This is going to be for Darker than Black 5-8; I was too tired and uninspired last night to say anything about 5&6.
Five and six were pretty basic, for me: they delivered a bunch of emotionally-charged backstory concerning Li, and showed us yet another moe-girl affected by the Gate. This time she was one of the world’s deadliest Contractors, and I suspect she has a big fan following. She has the “broken” face and mysterious past that tends to do it for people.
This arc deviated in an interesting way from the norm thus far: it didn’t show us how the fights of the Contractors affect the life of someone only marginally involved, if that. Instead, it showed us a person who had escaped that life and been pulled back in (I kept thinking of The Bourne Identity). It gives us more of a view from within the structure of the marginalized, but I wasn’t too interested. I much prefer glimpses of how the rest of the world is being affected. In that way the show is much more sci-fi than it is fantasy — in fantasy, fantastic events illustrate psychological realism in the characters who confront the events. DtB takes a personal view of things, but it’s still mostly about how a fantastic event changes the culture and lives of the world.
Seven and eight were a lot of fun. Comedy makes just about anything better, and I was figuring, from the beginning, there would be a noir-esque detective arc, given how each arc toys with some genre or another. The self-shaped detective (who’s calling himself “Gai,” or “Guy,” to underline his hard, faceless life on the margins of the urban world) blunders into a fight essentially about nothing. That is, people are being killed over perfume samples. At first it might be difficult to see what this arc offers in terms of the society looking at the Contractors, or vice versa, but remember that Gai’s assistant thinks Li is hot, and wants to stalk him. Certain segments of society continue on, not really paying attention to the changes. Why wouldn’t they? They have more important things to think about, like sex (it’s significant that both the detective and his assistant are obsessed with essentially-unattainable people, the widow and the stranger on the street).
Ah, interesting observation you have there. It never really occurred to me that Gai and Kiko both have this sexual frustration/desire/longing thing with unattainable people, but there you go.
Perhaps their overdramatised reactions had something to do with it.