D.Gray Man is like an onion: it has layers. And nowhere is it more obvious than with the characters.
Premise of the story is, on the surface, simple: boy joins the organization whose task is to fight the evil demons that are attempting to bring about the destruction of humanity. But as the story develops, so characters become deeper and deeper. Characters and the story are closely intertwined, pulling each other to even greater heights. There are four main characters and an extensive cast of support characters, all of whom get their moment to shine during the story.
Protagonist, Allen Walker, it likely one of if not the best shounen protagonist out there. He was the blueprint for characters such as Tanjiro Kamado from the Demon Slayer (a review of which I will be writing sometime in the future). Allen is outwardly very polite, formal, compassionate and caring. Yet while none of this is an outright lie – he truly is polite and compassionate – it is also a mask of sorts, hiding his true self. As the series progresses, cracks begin to appear in Allen’s facade, allowing his true self to begin shining through. This is most obvious when he is with Cross or Kanda, but he slowly begins to relax around his friends.
Yet Allen himself is also a very unreliable narrator, especially when it comes to his past. At first we see only glimpses of his past, bits and pieces, often with little or no context, allowing us to be easily mislead. Moreover, all of this is revealed from other characters; Allen himself revealed nothing of his past. Most of Allen’s past in early chapters is revealed by Cross Marian – another character who cannot be considered trustworthy at all. And even as Allen begin revealing his past – and this only very late in the story, around chapter 230, that we even properly get his backstory – the account of Allen’s past is still unreliable.
And all of this is revealed only little by little. In fact, the first indication that Allen is wearing a heavy mask and hiding his true self in front of his comrades is when he cheats at cards to get Krory’s clothes back. Allen’s simple act of cheating early in the manga tells a lot about him. There is a severe disconnect between the persona of a perfect gentleman which Allen tends to project and the way he basically rips off the poor sods. Yet it is clear from the beginning that this is done simply as a self-defense mechanism, not out of malice or as a way to manipulate people – something Allen usually doesn’t do despite being fully capable of it. Over time, it becomes clear that Allen’s self-sacrificial idiocy (as Kanda would put it) is in fact a consequence of guilt Allen feels over Mana’s death and his own role in it.
But Allen is far from the only deep character in the series. In fact, all of the characters that appear – even the speaking Akuma – are given deep characterization and some complex motivation. Yuu Kanda is initially portrayed as cold, aloof, impersonal and kind of an asshole. And it will have been easy to remain within these bounds or to even flanderize the character the way One Piece so often does, even to its main cast (e.g. Zoro). Yet throughout the story hints are dropped here and there that there is more to Kanda than meets the eye, and these hints are finally brought together and fully justified with reveal of Kanda’s past.
Lenalee Lee is on the opposite end of spectrum from Kanda, and also very different from Allen. Where Allen hides his trauma behind a friendly mask and Kanda defends himself with an armor of assholery, Lenalee instead desperately reaches out for friends. Lenalee’s family and her friends at the Order are literally her world. And just like Allen, she has a tendency to try and carry her own problems and also to help others. Yet she too slowly becomes more open.
Lavi starts off with a mask as well. He is a Bookman apprentice and is thus not supposed to develop deep (or any) emotional connections to other people around him, in order to preserve his objectivity. To get close to people and record history he uses the mask of an overtly laid-back and friendly goofball. He too slowly abandons his mask as the series goes on, except that instead of discarding it like other three do, he turns his mask into real personality.
And all of this too plays into character interactions. The main four especially feel like a close-knit family rather than just comrades: there is a lot of what can pass for sibling teasing, dumb fights that cause frustration easily forgotten, but also genuine concern. They notice things about each other that others simply do not. And because there are only four main characters, they do not end up flat irrelevancies that characters from character-heavy manga often do. Sure, there are only three main characters in Main Hero Academia – but because Horikoshi attempted to give some character development to everybody, he ended up giving it to nobody, only hurting quality of the manga in the process.
Fantasy View 