Angel Sanctuary analysis
Angel Sanctuary is one of the most complicated manga that I’ve ever read. This is not necessarily good. After months before a new volume is published many details are forgotten and it makes it difficult to follow. But it is interesting enough to make an effort.
The main character is Setsuna, the reincarnation of the angel Alexiel. Alexiel’s soul being cursed for her revolt against God to never find happiness, he fells in love with his sister and only wishes to live with her. But his problems become more complex still when he discovers Alexiel’s great power, still inhabiting his body, and when his sister, Sara, gives her life to protect him. Thus begins his journey in Hell and later Heaven, in order to find Sara’s soul and bring her back to life. He also struggles to persuade the people around him, demons and angels, that he is no longer Alexiel but a totally different person.
An idea which I first encountered in “The revolt of the Angels” by Anatole France and then in a comic that I have mentioned before, Lucifer, is also dominant in this manga: the angels are not the benevolent protective creatures that popular imagination wants them to be, but ruthless warriors, violent, thirsty for power and domination.
"We are creatures born of the delusions of the creator God’s twisted ideals” Lucifer, also appearing in the manga, tells. He describes them as selfish, but he allies with the admittedly most selfish but twisted angel. And if we see more carefully, the angels are not at all free to pursue their own desires. Someone mentioned in libertarianism how collectivistic the philosophy of Nazism is. The society of angels reminds us very much of fascism. I find this idea very fascinating because it is a constant reminder of how stereotypes and symbols can affect our unconscious and our thought. Nothing is what it seems and nothing must be judged easily.
Although my favorite character in the manga is Kurai, the young demon girl (oh, wow! - I have a favorite female character and I hadn’t realized!), Setsuna proves to be the most interesting character in the story. Beginning as a troubled, confused schoolboy, he finds the strength to oppose everyone and prove his uniqueness in an environment where everybody is searching something different from him, whether it is Alexiel’s soul or his power to lead the demon army against the angels.
Actually one other interesting idea of the story is that it matters little if the belief in reincarnation has some basis or not. The soul is controlled by the mind and when it inhabits a different body it acquires a different identity. (The mind’s control over the soul is also a basic idea in Fullmetal Alchemist). In the last analysis, the soul is not the basic element of life, whatever it might be.
What Setsuna and Lucifer have in common is their contempt for God, but Lucifer fails to recognize what is wrong with the angel’s ideals, and that’s why he remains an evil character, regardless of his ambiguity. Setsuna accepts selfishness as necessary, as the motive to pursue his goal. He allies not only with the demons, but also some angels, the enlightened individualists of the story.
“I am not trying to save a corrupt heaven. I have no mission to protect the future of the world. Those things are nothing to me. All I want is to return to the Earth I was born on and the people I knew. I want to save the woman I love from her nightmare. I want all of us who’ve struggled together to win, and to have the last laugh.”
“My fate, my choices, my pride, I have to protect them myself.” When he uttered those words, he could be a character directly taken from an Ayn Rand novel.
And finally, some theological thoughts expressed in the manga have to do with the notion of purification. God’s objective is to purify humanity. This is what someone could deduce by reading all the religious texts. This might sound noble, but this is probably the most destructive side of religiosity. How can people accept their fellow humans when they believe in a judgmental god, who promises acceptance but doesn’t give it? What do people gain when they “have god inside them”?