Angel Sanctuary

Original Title: 天使禁猟区
Romanized: Tenshi Kinryouku
Literal: Angel Hunting Prohibited Area

Plot Synopsis

Setsuna is not a normal young man. His only friend, Kira, is the leader of a street gang that routinely and brutally beats him. And, even though their parents divorced years ago and they have grown up apart, Setsuna has always felt unusually close to his younger sister--too close, in fact. But as severe as these problems may seem, he is about to discover something else--that his body holds the soul of the Angel Alexiel, who rebelled against god and has lead armies. But God has grown quiet and discontent is mounting within the halls of heaven and hell, while Alexiel's brother, the insane Rociel, cast out of heaven for his vanity, seeks his sister. The fate of not only Earth, but the realms of Angels and Devils may rest upon young Setsuna's shoulders.

Review

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2004-10-17

One thing I can say for certain: Angel Sanctuary is a memorable OAV series. Most noticeably, it practically oozes controversy--the laundry list of touchy subjects covered include religion, incest, homosexuality, familial dysfunction, and even a touch of drug use. But while I was intrigued by many individual aspects of it, there are a variety of flaws and a general sense of uneven construction that cause the series as a whole to suffer badly. I'll stop just short of calling the end result a mess, but it was more effective as an advertisement for the manga (or supplement for fans) than as a stand-alone OAV series.

Among Angel Sanctuary's stronger points is the unashamed way it confronts the issues involved in the story--it neither shies away from its sensitive subject matter nor aims to shock. The strongest one, both in terms of social unacceptability and how much of the story revolves around it, is (a bit surprisingly) incest--the hero's feelings for his sister are definitely not standard romantic fare, and the turmoil surrounding their relationship, both internal and external, are powerful and where the series is at its best. The social and religious unacceptability of this relationship isn't examined particularly deeply or eloquently, but these aspects are addressed as well.

Though Setsuna's battle with his incestuous desire stands on its own as part of the story, it also serves as an unusual and acute analogy of the oft-portrayed variety of feelings that plague the transition from adolescence to adulthood--isolation, misunderstanding, rebellion from the norm, and self loathing, as well as some of the eventual triumph of coming to terms with yourself and finding your place in the world around you. In particular, I thought the scenes where his internal monologue drowns out the voice of his mother or other adults yelling at him are among the most effective in the series.

Although there are plenty of other characters with potential, there are so many of them and so little time available to establish their personalities and motivations that I didn't end up caring a whole lot about anybody but Setsuna, Kira, and Sara. Though it improves a bit after it gets rolling, this is only the first of the problems the story has with itself.

Being a show with shoujo roots, most of the characters have more than enough angst to go around, although they have a harder edge (both bad-boy types and the insane Rociel) than most shoujo series. In any case, if you're not into gender-bending shoujo-style prettyboys, you're in trouble--none of the angels or devils have a clear gender or sexual orientation.

On the positive side of the shoujo spectrum, I like that it didn't seem to try too hard to set up most of the morally or emotionally difficult situations. True to form, several scenes do seem to work particularly hard at piling tragedy upon tragedy, but even most of these situations are abrupt and brutal enough to lessen the sense of constructed melodrama.

Moving on to the religious aspects, although the Christian mythos used as a basis for the supernatural events in the series at first seems aimed at striking a nerve with some people, the mythology has little enough to do with any actual religious beliefs that I didn't find it particularly worth looking at as any sort of commentary on a specific religion. There was a bit of an implied attack on the moral authority of humans with religious beliefs, but for the most part the Judeo-Christian connection was little more than a set of names and general concepts to work with.

That said, Angel Sanctuary sets its world up as a place where Heaven, Hell, and Earth are not all that different, or that far apart. The conflicts between the self-indulgent and flawed Angels, the not-necessarily-evil Evils and Demons, and the human world that both are connected with form the basis for the series' plot, and it's also where things go very wrong.

The biggest flaw in Angel Sanctuary is the amount of material it tries to squeeze into three OAVs--far too much to do justice to the whole. Most of the series doesn't feel hurried as much as just jumbled--dense explanations of mythology and dramatic scenes involving poorly introduced characters with motives that don't seem to make sense at all are stuffed together with almost no segue or flow.

Among other things, we're subjected to a lot of the angelic equivalent of technobabble; several relatively long descriptions of a variety of wars, political conflicts, and reasons for the pending apocalypse punctuate the plot, but most of them sound remarkably like nonsense to the viewer not already familiar with the comic version. I found myself re-watching scenes several times to try and figure out what they were talking about, but in the end most of it seems entirely unnecessary--it usually doesn't further the plot and most of the descriptions are too rushed and generally unclear to mean much anyway.

Although things even out a little bit after the first part (partly because you've gotten your bearings at that point), it all comes to a very abrupt conclusion, and several of the best dramatic scenes toward the end lose a lot of their impact because there simply isn't any setup until a few minutes before the climax. Although I did like the unexpected end, even it felt a bit out of place, and you're also taunted with a completely indecipherable preview of the never-animated continuing story.

Ironically, a look at the original manga reveals that there was actually enough time to do a lot more with the same material. The OAVs attempt to cover roughly the first three volumes of the manga, and not only were many scenes taken almost word-for-word from the manga, but surprisingly little was cut out. However, some very brief moments here and there that set the stage for later events were unwisely removed, leaving things like the ongoing connection between the "Inorganic Angel Rociel" and technology under-explained and easily missed.

Worse yet, the comic version explains the same things about heaven and hell much more clearly, and probably spends less time doing it--the muddled nature of the backstory has as much to do with poor writing (and not much of it due to the translation) as anything. To the series' credit, there are a handful of flashbacks that work fairly well, but only a handful. With shorter, clearer explanations, a minimum of pruning, and a few brief scenes (or just lines) added here and there to establish things that come into play later, the story could have left almost everything intact and done a much more effective job with its strong points. Honestly disappointing.

Next on the list of inconsistent things about Angel Sanctuary comes the visuals. Basically, the series keeps bordering on looking really slick, but rarely succeeds. There are a variety of the sort of creepy, symbolic, and subtly supernatural images that you'd expect out of a shoujo series involving angels lurking in the human world, but the animation is awkward or choppy enough to badly mar most scenes with any action in them. Other parts had all the visual elements, but just aren't drawn well enough to pull off the full effect. Sad, since the original is very stylish and the budget seems to be there--many (though oddly not all) scenes are just very poorly animated.

The art is also somewhat inconsistent, with occasionally bland backgrounds contrasting with detailed and attractive character art, but overall it is quite good (if a bit brightly colored for the subject matter). I also like the (mostly classic shoujo style) character designs, though I got some characters confused a couple of times (still, telling who is who is much easier than in the manga).

Even the music is a mixed bag; most of the background themes are good, though none stand out in my memory. The opening theme is weaker, but still acceptable, while the end theme is awful--I suppose someone might like it, but it sounded more like karaoke than professional singing to me.

The voice acting in Japanese is all around very good. Both the leads and minor players sport a variety of dramatic performances and reasonably distinctive voices. Setsuna in particular has some powerful moments, without seeming overblown or annoyingly angst-ridden. There are also a couple of small but unusual turns from Orikasa Ai that I enjoyed, but then I always notice her--convincing as both a frightening and powerful angel and (uncredited) as Setsuna's distraught mother (the overlap doesn't seem to be symbolic of anything, if you're wondering). I only skimmed the English dub, which seems solid enough.

In the end, I was a bit surprised by Angel Sanctuary. Surprised because despite the fact that I was very disappointed by the numerous flaws throughout the production, I actually felt that it was worth watching. I still think that it is basically a rather poorly directed, choppily written, rushed mess, but it brought enough interesting concepts from the source material to make for at least an interesting experience. Certainly not for everybody, but it might be worth a shot, and fans of the manga will at the very least get to see plenty of very familiar scenes played out in animation.

Related Recommendations

Other shoujo stories with a generally similar theme include Earthian, X: 1999 and X: The Motion Picture, Please Save My Earth, to a lesser degree Tokyo Babylon (much more introspective), and maybe Revolutionary Girl Utena (generally weirder, but with similar apocalyptic overtones).

US DVD Review

The DVD is one of USM's better releases in their newer format. To start with, the video is crisp and bright, as is the audio--no significant problems that I noticed. The episodes are indexed, the full bilingual cast is included (at the end--the entire original credits, and even opening copyright screen, are intact for all three episodes), and there are even a variety of fun special features: Character sketches, other artwork, a really cheesy quiz game, and one of USM's "making of" videos about the dubbing process. As with similar bonus flicks, you'll get to meet some of the actors, watch a bit of acting, and get various people's thoughts on the story and characters--interesting stuff. There are also some DVD-ROM bits to see if you've got a properly equipped PC, including scripts and browseable images (the same as the ones you can get to through the menus).

Content Guide

Angel Sanctuary features several very violent sequences, a variety of highly controversial (and mature) themes, and a fair amount of overt sexuality. It is most definitely in the 16-up category.

Violence: 3 - Bloody and direct, but not particularly gratuitous.

Nudity: 2 - Some brief nudity.

Sex/Mature Themes: 4 - Mostly non-physical, but there are blunt mature themes and incest features prominently in the story.

Language: 1 - Little that I noticed.

Notes and Trivia

Based on the Angel Sanctuary manga series by Kaori Yuki. The story, as mentioned above, follows roughly the first three volumes of the manga, one per OAV. The manga series, as hinted at by the preview for a nonexistent fourth episode, continues considerably longer--this is only the beginning of the story.

Availability

Available in the US from US Manga Corps on one bilingual DVD.

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