Hearts filled with lies
The contract—is it worth the price?
A soul pledged to the darkness
Now I've lost it, I know I can kill
The truth exists beyond the Gate!"
A 2007 Fantastic Noir Science Fiction Spy Fiction Anime and Manga series produced by Studio BONES.
Ten years ago, an inscrutable and abnormal territory known as Hell's Gate appeared in Tokyo (as well as a corresponding Heaven's Gate in South America), altering the sky and devastating the landscape. The heavenly bodies disappeared, replaced by false stars. At the same time, people who possessed various special abilities emerged. Kept secret from the masses, these individuals are known as Contractors. However, their abilities are gained at the expense of their humanity: they lack most human emotions, particularly a conscience, and thus have no overriding loyalties or aversion to killing. Various nations around the world use Contractors as spies and agents, often resulting in vicious, no-holds-barred battles for information. They're called Contractors because each has a remuneration or obeisance (called "the price" in the FUNimation dub) that their "contract" compels them to perform after they use their powers and because they have no loyalties outside the scope of their current employment.
The story follows Hei, a Contractor working for the Syndicate in Tokyo, as he performs various tasks for them while trying to discover what happened to his sister Pai, who disappeared five years before the start of the series during a war fought over Heaven's Gate.
The first season, subtitled The Black Contractor, is available (in some countries) on Hulu
, YouTube and FUNimation's website. A series of OVAs, The Black Contractor (Kuro no Keiyakusha) Gaiden, which bridge the events of the first season with the sequel, followed soon afterwards.
A second season, subtitled Ryuusei no Gemini, translated as Gemini of the Meteor, ran from October to December 2009. FUNimation licensed the second season and released it in 2011.
There's a manga, Darker Than Black: Shikkoku no Hana (Jet Black Flower) by series director Tensai Okamura with art by character designer Yuji Iwahara, which covers the events that take place in Tokyo after the first season, but before the OVAs.
There's also a shoujo manga known as Darker Than Black with its own plot that doesn't have anything to do with the first season.
Tropes go on the appropriate sub-pages. Please put all character-related tropes on the character page.
- Season One (The Black Contractor):
- Gemini of the Meteor:
- OVAs:
