D.Gray-man Hallow: Episode 6 Review
By: TheJewphin[yasr_multiset setid=11]Prepare yourself, it's flashback time.Episode 6 of Hallow takes place, for the most part, in Yu Kanada's mind. Wisely's plan is to use Yu's memories of his time with Alma Karma to reawaken Alma. The episode itself gives us some insight into Yu, his past, and his early relationship with Alma. Allen and Road are along for the ride, having been caught in Wisely's initial attack, but they barely appear in the episode. This is Yu's story.So what's the story? Yu is born into an underground laboratory. Alma has been there for a while and is just happy to have a friend. Meanwhile, Yu is a fairly miserable child, spending all of his time sulking about how he is trapped underground and gets constantly tortured. Yu also hates Alma's upbeat attitude in the face of said trapping and torturing.The tension between Yu and Alma escalates until, after one bad day of suffering while trying to absorb innocence, the two come to blows. The fight leaves them both fairly bloody, mostly due to the fact that they haven't fully healed from their injuries of the day. As the two laugh off their injuries, Yu starts to feel happier. And thus, the friendship between Yu and Alma is born. The building of Yu's friendship with Alma was nicely done, especially given that it gives us some context for Yu's current negative demeanor.
Everything seems to be going fine until Yu starts having weird visions of a battlefield and a pretty girl. The crows who are overseeing the operation learn of the visions and decide it's time for Yu to die. Apparently, all of the incubated children contain the souls of exorcists who died in battle. If they start recalling their old memories, they are likely to go crazy and kill everyone everywhere. Or something along those lines. Suffice to say, it's bad.As the crows are getting ready to finish off Yu, Alma storms in, grabs Yu, and runs out. His escape is quickly thwarted by the crows, but he is able to push Yu off a cliff at the last minute.Yu is quickly recaptured, but Alma comes to his rescue again, this time after infusing himself with innocence. Will Alma be able to save Yu from a fate worse than a fate not as bad as death? We'll find out next time on D.Gray-man.Episode 6 of Hallow had a lot going for it. While Allen and Road were available for a few scenes, they stayed far in the background for the most part. This let us get invested in Yu's backstory. Additionally, we got to see the start of a few old friendships. Marie makes an appearance after his initial blinding, leading us to believe we will also learn more about his relationship to Yu.
The pacing of this episode, unlike of the last few, was actually fairly on point. We had time to get a feel for Yu's relationship with Alma before things turned bad. This gives us a little more emotional investment in the eventual payoff of Yu having to kill Alma for whatever reason. I actually look forward to these next few episodes of Yu's backstory more than I did to the jumbled episodes in the earlier parts of Hallow.
