Tenshi Kinryouku
Angel Sanctuary

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The manga series Angel Sanctuary was written by Kaori Yuki and is based on her middle school fascination with how angels rebel against God, particularly how Lucifer rebelled against God. Setsuna Mudo is a problematic teenager who learns that he is the reincarnation of an angel who rebelled against heaven. He sets out to reunite with his sister who died during that period. Setsuna and his sister Sara are very much alike in that they are very messed up characters but faithful to the people they love. Setsuna and his friends are involved in gangs, drugs and fights. It takes place during the late 90s. ...

The character designs were fitting considering that in the 90s, alt culture like goth, metal and punk was quite the craze then. Their androgynous appearance is a reflection of the image J-Rocks bands often projected. In fact, the story is inspired from the underground alt culture scene in Japan during the 90s. There are references to Rapaunzel, and Alice In Wonderland to the story.

The story focuses on the theme of forbidden love, including Incest, and as such this is really considered to be extremely taboo to many people in the story. The author is very open minded about exploring other things that at the time, would be frowned upon. However, she does it in a way where its observational and leaves it to the reader to interpret how do they view such subjects like LGBT, religion and science. Sara and Setsuna are in love with one another and both really struggle with their feelings for one another.

The concept of morality is explored too. Angels are just as bad as demons and there are no heroes as both sides display a moral fluidity depending on the situation. The story in addition focuses on the consequences of humanity abusing science and the planet because of their unbridled lust for great wealth.

The manga makes references to various mythology and pop culture especially Japanese pop culture and some characters are named after notable people in Japan. The action in the story is good and anybody can die at any given moment.

There are too many characters and too many story lines which causes a back and forth that makes the story disjointed but it is fast paced. It is also really not an easy story to follow especially when a lot of information can be thrown out at once and the convoluted plot does not make sense sometimes. Scenes can take up an entire page due to how overly dense it can be. The nicely detailed art style has the same kind of problem as Godchild, it can be cramped and overly detailed.

Overall, it is a pretty good manga series.

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)