I first heard of Angel Sanctuary from a friend named Stella back in the late 90s. Everyday she would write me emails telling me about the latest Angel Sanctuary manga that she has read, and she was so fascinated with angels (the way my sister Thunder is obsessed with vampires) that she even made up a fiction about them. In her enthusiasm for the subject, she had already translated the entire manga to me without me even seeing a single comic panel. As you can see, it’s pretty understandable why I find the anime extremely lacking in valuable information pertaining to its characters and the sequences of events.

My brother, the prude, is now wondering why on earth I am giving Angel Sanctuary the anime a high rating. He literally almost tore the screen off my TV because of the incestuous relationship that Setsuna and Sara was having, not to mention Rociel’s obsessions with his (her?) own sister Alexiel. I gave it a high rating because of the twists in the storyline that can actually survive even if one hasn’t read the manga. There is depth that is written all over the plot without one having to see too much of the details. In a way, everything seems bizarre — like a hentai title without the ecchi scenes. What I told my brother as a way of haphazard explanation was this: “In the eyes of your Christian God, all of us human beings are His children and are therefore siblings. Biologically we may or may not be related, but spiritually we are. Perhaps Setsuna’s ‘true’ soul transcends the laws of the flesh? Like it doesn’t really matter because we are all related spiritually anyway?” But this is all supposition. I have to re-read the manga again to find the connection between Sara’s soul and Setsuna’s.

To appreciate both the anime and the manga, it takes an open mind. One can question another’s belief or go with the pseudo-reality that is set before our eyes. Setsuna’s God can be passionately cruel and yet benevolently forgiving, much like the Wiccan God/Goddess that has both an enlightened and a dark side. It’s like the law of nature, which always has two sides. Bear in mind that most religious concepts and laws are both of human and of nature. Angel Sanctuary has both elements, and we don’t really know if the philosophy it’s projecting can be considered a half-truth or not (truth and realism are both relative anyway). There is one thing I can say about this title, though: For something fictional, it hurts like it’s real.

Individual Rating: Art/Animation 10; Story 5; Characters 9; Sounds 8

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2001 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Angel Sanctuary, Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.