Dgm - Tumblr Posts
Tyki’s reaction to being slapped fascinates me. This guy gets slapped by a helpless exorcist that's fully at his mercy and he kinda likes it. It wasn’t a weak slap either! Despite the state Allen’s in, it left a mark! But Tyki just laughs it off. Settles down to chat. Lights himself a cigarette.
Let’s face it. It’s charming.
I really like the contrast between Allen’s first meeting with Road and his first meeting with Tyki. Road had no intention of killing Allen from the start, and she wasn't really there to destroy any Innocence, but she gets incredibly rough with him: nailing his arm to the wall, stabbing his eye out, making a pincushion out of him with her candles. She fully delights in the bodily harm.
Tyki’s here to kill Allen and destroy his Innocence. That’s already decided. But he doesn’t brutalize him at any point.
Because Tyki's so casual, you keep thinking: hey, Allen’s going to get out of this totally fine. Someone is going to show up and save him. Lenalee should be looking for him. We haven’t seen the others in a while, so they must be on their way. Someone is going to arrive in the nick of time to save Allen, and everything’s going to be fine. We still have to get to Japan, after all.
But no one comes.
The scene progresses. Tyki keeps talking, he shows off his power a bit, tries to play with Allen like he played with the others. Tries to make him scared, maybe beg a little. He’s fooling around with the prey he’s already caught, like a cat.
But Allen's not scared, and Tyki backs off. The actual physical torture isn't the appeal for him, so if his victim isn't scared there's no reason to get violent.
So now you're thinking, wow, this guy is gonna regret taking his time when someone finally arrives! What a classic villain fumble; failing your mission because you were too busy monologuing.
But no one comes.
Tyki pulls out the card the Earl gave him. And you find out Tyki’s been searching for Allen. Specifically.
That’s bad, but it's okay. It'll be fine. Someone is going—
You turn the page, and Tyki is ripping Allen’s arm off. No warning, no posturing. One second Allen is fine—someone is going to save him, any second now, Tyki hasn’t even hurt him yet—and the next Allen’s fucking Innocence is on the forest floor.
Tyki keeps talking, smiling. Nothing about his demeanor has changed.
He destroys Allen's Innocence. Like it's nothing.
And at this point, you start to realize, maybe no one is coming. Or if they are, it’s already too late.
Tim gets sent away. He can go get help. But, now Allen’s truly alone with the assassin sent to kill him—if anyone’s coming, it has to be now! Where is everyone?!
Right on cue, you finally get to see the other characters.
And they’re still on the fucking ship.
Then maybe Lenalee—
No. Lenalee’s also at the ship. Tyki has his hand hovering over Allen’s chest and Lenalee’s at the goddamn ship.
No one is coming, you realize. No one was ever coming.
And just like that, Tyki kills Allen. Intimately, with a smile. He wants it to be slow, but quiet. He wants Allen to feel how helpless he really is.
Tyki's a serial killer: we've seen him stage his victims before, like leaving Daisya hanging like some kind of grisly ornament. We saw the state he left the General in.
Allen, however, gets more artistic treatment; he's by the far the favorite of Tyki's victims so far, and Tyki doesn't want to disturb the pretty picture he's already made too much, but it needs a little extra flair, doesn't it? A more personal touch.
So he scatters his own gift to Allen over him: a little something to suit his white hair and black coat and red scars, and the last thing we see is the black crescent of despair. Put there quite deliberately; it is not a typical image to appear on a Joker card.
Volume 6 ends, just like that.
It really is a merciless ending. You can't believe that the protagonist will really die here, but even if he somehow survives, his Innocence has been destroyed. The entire scene is built around your expectations as a reader that the protagonist can't die, so someone will save him, or there will be some other interference.
But no. No one was ever coming to save Allen; not this time.
And that? That has consequences.
Komui is a character that goes a little unappreciated, I think.
But he is fucking amazing.
A secret militant organization takes his little sister away. And he couldn't do a thing to stop it. He is this girl's only guardian and she's going to be a soldier in a hopeless war to save all of humanity and there's nothing he can do to protect her.
It is a parent's worst nightmare. It is the cruel reality of how powerless individuals can be in the face of governing structures.
But what did Komui do, in the face of it?
He decided to fucking be the leader of that same organization???
Komui seriously decided, if there was nothing he could do for Lenalee as her big brother, then he'd just have to become someone with the power to help her.
The sheer emotional tenacity and hardwork it must have took is insane to imagine.
And then there's this moment that we see from Lenalee's perspective. It is incredibly touching: a shining light of hope, a great reunion.
But imagine how this must have looked from Komui's perspective. The first time he gets to see his sister in three years: three years working relentlessly to reach her within a power structure he must have already despised, probably fully aware that she could die at any point and that’s she’s basically being tortured in the meantime, and when he finally gets to her, he finds her tied down to a bed by his now coworkers, her finger nails broken from clawing at everything she could reach, her wrists bloody under her restraints.
Can you imagine the hatred he must have felt for the Order, in this moment?
But he smiles. For Lenalee's sake.
We see later on that the Black Order can really be divided into two ages: Before Komui and After Komui. Komui not only takes over the Black Order HQ for Lenalee's sake, but he takes the entire HQ staff under his wing. He changes the entire culture of the organization, and assumes responsibility for not just Lenalee, not just all the exorcists like her, but every human fighting this war.
Honestly, in a series full of incredible character moments, I think Komui's off screen journey is by far the most impressive.
In many ways, Komui is the Black Order: its heart and soul. His Black Order is the one that becomes our protagonist's home, the Order we come to love. He took what must have been the thing he hated most in the world and remade it with love.
Hence the absolutely gorgeous volume cover yet to come:
quick doodle of my favorite "ouuughhhh he is NOT beating the doomed martyr allegations" guy
Tyki and Allen's interactions are always my favorite parts of DGM. Their first two encounters are such a bizarre base to build off. As a reader, I'm constantly wondering just what they're both thinking at any given time.
Here, Tyki gets so up close and personal. There's a ton of other exorcists around, ones he was just having fun toying with, but now that Allen's here, he's the only one Tyki cares about. The others don't seem to matter anymore in the slightest.
Tyki even went to the trouble of getting back in "disguise", but to make sure Allen recognized him from the train.
He fished out his glasses from somewhere and put them on just so he could take them off in front of Allen.
Here's some more mirrored paneling too.
Absolutely fascinated by Tyki's choice to gently grab Allen's hair and then violently headbutt him. Like. Sir. Why a headbutt of all things.
Equally fascinated by the way Hoshino paneled this scene: the deliberate focus on Tyki's smile, two panels to show him slowly and carefully touching Allen's hair, then another panel focusing on his grin and lips and the way he says: "Why are you still alive?"
It all feels slow and deliberate and sensual and that's immediately contrasted by Tyki's great big HEADBUTT.
Aw, who am i kidding. I find everything Tyki does fascinating.
Allen finally recognizes Tyki in those last panels, but isn't given any time to really react to this would-be murderer very suddenly being there. Which is kinda a pity: we can only imagine the sort of emotions Allen's feeling in this moment.
jk one more theory before I go lol
The more I think about the past!Lavi becoming crown clown theory the more sense it makes.
1. At first, Allen couldn’t even move his innocence hand (as if it were a prosthetic added onto his body). Then, after he activated his innocence, it was incredibly unstable until he decided to stop fighting to die and start living for people and akuma, AKA he decided to start fighting to live period. After he made that declaration, he aligned more directly with his innocence’s wishes—Past Lavi’s wish for him to live! So his synchro rate increased.
2. Lucia mentioned that Past Lavi had shimmering silver hair just like our Allen’s. Our Allen mentioned his hair was chestnut until he activated his innocence. In a komui’s corner, Timothy explained after his hair turned green once his innocence activated, Allen told him his also changed color and he once tried to dye it, but it just changed back to silver—the same color as Past lavi’s!
3. Crown clown is unique in the ways it’s a defensive and offensive innocence. It has a white cape that wraps itself around Allen to protect him just like past!lavi once did for past!allen.
4. Of course, this is the most obvious point and one many have mentioned—crown clown actively protects Allen. It mended his heart post-Tyki and it plugged the wound Allen got from Kanda. Aka, it does everything it can to protect Allen.
Now I’m super on board with this idea. Especially because it also explains why Neah may have thought of past lavi when he saw Allen’s reflection for the first time AND why he seemed so bugged out by it. Aside from the whole Allen being young thing, since Allen has Past Lavi’s hair, his reflection likely gave Neah quite the jump-scare since our Allen looks like Past Lavi and Past Allen put together. And the last time Neah saw them both he probably saw them off before they traveled together. Which is also why he may have figured Allen had been reformed by apo!
Okay but what if we called Past!Lavi “PBJ”- for Past Bookman Junior?
So then we have Pasta and PB&J
(PB&J ends up SANDWICHING himself between Pasta and Apocryphos, and Pasta ends up being snapped into pieces like a dry spaghetti noodle.)
I feel like Tyki's face right here is the blueprint for like 70-80% romance/sometimes action - manhwa male leads/bl manhwa semes, iykwim? He's just THAT gorgeous I guess👌✨ I kinda see YJH from ORV in the last panel, and several others that I can't name atm.
Tyki
(DGM chapter 250)
PLEASE HOSHINO SENSEI JUST LET ALMA KARMA BE HAPPY
I found this cute hat and didn’t get tired of it)
