The beginning of the end.
"A Fallen is the result of someone failing to synchronize with the Innocence. They are born when a non-Accommodator tries to force a synchronization with a shard of Innocence. A Fallen is the sin of someone who isn't an apostle, yet tries to join God."
— Lenalee Lee
Coverage: Chapters 045-056; Episodes 051-056
Short Summary
Still recovering from the numerous losses of the Akuma attack, Allen and his friends finally manage to reach China, but to their surprise and frustration, they learn that Cross isn't there anymore, as he departed to Japan to start a mission from the higher ups of the Black Order. With the help of Anita, a lover from the General, the Exorcists take a ship to travel to the Land of the Rising Sun, hoping to finally meet the elusive Cross. However, the sudden appearance of a huge swarm of Akuma surprises them and ends up with Allen kidnapped by one of the killer machines and Lenalee pursuing them to rescue her friend. Meanwhile, also in China, Suman Dark, an Exorcist who survived the massacre, wakes up in a village, confused and lost, when he abruptly mutates into a gigantic, grotesque being. Both situations interconnect with each other, in an event that will change forever the fate of everyone involved.Main Summary
The Fallen One Arc has the following tropes:
- Aborted Arc: Right before being attacked by the massive Akuma swarm, Allen briefly tells himself that he really doesn't wants to go to Japan for some unspecified reason, but he will do it anyway to find Cross. The reason why he dislikes the idea of travelling to Japan is never elaborated on after that, however.
- Adaptation Deviation: A minor example. The scene where Lenalee realizes that Allen’s left arm has become worn down out of all the fights against Akuma he has been involved in ever since his cursed eye healed happens in the manga when the Exorcists arrive in China before meeting Anita. That moment in the anime is moved to the point where the Exorcists are all in the ship sailing towards Japan, a bit before the Akuma swarm sent to destroy the Fallen appears.
- Adaptation Expansion:
- The part of Allen and his friends meeting Anita is fleshed out in the anime. While in the manga Anita makes the preparations for the ship as soon as she meets the Exorcists, in the anime there is a conflict in which the sailors working for her initially distrust Allen and the rest due to not considering them apt to protect their boss from the Akuma, which leads to an arm wrestling competition which is interrupted by an Akuma swarm. After the Exorcists successfully destroy all of the Akuma with no casualties, the sailors finally accept their worth and prepare everything for the journey to Japan.
- The anime adds a short scene where the Earl and Road are seen supervising all the Akuma prepared to destroy Suman's Fallen.
- The battle of Suman's team against Tyki in India is shown in the anime unlike in the manga where the readers only get to see the aftermath, with Suman's partners getting the chance to showcase their Innocence before being easily killed by Tyki.
- The attack of the Akuma swarm sent to kill Suman’s Fallen has a different context between manga and anime. While in the manga the ship of Anita never gets to sail and Lenalee remains in the port until she has to rescue Allen from the Akuma who kidnapped him (while most of the fight happens offscreen), the attack in the anime happens when the ship has already sailed, so all the Exorcists aboard get to have an extended fight sequence against several of the Akuma before Allen gets kidnapped.
- All for Nothing:
- Despite all of Allen's efforts to save Suman and even after freeing him from the body of the Fallen, he ends up braindead as a result from his Innocence killing his soul as a last measure to make sure Suman would pay the price for betraying God. And even then, it's shown shortly after that Tyki inserted some Teez inside Suman's body, so he would have get killed either way.
- Played for Laughs in the anime with the dispute of Allen with the sailors. Lavi and Krory fear that if Allen loses the arm wrestling match with the captain and later Mahoja they will be harshly exploited by the sailors by performing heavy tasks in the ship. While Allen beats the captain and later gains his respect when saving him and the rest of the crew from some Akuma, at the end both of them are still forced to help with the supply of the ship, though at least they don’t get wiped like they feared.
- Angelic Abomination: Suman as a Fallen is turned into a white, gargantuan angelic torso who is in constant pain and curses everything as huge blasts of energy are released from his body as his life is consumed by the Innocence, draining his life more and more until killing him.
- Arc Villain: Suman in his Fallen state provides the main conflict of the arc when Allen and Lenalee find him being attacked by a swarm of Akuma sent by the Earl to destroy him and take his Innocence, with Allen attempting to stop and later save him when he starts destroying a nearby village after losing control of himself as a result from his Innocence driving him insane.
- Greater-Scope Villain: With the fallen of Suman acting as the main threat of the arc, Tyki, indirectly responsible for turning Suman into a fallen and already an established antagonist, remains in the background for most of the events of the arc until the end, where he appears to finish off Suman and then directs his attention to Allen, destroying his Innocence and almost killing him.
- Heroic RRoD: Allen employs the maximum power of his Innocence in order to stop Suman's rampage. The strain of this on his body is just so big that he ends defenseless with his arm unusable after releasing Suman from his Fallen body. Unfortunately for Allen, this leaves him at Tyki's mercy.
- The Reveal: After the dark side of the Black Order and the Innocence was briefly hinted by Lenalee back in the Rewinding Town arc, we finally see firsthand some of it in this one:
- A brief flashback of Lenalee shows how the scientists of the Order, in a desperate way of creating Exorcists due to the shortage of them, made experiments where they forced the synchronization of the Innocence in non-compatible people (usally relatives of previous Exorcists). If the synchronization rate fell down below 0%, the non-compatibles become Fallen Ones.
- After Lenalee is left shocked seeing how Suman became a Fallen when he was compatible with the Innocence, later is revealed by Komui (in a conversation with Lenalee when she calls him to find a way to save Suman from his fate) and in the visions Suman's Innocence shows to Allen the reason why he fell: after Tyki killed his squadmates, he begged for his life and was offered the chance to remain alive if he would reveal information about the Exorcists and Finders that were active at the moment. As Suman accepted the deal and gave the information to a Noah, his Innocence detected that he betrayed God and turned him into a Fallen One as a punishment.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: A candidate for one of the most depressing endings of an arc from D.Gray-man and from shonen manga in general. After Allen frees Suman from his Fallen form, Suman is revealed to have been brain killed by his Innocence, and any small chance of at least hoping for him to recover from that state is crushed when the Teez Tyki implanted inside Suman tear out his body and eat the remains. Things get even worse, with Tyki destroying the Innocence of an injured Allen and then swiftly killing him in an apparent certain way, with Allen dying alone, his friends still searching for him desperately and lots of innocent civilians killed in the rampage of the Fallen. The only positive thing that can be said about the conclusion of the arc is that Timcanpy at least manages to flee with Suman's Innocence before Tyki has the time to destroy it too, and that the events of the arc lead to Allen becoming stronger.
- Small Role, Big Impact:
- Suman Dark in the manga only appears in this arc and dies at the very end of it (the anime introduces him earlier as an Exorcist, however), but the ramifications of his downfall lead to consequences that would change the course of the story for good, such as showing the first hint that Innocence possesses a dark side, arranging the stage for Allen to obtain his Next Tier Power-Up in the next arc and making Lenalee develop an Heroic BSoD that would make her set the events leading to the climatic showdown in the Noah's Ark, taking the story towards a new stage.
- To a lesser degree, the wasp-like Akuma in the swarm sent to destroy Suman's Fallen that kidnaps Allen. He's only a very minor antagonist that gets destroyed in the same chapter and episode where he debuts, but by taking Allen with him, he leads him and Lenalee towards Suman, thus starting the conflict of the arc.
- There's also Fan, the little girl from the Chinese village that took a wounded Suman as a guest after his fight with Tyki. She doesn't plays an active role, instead being just trapped in the sea of memories of the Fallen Suman turned into, but Allen asking Lenalee to put her to safety effectively writes her out from most of the arc and leaves Allen alone dealing with Suman, which ultimately assures that he doesn't receives any kind of help when he ends up facing Tyki completely defenceless.
- Wham Episode: The entire arc is the turning point of the plot of D.Gray-man. The arc unveils reveals about the Order and the Innocence that shows they’re not as good as initially believed, features destruction not seen in the manga so far and ends in a pretty devastating note with Suman succumbing to the punishment of his Innocence and Allen being apparently killed by Tyki after he destroy his Innocence first. The consequences of the arc are carried for the rest of the series and start a turmoil in Allen’s life that marks his character arc forever.
