Angel Sanctuary.
Aug. 11th, 2006 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elwenAfter finishing Mirage of Blaze, I was craving more of the same, and somehow ended up reading Angel Sanctuary. It didn't satisfy any of the BL-craving, but if I was looking for more twisted love, I certainly got a lot of that.
[I also started reading Tokyo Babylon, another series on my "to read" list that's plenty dark and BL, but I think my brain is subconsciously rebelling against Japanese. Plus, TB Subaru is just too innocent for my taste.]
So. Angel Sanctuary. And I thought CLAMP was complicated. Even the OVA was enough to figure out that no one would be who he seemed, but I was still surprised by some of the twists. It was a bit too grotesque for me at times -- I don't mind blood and gore a la X, but huge disembodied heads with tubes coming out of the mouth and deformed babies crawling all over it will give me nightmares. After I finished around 3am, I went to the kitchen for water, and a white power cable in our living room that stood out in the dark scared the hell out of me.
Overall, I thought it was a pretty good series. The characters are all well-developed and the story is delightfully overcomplicated. The presentation is confusing sometimes -- I had trouble figuring out what was going on in a lot of fast-paced action scenes, and also when there was a lot of abrupt cutting from one character to another. But that can be effective, too. Unfortunately, the ending sucked. Up to the very end, it seemed like there would be something, but then it just fell apart.
The moment I finished, I knew the ending felt exactly like something else, but I couldn't place my finger on it. The whole, "I release you, my children, please be happy, goodbye" speech and all. I thought it might be Hyperion, which also ends with that sort of "humanity freed from its chains" feel, but there was no speech as such -- Aenea's thing doesn't count. Finally, while talking to my sister the next afternoon I figured it out. The ending's just like Scrapped Princess. It was like a huge pun within a pun, irony within irony of the phrase deus ex machina. Har har har.
Now that I think about it, I think there was another series with a similar ending, too. Where some dead character is bestowing his wishes on the survivors while we see scenes of them all being happy... well, I bet there are tons of anime that end like that. I'm probably thinking of X TV.
So yeah. Looking back, it would seem like the whole "people are not what they seem" thing, culminating in (or perhaps beginning with?) the idea that angels themselves are not what they seem, was way overused, but it really didn't feel that way while reading. I did get a bit frustrated with Lucifer, but that's just because I saw it coming a mile away and it completely ruined one of my favorite characters.
Speaking of favorite characters, I was a bit miffed when Kaori Yuki killed two of them in a row in the same volume. But to be fair, I liked most of the characters, and it wouldn't be true to the series if they'd all survived. [Although some of them came back to life far more times than was fair, and all the ones I wished would come back didn't.] I even ended up liking Belial, whom I initially hated fervently.
Thinking back, Angel Sanctuary was probably the right choice as follow-up to Mirage of Blaze, because Lucifer/Alexiel is actually quite similar to Naoe/Kagetora, what with the repeated reincarnation thing and all. As much as I dislike Lucifer, I find it hard to resist Lucifer/Alexiel (as long as you include that one Kira/Alexiel scene with it, the one that was really reminiscent of Naoe/Kagetora). I mean, two drop-dead sexy characters and tons of sexual tension. What's not to like? But Kira/Katou is pretty hot, too. I thought it was awesome how she brought back Katou, whom I thought was just a throwaway character, and made him all sexy and lovable. ^o^
I can't say I was a big fan of Setsuna. He was just mostly annoying, and I felt pretty bad for Kurai, too. Sara was annoying at first, but I almost liked her while she was talking down angels like Raphael and Sevotharte. But then she was the reason Raphael became un-cool. Boo.
I guess there are a lot of pairings I find cute in which I still dislike one of the characters. Such as Rociel/Katan (stupid Rociel) and Raphael/Michael (stupid Michael). Maybe it's because the characters I dislike are foils, because the half that I like is certainly much less interesting outside of the pairing.
Anyhow, I think I'm done fangirling for now. I might append more as it comes to me.
And here's another good example of a fandom that I arrive to too late to really participate in any discussions or speculations or whatever. Ah well.
And, because I don't know how I'll ever work this into another entry... in an attempt to detox, I went and read all of the languishing drafts of stories and fanfics I have in progress, and I found a file called puns.doc in my Sailor Moon/Xanth crossover directory. There was only one line in it.
She criticized my apartment, so I knocked her flat.
Now, I have no clue whether this is a pun I came up with, or whether I found it somewhere and found it worth reusing. But oh, the groan-inducing-ness. I would be proud if it was mine.
The only potentially decent pun I've ever come up with was "sheets of rain", which is something I'd really wanted to submit to Piers Anthony for use in Xanth (because it goes perfectly in the Water Wing), but I never dared.
[I also started reading Tokyo Babylon, another series on my "to read" list that's plenty dark and BL, but I think my brain is subconsciously rebelling against Japanese. Plus, TB Subaru is just too innocent for my taste.]
So. Angel Sanctuary. And I thought CLAMP was complicated. Even the OVA was enough to figure out that no one would be who he seemed, but I was still surprised by some of the twists. It was a bit too grotesque for me at times -- I don't mind blood and gore a la X, but huge disembodied heads with tubes coming out of the mouth and deformed babies crawling all over it will give me nightmares. After I finished around 3am, I went to the kitchen for water, and a white power cable in our living room that stood out in the dark scared the hell out of me.
Overall, I thought it was a pretty good series. The characters are all well-developed and the story is delightfully overcomplicated. The presentation is confusing sometimes -- I had trouble figuring out what was going on in a lot of fast-paced action scenes, and also when there was a lot of abrupt cutting from one character to another. But that can be effective, too. Unfortunately, the ending sucked. Up to the very end, it seemed like there would be something, but then it just fell apart.
The moment I finished, I knew the ending felt exactly like something else, but I couldn't place my finger on it. The whole, "I release you, my children, please be happy, goodbye" speech and all. I thought it might be Hyperion, which also ends with that sort of "humanity freed from its chains" feel, but there was no speech as such -- Aenea's thing doesn't count. Finally, while talking to my sister the next afternoon I figured it out. The ending's just like Scrapped Princess. It was like a huge pun within a pun, irony within irony of the phrase deus ex machina. Har har har.
Now that I think about it, I think there was another series with a similar ending, too. Where some dead character is bestowing his wishes on the survivors while we see scenes of them all being happy... well, I bet there are tons of anime that end like that. I'm probably thinking of X TV.
So yeah. Looking back, it would seem like the whole "people are not what they seem" thing, culminating in (or perhaps beginning with?) the idea that angels themselves are not what they seem, was way overused, but it really didn't feel that way while reading. I did get a bit frustrated with Lucifer, but that's just because I saw it coming a mile away and it completely ruined one of my favorite characters.
Speaking of favorite characters, I was a bit miffed when Kaori Yuki killed two of them in a row in the same volume. But to be fair, I liked most of the characters, and it wouldn't be true to the series if they'd all survived. [Although some of them came back to life far more times than was fair, and all the ones I wished would come back didn't.] I even ended up liking Belial, whom I initially hated fervently.
Thinking back, Angel Sanctuary was probably the right choice as follow-up to Mirage of Blaze, because Lucifer/Alexiel is actually quite similar to Naoe/Kagetora, what with the repeated reincarnation thing and all. As much as I dislike Lucifer, I find it hard to resist Lucifer/Alexiel (as long as you include that one Kira/Alexiel scene with it, the one that was really reminiscent of Naoe/Kagetora). I mean, two drop-dead sexy characters and tons of sexual tension. What's not to like? But Kira/Katou is pretty hot, too. I thought it was awesome how she brought back Katou, whom I thought was just a throwaway character, and made him all sexy and lovable. ^o^
I can't say I was a big fan of Setsuna. He was just mostly annoying, and I felt pretty bad for Kurai, too. Sara was annoying at first, but I almost liked her while she was talking down angels like Raphael and Sevotharte. But then she was the reason Raphael became un-cool. Boo.
I guess there are a lot of pairings I find cute in which I still dislike one of the characters. Such as Rociel/Katan (stupid Rociel) and Raphael/Michael (stupid Michael). Maybe it's because the characters I dislike are foils, because the half that I like is certainly much less interesting outside of the pairing.
Anyhow, I think I'm done fangirling for now. I might append more as it comes to me.
And here's another good example of a fandom that I arrive to too late to really participate in any discussions or speculations or whatever. Ah well.
And, because I don't know how I'll ever work this into another entry... in an attempt to detox, I went and read all of the languishing drafts of stories and fanfics I have in progress, and I found a file called puns.doc in my Sailor Moon/Xanth crossover directory. There was only one line in it.
She criticized my apartment, so I knocked her flat.
Now, I have no clue whether this is a pun I came up with, or whether I found it somewhere and found it worth reusing. But oh, the groan-inducing-ness. I would be proud if it was mine.
The only potentially decent pun I've ever come up with was "sheets of rain", which is something I'd really wanted to submit to Piers Anthony for use in Xanth (because it goes perfectly in the Water Wing), but I never dared.
