"Because my time is limited, I don't have time to waste hesitating. That is why I can walk straight ahead. That is why I never stop."
Chrono Crusade is an anime adaptation of Daisuke Moriyama's manga, from the ever controversial and bold studio Gonzo, the series made quite a stir back when it aired in 2003 due to elements such as a taboo romance between a nun and a demon, Christian lore integrated into the plot, religious themes and a tragic finale that still to this day is pretty rare to occur in shounen anime. Both the manga and the anime series are among my favorites, but I tend to give special attention to the anime, because it is the version of Chrono Crusade that tends to get the most criticism, either from manga purists who automatically call anything that isn't an exact panel-to-panel adaptation of the source material garbage, or because of criticisms such as "the whole plot is pointless because everything was for naught" or "the second half has an inconsistent tone and gets too convoluted" and other things commonly said by those plebs who got caught in the filter. In fact, I disagree with the vast majority of the criticism the Chrono Crusade anime receives, as the points tend to be either straight up wrong or only partially right, and I'll discuss some of them in this review when it's relevant to talk about them.
Anyway... Yup, the Chrono Crusade anime diverges from the manga, even in the first half that adapts the manga storyline, it's still a fairly loose adaptation: Some of the manga-adapted stories play out differently, some chapters of the manga got cut out because they're not relevant to the anime's storyline, several episodes are exclusive to the anime, and the plot in general for the second half is radically different from the source material. However, I don't care if a series follows its source material faithfully or not, as long as it's still a good story, I'm more than willing to accept it for what it is and recommend to anyone else, as I do with the 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist and Bokurano, another controversial Gonzo manga adaptation that gets flak for not following the manga. Maybe I'll write a Bokurano review too once I stop being a lazy bastard, but not today.
Sadly, though, Chrono Crusade is barely discussed nowadays, as older anime tend to fade into obscurity after everyone has already discussed everything about them, unless they're either famous long running shounen or provide quality shitposting material for weebs to keep on making memes and/or waifu wars for eternity, like Evangelion, Code Geass and Darling in the FranXX managed to do. Fortunately, I'm one of those guys who remember Chrono Crusade and still think it's a masterpiece of a series, and since my opinion is the only objectively correct one in the entire internet, you either agree with me, or you're simply wrong. Now, let's properly dive into this series as I try my best to explain what makes it so great.
Set in America fresh out of World War I and all the prosperity of the roaring 20s, Chrono Crusade tells the story of a nun called Rosette Christopher and her demon partner Chrono as they work for the Order of Magdalene, an organization created to combat the demonic threats that started to mysteriously pop up all over the country. Rosette and Chrono aren't just fighting demons for the sake of it, however, they're after Rosette's brother, Joshua Christopher, who was taken away by a mysterious demon called Aion and his group called the Sinners, all of which seem to share a bit of a history with Chrono.
The way Chrono Crusade plays out during its first half is somewhat akin to early Fullmetal Alchemist in a sense that it's an action shounen with dark undertones and some comedy thrown in there so the series doesn't get way too gloomy... Often bad and poorly-timed comedy that honestly the series would have been better off without it. But hey, if Fullmetal Alchemist (especially Brotherhood) can get away with that shit, then so can Chrono Crusade. Regardless, the first quarter of Chrono Crusade mostly revolves around Chrono and Rosette taking up demon-hunting missions for the Order as their personalities and relationship get fleshed out and we're introduced to other characters, the most important ones being: Azmaria Hendric, a portuguese soprano singer who's also one of the seven apostles blessed with God's holy power, and Satella Harvenheit, a pair of breasts who's able to summon magical stands with her jewels, called a "jewel witch" in the series.
One of Chrono Crusade's strengths is precisely the interactions between its characters, striking a perfect balance between lighthearted fun, genuinely heartwarming and sad. Chrono and Rosette are at odds with each other in many ways, her being a hot-headed energetic girl who gets in trouble easily while he's calm, composed and passive to a fault, the way they play off of each other and have all this bantz is pretty fun. The series does a fantastic job at showing how different their personalities are, yet at the same time how deep their borderline-romantic bond goes and how much this contract between then hurts on both sides, it's easy to see how important they truly are to each other despite their silly antics as they both grow as characters. Azmaria and Satella, while not having as much focus as the leading pair, still get their fair share of moments, moreso Azmaria than Satella, who unfortunately is a bit underdeveloped in here.
That's not to say they're not good characters individually, each one of them develops and the character arcs they go through are very satisfying... Mostly. As I mentioned before, Satella leaves a bit to be desired due to her having significantly less screen time than the other three, but it's good enough to be acceptable nonetheless. The character arcs are mostly tied to the central themes of the series: Mortality, faith, loss, family, stuggling with the past, and last but not least, the concept of "good" and "evil" and how the line between those two opposites is blurrier than we believe, and all of these are more or less incorporated into the main protagonist, Rosette.
The way Rosette is handled is a brilliant example of subtle characterization and development, she's presented as this idealistic headstrong girl who, despite having a tragic past that caused her to essentially miss out on enjoying childhood and adolescence, as well as making a contract that's cut her life short and will prevent her from making up for that in the future, is still very optimistic, passionate and caring towards the people around her. But Rosette isn't quite the shounen hero she appears to be at the start of the series, that's more like an image she puts up in order to convince Chrono and the others, as well as herself, that she's fine and it'll all turn well in the end. Rosette isn't really fine, though, her traumatic past and the fact that most of her short life was spent fighting and looking for her brother are taking a toll on her, emotionally she's far weaker than she lets it show and fears that she might die before saving Joshua.
The series starts to show this around episode 8, when one of the Sinners, Rizelle, mentions Joshua and actually succeeds in convincing Rosette to board a train with her under the promise that she will see her brother if she goes with them. Rosette was actually willing to abandon everyone that was on her side just for a slight chance at getting to Joshua, not even caring if she could be walking alone into a trap or anything, and if Minister Remington hadn't stopped her at the last second, she would probably be in a much worse situation. From that episode onwards, Rosette still retains her lighthearted personality, but at the same time she also slowly starts to get gloomier, she gets visibly disturbed by seeing people die because she, more than anybody, knows how valuable life is. Around episode 16 Rosette doesn't resemble her earlier self all that much, she's more fearful of what will happen to her, especially because of the holy stigmata that started to appear on her body.
The last time we see Rosette being lighthearted and having fun with her friends is on episode 18 during the festival, but even that episode has a really sad undertone as Rosette and Chrono talk about how important they are to each other and Chrono states that he does not intend to live longer than her. If this was Rosette from the earlier episodes, she would get angry at Chrono for being overdramatic and wanting to throw his life away for her, but now that she has even less time than before and got considerably less certain of her future, she reluctantly accepts his wish of dying together with her. It's one of my favorite scenes and shows how far they are now from the goofy pair we saw in the first couple of episodes.
Then things go to hell right at the end of that episode and never go back to being lighthearted fun again... It all culminates in one of the most powerful and gut-wrenching final episodes I've seen in any anime, probably the most well-known episode from this series too. However, as much as I love the final episode and have it as my favorite, I disagree with the notion of some people that it's "by far" the best episode and the rest of the series doesn't compare. No, the final episode is only as good as it is because of how the rest of the series built up to that conclusion, if you detach it from the rest it becomes just another tear-jerking moment and loses its impact.
Final episode aside, the other characters receive quite a bit of development too, but they don't have as much focus as Rosette, not even Chrono. I mean, Chrono is a very good character here and has a well done arc exploring the trauma he suffers from his own past way before he met Rosette and Joshua and how it affects him in the present, but I always thought he played second fiddle to Rosette way too much. Aside from when he transforms into his true form and uses the full extent of his demon powers to fight at the cost of Rosette's lifespan, he's kind of weak and gets his ass kicked around quite a bit, and I feel it would have been more interesting to have him fight in his sealed form too instead of just being some kind of support while Rosette does the fighting. Nevertheless, it is a minor complaint, he's still a well-written character for the most part, my only gripe is that I wish his past with Aion, the Sinners and Mary Magdalene wasn't explored in just one episode, it came off as a bit rushed.
Azmaria's character arc, unlike what people usually assume, is not about her becoming a badass fighter who can take on demons like Rosette, people often call her useless because of her fear of demons during combat, but that's not really the point. I mean, she does say she wants to get stronger, but she's still just a 12 year old girl who's been through a lot of grief and has zero combat experience, you don't just become an amazing demon hunter overnight. Azmaria's story is about her finding her place in the world after losing her parents to WWI at a very young age and her status as an Apostle blessed with God's power causing her to become a target of people who want to use her powers for their own gain, leading her to be adopted by Ricardo Hendric, one of the early villains in the series, and the band of singers with whom she traveled around the country to get killed by demons.
After being Rescued by Chrono and Rosette and joining the Order, Azmaria is shown to be submissive and have an incredibly low self-esteem as she blames herself for all the tragedy that's happened with those around her and does not believe her own worth. Inspired by Rosette, she becomes determined to change into a better and stronger person, but of course, this is a tough road for such a young girl, so she still shows more than a few signs of weakness until later in the series when she's matured, so much that when Chrono is at his lowest point moping about how he's taken Rosette's life away, she's the one who reminds him that there's much more to their relationship than just him draining her life away, which puts him back on track. I just love Azmaria's growth from a girl who believes he's worthless due to only bringing misfortune to those around her to realizing she deserves to be happy, and most importantly, she is capable of bringing happines to those important to her, the Christmas episode focused on her is one of my favorite episodes because of this.
Satella... Is the weakest of the main characters. Not because she's a bad character herself, but she's mostly separated from the other three doing her own business, and her arc is a bit cookie-cutter: She holds a grudge against demons because her family was slaughtered by a mysterious hornless demon who's taken away her older sister and is totally not Aion, and she thinks Chrono might be the one since he also doesn't have horns, but starts to warm up to him later and becomes friendlier towards Rosette and Azmaria too as she begins to trust them more. She's pretty likeable, though, and there are a couple interesting aspects to her, the parallels between her and Rosette are nice and episode 11 (one of the weaker episodes, unfortunately) at least does a good job at portraying how different their views on life and sacrifice are despite their similar struggle.
A few minor characters also get some development as the series goes on, mainly Sister Kate, the leader of the Order's NY branch who's not very happy with Chrono being Rosette's partner in the ranks of the Order as she, along with pretty much everyone else, views demons as pure evil. Sister Kate gets a bit of Rosette's optimism rubbed on her and starts to appreciate Chrono as well, which leads to her defending him as an important member of the Order later in a discussion with the higher-ups when they were offered to join forces with the demons in order to fight the Sinners, who are a common enemy. I find it interesting that Sister Kate did not back off from defending Chrono and suggesting that they take this offer, even though everyone was criticizing her for it, and this experience changed quite a bit about her faith, she started to question some of the things God apparently planned for everyone, even though she still keeps believing.
I wish more was done with other characters who had potential and ended up playing a relatively minor role, like Joshua, Fiore and Remington. I mean, Remington does a handful of stuff in the story, but I feel the twist regarding his actual status later in the series could have been better used. Regardless, I don't think there's any bad character to speak of here at least, just some that could have been done better and a few others that are just mediocre or forgettable.
As the series goes on, it introduces a handful of plot elements: The Prophecies of Fatima, the seven Apostles, the Astral Line, which is more or less the Lifestream from Final Fantasy VII, the demons' source of power being their horns which draw energy from the Astral Line and Chrono's lack of horns forcing him into using Rosette's life as a substitute source, we get some glimpses of the demon world Pandemonium, the mother of all demons who's also called Pandemonium. All of this stuff gets properly explained in the series, but I wish we got more of Pandemonium... Both Pandemoniums, since details about the demon society and how Pandemonium was ruled are pretty scarce, but what's been shown is at least enough for me to get what was going on: The Sinners killed Pandemonium and stole its head, throwing their society into chaos and causing them to be branded as traitors by the other demons who are still hunting them to this day.
And this leads us to Aion... Who is a fairly difficult character to talk about, actually. In a sense, I guess you could say that superficially he's evil for the sake of being evil and embodies the most despicable aspects of any living being, but he's a much more nuanced take on this type of villain. Aion seems to be inspired by the prophecized Antichrist especially in the final stretch of the series, his goal is to collect the Apostles and use their power along with the head of Pandemonium to get rid of God and the system he binds the demons to, essentially using them as tools to test people's faith, increasing his authority as a result. Through Aion, the series puts God in a more negative perspective, as the big bad does some horrible things to everyone and asks why doesn't God show up to stop him if he's able to do so, constantly mocking and blaming God for everything. With time, you start to question the same thing, like... Yes, why doesn't God do something about Aion? Does he not care about what's happening on the Earth? Does he think humanity deserves to be tormented by Aion like that? What's his deal anyway? I'm pretty sure everyone has asked questions like these before, it's natural that we expect an all-powerful benevolent being who created us to be able to do something about the bad things that happen.
Chrono Crusade's portrayal of God is not necessarily that he's evil or that he's uncaring of his creations, after all he gave humanity the means to fight the demons off and even blessed a few among us with a fraction of his own power in order to assist us. But God also gave us free will, we can use the gifts he gave us in any way we want, and unfortunately cases like Azmaria's power being used by terrible people for their own gain happen. Even in the real world we see things like pastors using God's name and performing "miracles" just to get money out of people who are too blinded by their faith to realize that they're being deceived. But in Chrono Crusade's case, you can argue that God was actually watching all along and only decided to act when it was most convenient to him, not by personally showing up and stopping Aion, but by giving Azmaria a power boost when things got out of hand at episode 7, or giving Rosette the holy stigmata. It's like God is still manipulating everyone into acting according to his plan, even Aion who fails to realize it and still believes he's doing something that will bring an end to God.
Basically, what Chrono Crusade has to say about religion and God isn't that they're bad, but that God is a mysterious figure, we don't know who exactly God is or what he wants, so we shouldn't be blinded by our faith like so many people out there end up becoming. And religion, while having many good people attached to it, can also bring out the bad aspects of other people, the final stretch of the series even shows how easily people who fell into despair can be manipulated by someone who poses themselves as some kind of holy savior to them, becoming completely oblivious to this person's true intentions. It's a much smarter way to tackle this subject than the cynical "naw man religion bad" message that's often present in japanese and even a handful of western works.
The writers certainly did their homework, the way Christian lore and symbolism are incorporated into Chrono Crusade's plot doesn't feel like it was done by people who don't know what they're talking about. Even if certain liberties were taken, like demons being capable of being good and working with humans while in actual Christianity they're just pure unadulterated evil, but that's part of the themes here. Due to how they were created, demons and humans are different in nature, the former leaning towards evil and the latter towards good, but much like humans are capable of going against their nature and doing bad things, demons can do the same and perform good acts... Because, you know... Things aren't black and white. During the final episode, it is implied that after Rosette and Chrono died together, her soul definitely won't be damned to hell by God for dealing with a demon, and I think this moment makes it very clear that God also does not view things in black and white either.
In any case... Chrono Crusade is still an action shounen series at heart, which makes it easy for some people to just write the more complex aspects of the plot off, because apparently a fun action shounen can't possibly have anything profound to say. A common criticism is that the series suffers from tonal shifts, which I agree, but they're not nearly as bad as they're made out to be. The poorly-timed bad comedy certainly helps with the tonal shifts and I'd rather not have pervy old man boob jookes, as well as the (thankfully few) fanservice moments feel out of place. But when I see people saying the series "suddenly" becomes very dark in the final quarter which is supposed to be totally inconsistent with the rest of it being a lighthearted action shounen, I have to ask... What series were you watching? Because it's definitely not Chrono Crusade.
It's true that the final quarter of the series is much darker than the rest, but it's simply not a case of a fun action series that suddenly became an apocalyptic tragedy. The dark and tragic elements of Chrono Crusade were always there since the beginning: Chrono and Rosette's contract slowly killing her, characters like Azmaria and Ricardo were victims of tragedy from World War I, Satella's family was murdered right in front of her, the story of how Rosette and Joshua met Chrono, how he was taken away by Aion and how the contract between Chrono and Rosette was form was anything but happy, there's the entirety of episode 7... I could go on, but I think you get what I'm saying. As much as the series presented itself as an action shounen with some lightearted moments and episodes, it always had a dark atmosphere as well, it just didn't take the center stage completely until the climax from episode 18 onwards, but the progression towards a darker tone was always visible.
Regardless, Chrono Crusade is a well-paced series for the most part. There's one episode in particular, that being episode 14, that I feel could have been cut off because it doesn't really offer anything of significance despite being cute and all. And really, I think the time spent in this episode could have been used instead to add more time to the events in episodes 21 to 23, because they do feel like they're unfolding a little too quickly, and an extra episode to cover what happens in them would certainly help. But aside from that one episode, all of the others contribute to the narrative of the series, the ones that don't advance the plot all that much give more insight on the characters and the setting. Speaking of setting... Yes, I think there are some historical inaccuracies, but I don't really care much for that kind of thing. I usually accept this kind of stuff as alternate pasts, and as long as they at least capture the feeling of whatever period in the past they're trying to go for I'm fine with it, and Chrono Crusade captures the atmosphere of 1920s America very well.
Production-wise... Well... It's a Gonzo series, which means the series can look very good for most of the time, but then in some episodes it decides to look like complete shit with off-model characters and awkward animation. Fortunately, the badly-animated episodes are a minority, and while the art and character designs may very much be a product of 2000s, they're all colorful and distinct, so it's pleasing to the eyes at least, and the scenery is fantastic, with lots of details and vivid colors to look at. Action scenes are pretty solid, demons (especially the Sinners) are pretty threatening in a sense that they seem to be invulnerable to a lot of the weaponry Rosette has and can require a bit of brains to be dealt with, I just don't get why they chose the demon aura color to be yellow, it doesn't really match them very well, but alright then.
To make up for the standard Gonzo production, there's a gorgeous soundtrack to listen to as you watch the series unfold, the opening theme is good but standard for anime, and the ending is just amazing in its melancholy, Sayonara Solitia is one of my favorite ending tracks ever... But aside from that, the music is pretty good, it's largely orchestral stuff with some jazzy tracks, and my favorites being the ones that play during the sadder moments of the series, especially the one that plays in Chrono and Rosette's final moments, it's just so beautiful it hurts.
This write-up has already been way longer than necessary, so I guess I should stop. I just wanted to express how much I love Chrono Crusade, it's not very common for me to feel touched by an anime series the same way I did with this one. I'm not one to cry to stuff like anime, games or even movies, but the final episode of Chrono Crusade is one of the few things that made me almost shed a tear. Despite the rough edges, this is a fantastic series that manages to be fun, heartwarming, tragic and genuinely meaningful in one package. Maybe the religous elements won't be for everyone and I understand that, but it is what elevated Chrono Crusade from simply a good action shounen to something greater and more unique to me. Gonzo may be a hit-and-miss studio overall, but this is one of their shows that will always have a special place in my heart, I hope I'm able to convince more people to give it a shot.
