Angel Sanctuary 1

So here’s the story with this series: I had a few friends who raved about Kaori Yuki, so I was pretty pumped when this series got licensed.  It sounds like it’s got a great plot, and it definitely has nice art.  I went out and bought the first volume, read it… and was kind of disappointed.  Between then and now, I bought every volume of the series as it came out (because I just do that), but I didn’t read any more.  Angel Sanctuary’s time has come.  Let’s see if reading all the volumes together helps it out any.

My main problem with this volume is that it introduces the main character, his sister, her friend, his friend, the two “Evils,” a Cherubim-rank angel, Adam Kadamon, and two other characters who may or may not be the most powerful angels in heaven, who are definitely somehow against heaven, but also seem to be against each other for some reason.  When I put it like that, it doesn’t really sound like that many, but mix in the beginnings of, at this point, a very poorly-explained heavenly conflict involving all these characters possibly on different sides and… you have a mess.  Also, those two evils, their genders turn out to be not what you think, and because I didn’t trust things after this, I had a hard time believing in the genders for Alexiel and Rosiel.  It would have been easier if the angels were genderless like usual, but nooooo.  I don’t really mind that much, but Kaori Yuki should stop trying to fool me.

Normally I would sort of forgive this and assume everything would work itself out in future volumes, but from what I’ve heard things only get more complicated and we’ve only seen the first several of about 500 characters.  Bah.  But this is why I decided it might be better to read the whole thing at once, so it was easier to keep track of the story, characters, and places (we’ve also already had 3 or 4 intangible places mentioned by name in this volume).

I like the basic story.  Normally I don’t go for incest, no matter what, but here it’s set up to be most heartbreaking, and depending on how it’s handled, it could turn out quite well.  So far Setsuna looks like he’d make for a pretty good character (he’s kind of a punk, but an honest punk, and he picks his battles), and I also don’t mind Sara.  Here’s hoping the random comic violence between the two will be phased out as the series continues.