Warning: only 51 episodes of 102 episodes of D.Gray-man are available in the U.S. If I had known that before I started watching the series, as a completist, I probably would not have started watching it and am extremely frustrated that even YouTube only has the latter episodes with no audio. I prefer subtitles over dubbed, but I’ll take anything at this point. D.Gray-man claims to be set in the 19th century and focuses on humans with special abilities called Exorcists, who can harness or “accommodate” a power called Innocence, which they can use to fight Akumas. Akumas are like a mashup of a steampunk terminator powered by a human soul unwittingly sold into an eternity of slavery by someone who loved and missed them. That human soul is then controlled and twisted into killing that person and many others by the Millennium Earl, who apparently is responsible for THE Flood and trying to collect and destroy the Innocence. I’m still not sure why he wants to do that, but it may have something to do with a group of humans with special inherent powers with gray skin who see themselves as the chosen people called Noah and who like to kill people that they see as inferior. Initially I did not like the show because a lot gets lost in translation: terms, words and time periods that mean one thing to me clearly mean something different in the show. Also there is one character that I thought had a huge crush on a girl, but it turns out that the girl is his sister. One character looks like a girl, but is an otherwise typical sullen guy. Even after adjusting to those things, the first season initially seemed either filled with goofy humor from the seemingly incompetent support team for the Exorcists or tragic story of the week as we get the backstory of the featured Akuma or unwitting holder of Innocence, but things got interesting when D.Gray-man raised the stakes. Exorcists could get killed. Akuma could have conflicting motivations. The support team suddenly stopped accidentally endangering the Exorcists and became useful. My favorite story arch was also the shortest for an Exorcist: 2 episodes called Charity Bell and Froi Tiedoll. My second favorite involved a clever twist on vampire legends. D.Gray-man was improving and becoming riveting with each episode as it found a new way to address supernatural phenomena, unfortunately probably because of business reasons, I’ll never see how good it got.