High School DxD Manga Vol. 1 Review

Just starting to be released this year, the High School DxD manga series is based on the light novel series of the same name.  Already a hit anime series in Japan and the United States, Yen Press just started printing the manga series this summer.  Covering the first 4 chapters of the story, it introduces Hyoudou Issei, a high school student and pervert, who is killed in the opening pages by Raynare, a fallen angel, who was pretending to be his girlfriend.  As he lay dying, Rias Gremory appeared before him and offered to resurrect him as a devil.  From there, Issei learns more about what it means to be a resurrected devil and meets the other members of the Rias Gremory devil family: Akeno Himejima, Kiba Yuto, and Koneko Toujou.  While performing devil duties, he meets a nun, Asia Argento whom he instantly befriends.  Later on that night, he learns that she is forced to worked with a very cruel and evil exorcist who tries to kill both him and it is only with the intervention of the entire Gremory Group and Asia that Issei survives.  The manga closes with Issei promising to rescue Asia.

Hiroji Mishima has done a very good job of capturing the character designs of Zero Miyama, the artist from the light manga and promo material.  It being an action comedy ecchi manga, he seamlessly blends the comedic elements with the fight scenes and Issei’s interactions with his female companions.  As it is the first volume of the series, there is not a lot of extra stuff at the end of the manga, just some translator’s notes but the two color pages in front are nice.

Personally, I have been a fan of the DxD series for a while now. I've watched both anime series, and read fan translated versions of the light novels and I was excited to hear that this manga series and it spinoff were being released by Yen Press this year.  I hope soon they decide to do the light novel series because they are very fun reads.  I liked this manga too; it captures the essence of the DxD Light novels, and provides its own humor and emotions to many of the scenes you previously only had words to imagine it with.  It is still very ecchi, so it’s not recommended for younger audiences but if you want a funny action packed harem manga, Irecommend you pick this up.  And with a English dub of season 2 being released in November and season 3 in pre-production in Japan, there is much more of this series that there is to look forward to.

Comic - Hiroji Mishima

Story - Ichiei Ishibumi

Character Design - Zero Miyama
Publisher - Yen Press
Release Date - May 2014