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Hoshino once drew an one shot called ZONE for Akamaru JUMP in 2003. Despite it being the debut work of a newbie artist, ZONE attracted a decent amount of positive feedbacks from its readers as well as from Hoshino's editor at the time. S/he was soon encouraged to expand ZONE's plot so that it can be made into a series. Before long, D.Gray-man was born.
Hoshino modeled three characters in D.Gray-man based on ZONE's main cast: The Earl of Millenium, a half-Japanese girl named Lenalee and a prototype of Allen, Robin the Exorcist. Here are some differences between ZONE's protagonists and D.Gray-man's key characters:
- While bearing a striking resemblance to Allen, Robin is actually a girl
- Both Allen and Robin called the Earl after a close person's death. However, while Allen received a curse for his mistake, Robin was turned into an AKUMA and received power of an exorcist much later. In other words, the Robin we see is actually her sister Julia in disguise
- Lenalee of ZONE has no special power but still served as an important plot device
In D.Gray-man, everyone is searching for the heart of Innocence which will either save or destroy the world. Allen and Lenalee's Innocence are both treated as nominee for said heart at the moment due to their unique characteristics. This is interesting because we know Allen and Lenalee are the only two exorcist characters inherited from ZONE. Could this be a hint to future plot development in D.Gray-man? Very likely.
Betrayal is a recurring theme shown through both the protagonist of D.Gray-man and of ZONE. If Allen is indeed the successor of the 14th Noah, he would technically be "betraying" his "creator" aka. the Earl by fighting alongside his exorcist friends. The same goes to Robin: she was already turned into an AKUMA containing her sister's soul, yet her human character was so strong that she ended up fighting for humans instead of following orders from her "creator". I really enjoy Hoshino's idea of incorporating both love and hatred in one character in such a twisted form, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of Allen's Noah links in the future: it would spice up D.Gray-man's main plot even more.