I've read a ton of screwed up stuff in BL, and Harada normally never got to me that much. But this last update was absolutely disgustingly jarring to me, and I don't know why. Besides the rather predictable twist ending that she likes to do, I thought the idea of being stalked, molested, and raped in a train car is a terrifyingly REAL issue that women and occasional men experience all the time in Japan - and their reaction is exactly the same: they don't want to shout or say anything because they are ashamed. They don't even bother to look at their attacker. This read really says a lot about the cons of a collectivist society such as Japan, where it's better to sacrifice your basic sense of safety than to cause a ruckus.
I'm actually genuinely surprised that this is getting votes down. Does anyone actually want to discuss the nature of rape culture in Japan? Or are we simply going to continue leaving anonymous dislikes.
Your last sentence seems to be implying that molestation victims in Japan don't call for help because they prioritize keeping peace over their safety. Pretty sure that their reason for not calling for help is more due to their own shame and embarrassment at getting molested and then having other people know that such a thing happened to them, rather than them keeping quiet because they are a "collectivist society".
I just confirmed with my Japanese friend that that last sentence's implications are indeed founded. I am a Japanese studies major, and a lot of what I observe is this sense of peace-keeping, as you have derived from my statement above. My Japanese friend and I are truthfully observing this great sense of "forsaking the events of a single moment," that their rippling outcry may never make eventual waves in the passage of overall time - it is a very inherently imposed societal standard, which is very hard to grasp for people who live in majority individualist nations. Of course physiological post traumatic stress is a very large component in a victim's inability to voice their experiences, but with Japanese people specifically, the lack of dialog in their country about the severity of molestation issues is exacerbated by their collectivist mentality. This is something rightly observed by myself and many others who have lived in and studied Japan.
On an individual level, societal standards and personal damage compound to create a hyper lack of "safe-place" in which there might be a space where people feel like they can talk about their victimization. This is a true issue, unique to Japan and many East Asian countries. Your feeling of the implications were completely correct. But there is nothing inherently wrong about bringing in the structure of a society, when discussing how it deals with sexual assault on a widespread, ethical scale. (And in Japan, the case is generally that they don't "deal"at all. The age of consent is still 13, the young are still virtually blameless for crimes, if even they are serial murders, etc.)
Yes yes, the translation is wonky. The essential theme is organ transplantation. As a bit of a Japanese history lesson, to those of you who don't know, organ transplants were outlawed in Japan for quite awhile until around the 1990's. The politics of the whole issue was chiefly ideological in nature: it is a Buddhist and highly East Asian belief that ones body parts carry a massive amount of the individuals own personhood - organs especially are latent with unique energy. If a person has died and they do not have all their organs (i.e.: their organs are still living in someone else's body), there logical conclusion was that the "incomplete" person's spirit would not pass on.
That backbone of understanding in Japan was a VERY hard obstacle to overcome in the legalization of organ transplantation. This story explores the very possibility of all those cultural speculation: what would happen if someone received a transplant and the spirit the donor was still one with it?
Ah, and there are also many Western stories of transplantee behavioral changes, ostensibly due to the very same spiritual phenomenon speculated above.
ヾ(☆▽☆) Thank you! This was very interesting to learn about!
Interesting (๑•ㅂ•)و✧
Thank you reading!
Yeah I took a course on Death as a biocultural phenomena and it just happened to be taught by my Japanese history professor, so a lot of Buddhist and Shinto values were taught. ヾ(☆▽☆)
Thank you very much for these informations. I didn't know about these beliefs.
I know about the theory of the cellular memory though, but your explanation answers other things. As the hypothesis about the body memory excludes its action being the same as the brain memory, I was wondering why Keisuke could see, hear, think all of this and behave like this although it's not his personality.
I was thinking there was a part of supernatural in this story but what you said cleared a lot of things for me.
Your course must have been really interesting. It's a type of course that I like :)
Was checking my account from my phone in an airport. I pulled up this update - because, of course, I always get the naughtiest chapters on my alerts when I'm in public. Looked right at my companion who was vaguely interested in what I was doing on my phone, looked left at the old lady beside me, and then before me to the 50-60 people waiting for a San Francisco morning flight. I thought I gave a fuck for a second, and then I leveraged my fuck against Ten Count fucks. Ten Count won by a landslide. Who here could care less about where they read BL?
LOL - this post made my dad. You go Glen Coco!!
bahahaha dude, I remember that random hawt update when I was passing on my uni hall. I read it anyway, my friend left me walking alone, embarassed.
I know the feeling!!! XD It's totally worth it though!
lmfao!! I remember reading Yokozawa no Baai novel in a bus and I was pretty confident there woild be no pics coz duh it's a novel and when I flipped the next page on my face it was the freaking blowjob pic and the old lady beside me was very shocked. XD I could hear her thoughts judging me. loooooool
*in my phone not face loool
Lol what is it with old ladies always being around when we're reading BL. Maybe they're fujoshi too ^o^
...It is common knowledge that hair dye only works on black hair after it is bleached, right? As in, irreparably removing pigmentation that WILL NOT return to the lock, much less the oldest part of the hair at the tips. Like things would have been so much more realistic if he was losing color at the roots. Poorly articulated symbolism and shot-y job of translating implied subjects aside, the physical impossibility of Makishima's hair was just so distracting.
lmao that was bottering me as well
You gotta make a story about something ╮(￣▽￣)╭
There were so many things I just couldn't understand why they were in the story. The hair dye issue was so weird.
Who else shamelessly reread the whole series until now?
ME!
More than three times actually(￣∇￣")
I just reread the whole thing in one day. (￣∇￣")
Was trying to agree with your post... I will be rereading this again
Yepp, i re-read this about two times. <3
I did but I'm not ashamed at all actually I'm craving for more ヾ(☆▽☆)
Meee me me :p i have koisuru boukun downloaded and had read again n again but cant get enough.....
Downloaded and reread for more than 3times ε=ε=(ノ≧∇≦)ノ
I've read this series like 6 times really but not lately since I've memorized the story. I especially love they after fire and stalker sex.
ヾ(☆▽☆) after all both times senpai really wanted it hehehe
I'm about to reread the entire series (even though I just did about a month ago) to see if I can get more clarity on the subject, but I'll work backwards from what we KNOW in order to start a productive thread about Mana/Nea/Millennium Earl theories.
Facts concerning Nea:
1. Nea is the 14th Noah.
2. Nea has been resurrected and he is now in Allen Walker's body.
3. Nea, as the 14th, betrayed the Noah in some way. Only Road and the current Millennium Earl are old enough to remember the details of the conflict, however. The D. Gray-man wiki claims that Nea was attempting to seize the patriarchy from the Millennium Earl, but there is no clear evidence to support this.
4. Nea was good friends with General Cross, as shown by Tim Campy’s behavior, and by the fact that General Cross initially raised Allen for the sheer purpose of awaiting Nea’s resurrection through his body.
5. Nea was very close to Road, and was seen in a flashback, held by her, presumably in protection from some unseen terror. Most likely what had killed him.
6. Nea was killed by the Millennium Earl.
--- As of current chapter ---
7. Nea is Mana’s identical twin - not born of the same seed, but created from the same being, the Millennium Earl who “only once disappeared” in order to split himself in two people.
Facts concerning Mana:
1.“Mana” is the name of the man who raised Allen.
2.“Mana” was reportedly a very disturbed man, who named Allen after his dog (ref. General Cross).
3.“Mana” was killed by Allen after the Millennium Earl turned him into an akuma.
4.Mana, according to Allen’s memories of Nea’s childhood, was a sickly child.
--- As of current chapter ---
5.Mana is the current Millennium Earl.
6.Mana has a form of dementia and severe memory distortion. He does not remember what he used to look like, neither does he recall his exact ties to Nea, other than the fact that he is “the 14th.”
7.Mana, as the current Millennium Earl, does not believe he is Mana, and continues to claim that “everything is Mana’s fault.” (See 3 latest chapters)
Facts concerning the Millennium Earl:
1.He is the patriarch of the Noah family, who were a collection of entities that survived the great flood, and to whom all of the current human race is related.
2.He is charged with fighting “the Innocence.”
3.He creates an opportunity for humans to resurrect the beloved dead, using a technology that binds the soul to a vessel and forces them to kill and take the flesh of the loved one that resurrected them. These beings are called Akuma, and they continue to kill, seemingly with no direct benefit to the Earl himself in fighting Innocence. Although Akuma have killed many exorcists, the exorcists have never posed a poignant threat to the Noah, who will always be reborn, even if they are killed. So I call the necessity of the Akuma into question. The Earl claims that he himself created the Akuma as a positive effect on humanity, “giving people a chance to show the magnitude of their love” by creating an akuma or the like. I believe this is directly related to a combination of his dementia, his indirect longing to bring Nea back, and Hoshino-sensei’s aesthetic need to make the Earl a man of creepy, inaccessible logic.
--- As of current chapter ---
4.The current Millennium Earl is Mana. He himself, however, has had no knowledge of this fact since the start of the series.
5.The current Millennium Earl has had his face and memories altered, and he bares a deep longing for Nea.
6.The Millennium Earl of the past was involved with Nea and Mana’s mother.
7.The Millennium Earl of the past was actually Nea and Mana, in one form.
8.The Millennium Earl has disappeared only once: when he was split into two people, presumably during the childhood of Nea and Mana, before the feud for the patriarchy began. That is to say, we can assume there was a time - as we saw in the flashback - when there was no Millennium Earl, and Nea and Mana had no concept of their relevance to the Noah.
9.At some point, the mother of Nea and Mana dies. Road also appears along the way, the first sign of Noah in their life. Shortly after, The Millennium Earl is at large in the story again, and kills Nea.
Problems to tease out:
First and foremostly, are the two “Mana” figures in this series the same person - is it even possible? Chronologically, if we laid out all flashbacks, Mana’s personal history would run fairly smoothly, as follows:
Mana and Nea are born → Mana and Nea’s mother dies → Mana and Nea presumably collide over the issue of succession to become The Earl → Mana kills Nea and becomes The Earl → Mana regrets or (from Road) learns to regret his decision to kill Nea and goes senile → Becomes a traveling clown → incidentally (or maybe not so incidentally) takes in Allen ⇒ somehow “dies” and is in two places at once, when he is resurrected as an Akuma, but is presumably also present as the Earl on the day Allen’s innocence awakens <=
There is reason to believe that the plot holes we are seeing will be smoothed over later. Mana the clown and Mana the man (as well as the Millennium Earl) have distinctly similar body types. They both suffer from increasing incoherent episodes of dementia, whose severity completely parallels the point in time at which they would have progressed in relevance to Nea’s death, had they been the same person. All that is left is to figure out is who the unreliable narrator is: Was Allen’s memory wrong? Since Allen can recall, he has always been with either Mana or Cross, two key people in Nea’s life. How much has Nea fashioned Allen’s existence? The key to Mana’s past lies in the validity of the imagery we have been fed thusly - through Allen’s eyes - and whether or not it was influenced in any way.
Secondly, and also a key component in figuring out Mana’s identity, is discovering who the Millennium Earl is. Was Mana always the Earl? Can the Earl be anyone else, besides either Mana or Nea, who are the two halves of the original? Anyways, food for my own thought, but I hope you guys will have fun with this too.
Thank u that help alot.i 've already forgotten many things.guess should go back and reread the whole serie again. And it's really back. Oh God I can't believe it.sooooooo happy i want to cry.
Great effort you've put in here. Thanks a lot.
It makes sense in a way that mana can be both the earl and akuma in Allen's memories. Remember after The 14th first awakening, the Earl stated that akuma are his eyes and ears, so for a demented man who can split himself in half, who knows how much he could split his soul (ex: infinite number of akuma)
Interesting assessment. For me, that would mean he separated his conscience into a separate being. The mana who raised Allen, would then have operated has his own entity, incidentally or rather, in all eventuality returning to the millennium earl upon the advent of his death. However, I'm sure you can imagine the complications with assuming that the Earl, at any point in time, can become any number of people. It stands valid in as much as all other theories. :3 thanks
Thank you!! It's a long post ^_^ so I commend you for reading!
I'm rereading too!! Grab some tasty snacks and get down n gritty like me~ ♡
You stated that the akuma have "no benefit to the Earl in fighting the innocence" but the akuma live solely for finding innocence. Honestly, the first or only words that come out of akuma mouth is where is the innocence?!?! which from recent chapters is not as innocent as we were led to believe (I agree with allen & wanted to barf). So, now we have a story of a battle between a mad earl, creepy innocence & and humans that were tossed in the middle, since both sides are using them (humans) to fight off the other.
By both sides, I mean whether as turning humans into akuma or having them be born with innocence. From what I see, this is really a story of the human underdogs getting yanked around by big players.
I'm about to reread the entire series (even though I just did about a month ago) to see if I can get more clarity on the subject, but I'll work backwards from what we KNOW in order to start a productive thread about Mana/Nea/Millennium Earl theories.
Facts concerning Nea:
1. Nea is the 14th Noah.
2. Nea has been resurrected and he is now in Allen Walker's body.
3. Nea, as the 14th, betrayed the Noah in some way. Only Road and the current Millennium Earl are old enough to remember the details of the conflict, however. The D. Gray-man wiki claims that Nea was attempting to seize the patriarchy from the Millennium Earl, but there is no clear evidence to support this.
4. Nea was good friends with General Cross, as shown by Tim Campy’s behavior, and by the fact that General Cross initially raised Allen for the sheer purpose of awaiting Nea’s resurrection through his body.
5. Nea was very close to Road, and was seen in a flashback, held by her, presumably in protection from some unseen terror. Most likely what had killed him.
6. Nea was killed by the Millennium Earl.
--- As of current chapter ---
7. Nea is Mana’s identical twin - not born of the same seed, but created from the same being, the Millennium Earl who “only once disappeared” in order to split himself in two people.
Facts concerning Mana:
“Mana” is the name of the man who raised Allen.
“Mana” was reportedly a very disturbed man, who named Allen after his dog (ref. General Cross).
“Mana” was killed by Allen after the Millennium Earl turned him into an akuma.
Mana, according to Allen’s memories of Nea’s childhood, was a sickly child.
--- As of current chapter ---
Mana is the current Millennium Earl.
Mana has a form of dementia and severe memory distortion. He does not remember what he used to look like, neither does he recall his exact ties to Nea, other than the fact that he is “the 14th.”
Mana, as the current Millennium Earl, does not believe he is Mana, and continues to claim that “everything is Mana’s fault.” (See 3 latest chapters)
Facts concerning the Millennium Earl:
He is the patriarch of the Noah family, who were a collection of entities that survived the great flood, and to whom all of the current human race is related.
He is charged with fighting “the Innocence.”
He creates an opportunity for humans to resurrect the beloved dead, using a technology that binds the soul to a vessel and forces them to kill and take the flesh of the loved one that resurrected them. These beings are called Akuma, and they continue to kill, seemingly with no direct benefit to the Earl himself in fighting Innocence. Although Akuma have killed many exorcists, the exorcists have never posed a poignant threat to the Noah, who will always be reborn, even if they are killed. So I call the necessity of the Akuma into question. The Earl claims that he himself created the Akuma as a positive effect on humanity, “giving people a chance to show the magnitude of their love” by creating an akuma or the like. I believe this is directly related to a combination of his dementia, his indirect longing to bring Nea back, and Hoshino-sensei’s aesthetic need to make the Earl a man of creepy, inaccessible logic.
--- As of current chapter ---
The current Millennium Earl is Mana. He himself, however, has had no knowledge of this fact since the start of the series.
The current Millennium Earl has had his face and memories altered, and he bares a deep longing for Nea.
The Millennium Earl of the past was involved with Nea and Mana’s mother.
The Millennium Earl of the past was actually Nea and Mana, in one form.
The Millennium Earl has disappeared only once: when he was split into two people, presumably during the childhood of Nea and Mana, before the feud for the patriarchy began. That is to say, we can assume there was a time - as we saw in the flashback - when there was no Millennium Earl, and Nea and Mana had no concept of their relevance to the Noah.
At some point, the mother of Nea and Mana dies. Road also appears along the way, the first sign of Noah in their life. Shortly after, The Millennium Earl is at large in the story again, and kills Nea.
Problems to tease out:
First and foremostly, are the two “Mana” figures in this series the same person - is it even possible? Chronologically, if we laid out all flashbacks, Mana’s personal history would run fairly smoothly, as follows:
Mana and Nea are born → Mana and Nea’s mother dies → Mana and Nea presumably collide over the issue of succession to become The Earl → Mana kills Nea and becomes The Earl → Mana regrets or (from Road) learns to regret his decision to kill Nea and goes senile → Becomes a traveling clown → incidentally (or maybe not so incidentally) takes in Allen ⇒ somehow “dies” and is in two places at once, when he is resurrected as an Akuma, but is presumably also present as the Earl on the day Allen’s innocence awakens <=
There is reason to believe that the plot holes we are seeing will be smoothed over later. Mana the clown and Mana the man (as well as the Millennium Earl) have distinctly similar body types. They both suffer from increasing incoherent episodes of dementia, whose severity completely parallels the point in time at which they would have progressed in relevance to Nea’s death, had they been the same person. All that is left is to figure out is who the unreliable narrator is: Was Allen’s memory wrong? Since Allen can recall, he has always been with either Mana or Cross, two key people in Nea’s life. How much has Nea fashioned Allen’s existence? The key to Mana’s past lies in the validity of the imagery we have been fed thusly - through Allen’s eyes - and whether or not it was influenced in any way.
Secondly, and also a key component in figuring out Mana’s identity, is discovering who the Millennium Earl is. Was Mana always the Earl? Can the Earl be anyone else, besides either Mana or Nea, who are the two halves of the original? Anyways, food for my own thought, but I hope you guys will have fun with this too.
The self-imposed cockblock is so real.
ITS SO FUNNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yuuji's brother is always cockblocking them........ I feel bad thou lol I really want them to be able to do it soon!!!!!!!!!!!!! they deserve to feel the happiness they have been waiting for plus they just get cockblocked by everyone really THE TORTURE (=・ω・=)