Angel Sanctuary volumes 12-14

[rachelmanija]

I finished this series a while ago, but was unable to write it up because every time I attempted a thoughtful, coherent analysis, the content I was trying to analyze was so deliciously demented, so carefully foreshadowed yet totally insane, that my head exploded

Comments

[coffeeandink]

Sometimes I forget how this is truly THE BEST SERIES EVER.

So the Lailah story is, she wasn't Zaphikel's lover; she was the assistant of Zaphikel's lover, whose name I forget, and had a crush on Zaphikel, who never returned it. She was gang-raped by angels who were upset at women scientists and/or rumors about what Lailah's boss was doing in the lab, blamed for it because she was female, and blamed Nidhurag, another lab assistant who actually came to her aid. Nidhurag was executed or condemned to something or other that meant he ended up being the vast leviathan Setsuna rode in Uriel's realm back in volume 4 or 5. Lailah, meanwhile, had blamed Nidhurag as part of the process of going insane from trauma and guilt about her own sexual desire for Zaphikel and therefore faked her own death and disguised herself as the male Sevothtarte.

Zaphikel's lover, Lailah's boss, was working on a project to clone angels or something to do with artificial conception or gestation; I forget the exact details. She was having doubts about her work when she discovered she was pregnant and she and Zaphikel were making plans to flee Heaven. Zaphikel decided to go on One More Mission which of course happened to be the one where his lover was kidnapped by terrorists and killed by them, or kidnapped by Heavenly forces pretending to be terrorists who tricked Zaphikel into firing the shots that killed his lover -- I forget the exact macabre details here. Suffice to say, there was blood! And tragedy! And pain! And all the good stuff you find on every other page of Angel Sanctuary.

This led to Zaphikel joining the secret resistance against Heaven, eventually. Someone or other in Heaven extracted the unborn fetus from his lover and had it gestated in its mother's equipment, maybe for a sane reason or maybe just to screw with Zaphikel, I forget. Maybe it was Rosiel? It sounds like a Rosiel plan.

PS

[coffeeandink]

I think letting Zaphikel eat him was the ultimate act of love, but then Zaphikel realized it was Raziel despite being a FLESH-EATING ZOMBIE WITH DECAYING BRAINS and flung him away, in his own ultimate act of love, and the only way to top that was to accept the sacrifice.

One day we should go through AS and count how many disembodied heads there are.

[coffeeandink]

It makes Saiyuki Gaiden's Heaven look downright heavenly.

[rachelmanija]

Thank you! I knew I'd forgotten some Byzantine plot.

maybe for a sane reason

Unlikely, all things considered.