Badly Written DGM

I have no idea how recently this chapter came out cause I've been off the 'net for a while, but...

Let's appreciate how cute Mana/Adam is ♥️

This is exactly what we were looking for in these, and thanks for sending one is.

I think for you, Kanda would be an ideal choice.

You're kind of his opposite; empathetic, shy, and easily walked on- but I personally think that it's exactly what he would need in a partner.

You help him be more empathetic towards others, when he's normally brash, and he'll help you learn to say no and stand up for yourself.

I can easily see you two buying and caring for a pet together.

I uh... Is there a big drama going on we missed?

I noticed a couple posts about people calling Poker Pair pedophilia, but it's not legally pedophilia. That doesn't mean I'd be cool with it in an IRL situation, but DGM is fiction.

Neither of us actually ship Poker Pair, mainly because there's just no chemistry between Tyki and Allen. I was considering writing a post about that but decided against it.

I feel like as long as both parties in a ship are at legal age of consent and are able to do so, ships are fine and should be allowed. That also applies to real life, even if I'm personally not comfortable with it.

TL;DR ship what you want to ship within reason.

Road:

Road sleeps next to Adam/in the same bed as Adam pretty frequently. There's a few different reasons for this-

Road is pretty fiercely protective of her family, but she's especially protective of Adam because of all they've been through together.

Adam is severely traumatized. Nea's slaughter of the Noah and his subsequent death was extremely rough on the Earl, so he still hasn't completely healed all this time later. He has vicious nightmares, so Road, as the Noah of Dreams, stays nearby just in case she needs to soothe his nightmares and make them pleasant dreams instead.

Road likes to dress like a lolita even when she's going to sleep, there's no stopping this girl.

She also has a fondness for changing her room to look like the night sky when she herself is trying to sleep.

Though she's loathe to admit it, she's also still hurting, so she finds it comforting to sleep in bed with someone.

Wisely:

Wisely is constantly lying down because of his headaches, so he doesn't spend enough time sleeping.

He likes to eavesdrop on the other Noah's thoughts when lying down at night, but has learned to avoid Sheril's thoughts pretty much at all costs.

Speaking of eavesdropping, do you ever try to think about something serious and then think about something dumb? That's probably Wisely.

Wisely is a cuddler.

In general, they both like to nap with Adam.

No.

A lot of people think he's connected to the Earl somehow, like:

Tyki is a super secret third part of the Earl nobody knew about

Tyki is actually the Earl and Mana/Nea are new Noah entirely

Tyki is Mana and the Mana Allen knew is actually just the Earl

Theories like this are pretty common since we can't see Past!Earl's face on the side where he'd have a birthmark in the same place. And because Tyki had mentioned that Mana's name is familiar / there are scenes which parallel scenes with Mana / other Noah have mentioned that Tyki looks like Mana.

However, I feel like this whole thing is intentionally misleading. Here's a few reasons why.

Katsura Hoshino has mentioned on more than one occasion that the Earl/Adam is her favorite character, (to the point where she asks God a favor because she wishes he was somewhere in the top 10 favorite polled characters.

She has also mentioned that the only reason Robin/Allen exists is because she couldn't have The Earl/Adam as the protagonist.

Speaking of reasons to create a character, she also only made Tyki to have another beautiful man to draw.

Now, all that being said. It seems really disingenuous to me to suddenly make Tyki more important than a character she's been building on for years.

It also seems like the majority of D. Gray Man was at least partially planned out. I have no doubt in my mind that she's been planning "Mana is the Millennium Earl" since the begining.

In the context of the story itself, it seems a lot more likely that:

1. Past!Earl doesn't have a birthmark, but his eye is hidden because it's his design/something to do with the fact that Adam cries blood from that eye. Tyki's birthmark has the possibility of being more interesting than a carryover from Past!Earl.

I've heard it said that a birthmark is from whatever killed you in your past life, which is pretty significant with Tyki since Joyd was one of the many Noah slaughtered.

2. Tyki looking like Mana/Nea isn't a coincidence, but it's also not because he is Mana/Past!Earl. I personally believe it's out of spite towards Nea. That's why Nea tells him he'd "spit up the food [he] ate" because of his new form.

When you know your brother is your host’s dad but you decide not to tell him cause your nephew’s daddy issues are none of your business 

It’s kind of complex, but I’m going to try explaining my take on it. 

Past!Earl splits into two infants. 

So, given that, why is it impossible for one of them to split? 

I don’t believe Past!Earl intentionally split into Mana and Nea, nor do I believe Mana intentionally split into the Mana Allen knew and the Mana that is now the Earl. 

I also don’t believe Mana’s split was quite the same as the one that formed him. Rather than split into separate bodies, I can only see one of two things happening.

 Scenario 1: Mana’s personality fractured itself in two, and the Mana Nea knew resurfaced decades later with no real knowledge of what had happened and a greatly degraded sense of reality. Despite being the Earl, he sort of just wandered off, remembering that he needed to keep walking and to find his brother. Later, after Mana dies, the Earl brings him back as an Akuma, having forgotten who “Mana” was. 

Mana, in a moment of clarity, realizes exactly what is going on and does the only thing he can to save Allen, and is subsequently killed by him. 

This explanation still leaves some problems, though. While we’ve seen the Earl’s costume without someone in it before, it’s fairly clear that it is inhabited by someone during this sequence, which leaves the problem of Mana (who in this scenario is inhabiting the same body as the Earl) in a weird spot and doesn’t totally explain how his soul could be “brought back” since his body never died. 

Scenario 2: Mana’s personality fractured itself in two, and the Mana Nea knew instead hopped into his brother’s relatively undamaged body and wandered off with no real knowledge of what had happened. 

Nea’s body wasn’t unusable, but due to the injuries it had, his mental state was further degraded (after all, a lot of Mana’s symptoms and behaviors line up pretty well with a TBI; though it’s not clear if Nea’s body suffered one).  ADDENDUM: Lost Fragment of Snow implies that Red gave Mana a TBI during a fit of anger by repeatedly hitting him with his cursed arm.

Nea's injuries may or may not have played a role in Mana's mental state.

From there, everything that happens is fairly straightforward. Mana dies, what part of him was left in his original body brought him back from the dead.