Tyki Mikk is a Clone and I can (almost) prove it
Tyki Mikk is undoubtedly a fan favorite and yet we don’t really know a lot about him. For a character that was created with the purpose of being handsome (cf. D.Gray-Man Manga Volume 5, page 150), he carries a lot of baggage and has a rather unclear past. A theory that has haunted me since I read chapter 198 and has only grown in strength with the most recent arc is that Tyki is in fact a clone of Nea. As far fetched as this seems at start, there is quite a bit of evidence supporting this theory.
1) Tyki’s visible similarity to Nea (and Mana)
One of the first things Wisely remarks on when he meets Tyki is his similarity to “a certain man” (Chapter 187).
This similarity is picked up twice more in the manga. When Allen meets Nea for the first time (cf. chapter 198), he mistakes him for Tyki at first.
And it is brought up a third time by Nea himself in chapter 225 when he says:
To which Tyki, or rather Joyd, has this wonderful reaction:
But more on that guy specifically later. Point being right here is that three different characters, or four if you want to count Road and Wisely separately, acknowledge that Tyki resembles Nea a lot, down to the man himself. How does that saying go again? Once An Accident, Twice A Coincidence, Three Times A Pattern? This is something that repeatedly gets brought up again. And this is without going into detail on how much Tyki resembles not only Nea, but said man’s identical twin as well. Just look at that dashing long hair!
And take this from chapter 158 as well
Pretty long haired boy Mana is nothing new as of chapter 218 and 219:
Another interesting point here is that Tyki is the exact same height as the Earl in human form! They’re both 188cm tall. Nea, on the other hand, is listed at being 177cm. This could just be that Nea unfortunately ended up as the shorter twin, or, we take into consideration what Mana tells Allen/Red in chapter 238:
He remembers being seventeen, which means that he and Nea probably weren’t done growing yet when the “Earl” corrupted Mana. (It also kind of makes everything about Nea more hilarious if you realize he’s just seventeen.) Tyki, however, is 26 when we first meet him and should be around 27 now. He is an actual adult and not bound to hit another growth spurt.
But to summarize the first argument: Tyki looks uncannily similar to Nea and Mana and the manga keeps pointing it out so we can assume this resemblance is important.
2) Cloning is possible in canon
Now the second point is just here to point out that we know cloning to be possible. Funnily, Tyki’s resemblance to Nea gets pointed out just before the Alma Arc, which very much deals with the concept of reincarnation – only there we have the brains of deceased Exorcists transplanted into youthful bodies.
However, it’s not as if something like DNA hasn’t been mentioned before. Specifically, it has been called “Helix of life” by no other than maybe-former-Bookman but definitely First-Nea-host Past!Allen in chapter 221:
So let’s assume that, in the aftermath of Nea’s “death”, PastA didn’t just wait around for Nea to wake again, but tried to find a vessel for him. Messing around with this helix, and whatever other dubious science and magic this world had to offer, and created a new body to host Nea. Except he failed, and the result is Tyki.
But if that is so, shouldn’t Tyki remember anything about that? Good question. Time for some more shady weird stuff about Tyki.
3) The Missing Years
In chapter 202, while the Earl is resting, Tyki talks to Road. I don’t speak Japanese, so I can’t verify which translation is more accurate, but I’ve found these two:
Now the official German one also goes with a similar translation as the second one here, implying that Tyki has been with the Earl for ten years. In any case, the fact that this decade at all gets mentioned is quite odd because it doesn’t match up with what we know of Mana travelling with Allen. Cross calls Allen a “ten-year-old brat” (chapter 208) when he looks after him. So between Mana travelling with Allen and current canon, only 6 years have passed – what are up with the other 4 that are supposedly within this decade? We don’t have a definite age for how old Allen was when he met Mana, but I’d say around 7 or older. That’s still not enough to fill out the decade they speak about here.
Now, presuming that it does in fact refer to Tyki staying with the Earl for that time, we’re either left with assuming that the Earl acted as a separate entity as we see in 218, or that Tyki’s memories are just flat out wrong.
4) Tyki Mikk’s Canon-Typical Ignorance AKA The Baby of The Family
The more often Tyki appears, the more we see how much he actually doesn’t know about the going-ons of the war, or even himself. This goes back as far as the Ark Arc in chapter 130 with the Earl pointing out that:
So this form is apparently something that all Noah of Pleasure can take on, a sort of second stage of awakening. Still, it feels significant that Tyki separates his life so much into “black” and “white”, “Noah” and “human”, going as far as suppressing a part of his Noah. It puts him in direct opposition to Skinn, who was more or less entirely consumed by his Noah memories. Though, perhaps this is also just a narrative ploy because a character with the ability to chose is, frankly speaking, fuck off overpowered and the only reason why Tyki isn’t constantly leveling battlefields is probably that he just doesn’t know how to apply himself.
Regardless, Tyki’s ignorance also becomes visible in chapter 187 again when he wonders about his Noah name:
Nobody else reacts like he does, even though the other Noah haven’t been awake as long as he has and also should have retained the same memory damage as Joyd after Nea’s murder spree. Yet Tyki feels a little like the baby of the family, still learning and growing while everyone else is already in the know, which can’t be too far from the truth if we look at chapter 225:
Wisely and Road definitely know that something went down and kept it from Tyki for so long for reasons. So besides Allen learning the truth sometime in the future, Tyki is also heading towards some kind of realization – and honestly, what better than the fact that the man who enjoys his freedom and roam so much, was artificially created?
Road could have manipulated his subconsciousness, his memories. It’s a miracle really that the Earl hadn’t had a breakdown around Tyki already given how much he looks like Nea. And if Tyki really awoke as a Noa a decade ago, then eh would have been right the age Nea was when he died. The Earl should have reacted in one way or another.
Other small details that don’t add up is a) the claim that Tyki and Sheril are actual brothers. They have different last names, which would imply that they are perhaps rather half siblings, sharing one parent, or maybe they just aren’t related at all in the first place. The other thing is that Nea recognizing Tyki’s face immediately after confronting Mana about his changed appearance just adds even more suspicion.
5) TLDR
Tyki is either a clone or something else messy went down because there’s no way that there’s a natural Nea and Mana copy running around who also just so happens to be a Noah. No way.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk I’m never writing meta again this was a nightmare to post.