Angel Sanctuary 11

Oh, come on.  People just need to stay dead in this series.  It doesn’t help that several characters have amazing regenerative properties, but some characters definitely don’t.  And I don’t expect these characters to come back to life an kill people at opportune moments.  It’s just not right.

Also, Kira.  His role.  HIS ROLE.  Was that necessary?  It is kind of cool, I’ll have to admit, even though it doesn’t totally make sense to me.  It’ll be important later, I suppose.

The thing with Lucifer actually having hell inside him is pretty cool.  Lucifer makes hell liveable with his power, but after disappearing from hell, the bridal sacrifices are necessary to keep his power in check and not destroy everybody.  Apparently Lucifer is actually AWOL.  Even with what was revealed this volume, I’m not entirely convinced that my theory on Lucifer/Sevothtarte is incorrect.  I’m just waiting for that one person to be all people.

Raziel gets more of a role this time around.  I’m not sure what to think of Raziel, he’s a faithful servant and wants to do the right thing, doesn’t seem tainted with extreme evil like all the other angels in heaven.  He gets in trouble with Sevothtarte after he tries to do a little good for the angels in the lower levels of heaven when he wasn’t supposed to (apparently Thrones are supposed to go down there and kill people periodically, particularly children born from illegal pairings between angels, and then bring the angels responsible for producing a child to justice).  Zephikel saves him from being executed by Sevothtarte, and it goes into a flashback as Zephikel shows his past to Raziel.  I don’t talk about Zephikel very much, but he’s in the story quite a bit.  I like him, but the reason I don’t really talk about him is because I had no idea what his function in the story was until this volume.  It was clear he was plotting something, but given the fact that everyone else is also plotting something on their own behalf, I concerned myself mostly with what the more powerful angels were doing.  Zephikel is the head Thrones, but he’s no match for Rosiel or Alexiel or Sevothtarte or the elemental angels or anything.

Zephikel’s flashback was pretty brutal.  It explained what it is that he’s trying to do, and it also showed how he got the scar on his neck, how it was that he actually lost his sight, and what his relationship to Sevothtarte is.  Anael, another head angel, was in the flashback, as was the character Nidhogg asked Setsuna to find earlier.  Maybe we’ll get a story about her yet.  Zephikel was framed, though I’m not sure why the high council got ticked off at him other than the fact that he was doing too good a job killing the little angel kids… and possibly because he liked Anael?  There was no child there, but I guess it was still a sin.  The frameup he went through was pretty brutal, and it was clear it wasn’t the old council members he was complaining about in the past that were responsible for it.  Anyway, the important thing is that Zephikel is a good guy, whatever that means, and Sevothtarte is not.  We already knew that about Sevothtarte, though.

What else… Setsuna gets his form back, but just barely.  The four elemental angels were… interrupted in the middle of the proceedure.  I guessed before the beginning of this volume who the character was that gave Metatron the power over dreams, but it’s sort of an instance of… well, there really being only one character other than Gabriel and Sevothtarte that Metatron has spoke of.  Sandalphon is an evil little brat, too.  Zephikel is aware of Metatron’s power, and he does his business where Metatron can’t see him, but the four elemental angels are not so lucky and Sevothtarte busts them.

Zaphikel speaks to Setsuna to enlist his aid… and, of course, the only thing that can get Setsuna to act immediately is letting him know Sara is involved.  The two of them spoke briefly in this volume, and my heart nearly broke.  I like the pairing a lot, weird though it is, and I sincerely hope the two of them get a little more time together.  As it stands, I don’t think Sara has much chance since she’s fallen in the hands of Sevothtarte and he finds it most convenient to execute her.

It’s kind of surprising that the actual villain of the series, or what it seems like at this point, is actually one that you wouldn’t suspect of being evil.  Of course, in this universe of evil angels and persecuted demons, things are never what you expect them to be, I suppose.  Of course, candidates for top bad guy at this point are numerous, and may even include God himself even though he hasn’t really been spoken of and hasn’t appeared.