich boy. That is, until his mother died & he was sent to his father's academy. Curious about a father he knows little about, Kuro attends the school & discovers that once the sun goes down, students are forbidden to remain on campus. He & several other students soon discover that the school has been overrun with monsters!

I'm still puzzled as to why I haven't given away my copies yet. The story is incredibly thinly done & the characters are kind of stupid. They know that there's monsters on the campus, yet they keep coming back & their reasons for doing so aren't really convincing. If the manga's storyline had been condensed & the amount of overall volumes halved (there's about 15 volumes to the series), this manga would have been that much stronger for it.

I do believe that the artwork is what keeps me going- it has a certain appeal to it, although it is overly fanservice-ish at times. I wouldn't mind the fanservice, except that it seems to be done in order to keep the reader's attention from the weak storyline, which makes it rather annoying. Plus the manga can't seem to make up it's mind as to what type of story it wants to be. It is mainly horror, but there's little bits of humor & drama thrown in. (As a horror aficionado, I can say that 90% of the time trying to mix horror & comedy does not work out well.)

The bottom line is that this is just a weak series. It's about a 2.6 on my scale (which makes this rating a 3), but for some reason I really want to stay the course & find out how the story ends. It's just that reading through much of the series is a chore. There's potential here, but it just isn't very well executed.

My diagnosis? If you can, read this at the library (assuming they'd even have it). Otherwise, I wouldn't waste your time unless you are really, really into slow moving horror series. Seriously, this series moves almost as slow as a season of Dragonball Z.

EDIT:

I discovered that there is a Dark Edge Set of volumes 1-6, so that might prove worthwhile for some & I wish that they'd had this out from the start rather than releasing it per volume.

Dark Edge centres around Takagi, a boy who starts at a new high school only to find that things aren't quite right there. Along with some other students, he discovers that the teachers and the school in general, is host to supernatural, zombie activity. As some students become victims, Takagi and his friends seem to be the only ones who know about, and can potentially stop what's going on.

I really love this series. The plot is fast moving and interesting throughout. From the first volume onwards, there's a good mix of action and character/plot development. The characters are all well-defined, this includes Takagi and his friends as well as other, more negative characters. There's quite a few core characters, which makes it a bit confusing at first. However, as the series progresses, it's a real strength, as their various backgrounds and personalities add depth to the series.

This series is totally absorbing- I definitely recommend it!

My sister translated this book into english! It was awesome... she did a good job! haha!