DNAngel, vol. 1

DNAngel volume 1
Yukiru Sugisaki
Tokyopop, 184 pp.

Daisuke Niwa is an ordinary middle school student with an extraordinary genetic “condition.” Whenever he starts longing for the girls of his dreams, he transforms into the legendary Phantom Thief, Dark! The only way to lift the curse? To have his love returned, of course. But how can Daiksuke win the heart of a girl he can’t even romance?

DNAngel has an interesting concept. Changing into the phantom thief Dark when Daisuke thinks about how much he wants Risa, the girl he's crushing on? This could either be good or bad, depending on how it's executed. Which will it be?

As far as the first volume goes, it doesn't to so bad. We're introduced to Daisuke on his 14th birthday, finally admitting his feelings to Risa. She rejects him, so he spaces out the rest of the day. After a spy-esque trek home involving navigating through a hallway full of lasers, his mother informs him that he's the next in line to be a thief, with the previous being his grandfather. So what does he steal? Assorted statues from museums.

But this is a problem. No, I don't mean stealing the statues (he handles that pretty well), but transforming back. To do so, Dark must think of his love interest, Rika, Risa's twin sister. This leads to a few problems, with Daisuke transforming at school when he sees Risa and then having trouble turning back when he can't find Rika.

DNAngel only takes up about 144 pages of this volume, with the other 40 going to an earlier story of the author's, N is for Nishiki . It is about Kokoro Nagahara, a fifth grader who summons Shikigami. She's pretty much is still in training and only creates failures, so she has to rely on her brother, Kodama. She ends up getting in a bind with another girl in school "wishing she'd just disappear", so in the middle of all the confusion, she summons Nishiki. He's her Shikigami, who ends up saving her but. But she's not thankful, so she sends him away. In the end, he comes back, and Kodama shows up in place of her missing parents for the parent-teacher conference.

The art is okay in DNAngel, it just looks a bir off in certain places. Like maybe a character's head is turned a bit, and it doesn't look right. Or it could be one of the girl's uniforms. In one panel, it looks a bit big, but in the next it's normal size. Also, in some panels the character's heads are way to small compared to their bodies. I can say that the art in N for Nishiki is a little bit worse, because it was done 3 years before DNAngel. But I forgive you, Sugisaki-sensei.

The characters are great, they range from the emotional teenage Daisuke, to the serious and mysterious thief Dark, to the unknowing, sweet Rika and Risa, to the braniac and snobby Satoshi, and last-but-not-least the adorable rabbit Wiz. The characters are drawn well, aside from the aforementioned issues.

Quality wise, the translation is okay. It's not clunky, unlike some of Tokyopop's other translations (namely Dream Saga.) The paper quality was okay, this was before their transition to crappy, lower-than-newspaper quality. This time, Tokyopop was actually nice with translation a little note from the manga-ka. Cool. We also have their standard advertisements, this time with Fruits Basket, Farie's landing, and the rest of the usual stuff. At least there was no preview of another series.

Art: 3
Characters: 4
Story: 4 (It's good for now, could go up/down later though.)
Quality: 3

Total: 3.5 That's a bit above average. I'd give it a B-. Good idea, works out well as far as this volume goes. A good fantasy/romance with decent characters and average art.

and a half out of five.