The Art of Angel Sanctuary: Lost Angel (2007) Lucifer Artwork Illustrated By: Kaori Yuki

Series: Tenshi Kinryouku Artist: Kaori Yuki Publication: Hana to Yume #1 (01/1997) Details: 1997 Hana to Yume Original Calendar (November-December) Source: Scanned from my personal collection

Cain Saga On the cover of Hana to Yume - April 1993

The Art of Angel Sanctuary 2: Lost Angel

Kaori Yuki

Angel Sanctuary by Kaori Yuki

God Child (2001-2004) by Kaori Yuki

Angel Sanctuary Collector's Edition 1

Angel Sanctuary Artworks Illustrated By: Kaori Yuki (2004-2007)

Series: Tenshi Kinryouku Artist: Kaori Yuki Publication: Hana to Yume Issue #1 (01/1995) Details: Hana to Yume Super Visual Calendar (Mar-Apr) Source: Scanned from my personal collection

Godchild On the cover of Hana to Yume - July 2003

Shoujo Thoughts - Angel Sanctuary

I finally completed Angel Sanctuary by Yuki Kaori. For me, it's been a long time coming, having watched the OVAs well over a year ago and reading a couple volumes last fall, to finally continuing and completing it within the last couple months. In comparison to the last series I covered (Hana Kimi), this one is a lot more fresh in my mind and honestly just denser content wise. Again, I'll be pretty light on spoilers until the character section.

To get things out of the way, yes this series touches sensitive and weird scenarios, I assume most infamous for it's incestuous relationship between Setsuna (the protagonist) and his sister Sara. This is done for several reasons that I won't really go into for sake of spoilers, but in a manga with heaven and hell and religious themes, they are condemned throughout the entire story. I never really rooted for them or considered their relationship "cute" because of the nature of their relationship always looming in the back of my mind, but the story itself consistently marks their love for each other as a huge sin so contextually it made sense. It wasn't fetishizing their relationship, rather it was a building block for the greater narrative and the result of a curse placed on Alexiel (who Setsuna is the reincarnation of). It's still admittedly weird but I was able to compartmentalize it for sake of continuing and seeing what the story built around it offered. On a whole, this story tackles many taboo or tragic relationships.

This is my first time reading something by Yuki Kaori and it certainly made a big impression. Her art is really well done and detailed, with a gothic-leaning style that at times emphasizes horror and gore. The tone of the series is pretty serious but also is well balanced with humor and lightheartedness. As someone who's not religious or overly informed, I'm sure many of the references went over my head and at times the names of the various places would be hard for me to remember. The story had a lot of twists and admittedly was pretty tragic throughout.

I enjoyed the worldbuilding as well; all three of the realms (Earth, Heaven and Hell) had interesting areas visually and the way things operated in each place was pretty well explained or shown through visual cues. The politics were easy enough to follow while still allowing twists in the plot to occur. It was interesting to see that the inhabitants of both heaven and hell were portrayed as somewhere between morally gray to straight up twisted. It made most of the characters have unique and interesting motivations. There's also a ton of different characters (with varying significance) so I'm sure any one could find several characters that they'd enjoy. Some of my favorites throughout were Kira, Kato, Hatter, Katan, Rosiel, Michael, etc. The mangaka also seemed to have no issue with killing a character off which made it anxiety-inducing for me at times when a character I liked seemed to be in danger because I stopped doubting that she would really kill them off.

I would say my favorite arcs were the Hades arc and the Hell arc, I really enjoyed the look of these places as well as the pacing. Kato was one of my favorite characters so it was nice to see the parts that had a larger focus on him as well as the beginning of Setsuna realizing the possible flaws of his recklessness. Hatter was also a pretty twisted character that made for an interesting arc with a lot of great imagery (the parts with Kurai specifically had nice visuals). I found the story overall to be a interesting fantasy epic that covers a lot of ground. In fact, I feel as though this one would be good to reread at some point to help absorb all the content.

Favorite character (contains spoilers) : Kira

Kira was the character that I found most interesting throughout. He was pretty layered due to his tragic past and all the suffering he went through, which made it hard to tell what his actual motivations were or if he truly meant some of the things he'd say (even when it seemed like he didn't). He was an emotional support for Setsuna (presented as a lot more mature than Setsuna), and it seems like he struggled for a while about whether he was actually attached to Setsuna or just there for him because of his affection for Alexiel, who he has always been chasing. Kira however is also a reincarnation of Lucifer, which creates a lot of issues later on (ruthless murder, seeming betrayal, etc.). Overall, he was the character I would get most excited about seeing because it was hard to tell where his character arc would lead him.

//Sidenote// I found the little sidebar comments from the mangaka in this series amusing. She would say things like "Sorry I killed this character but I wasn't really fond of them" or "Yes this character was specifically created to later die so sorry if you got attached", etc. I had to hunt this sidebar down because I remember finding it funny how she described this ("kind of a gay and dark, perverted story"). Were these characters ever used? I have no idea but it made me laugh.