D.Gray-man Chapter 222 Thoughts

Title: D.Gray-man Chapter 222
Author: Katsura Hoshino
Publisher: Shueisha
Language: Japanese
Format: Digital
Pages: 33
Genre: Shounen, Battle
Publication Date: April 18, 2016

It’s been three months so we’re back with another chapter of Katsura Hoshino’s D.Gray-man.

After Allen/Nea went face to face with Howard Link, it appears that Allen is now in his sub-conscious. It is there that he meets with Marian Cross, his mentor and one of the former generals of The Black Order (or at least I think he’s a former general. It really has been a while.) Allen doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or if it’s reality. Cross tells him that this is the end of Allen Walker and the more the 14th awakens, the more Allen will “die.” Of course, Allen’s body won’t die, but his control over his body will as the 14th will fully gain control of Allen’s mind and kill off his persona. Allen swears by his oath that his left hand was made to protect the akuma and his right hand was made to protect the humans. That was the pact he made when his arm was destroyed and his innocence regenerated as the Crown Clown. Marian Cross is interested to see if Allen can still live by that oath under the 14th’s influence. Cross tells Allen to head to a mansion that exists in the real world and he’ll find all of his answers there. It is also there where Bookman is being held captive and that is where our chapter ends this quarter.

Final Word

Chapter 222 of D.Gray-man was just another info dump chapter and a bit of a confusing one. We know for sure that back in the real world, Allen is out cold. While Allen is in his sub-conscious, we get a shot of Road mentioning something about the dream Allen is having, heavily implying that Road is the one manipulating Allen’s dream state. If that’s the case then where the hell did Road come from? The last few chapters were dedicated to The Earl and the 14th with a brief battle broken up by Howard Link. I don’t recall Road being anywhere near there. It seems that she was just thrown in there for plot advancement.

Also, they talked about Bookman not having a successor anymore. The last time we saw Lavi, he was getting his ass handed to him by the Noah, but now they are implying the Lavi is either dead or he lost his license to carry on the title of Bookman. I really hope it’s the latter because that would mean that they killed Lavi “off screen” and that would be absolutely terrible. I know secondary characters are not protected by plot armor and can die, but that’s just a lazy and terrible way to kill off a pretty major character, if it is indeed true.

The entire chapter was dedicated to setting up the return of Allen Walker. We knew something like this was coming, however. There was no way they were going to just write Allen off and have the 14th completely take over his mind. How many times have we seen this scenario with other main characters in other series? They always go through the darkest and most hopeless moments until something pulls them through. In fact, I’d be willing to be that Allen ends up tapping into his Noah powers and gets a power up out of this. It wouldn’t really shock me all that much.

But if Allen is coming back and can suppress the 14th, where does that leave him with The Order? Will he still be hunted? Will Howard Link truly protect him? Where the hell did Johnny go? What about Kanda? How will the Earl and Allen end up? Just so many questions left to be answered and this whole one chapter every three months thing is just killing me. Oh well… at least we can take some solace in knowing that the D.Gray-man anime returns (along with chapter 223) in July and we can see the story animated. This will be amazing to see because if you’ve followed Hoshino, her chapters before he return last year suffered greatly due to illness and her hand injury. There were times where her art was just completely atrocious and you had NO IDEA what was going on AT ALL. So I’m sure seeing this story animated will make a much clearer picture out of everything and help brings us back up to speed with the new chapters that are out.

One can only hope.

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