Title: D.Gray-man Chapter 221
Author: Katsura Hoshino
Publisher: Shueisha
Language: Japanese
Format: Digital
Pages: 46
Genre: Shounen, Battle
Publication Date: January 25, 2016
Another three months have passed and when we last left D.Gray-man, Howard Link had located Allen Walker. We see a few pieces of cannon fodder from The Black Order swoop in and try to contain Allen and in the process they push “the old man” out of the way who just so happened to be The Millennium Earl. The Earl begins to revert back to his old form and the cannon fodder end up getting absorbed into him. The Earl’s power is to harvest and absorb the souls of humans.
Howard Link comes in and shows off his abilities… the power to bind others. This ability is so strong that it almost binds The Earl, but he ends up escaping. It does end up binding Allen Walker, who was injured during the battle. Link unveils another power of his… the ability to transfer his own life force into others to heal them. Link also has an ESP-like ability to tell when someone is lying to him and sees through the 14th’s deception by pretending to be Allen Walker.
Allen (or Nea at this point) realizes it’s futile to keep up the charade and threatens to dispose of Link until Link gives us this chapter’s cliffhanger and says that he was sent to protect the 14th and that he is putting himself in Nea’s care as his servant!
Final Word
The artwork was amazing as you would expect from Hoshino-san, but her biggest flaw has been and still is the ability to depict action. While the scenes were good, they just didn’t feel like typical battle scenes. She has struggled with this aspect throughout the entire series and it still shows to this day. The story, though, just got a bit more interesting.
I was a bit confused with The Earl’s comments about Mana. Hoshino went through great lengths to paint the picture that The Earl was Mana, but now the Earl is denying it. It’s implied that The Earl absorbed Mana’s soul, but they don’t exactly give a yes or no answer on that. It’s just a bunch of confusing, cryptic back and forth dialogue that I hope gets cleared up because it didn’t really make much sense given the fact that they spent the last two chapters building it up.
Link saying he would protect the 14th, to me, is a complete and total lie. If Link is under Levierre’s orders, then Link is simply biding his time until the moment where he can capture Allen. That’s just my guess and it seems to be the standard plot twist that’s being set up, but then again, I’m hope that I am proven wrong as it would be a bit more interesting this way.
All in all it was another good chapter. It’s nice to see some action after two chapters of information dumping. Now the agonizing wait for the next three months to pass.
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