D.Gray-man Hallow

Episode 6

This world is dark and it is very hard to breathe… But that time, when I tried to laugh like you, I felt like I was able to breathe a bit easier.

The lotus is an interesting flower. It grows from the mud, but due to its self-cleaning abilities, it's never soiled by the dirt of its surroundings, always continuing to shine majestically. Its attributes are both mystical and real. Nothing can defile the lotus, and no matter how much the Order tortures Alma and Yu, they will always heal to suffer through another day. But the lotus is more than an allegory for the Second Exorcists' regenerative abilities. The image of falling lotus petals has always been associated with Kanda, one of the very few personal things we've known about him. Now we find out the lotus flower is tied to the memory of the woman he loved in a previous life. Wait, what?

Last week, we learned that Kanda and Alma were created as artificial apostles to compensate for the lack of naturally born Innocence accommodators. That's what the Order wanted to make them believe. As Rei would attest, it's always easier to force the destiny of saving mankind onto suffering children if you let them believe they're puppets with no agency in the world (especially if you plan on denying them the very humanity they've been born to fight for).

Little Yu, who doesn't consider himself to be human, and tragically adorable little Alma deal with their shared misery in very different ways. Where Alma hopes for things to become more bearable simply by having a friend, Yu calls the lab they were born in “a place dedicated to God, where the reasons for both my birth and my being alive were already decided", going so far as to contemplate if dying (or at least not having been born) might be the preferable option to the eternal darkness in which they are forced to exist. I say exist rather than live, because to call their existence life would probably give it too much credit. For Yu, life is too hard to care, where for Alma, caring is required to survive. Of course they clash, just like Kanda and a certain someone we know always do.

Looking at Alma's painful cheerfulness in the face of despair, I see a lot of Allen in him – or, from Kanda's perspective, a lot of Alma's qualities in Allen, making it all the more obvious why he hates Allen, the constant reminder of what happened when he allowed himself to care just a little bit more than anyone else. And Kanda has plenty of hate to go around. We didn't know how good a reason he had to despise the Order, God, Innocence, and the world. For a split second, he tried to care, admitting that it got easier to breathe when trying for human connection. But D.Gray-man wouldn't be a tragedy if it didn't remind us right away (over their laughing faces, no less) that Kanda is going to “kill” Alma eventually.

This mixture of drama and brief (often intentionally awkward) moments of comedy sets this episode just a notch above previous ones. Comedy is something D.Gray-man can do very well, but just as often, poor timing lets the intended effect of relief come off as jarring. Not so this week, where little moments of awkwardness managed to provide relief and enforce the underlying tragedy at the same time, befitting Michiko Yokote, who returned to the helm for this episode. I had hoped she would be the one responsible for adapting the flashback, and I wasn't disappointed. Yu asking if humans also come from holes or falling asleep in a freshly blinded Marie's arms, because of the comforting smell of blood and death he's so used to, are prime examples of how powerful superficially humorous moments like these can be.

Marie's presence is important for another reason. When a worried Bak apologetically prepares him for his next (and likely final) mission, Marie is at peace with the idea of dying so that he wouldn't have to smell the stench of death any longer. When the Order brought Kanda back to life, they not only denied him this peace, forcing him to suffer once again when he had already sacrificed himself for humanity once before, they also took away everything he was, turning him into a shell ruled by the two most important memories he could hold onto – his death and the woman he loved. Then when he started to regain his memory (and his humanity with it), they chose to terminate him in an act of ultimate betrayal.

But, just like the lotus, the Exorcists will always reach for the sky, a sky so provokingly blue and beautiful that it hurts. And even though this incarnation of Yu never saw the sky, he still remembers its beauty, however uncalled-for it might be. The question of whether that will be a gift or a curse remains yet to be answered.

Rating: A

D.Gray-man Hallow is currently streaming on Funimation.