sincere | Liveblog: D. Gray-Man

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Liveblog: D. Gray-Man

I accidentally thought about D. Gray-Man. 36 hours later all I've been able to think about is some of the things I loved about this series, so here I am again. Much to my surprise, it hasn't been abandoned, it's still currently ongoing. So I'll liveblog it and in the future I'll have one more thing to read and remember how good it was.

Currently: Caught up to 251 and confused

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Embrace Hoshino's baby artstyle, when proportions were insane and everything was a nightmare!

We open on a mysterious abandoned church where travelers sometimes spend the night and never come back from. Moore is an anachronistic policewoman in England in the year of our Lord 1895, and she wants to find out why people keep disappearing in this church. Her partner Charles musters his courage to follow her in. Should've stayed outside, Charles! You're a red-shirt in D. Gray-Man, it's tragedy all the way down.

Their first guest is a chonky cat, followed by a swarm of bats that apparently contains Allen Walker, who makes a grab for the cat. But he managed to grab Moore too, and she takes advantage of his surprise to handcuff him.

We get our first clear view of Allen as he's holding up his hands in surrender sheepishly. He looks adorably homeless!

Allen explains that he's just a traveler who was ambushed by the cat, which ate "one of my valuable possessions", which his Master entrusted him. His Master disappeared in India somewhere.

Moore doesn't believe any of this, but he's a little kid so she isn't terribly threatened by him. But there's a ruckus downstairs where they left Charles, and she runs off to find that he has become the first victim of Hoshino's gothic nightmare world.

How am I supposed to describe literally anything that happens in this series? I've made a huge mistake

Charles has been, like. Strapped to something. His mouth is open in a silent scream and there's a big hole in his chest. His face becomes covered with black stars, and then his skin is covered by black, and then he disintegrates in front of her eyes, leaving just his clothes -- just like everyone in the stories about the cursed church.

Allen grabs Moore and pulls her away, holding a cloth over her mouth, since the gas from the corpse is toxic. She faints. Allen, don't smother ladies!

She wakes up at the police station, where the police are "questioning" the "suspect", Allen with a cat in his arms. He protests that all he did is bring an unconscious cop here, and now he's being accused of murder. The detective protests that his hand is "all red from the blood" and pulls off his half-glove.

Close-up on Allen's Innocence hand now. It's red, with heavily gnarled skin and unnatural black nails, kind of hinged at the finger joints, and there's a ~~plus sign~~ cross burned into it. The officers unsteadily accuse him of being a lunatic who would do this to himself.

Moore at least vouches for the fact that Allen was with her when stuff went down, and the officers admit that there were bullet holes at the scene and Allen is unarmed. Moore didn't see the culprit, and neither did Allen... but he does know what it was.

Allen explains that it's an "akuma", which is going to continue killing people, and it will get stronger with each kill. He is an Exorcist, a specialist in destroying akuma, and the cross in his hand is his weapon.

Elsewhere, the Earl is frolicking around. He's -- um -- I can't even describe, so here's a picture

Anyway, he goes to visit a hollow-eyed man in a wheelchair, which he calls his "akuma" and urges happily to keep killing so he can evolve. The Earl promptly vanishes as the door opens and Moore emerges, greeting the hollow-eyed man as her brother.

Slowly remembering details about how fucked up this all is

She's urging him to eat when Allen catches her attention bumbling around in the hallway. The detective put him in Moore's care, and he really wants to go to the church because he's worried all the cops are gonna get themselves killed. He and Moore argue about whether or not there's any such thing as demons, and he says that akuma are a thing, they're weapons created to kill humans.

ALLEN: They normally look human, so it's quite hard to spot them--
Moore's Brother: you guys talking about me in here?

"Marc" wheels into the room and makes some incoherent noises. Moore goes to try and help him, but suddenly Allen's scarred eye distorts and activates, and he can suddenly see the horrific spirit looming behind "Marc". But "Marc" is done pretending anyway. Weird that he made it two years living like this without ever attacking Moore but now he's so overwhelmed by the need to eat her that he bursts out of his skin.

Anyway, "Marc" transforms into a body horror nightmare drone of some kind which starts shooting in all directions. Allen dives for Moore and they're blasted out of the house, straight across the street into the old church. He is holding the shell casing that the akuma fired at them, and explains that the akuma's blood bullet contains a virus that rapidly kills anything it infects. He narrates the effects very sadly as the cat in his arms succumbs to the virus and disintegrates, and he's as sad as I am that an innocent kitty had to die for this explanation.

Allen apologizes for failing to save the cat.

Moore wants to know what the fuck happened to her brother, and Allen explains that an akuma kills a human and wears their skin to blend in. The thing wearing her brother is not Marc anymore.

The akuma and the police find them at the same time. Allen shouts for them to run because guns won't hurt it, but they fire on the akuma and it fires back and disintegrates them. Moore is angry and horrified, but Allen tells her there's no point. The soul bound inside the akuma is just a puppet of its creator, and its torment and frustration and rage are what powers the akuma.

An akuma is "a machine, a soul, and tragedy." Poetic.

Something tragic happened to Marc that turned him to darkness, and that's when the akuma maker appeared to him.

LET'S TALK ABOUT IT

Moore and her sister, Claire, were orphaned young, and "Pastor Marc was always there to help and guide us", and then he and Claire fell in love and got married. Grooming?

One day, Claire was venting a little about how she wishes Moore would set aside her drive to get revenge on the burglars who killed their parents. Marc urged her to have faith in God, and they all agree that God is super wonderful and the world is all roses and rainbows except for the insane nightmare cross hanging right above Claire's head that promptly breaks and fucking skewers her.

Marc unsurprisingly was filled with anguish and rage and for some reason had an axe while he cursed God for doing this. Allen is like, "Sure, a pastor cursing God, that'll get the akuma-maker's attention."

The Earl appears, all happy and filled with hearts and helpful, offering to bring Claire back to life. All Marc has to do is call out to her, and her soul will be summoned into this handy-dandy machine body!

So Marc calls her name happily, and then Claire says his name in return, and then starts screaming, demanding to know how he could do this to her, now she's trapped in this body... And her soul belongs to the Earl.

He commands her to kill Marc. Then we get a lovely couple of panels of the akuma shoving itself down Marc's throat while the Earl merrily sings happy birthday.

The akuma isn't Marc, it's just wearing him. The akuma is Claire.

While Moore is still struggling to process with how fucked up this series is, Allen activates his left arm, transforming it into a massive white claw weapon. He tears the akuma apart, and whispers for Claire to rest in peace.

As the akuma breaks apart, we see the chains on the bound spirit inside of it melting away, and then for a second we see Claire again, crying and smiling, and Allen smiles back at her. "Thank you..." are the akuma's last words.

For some reason Moore still thinks it's possible that a loving God exists in her universe, so she's like, "I wonder if they're in Heaven now?" and Allen is like "Sure, why not."

Allen bio! He is British, circa 15 years old, birthday unknown. He was found and adopted on Christmas Day, so that's when they celebrate his birthday.

Hoshino says that she likes rude hyper characters most, so Allen's creation is a mystery to her. She struggled with his design because the Allen character was female in the pilot manga, so she wondered if he should be more masculine, but... welp. Here's Allen.

Flashback to a few months ago, in India: Allen has been Cross's apprentice for three years now, so Cross officially dubs him an Exorcist.

Cross: You know how to get to HQ, right
Allen: why are you holding that cartoon mallet
Cross: Take Timcanpy
Allen: are you ditching me
Cross: I'll send a letter of recommendation to Komui
Allen: HELP
Cross: I hate that fucking place
THUD

Allen wakes from his memory nightmare in a cold sweat. He has hitched a ride with some circus folk, and Timcanpy is flying around, having emerged from the cat's grave and apparently unconcerned about being eaten by another cat, as he is wont to be. They're on their way to the Exorcist HQ, but then the Bat-Signal lights up the sky, so Allen flies into action!

The kid screaming about akuma is surrounded by angry adults who say that he does this all the time. John insists that his dad says that akuma are invading the world, and he just saw one kill this here homeless guy and crawl inside his body.

The homeless guy has a super normal response to this accusation, grabbing and muffling John. Everyone else leaves. We can see that he has an akuma star on his forehead, and so can Allen, because he destroys that guy immediately.

John explains that his dad is "a scientist at the New World Alliance", so he's never around. He read his dad's research materials and that's how he learned about akuma. He's never seen a real Exorcist before and has tons of questions! He also sniffs that Allen is much scrawnier than he expected

Allen kinda sighs and then tells him to stop asking about and stop talking about akuma. He's going to get the Millennium Earl's attention, and that's dangerous.

John rejects this advice via onion bomb.

John's friend Leo pays him a visit at his family's mansion. Leo smiles calmly and doesn't say anything and is just generally extremely suspicious while John rattles off a laundry list of clues that Leo is possessed by an akuma.

John notices that Leo is very obviously possessed. Probably still recovering from his mom's death! HEY GUESS WHAT I SAW AN AKUMA TODAY. I KNOW WHAT THE EARL LOOKS LIKE. I'M PROBABLY IN HUGE DANGER RIGHT ABOUT NOW!

Leo casually invites him to go somewhere alone and ominous. They run over Allen on the way out. Allen was annoyed to have to chase down this kid he shouldn't even bother caring about, but his annoyance becomes alarm after he sees Leo and his eye activates immediately.

Allen catches up with them at the graveyard, where the Millennium Earl is casually explaining that Leo has been dead since the day of his mom's funeral. You shouldn't get in the Earl's way, John!

Allen tries to take out Leo, but John dives in his way, because he hasn't internalized the message yet. Then the akuma sheds his Leo skin and blasts them both, and Allen takes the brunt of it to protect the silly little twerp who incited all of this.

The stars spread across Allen's skin, and he clutches at his wound, and John is horrified as he remembers what he read in his dad's papers about the akuma virus. But Allen's Innocence weapon is inside his body -- he isn't vulnerable to the virus because he can just activate his Innocence to purify it. When the virus is beaten back, and Allen's face is clearly visible again... the Earl recognizes him.

ALLEN: A long time ago, I turned someone very dear to me into an akuma.
ALLEN: Since then, I've been cursed to see the souls inside of akuma with this eye.
EARL: You're Allen Walker! You're that kid who turned his father into an akuma!

The Earl came to tiny brown-haired Allen Walker at Mana's grave, and offered to resurrect Mana for him. Allen was super vulnerable to this. He'd never had anyone else -- abandoned at birth because of his deformed arm -- and only Mana took him in and showed him love. So he brought him back, and then the akuma Mana screamed at him and cursed him, cutting open the side of his face and leaving that eye with the akuma-sight curse.

Allen would've died, but his Innocence arm activated for the first time in his life. It literally dragged him across the floor and forced him to attack the akuma Mana while he begged for it to leave him alone, urging the akuma to escape. And then the curse activated, allowing him to see and hear Mana's spirit, asking to be destroyed. And the Innocence makes him do it.

Lil Allen is slumped against a wall, traumatized, until Cross finds him. He explains (with his weirdly huge Timcanpy) that the doomed souls inside the akuma cannot be freed from the Earl's control until it is exorcised. Allen was born with an anti-akuma weapon inside him... so he decided to exorcise akuma in penance for what he did to Mana.

But he's seen so many akuma spirits now. He believes that the akuma don't cry because of their rage and pain and fear. They cry because they're mourning for their loved one who wasn't strong enough to keep going without them. Akuma are tragic creatures, and he wants to save them.

The Earl and Allen exchange some shounen manga battle words, and then the Earl summons like thirty akuma. Allen whips out a shounen manga battle named attack and they all die at once. The Earl is really fucking annoyed about it, but decides to retreat until he has more powerful akuma to help him kill Allen and destroy God and end the world and all that good stuff.

Then Allen collapses and takes three days to recover from all the damage he took to save John.

Eventually Allen makes his way to a comically gothic dark tower. A black golem is spying on him, and the Science Department inside is analyzing the feed and trying to figure out who he is. Lenalee points out that he has General Cross's golem, and Allen introduces himself as being here at General Cross's request, but Komui is like, "idk anything about that!"

The gate analyzes him to try and determine if he's human or akuma, and it can't actually see inside him properly. But Allen's cursed eye makes it start screeching about how he has an akuma mark so HE MUST BE AN AKUMA, and Kanda comes flinging out of the night to make a good impression.

lol original artstyle Kanda so skinny

Kanda goes for the kill immediately and Allen barely deflects it with his Innocence arm in time, and is shocked to realize that Kanda's sword was able to damage it. Kanda's philosophy is that he doesn't know if Allen is an Exorcist or an akuma or whatever, but we'll be able to tell once we slice him open, probably!

ALLEN: WAIT I AM AN EXORCIST
ALLEN: GENERAL CROSS SENT A LETTER TO SOMEONE NAMED KOMUI
KOMUI: ...............

They sort through the mound of papers on Komui's desk and find the unopened letter from Cross. Whoops?

Komui bio: he's 29, Chinese, and a genius "scientist", where science mostly equals magic and alchemy

Several different people encourage Kanda to get out of attack mode but he is still considering murder, so Lenalee goes out to bop him on the head with her clipboard. Kanda is like, an inch taller than Allen in one of these panels here.

Lenalee introduces herself as Komui's "assistant", and Kanda refuses to shake hands with someone cursed. Allen seethes. Lenalee apologizes, pretending Kanda isn't like that all the time.

Lenalee gives him the tour: dining hall, training area, lounge, some other probable settings for fanfiction, the hijinx origin area, etc. Most Exorcists live here and consider this place home, although some [like Cross] avoid it whenever possible. But Allen has some warm and fuzzy feelings about the word "home"!

Komui takes a look at Allen's damaged Innocence arm and is impressed! Allen is a "parasite-type" conformer, which is very rare. It means the repair process is AGONIZING and Allen hates his life, but parasite-type conformers can use much more of their Innocence's power than regular equipment-type conformers.

Komui turns Allen over to Hevlaska, an enormous weird tentacle monster of light, with zero explanation. Allen's arm has been anesthetized and doesn't respond to his panic while she probes him, but he wills himself to overcome his amnesia with the sheer power of his freaking out, so he invokes his Innocence anyway and it kind of... fizzles instead of activating properly, which seems painful.

She wants that it's dangerous for him to invoke the Innocence when he's not in sync with it. She assures him that she's on his side, and then gives him a reading -- his current maximum synchronization level with his weapon is 83%. Pretty good!

HEVLASKA: Allen Walker...
HEVLASKA: Someday in the dark future your Innocence will create a great "Destroyer of Time"...
Komui: ooh, cool

Hey what's an Innocence anyway

Komui explains that a few hundred years ago, they found a "cube". Inside the cube was a prophecy -- written by some civilization that vanquished a great darkness, but would soon disappear. They said there would be more darkness in the future, so they left salvation in the form of the cube, a crystal of God called "Innocence".

Once "processed and converted", Innocence can become an anti-akuma weapon; that's what Allen has in his arm. (Allen has been using the term anti-akuma weapon all this time, these conversations are the first time he's heard about Innocence.)

The cube's creators defeated the Millennium Earl, but were still wiped out ~7000 years ago in the great flood of the Old Testament. The cube calls it "the three days of darkness". According to the prophecy, those three days of darkness will return. Since the Earl is back now, the New World Alliance banded together to create the Black Order and find soldiers to wield the Innocence weapons -- Exorcists.

What the Innocence is to Team Human, "Dark Matter" is to Team Earl. He uses Dark Matter to create akuma, and as the akuma evolves, the Dark Matter matures and grows more powerful.

There are 109 pieces of Innocence out there, scattered throughout the world after the flood. Team Human wants to find it to wield it against the Earl, and Team Earl wants to find it to destroy it. So our mission: find Innocence FIRST.

"With you joining the order, we now have a total of 19 Exorcists!" Oh Jesus
Also: Hevlaska is also an Exorcist. She's the conformer of the Innocence cube.

There's a lot of Lord and God stuff in these opening chapters

Allen passes out in his room after his chaotic day, mulling that he has no idea where Timcanpy is.

But he's finally made it to the Black Order HQ. He smiles and talks to Mana, about how Mana always said, Don't stop. Keep walking.

The Black Order was telling him that these things were his destiny or fate, but he doesn't believe in any of that. He chose to walk this path. And he's going to keep walking it.

My poor baby I just wanna squeeze him

Kanda is out in the woods, practicing some blindfolded sword katas, barefoot and shirtless. Going by these first few chapters you'd think he never wears shirts because Hoshino wants us to see that he's bandaged. Meanwhile, Allen is in his room, doing some....... weird training of his own.

After dawn he heads out to the cafeteria where he orders a truckload of food from Jerry, and is distracted by quarreling. Kanda is looking harassed while some Finders stand over them, but apparently the truth is that he told the grieving Finders behind him to shut the fuck up and stop having a memorial while he's trying to eat. A big guy takes a swing at him and Kanda almost murders him, sneering about how the Finders are just rejects who didn't get chosen by Innocence, so if they're not willing to risk their lives, they can just leave.

Insert our hero, who grabs Kanda's arm. Allen tells him to cut it out.

KANDA: ...Get off me, Beansprout.
ALLEN: ?!? ...My name is Allen.
KANDA: I'll remember it if you're still alive in a month.
ALLEN: Leave him alone.
KANDA: I hate guys like you.
ALLEN: I'll take that as a compliment.

This is what romance is like, right? Shippers tell me this is what romance is like.

Their standoff is interrupted by a mission! Komui has decided they should go together, as a team. They are both much aggrieved by this announcement, and Komui is like, "You hate each other already?" It doesn't take long, have you met Kanda?

Anyway, they found some Innocence in southern Italy that's already being hunted by akuma. It needs to be retrieved ASAP.

Allen receives his new uniform, recovers Timcanpy, and off he goes!

Meanwhile, in Italy, some Finders are attempting to seal in the akuma attacking people. They can't be stopped until the Exorcists arrive. Unfortunately, one of the sealed akuma has killed enough people that it only needed one more kill before evolving... so we see our first Level 2 akuma. Surprise! It looks like a clown!

Lenalee's little mini-bio didn't have much in the way of facts, just some comments on her design. Kanda's little mini-bio says he likes soba, tempura, and dislikes basically all other things. "It's hard drawing beautiful people," Hoshino says.

Kanda, Allen, and a Finder jump onto a speeding locomotive and crawl inside. They flash their Black Order badges and are immediately given a cabin. The Rose Cross symbol is recognized all throughout the New World Alliance. The Finder introduces himself, but we are not going to be overly concerned about his name, because this is D. Gray-Man, and there is no point getting to know tertiary cast members.

There's a legend in their reading material about a ghost in the town of Mater. Kanda explains (VERY reluctantly) that Innocence out in the wild tends to take on different forms, but usually result in weird shit. So the Order's policy is, "Wherever there are a mysterious phenomenon, there's an Innocence."

The real story is that the people of Mater were big into puppetry because their lives were so shitty that even puppets could improve it. So they created these singing and dancing dolls, which remained after the people moved away. It's been 500 years, so there's no way any of those dolls could be functioning unless Innocence was involved.

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Liveblog: D. Gray-Man

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