D.GRAY-MAN HALLOW – EPISODES 3 & 4 (REVIEW)
By: TheJewphin[yasr_multiset setid=11] Hallows proceeds quickly in Episodes 3 & 4, spending as little time as possible on the action to make room for a lot of story progression. While the style of the show is still enjoyable, the choice to run these episodes at breakneck speeds lessens the impact of a lot of the major discoveries.Episode 3 picks up right where the prior episode left off with Allen, Kanda, and Marie trapped in battle with a level 4 akuma while Timothy is dragged off by a three other akuma. The battle between with the level 4 akuma stays fairly generic throughout most of the episode: containing the usual amount of taunts, attacks, and blocks with rarely any change in the momentum of the fight.Meanwhile, Timothy awakens to the power of his innocence (which is an incredibly awkward phrase without context). His innocence allows him to take control of one of the akuma, thereby purifying its soul. After the one hit K-O on a level 2 (something that initially Allen couldn't even do without a lot of training), Timothy can use the akuma's power to attempt to defeat the rest.As displayed in the episode, Timothy's ability seems to have 3 main drawbacks. The first is that his body is left susceptible to attack. The second is that he can only control a level 2 or lower - a lesson he learned from attempting to take the level 3 he is fighting. The third is that his ability comes with a ghostly guide. Ok, maybe having an inherent trainer is not a drawback. But I can imagine it gets annoying after a while.
Now that everyone is in the same room, the battle gets more intense. Link gets more awesome points for jumping in to defend Timothy who is back in his own body after failing to purify the level 3. A few crows show up to the scene and break through the barrier, allowing one to dispatch the level 3 with his super vacuum cleaner arm.Later, we learn that these crows are actually part akuma and the akuma that they kill do not get purified, leaving the inhabiting souls trapped and suffering. The addition of the crows that are incapable of purifying the akuma creates an interesting problem for Allen, one of the few people who can actually see the suffering souls.
Allen impales the level 4 Yoshimitsu style with the knowledge that his blade can only hurt akuma and Noah. Unfortunately for Allen, he is currently harboring part of the fourteenth in him so the blade starts to hurt him as well. The Noah awakens inside Alan and caresses the level 4 akuma. While Allen tenderly holds the level 4 akuma with a sword through its stomach, Kanada dispatches the level 4 with a stab to the back of the head.
And so the origin arc for Timothy comes to a close after two episodes. The demons have been dispatched and Allen is unconscious. Chief Komui is told that he is stuck with the bill for all of Phantom G's damages. Timothy gets a last bit of closure with the head of the orphanage - a bit of closure that falls flat given that we've had maybe five minutes of backstory between Timothy and the head of the orphanage. I don't even know her name. She's just "the head of the orphanage" to me.So again we get a huge push for the story, but at the cost of a feeling of any actual impact of the character's actions.Episode 4 is a very plot-centric episode. In Episode 4 we get the revival of the remaining Noah and the start of their plan to take out all of the exorcists. While Timothy trains to be an exorcist, Allen finds out about the half akuma that were created to fight the remaining akuma. Then the akuma attack and each exorcist is sent to a different part of the world to fight them off.Unfortunately for the exorcists, the akuma were just bait. The newly revived Noah are waiting at each site to kill any exorcists that arrived. A lot of nameless finders and exorcists die at the hands of the Noah. One of the crows loses both of his arms and barely escapes with his life. Once in safety, he asks another crow to use the magical vacuum to end his life. This is where Allen learns that the crows have a convoluted plan of making more half-akuma anti-akuma weapons by absorbing akuma to become strong enough to kill more akuma. Given the long-winded explanation, it is no surprise when the Noah are able to show up before the transfer and kill both half akuma crows.
The episode ends on a cliffhanger: a showdown between every character and somewhere between one and three Noah, depending on how widely spread they chose to be. The one fighting Kanada ends off the episode by attacking his mind directly. We aren't sure what the attack actually did, other than cause Kanada's back to arch and a few memories to surface. All we know is that things look incredibly bleak for our main characters.D.Gray-man seems to be rushing to something. It is like they were given all of the plot points and tried to figure out the fastest and flashiest way to cover all of them without giving any of them the time they deserve. Shoot, the explanation of the half akuma weapons got way more time than Timothy's back story. The art style is still great and the actual plot elements are interesting. The show remains dark with small points of humor. I just hope that when they get where they are planning to go, they slow down a bit to make the world feel more interesting again.
