Somewhere in these two books I learned that the humans of this manga world learn all about this world’s particular mythology in school. Like how the angel Raphael is a doctor. I like the idea of a world that has a religious education that gets things canonically right, no matter how weird “right” is.
By Kaori Yuki
Setsuna’s body is dead on Earth, and the two women who love him will do anything to bring it back to life. Kurai, the last Princess of Gehenna, agrees to marry Lucifer in return for a potion to revive Setsuna. She enters the deepest bowels of Hell, where she soon gets lost. Can Arachne help save her, or will a deadly secret doom Kurai to an eternity as the Dark Lord’s bride? In Heaven, Sara tries to convince Raphael to resurrect Setsuna–but the archangel refuses to help unless Sara joins him in bed first!Setsuna is still trapped in the body of the Angel Alexiel, but he has more important things to worry about now than an identity crisis. Kurai has promised to marry Lucifer in return for restoring Setsuna to his true body–but it turns out that neither the wedding nor the resurrection are as promised. Can Setsuna travel through the pits of Hell in time to break up the nuptial ceremony, or will he and Kurai be damned for all time?
Yuki’s art continues to amaze me. It’s nice to read her side journal notes and learn how it actually comes together. She has a team of artists who she describes the comic for, but when it comes to the trickiest and most surreal parts she will just draw the pages herself. These two books adds traditional western religious iconography and some serious chiaroscuro shading to her repertoire of tricks.
I’ve said it before, but I love this (relatively) modern shading trick, inspired by Adobe Photoshop, to use a checked pattern to mean null and void.
On the mythology front, God made angels and humans and earth, but is not the primogentitor; Adam Kadamon came before, from outside. God is an experimenter, and maybe just the latest one. Often the experiments goes wrong. Earlier I noted that the God of Angel Sanctuary is a fickle creator who giveths and takeths away its love pretty quickly. If the terrible state of Heaven I notes last week is any kind of reflection of God, then the God of Angel Sanctuary is quite a mess. I can’t wait till future books to see if I’m right.
The number of characters has exploded in the last few books, but not the number of roles. There’s a lot of conceptual overlap. For example, Alexiel is the traditional rebellious angel who fought a war in heaven blah blah blah. But she does so to help the downtrodden demons, who already existed because Lucifer exists, which is also the rebellious angel. There are also the seven Satans, which is just a title for the highest ranking demons, who each inhabit a particular sin, and none of them are Lucifer. That’s three levels of “title for most rebellious angel”
Between all these characters and cross-betrayals and Yuki’s love of exclusively drawing young and beautiful people have added up to the sad fact that I completely lost track of who Arachne was double-crossing. It seemed quite dramatic. I wish I knew why.
There’s a recurring theme of a lack of concern for consent. Raphael gropes anyone he pleases, and tries to trade life-saving medicine for sex. “The girls are just my toys to keep me from boredom.” The demon Asmodeous gropes a woman after failing to kill her. The Mad Hatter buys a bride for Lucifer by lying about (again) life-saving medicine. The parallels are obvious and reinforce what Yuki has been writing: the angels are demons are no different, not morally. They’re just citizens of different countries at war. They’re all equally evil.
And speaking of consent, a few books ago Setsuna offered a roofie to Uriel. It was presented as a joke to the reader. I didn’t know how to talk about that at the time. I still don’t. I also don’t know if the lack of care for consent is an issue with the angels, or with the author.
Continued belowScattered Notes
- The Mad Hatter demon has a David Bowie flair, and it’s easily my favorite interpretation of the Mad Hatter.
- Rosiel was initially a major antagonist, but hasn’t been heard of in two books. The entire war between Alexiel and Rosiel and the entire Angel Sanctuary program has been functionally put aside for travelogue through heaven and hell, culminating in a wedding for Lucifer. Angel Sanctuary isn’t worse off for this plot shift. It’s keeping things fresh.
- The hedge maze of suicides.
