Episode 88

Lavi (ラビ, Rabi) is the 88th episode of the D.Gray-Man anime adaptation.

Long Summary
While Road holds Allen, Lenalee and Chaozii back with her sharpened candles, Lavi is still stuck in her Dream World. Road wishes for them to wait until she has broken Lavi’s mind.

Meanwhile, in the Dream World, Lavi is forced to fight his friends, who are attacking him and accusing him of abandoning them. He fights with his eyes closed to the illusion of his friends, who are attacking like mindless zombies. He is forced to hear their desperate cries as he cuts them down. Lavi struggles to deal with this and constantly has to remind himself that it is an illusion, especially when he finds himself being asked by Lenalee why he has abandoned them.

Lavi then begins to remember his past travels with Bookman, specifically when he first joined him and began his path towards becoming a Bookman. He remembers being told that his job is to record the world’s hidden history. He wanted to become a Bookman in order to know what no one else knows.

A reluctant Lavi is then forced to recall more memories; he remembers how he lost faith in humanity after witnessing so many wars. He holds the belief that humanity is stupid even upon joining the Black Order together with Bookman, where he took on his 49th alias, Lavi. It turns out that they had arrived on the day of a mass funeral and it is there he first sees Lenalee, who is grieving for her lost comrades.

Back in the Dream World, Lavi urges the flood of memories to stop, but they keep coming. He goes on to remember when he meets Johnny, who wishes to take his measurement for his uniform. Despite being sociable and becoming friends with the Science Division and Lenalee, he realises that one day they too will be erased from history.

Again confronted by an illusion of his previous alias, Deak, he is reminded that he truly began to think of those at the Order as his friends. Lavi immediately becomes distressed when he is faced with this fact. At that moment, he drops the ace of spades card he picked up at the site of Tyki and Allen’s battle. Then, an illusion of Allen appears and picks up the card, commenting that Lavi held on to it without telling Bookman.

At that moment, Deak unleashes a fire seal, burning and incapacitating the illusion of Allen. Lavi is not able to hold back the worry he feels for his friend, and this does not go unnoticed by Deak, who emphasises that friends are something a Bookman does not need. This is because it is a rule of the Bookman Clan to not involve themselves too deeply with other people; if friends are the cause of heartache then they should just be eliminated.

The illusions of Lenalee, Kanda and Krory begin to approach Lavi, and Deak tells him to prepare to fight. However, Lavi is shocked into apparent inaction which results in him being stabbed by both Lenalee and Kanda. Deak deems Lavi a failure as a Bookman, then goes on to tell him that he will become the Bookman’s successor instead of Lavi. Deak tells him that he will disappear - this is when Road senses that Lavi’s mind had just broken.

Road reveals that it is not as though Lavi was actually stabbed, but he became unconscious in the Dream World due to the shock of being stabbed by his friends. As a result his mind had broken. With this, Road frees Lavi from her barriers and tells Allen that he will have to kill Lavi in order to save Lenalee and Chaozii. With this, Lavi immediately attacks Allen.

While Allen remains purely on the defensive, Lavi strikes him over and over again, managing to overpower him. Allen assumes he is possessed and tries to use his sword to exorcise him, but it does nothing. Road tells him that his Sword of Exorcism will not defeat Lavi and that he will have to fight using his Edge. She goes further, stating that if Allen does not use Edge then she will kill Lenalee and Chaozii. Meanwhile, Lavi continues his attack while Allen tries to get him to come to his senses by reminding him of his friends. However, Lavi does not respond to this. He tells them that he never thought of Allen and the others as friends. While this unfolds, Lenalee becomes increasingly upset.

Not long after this, Lavi unleashes a fire seal. Allen realises that he will not be able to defeat it unless he uses Edge, but he is reluctant to hurt Lavi. Again, Lavi manages to overpower Allen while Lenalee begs him to stop. Road tells her that this is Lavi’s true self. Eventually, Allen sees no other way to deal with this other than to deal with Road. He throws his Sword of Exorcism through Lavi, impaling Road. However, to Allen’s surprise, it does not affect her. Amused, she tells him it is impossible for anyone who does not know her true form to kill her.

Again, Lavi uses fire seal against Allen who is swept away by the flames, while Lenalee begs him to stop. However, Allen soon realises that while he is engulfed in flame, it is not burning him - it does not even feel hot. It begins to become apparent that Lavi is starting to regain control of his body, as he regains consciousness in the Dream World. It is revealed that the Lavi within the Dream World had stabbed himself in order to stop himself from passing out.

While unleashing one final fire seal with his real body, he manages to attack Road from inside her Dream World by stabbing the illusion of Allen. He managed to guess where she was hiding since Road is so infatuated with Allen. After Road tells him that he will not succeed at becoming a Bookman, Lavi bids his farewell as his body fades from the Dream World.