D.Gray-man (Manga)

is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Katsura Hoshino. Many characters and their designs were adapted from some of Katsura Hoshino's previous works and drafts, such as Zone, and Continue, and her assistants.

The manga initial serialization was in Weekly Shōnen Jump since 2004, published by Shueisha under their "Jump Comics" imprint, and to date, 23 collected volumes have been released. It made the transition from weekly to monthly series in November 2009, when it began serialization in Jump Square. There is also a Spin-off light novel series named D.Gray-man: Reverse authored by Kaya Kizaki, which explores various histories of the characters. Viz Media releases since May 2010 the first nineteen volumes in the United States.

The manga series has also been adopted in a 103 episodes anime series that aired from October 3, 2006 to September 30, 2008 in Japan. The anime got licensed by Funimation Entertainment since 2009.

The manga series has become one of the best-sellers for Shueisha. During its second release week, the 15th volume of the manga ranked as the second best selling comic in Japan. Although most reviewers compared it to other series from the same genre, they praised its moments of originality and its well-developed characters and their personalities.

Production
Some concepts in D.Gray-man initially appeared in Katsura Hoshino's one-shot Zone. It includes the same concepts of the Akuma and their creation, Exorcists, and the Earl's plans for ending the world. The main protagonist Allen Walker of the D.Gray-man series is based of Robin from the one-shot. In addition, Lavi is based on the protagonist of one of her planned series, Book-man. Other characters such as The Earl of Millennium, Lenalee Lee and Komui Lee are based on real people, although Hoshino has not confirmed who some of those people are. She has mentioned that some of them are famous scientists, while Komui is based on her boss. fter beginning work on the longer D.Gray-man series, Hoshino considered continuing to use the name Zone. She also considered naming the series Dolls or Black Noah. The word "D.Gray-man" is meant to have various meanings, most of them being the state of Allen and the other main characters.

Hoshino commented that she got most of her ideas for the series while asleep in the bath for 6 hours. One exception occurs in the plot of the second volume, which she based on a story called Koi no Omoni.