Tenshi Kinryouku
Angel Sanctuary

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In a world where most manga can be summed up in a sentence or two, Angel Sanctuary is a breath of fresh air. It is the only series that I can with confidence give perfect 10's across the board. As I am writing this, I find it much harder to be articulate than when I give a negative or mixed review, because when a story really blows you away, it's hard to express exactly why. If I had to sum up the theme of this series, it would be this; "What are the thresholds of love". This isn't due to the main romance in the ... series, which is between a boy and his sister. Rather, it covers the entire cast of characters, many of whom have been deeply touched by some kind of love that is deemed unacceptable in the eyes of society and God.

There are two reasons why people put this series down, and many people do. The first is based on the reader's maturity. This is a manga that deals with blood, incest, transgendered issues, rape, homosexuality, religion, and death. I have spoken to several people who's knee jerk reaction to Kaori Yuki's approach on these issues as "ewwwwwwww". To be frank, not every reader is mature enough to read a story that presents these topics in an open minded way.

The second reason is a bit more easy to understand, and that is that In Angel Sanctuary's early volumes, it went through a bit of an identity crisis. While still being excellent and gripping, it also jumps around in it's focal point and doesn't clearly lay the story out for the reader. Volume 1 in particular is guilty of this and leaves one wondering what exactly the focus of the story even is. However, if the reader is willing to work past this, they will find themselves pleasantly surprised.

Angel Sanctuary is divided up into three arcs. The first few volumes are known as the Earth Arc. The middle is the Hell arc. The last leg is known as the heaven arc. These are all based on the primary location of the main character Setsuna. All three shed a different light on Angel Sanctuary's incredibly complex world; from the deadly depths to the hypocritical and morbid politics of heaven.

Beyond our main character, the primary cast of the series consists of about 20 characters, who are all given equal face time, and their own unique backstories. This is part of the elegance of Angel Sanctuary. Normally, such a large cast of characters offers little chance of development, leaving most of the characters as cliche shells for the main character to interact with.

In Angel Sanctuary's case, every single character is touched with perfect detail. They are all given a task or something to overcome, and each of them are given the chance to grow and develop in such a way that you end up caring just as much for the side characters as you do the main character himself.

Most of these characters are incredibly morally ambiguous, and the line between good and evil is absolutely invisible in this manga. Characters that you believe to be good act unforgivably, and characters that may seem like the most horrible monsters in fiction can become great victims. Redemption and corrupted innocence are both major themes that come into play repetitively. This series also raises great questions about the divinity of God and heaven, the origins of evil, and of course, the limitations (or lack there of) of man's love.


This is one series that has the ability to touch just about anybody as long as one is willing to take it on with an open mind. It is bloody and actioned packed, so though it is a shoujo series, it could also easily appeal to men as well as women. Though it has slight faults within it's first few volumes, those are not nearly serious enough to take away from the value of the series as a whole; and even those first few volumes are quite good by manga standards. This is one manga that everybody should take a crack at at least once just to see if they can handle the ride.

Much as I wish to like this as I picked it up for the gorgeous cover and interesting title, it is not something I particularly enjoyed. Maybe someone who is into goth stuff (this is not a very gothic piece of work, but certainly contains enough tips to it that it may be enjoyed as such) or aesthetically pleasing works. I did enjoy it somewhat on a guilty pleasure sort of drivel, but unfortunately I'm going to be a bit of an ass critic so please be aware that I don't have many good things to say about this manga.

The key obstacle to my enjoyment ... is the lacking of solid reasoning behind its world-building.

The first impression is not too great. Art is delicious like the cover suggested, but the enticement quickly wears off. Volume 1, like someone else said, is all over the place and not really a great starting point. It goes from rumours of a mysterious game causing deaths in the beginning's setting of a regular city to the depiction of an angsty and violent teenager in love with his blood-related sister (......) and suddenly a bunch of characters show up and it ends on a sort of hanging note with nothing to hook the reader for the next volume (that is, unless you like violent, incest romance thwarted by the archetypal controlling "you're-a-very-bad-child" matron, which I'm surprised to say, is one of the few cases I actually root for).

The story tries to piece itself together later, and does look somewhat interesting with all the peppering of Christian allegories, strokes of inverted morality, mythological symbols and settings etc. But, choosing to focus on "hawt" forbidden romance is perhaps not the best way to bring out character / plot complexity. It is unknown why Setsuna is in love with his sister besides a shaky reasoning given by the story background that he is the reincarnation of angel Alexial, who 1) also had some kind of hots for xir sibling Rosiel and 2) doomed to endless reincarnations of misery. As a reader I can infer that if Setsuna's mother treated him horribly he may have leaned on his sister for support which spurred into love, but I don't believe their backgrounds were given much explanations for grounds of their romance. Sara herself is given even less reasoning for her feelings, being a very naive, pretty, innocent young woman, and basically not much personality, and I personally feel like she is rather akin to...well, you know what I mean. However Sara is a relatively normal and more relatable character than her male counterpart Setsuna, who keeps angst-ing about how miserable his life is despite that the reader feels his angst is rather disproportionate to his situation, as we see his supposedly abusive mother presented as mostly a douche for disliking his violent tendencies and not allowing incest (wow, shocking). I'll give it that she is kind of a dick for not giving Setsuna affection because he appears to be immune to physical damage. Overall their romance looks a lot like teenage rebellion / angst / lust rolled into one, which do not really gain much of the reader's sympathy.

Other characters are even less compelling if their sordid presence provides more amusement than the predictably triggered main character -- angels / God are mostly evil with a few exceptions (Jibriel, I suppose) and demons are usually the "jerk with a heart of gold" archetype. Perhaps the only slightly interesting character would be Lucifer, but unfortunately the manga does not shine the spotlight on him too much. The main villain, God, is a calculating machine bent on destroying the world. Yes, the archetypal villain suffering from a fair share of Disney syndrome. Well, the villain did get an upgrade from your evil mother trying to stop you from romancing your blood-sibling, I'll give it that. The characters also do not receive much development. I doubt Setsuna or Sara has changed much since the beginning (although they might be a bit more mature) and rest of the characters remain unvarying. Characters are essentially reduced to reincarnations of very monochromatic set of emotions -- Setsuna, angsty and violent-prone. Sara, innocent. Katan, loyal to a fault. Mother, cold and unloving. Alexiel, you're basically a plot-device...you get the idea, characters can be summed up in one or two sentences or even a few words.

The second most focused element of the story is violence, but like my English teacher once said, "do not use swear words, or even words, without good reason". Much of the violence is in essence rather Hollywood-like, thrown in for shock value to lure the crowd than carrying actual emotional weight. I'm not saying all of the violence is such, but too much empty violence can desensitize the reader when they are actually supposed to care.

Lastly the manga does not offer a particularly self-contained world view. For example, what is the relationship of this God with the deity in our world? If heaven is full of evil beings and hell reversely, what impact does that have on the humans? Do they believe in a parallel angel/demon view of ours, or an inverted one? How did a computer come to rule over magical creatures? Why was Sara taken to heaven instead of hell? What is the purpose of the subplot of Sandalphone gaining a body through Sara besides trying to add an obstacle to the sibling-romance reunion?

The story suffered due to the lack of reasonable characterization (I say reasonable as in within the bounds of most reader's expectations, as there are those who have different expectations of reason). It also suffers from excessive brashness and lack of coherent world-building. It could be seen as beautiful and complex at a glance but in reality leaves very little afterthought. Unless your stance is that most manga don't leave behind much afterthought (which I do not believe), this makes Angel's Sanctuary subpar of real masterpieces and falls beneath an average work of art in the process of doing so.

Of course, the above is purely my opinion. I can see why some would enjoy it -- just wasn't much of a thrill for me, for the above reasons.

Arguably one of the most confusing mangas I have ever read, with so many twists and turns that one might think of this as a rollercoaster. This manga is not recommended for younger readers and those who follow religions as this manga is certainly blasphemy, with the whole notion of Incest, Gay angels, Angel Rape, heaven as a corrupt place and a "God" a maniac bent on the destruction of earth just because "it" wants to. Artwork is ok, but the artist's continually draws the characters too feminine, so much that it gets quite confusing as in who is who. Although, character depth is ... quite good as the author really gets into the conflict of the main character.

This manga is similar to Neon Genesis (the whole god, Armageddon thing). yet unlike neon genesis, angel sanctuary actually made me quite quezy and not all that enjoyable (not just because of the whole incest thing). If you do read this be warned

* Also don't watch the Anime, it's a complete mess and misses a whole lot of things (it is only 3 episodes)