I would give a plot summary but I can't really describe it well enough without being spoiler central or vague as a wet sheet of paper. The best I can do is this: Super humans aka contractors emerge at the same time as mysterious gates as they call them. Inside this gate all science is defied and people tend to die for no reason. Along with the contractors, come docile beings called dolls, used for tracking and surveillance. The contractors are employed by government and criminal agencies as mercenaries because they have no conscience or moral obligation towards everything except reason. The contractors also have one act they must repetitively perform called their obeisance. The main character, Hei, and his team(one doll: Yin; one human: Haung; one contractor cat: Mao) work for a criminal syndicate which apparently has massive powers hidden agendas and is evil.
Anything more and I'll be describing the ending so here's my issue. While all the technical aspects of this anime are done very well the story is a little shaky. About half way through the anime begins to reek of producers and deadlines. I'm not sure what compels them to change and rocket you towards a climax but it seems to happen allot, and combined with the standard 25 episode cookie cutter platform it makes me begin to suspect that someone with malfunctioning eyes was in charge of the cutting process. I really hate when writers and producers fill you with plenty of background and character development and don't take it along with them to the climax. They just get the action in and stuff some dialog to go with and hope it goes well. I firmly believe that the events in the last two episodes would have been better covered in five or six episodes. Another three or so episodes should have gone around episode 19 as well. This is another classic example of where budget and deadlines get in the way of good material and gives us another anime with too much left out.
To top the story bit off they even screwed up the ending. The last episode was the worst in my opinion. DTB ends Claymore style with a long difficult lonely path ahead. Granted it's a little more conclusive and isn't as high and dry, but it's still leaves way to much room open. Without spoiling the ending I'll try to explain this. Hei basically goes through a big emotional dialog and is told to be himself, but when he returns he says something that destroys his entire personality they built in the first place and is left as some emotionless killing machine.
The other story problem DTB has is setting cohesion. I counted multiple different agencies including the police, Pandora, the syndicate and the astronomy. The problem I notice is that they never seem to fit together sensibly. Pandora is an anti contractor agency under the UN in charge of gate research and contractor control. The astronomy division uses the stars and dolls to track contractor activity. Pandora ends to act without the police knowing or authorizing which is very odd for a UN agency. The astronomy division doesn't seem to like to communicate with the police either. The head of astronomy is the police chief's best friend yet they don't contact each other about the most ominous signs and thoughts they have? This seems mostly to be a result of a lack of screen time for the side characters.
The entire series begs for a second season in order to tie up loose ends and give some decent closure but as is the series is still pretty good. Thankfully, demand has lead to the announcement of a sequel. I'm not sure how they can finish of the series without destroying everything they created in the first season. Based on the first season I can expect that Darker than Black 2 will turn into a well composed piece of work that begins to fall apart near the end. Either way DTB was a fairly enjoyable series that only angers me because it could be better. For any regular anime fan this is a good watch and something you should eventually get into.
