Angel Sanctuary 8

Sevothtarte’s intentions finally become clear here, in that he states what he wants to do explicitly.  I’m not that surprised by it even though I probably should be.  If nothing else, the series is full of very selfish characters, so what’s one more person with a grand plan?  I’m still not sure if he was planning on having all the angels in heaven help him out with his goal, or if he was going to go about it secretly.

Aside from his very evil master plan, he does a bunch of other things that let us know he’s just not the kind soul you’d expect one of the most powerful angels in heaven to be.  They bring up the fact he keeps his face hidden a few times, and after someone catches him in part of his plan, he… sticks them with a pin so that if they ever talk again, their head will explode.  That’s kind of an awesome power.  His face will probably wind up being a huge plot point later, but something tells me that if we saw it now, we would either have no knowledge of who he was supposed to be, or it just wouldn’t be that surprising.  I can appreciate a wait for this bit of knowledge, because I think it will be a really great twist when it comes.  Or he’ll wind up being someone stupid, obvious, and impossible like Lucifer, which isn’t totally out of the question at this point since Lucifer still hasn’t been introduced and his silhouette has long hair.  They go through the connection between him and Jibreel, which is something I’d already sort of guessed.

Michael meets up with Setsuna, and because Michael just loves picking fights, they fight on Earth while time stands still.  Michael doesn’t actually play fair or listen to reason, and he sends Setsuna into a berserker rampage.  Michael also doesn’t figure out who Setsuna actually is for quite some time, which is sort of hilarious and made even more so when Setsuna calls him out on not recognizing him.  Setsuna also meets Raphael briefly, but since he’s overcome with rage (Michael messes with Boyz a little) he can’t ask what he needs and winds up still having to go to heaven.

I keep forgetting to mention Boyz and Noyz.  Yuki says that they were originally side characters that wouldn’t appear ever again (she gives their names for the first time in the side bar, presumably because she didn’t plan on using them in the story).  I like their designs a lot, but they have the unfortunate distinction of having the two stupidest names in the series.  I’m especially sorry that Boyz is the dominant of the pair.  I’d seen the names translated elsewhere as Voice and Noise, which are significantly better names, but I’ll give Viz the benefit of the doubt and say that they used the names that Yuki picked out.

After being driven out of Gehenna by the evils last volume and having everyone but Boyz and Kurai lose faith in him, Setsuna gets welcomed back only when he begs them to save Boyz, and only then because the Dragon Gods interfere on his behalf.  A demon sent by Lucifer is responsible for turning everyone on him, and apparently the demon will stick around until he can get his old body back… which requires a trip to heaven.

Possibly.  Kurai is still struggling with her decision.  For a second, I thought her mind was made up not to do it, which would be kind of silly on her part.  But Mad Hatter shows up again and entices her further, and then further still.  The volume ends with a great scene where Kurai is trying to see definitively if there is a way for her to steal Setsuna’s heart away from Sara.  Her story is sort of a sad one since Setsuna and Sara are fated lovers and all that, so I’m guessing she’ll be making the decision in favor of setting Setsuna free at the cost of… well, her freedom, I guess.  We’ll see how that goes.

Sara finally comes back, which is good because she’s been sort of useless since, like, the third volume.  Metatron helps her, and Metatron only helps her because a mysterious character basically tells him to help her.  I thought this mysterious character was Setsuna, much like I thought Setsuna was on the cover of this volume, but I think the person on the cover and this person are the same, which means very little… other than they are a fallen angel that can appear to Metatron in dreams.  Sevothtarte definitely disapproves, and he looks like he wants to will people to explode or something after all is said and done.  They… sort of reveal why Alexiel’s newest incarnation didn’t have an Archangel watching over him, except it didn’t make much sense to me… it’s somehow because of Sara, but is it because Sara is actually a very powerful angel, or did her soul just wind up in that body?

I finished this and was really looking forward to the next volume, which is the first time that’s happened so far.  The story’s really starting to pick up, and with more and more of the pieces falling into place, the story is becoming easier to understand and easier to appreciate.  Kaori Yuki has definitely set things up to operate on a grand scale, and now that I’m this far in, I can see that the ambitious plot is finally starting to get going and pay off.