- #50
Hello everyone. I registered an account to discuss this chapter. I think I can explain what is happening, after thinking about it quite a bit.
The first Noah, the Millenium Earl (true name Adam) has been around for 7,000 years with the mission/raison d'etre of destroying humanity. At the start of time, the Earl battled the Heart of Innocence (or its users) and won, wiping out humanity at the time, but for some reason also creating a new generation of humans descended from the 13 Noah.
At some point, the Millennium Earl briefly came to question his purpose or mission (perhaps after meeting Katerina), and decided to disappear by fragmenting his consciousness into two main parts - Mana and Nea. This bumped the total number of Noah in existence from the traditional 13 to a total of 14.
Mana and Nea were raised by Katerina as humans, but at some point after coming of age, Nea's Noah side awoke and he realized who he was. At this point the original essence of the Millennium Earl (the mission to purge humanity) re-emerged to lead the Noah, which now included Nea. (You can argue that this brings the total number of Noah to 15 if you want to include Mana, Nea, and the Earl, but Mana's Noah side/half of the Earl never woke up so you had 14 still).
Nea as the 14th Noah decides to rebel against the system, wiping out all the Noah but Road (with whom he had a special relationship), and trying to kill the essence of the original Earl in order to became the new Earl and do what he wants instead. They keep failing, so Nea and Mana (still human) go on the run while fighting the Earl. Eventually Mana screws up somehow, and the Earl finally manages to kill his rebellious Nea fragment, and Katerina also gets killed in the process.
Whether or not the Earl reveals Mana's true origins at the time, in any case Mana is driven insane by the whole process and goes on the run and becomes a crazy circus clown. Allen, a human friend of Nea's (perhaps an exorcist already, perhaps not), finds Nea dying and offers to sacrifice himself by letting Nea eventually resurrect within Allen's body. Nea imbeds himself in Allen, causing Allen to eventually lose all his memories and regress in age until becoming a child before growing older again (probably to mirror Nea being reborn slowly). General Cross also made some sort of deal with Nea - it is implied that Cross rationalized "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and was an ally of Nea's since Nea was fighting the essence of the Millenium Earl. Cross knows about the deal between Allen and Nea (maybe he was even there at the time).
By fate, Allen/Nea runs into crazy-Mana the clown, who grows fond of Allen/Nea and begins raising him...either out of instinct or because he really knows Allen is also Nea, or some combination of both factors. When human Mana finally dies, the Earl shows up and tricks Allen (not knowing Nea is hiding inside Allen) into resurrecting Mana as an Akuma/Noah. To the Earl's surprise, Allen has innocence inside him as an exorcist and slays Mana. The Earl lets Allen live out of curiosity (though later it's revealed that he let him live because on some level he sensed Nea inside Allen without realizing it).
In any case, Mana finally being killed out of his human form and turned into Akuma lets the essence of the Earl transfer Mana back into his Noah origins, thus letting the Earl merge back with his Mana fragment. The human side of Mana loses all his memories and just becomes a walking vessel for the Earl fragment, his original progenitor.
Eventually everyone comes to realize that Nea was sneaky and is growing inside Allen. What the Heart/the Apocalypse Innocence protector think about all this is kind of wrapped in mystery, but they seem to want to kill all Noah, meaning the 14th and the Earl both (the 14th is as scary as the Earl because the 14th can also pilot the Ark). The general consensus is that Nea really threw everyone (including himself) for a real loop by not only finding a way to become reincarnated, but by choosing to reincarnate inside the body of one of the Noah's enemies, a born Exorcist who fights for the Black Order.
The Earl was already driven somewhat crazy 35 years ago due to being betrayed by his Nea fragment and being forced to kill part of himself (and maybe getting hurt by Nea during the fight too). He becomes more crazy after re-absorbing Mana, and then goes REALLY crazy when he realizes Nea is coming back, which triggers the dormant Mana to struggle to emerge to be re-united with Nea. In the most recent chapter, being re-united finally causes Mana to come out of the Earl essence's shell for a moment, after which Nea (still occupying Allen) reveals the whole backstory.
So the Earl and Mana have a messy merged/split personality due to the Earl forcibly re-merging with his Mana fragment but being forced to keep part of Mana's personality, whereas Nea and Allen have a messy merged/split personality because the original Allen allowed Nea to reincarnate himself inside Allen, but this also gave birth to a new, younger Allen who grew up a second time from scratch and developed his own personality as an orphan and an exorcist. So both lead characters have duality, but for different reasons. Both characters have a human side and a Noah side (Nea is technically also part of the Earl, but is distinct as the 14th Noah because he awoke on his own and was killed, rather than being merged back into the Earl like Mana).
Ta-da!
Very interesting and I think it's probably pretty close although I don't believe mana being turned into an akuma actually happened which throws some of this off a little. So other then a few things I agree with you.
