D.Gray-man 1

One of my favorite manga

(Review written in August 2024)

D. Gray-man is one of my favorite manga series, so of course it's required reading in any language I study! This series follows Allen Walker, a 15-year-old who, as of volume 1, is traveling to become an exorcist, someone who can use special weapons to destroy living weapons called "akuma". Along the way, he meets others who's lives are affected by the akuma, and we learn how the akuma are created (spoiler for midway through volume 1: by taking the soul of a dead person and using it to power a machine that wears human skin to blend in) and who their creator and master is.

This is, vocabulary, grammar, and text density-wise, mostly in the standard shounen battle level. There are lots of weapons and moves with an English gloss in katakana beside their kanji equivalent, and full furigana for kanji in general. There's a bit of casual language, but hero Allen is quite polite, and his speech reflects that.