thoughts on Angel Sanctuary, part 1
Aug. 11th, 2006 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfalling---------------------------------------------
Thoughts on Angel Sanctuary
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This is not anywhere near all of my thoughts on Angel Sanctuary, but this is all I have organized enough to be worth posting. I think my next goal is to handwave all the kludgy bits; or to talk about the treatment of morality, sin, and love; or to analyze the portrayal of selfishness and altruism; or to do some really detailed character analysis... but only after I write some actual fiction, since I am not really in the business of literary analysis these days!
WARNING: I am spoiling just about everything in the manga. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read!
Okay.
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(Almost) all the backstory:
Before I can figure out what I think about the story (besides the fact that I really, really like it), I want to get straight what the story is -- the backstory, that is, which is explained in bits and pieces throughout the manga, and which is often incomplete, misleading, or flat-out wrong for one reason or another. Therefore, a timeline of sorts:
In the beginning, God left/escaped/survived his/her/its previous universe.
God created the universe, presumably starting with the mostly spiritual dimension that contains heaven and hell, and then the physical dimension that contains the earth. The completely spiritual dimension of Hades and the random in-between places were probably also created at this time. The purpose seems to have been some sort of experiment, which relied heavily on oppositional dualities -- good and evil, heaven and hell, spirit and body, male and female, life and death, love and hate, etc.
At some point in here, God created Adam Kadamon (also known as Seraphita), who has six wings, who can stop, reverse, and accelerate time, and who is both male and female. Adam Kadamon seems to be the parent of all the angels, though how this worked at first is unknown. After a while, Adam Kadamon began to speak against God's rules, and God cut up hir body, locked hir away, and essentially used hir as a living spiritual battery and artificial womb.
God created humans, who at first lived in the garden of Eden in Atziluth, the highest heaven. Then they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree and got kicked down to earth. Exact details are somewhat vague, especially since the only significant tree in the garden during the manga storyline is the Tree of Life, which is... well, more like a tree of death. It grows from Adam Kadamon's left eye.
Anyway. God began experimenting with ways to divide or recreate Adam Kadamon's power, resulting in several sets of twinned angels. (Angels are not otherwise supposed to have families.) The first set was Alexiel and Rosiel, the Organic and Inorganic angels. (What, precisely, Kaori Yuki means by 'organic' and 'inorganic' is unclear, though the current form of Rosiel's power seems to have something to do with electronics.) The second set was Lucifer and Michael. The third set was Astoreth and Astarte. The fourth set was Metatron and Sandalphon. No others appear in the story.
All four pairs got thoroughly screwed over by God, though in rather different ways. Alexiel is the older twin in her pair, and Rosiel's body seems to have been created from hers. Apparently this didn't work terribly well, or his power is somehow incompatible with living flesh, and his body began to rot. Alexiel bargained with God to fix her brother; the price was that she couldn't ever see him or talk to him, and was locked up in Eden, where the Tree of Life suppressed her powers. Rosiel knew nothing of this. Rosiel also had a massive inferiority complex, as well as an obsessive love for his sister and a need for her attention. And God's 'fix' wasn't really a fix, since it left Rosiel slowly going insane as his body decomposed, recomposed, and (I think) aged in reverse. (This may have been intentional, since near the end of the manga God says something about Rosiel being a legendary angel of destruction, now that his power has been released. I think, therefore, that Rosiel was one of the failsafes to terminate God's experiment.)
Meanwhile, Lucifer and Michael had a prophecy made at their birth (or release from Atziluth) that said one would be a child of light, and the other was destined to fall into darkness and become the prince of evil. For various reasons, everyone thought Michael would be the dark one. Then Lucifer was summoned to meet with God, whereupon he learned God had decided that humans needed an example of absolute evil as well as an example of good, and Lucifer was designated to rebel and become the enemy of heaven.
Lucifer was furious at having his life decided for him, but he couldn't figure out how to effectively rebel against God when he was supposed to rebel. On his way out of Atziluth, he broke into Eden and decided to kill Alexiel to spite God. (Possibly he also meant to rape her; this is unclear.) However, Alexiel took his sword from him and revealed that she had sinned by eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, which was the flesh of Adam Kadamon, her parent, and God hated her anyway.
Lucifer decided he liked her.
The first holy war followed, wherein Lucifer rebelled against heaven, and, rather than actually fighting Michael, simply left the battlefield. (Maybe he didn't want to fight his brother. Maybe he didn't feel like playing along with God's plans. His motives aren't stated.) The fallen angels ended up in hell, which was unfit to support life. Lucifer used his own body to stabilize the seven layers of hell.
After a while, he somehow left that body (Uriel may or may not have been involved in this; it's not terribly clear in the scanlations I read) and sneaked into Eden to talk to Alexiel. She agreed to escape with him. However, they got caught, and someone stuffed Lucifer's soul into Nanatsusaya, the Seven-Bladed Sword, which was used by various people for a while until they realized that the sword projected hatred and bloodlust and drove his users insane. The sword was then locked away under a mountain until Alexiel tracked it down. She knew Nanatsusaya held Lucifer's soul, (though Lucifer couldn't remember his previous identity) and she was able to wield him without losing herself.
Around this time, the second holy war began. Human sins and pollution were reflected in the upper layers of hell, which left those regions vulnerable to a heavenly invasion. Alexiel joined forces with the inhabitants of the upper hells, called Evils, and fought against heaven. More specifically, she fought against Rosiel. Rosiel, you see, had asked his sister to kill him if he went insane, and he finally had.
But Alexiel couldn't bring herself to kill her brother. Instead, she sealed him in the earth. Nanatsusaya was stained by Rosiel's blood and shattered into several pieces, which somebody (possibly his own spiritual form) later gathered and put back together. Alexiel was tried and convicted in heaven, and sentenced to an endless cycle of reincarnation, wherein all her lives would be short and troubled, and she would died in great pain. This was enforced by Uriel's curse.
Nanatsusaya, now a disembodied spirit given strength by Rosiel's blood, spent the next thousand years or so following Alexiel from life to life, watching over her and occasionally possessing human bodies to protect her. Kurai, the princess and dragon master of the Evils, who had fought by Alexiel's side, slowly tracked down what had been done with Alexiel's body.
Meanwhile, in heaven, God's latest experiment with twins -- Metatron and Sandalphon -- had gone badly wrong. Sandalphon was stillborn, but his soul was tied to Metatron's life, so he lived on as a disembodied presence within his brother. A research project was created in order to give Sandalphon a real body. (And yes, feel free to imagine a really nasty cross between Frankenstein and Nazi doctors in concentration camps.) The angel in charge of this project, Lailah, was attacked in an attempted rape, and was so traumatized that she accepted Sandalphon's aid to make herself 'vanish.' She disguised herself as Sevothtarte, a male angel who had died in the second holy war, and, acting as regent for Metatron (who was the highest-ranked angel in Alexiel and Rosiel's absence), began to take over heaven.
Sevothtarte was opposed by Zaphkiel, who ruled the order of Thrones (and secretly ran a rebel organization called Anima Mundi), and by Jibril, who ruled the Cherubim and was Guardian of Water. (Here I should pause and say that there's a fair amount of 'elemental' shtick in Angel Sanctuary, but it's not excessively played up, and is no more stupid/inexplicable than any other angelic power.) The other elemental guardians -- Raphael of the Virtues, Guardian of Wind; Michael of the Powers, Guardian of Fire; and Uriel (possibly of the Dominions, since their leader isn't mentioned in canon), Guardian of Earth -- either withdrew from public affairs or left heaven altogether.
In Alexiel's last incarnation prior to the start of the manga, Nanatsusaya killed her guardian angel and also killed her, thus letting her die relatively quickly/peacefully instead of in drawn-out physical and emotional pain, which started to upset the working of Uriel's curse. Sevothtarte took advantage of the situation and had Jibril's soul incarnated as a human close to Alexiel's next incarnation, thus neatly assigning a 'secret' guardian angel and getting Jibril out of his/her way.
In 1999, Kurai finally found Alexiel's body, and stole it from heaven.
In 1999, Katan, an angel who loved Rosiel, found a way to unseal his master, using black magic and the sacrifice of human lives.
In 1999, Nanatsusaya had altered his usual pattern, and had taken on human form for over a decade instead of simply watching and intervening at crisis points.
And in 1999, Alexiel had been reincarnated as Mudo Setsuna, a sixteen-year-old boy who was in love with his sister Sara.
This is where the story of Angel Sanctuary begins.
(Yes, I know I'm leaving out all the stuff about Raphael, Belial, and Michael -- and everything about Zaphkiel, Anael, and Raziel -- but there's only so much I can work into one rough narrative.)
One thing that fascinates me about the manga is the way this overwhelming amount of backstory is dealt with. Kaori Yuki is telling Setsuna and Sara's story (well, mostly), so she starts in 1999 and works all the other information in gradually, as various characters learn it or are reminded by current events. I think she could stand to be clearer in several places, but overall, it's very well handled.
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Things to handwave:
There are some significant plot and world-building inconsistencies in Angel Sanctuary. Let me list a few.
One of the most obvious is the order of the seven layers of hell. In the first few volumes, Kurai says that Anagura is the third layer, to which she was temporarily exiled on a training journey. However, Mad Hatter (Belial) later lists the layers from top to bottom, thusly: Anagura, Stomach, Silence, Gate of Death, Gate of Death's Shadow, Destruction, and Sheol. This is a minor point, but it kind of sticks out.
Second, it's unclear what happens to souls when they die. Humans go to Hades, which seems to be in yet another dimension -- not earth, but not heaven/hell either. Spirits can interact with the earth in Hades, but they can't touch solid things, like Yggdrasil and teacups in Uriel's house. (Angels seem to be able to touch both solid objects and spirits. No explanation is given.) Anyway, human souls are gathered into a place called the Crucible, from which they can apparently go to heaven, go to hell, or be reincarnated. However, there aren't human souls wandering around heaven or hell, not that we see or hear of (and I'm pretty sure that if there were human souls in heaven, the angels would make a stink about it at some point). This makes me wonder if they 'go to heaven' by getting incarnated as angels... or if all this talk of going to heaven and hell is bullshit and everyone gets reincarnated anyway.
This leads to the problem of the river Lethe, which runs through Sheol. Apparently it's used to wash away memories of past lives so souls can be reincarnated... but then why is it in hell and not in Hades?
Really, the whole treatment of death and the afterlife is sloppy.
Moving on. There are nine official orders of angels: Seraphim, Cherubim, Dominions, Thrones, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. The tenth order -- the Grigori -- is problematic. According to Katan, who once was a Grigori, they originally had physical bodies and were set to doing work on earth, where they had a tendency to fall in love with humans and have half-breed children. Those children became demons.
(Side note: I wonder if those demons were the ancestors of the Evils. I think that might explain a lot about why the Evils have largely rejected the rule of the seven Satans -- the remnants of Lucifer's court -- and turned instead to the worship of dragons and other nature spirits. The origins of said dragons and nature spirits are, of course, never explained. *sigh*)
Because of this, the Grigori were cursed to exist as bodiless spirits and forced to use all their energy to carry out the wishes of 'true' angels, even if those tasks drained them to death. Kirie says that this is okay since the Grigori aren't aware of their fate. Katan doesn't disagree with her assessment of his people's intelligence; he claims that they can feel and understand pain, but doesn't otherwise contradict Kirie.
Rosiel hears Katan lamenting the fate of his people and says that perhaps it's significant that some Grigori are beginning to be able to think. Then he creates a body for Katan, which is apparently a very big thing. However, by the time of the manga, it seems to be standard to make bodies for Grigori. All these bodies are female, and the former Grigori are called Sisters. Some of them have certain brain functions paralyzed; they are known as Stakers.
Moonlily, a Staker Sister, tells Sara that she thinks she could think better when she was a Grigori. Either Katan seriously underestimated his people, or things have significantly changed since he got a body. Also, it's plausible that Sevothtarte, who knows all about Frankenstein's monster creations, could build bodies for Grigori to inhabit... but this doesn't explain the presence of Sisters all the way back in Rosiel and Alexiel's memories of their childhood and her imprisonment in Eden.
Moving on again. Angels are apparently born without gender. However, when they develop gender is somewhat unclear. Belial's decision to quit halfway through becoming a woman implies that se was an adult at the time, but when Rosiel embodies Katan, Katan has gender despite having the physical age of a child. And all of the twinned angels seem to have been born gendered. So I think that God changed his/her/its mind at some point and started gendering angels before they were born.
Anyway, there are a fair number of other points throughout the manga that need some extensive handwaving, especially the whole OMGWTFBBQ mess with the Embryos of DEATH!!! at the end. I think almost all of them can be handwaved, but it's still very sloppy.
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Identity (and complications thereof):
Let's talk about identity. Identity is a big, big theme in this story -- false identities abound, and even true identities change at the drop of a hat.
Setsuna is the most obvious case. He is human, and male, and yet his soul was originally a female angel. He spends a while denying this, and then after he accepts it, he still clings very tightly to his identity in his current incarnation. What's interesting is that Alexiel is almost like a split personality, the way she appears off and on during the story. None of Alexiel's other incarnations pop up -- just the original personality to stamp the soul. This makes me wonder what's going to happen when Setsuna dies. The curse seems to be broken, so presumably Alexiel can go back to her original body after this final incarnation... and yet Setsuna has such a strong force of personality that it seems strange to think of him fading away and Alexiel being all that's left.
(Setsuna also struggles with various labels and expectations people impose on him. The two strongest ones are 'sinner' and 'savior,' which are interesting in their seeming opposition. He's a sinner because he loves his sister -- loves her sexually and romantically, that is. He's a savior because he's Alexiel's incarnation, and a lot of people are relying on him to support their causes.)
Sara also has a dual identity -- her human life and her previous incarnation as Jibril, the Guardian of Water -- but either her personalities are more similar than Setsuna and Alexiel, or Jibril simply doesn't have the overwhelming mission that drives Alexiel to keep waking within Setsuna.
Then we come to Kira Sakuya. Ah, Kira. I love Kira. :-)
Kira has even more issues than Setsuna, I think. You see, Kira is really a blend of two people -- the soul of the original, human Kira Sakuya, and the soul of Nanatsusaya, the Seven-Bladed Sword... and Nanatsusaya is really Lucifer with a very long case of amnesia. So Kira is not exactly human, but he isn't exactly Nanatsusaya either, just as Nanatsusaya isn't exactly Lucifer. And when Lucifer remembers himself and ends up separated both from the human Sakuya and from the sword (which turns out to have a certain 'life' of its own, ironically enough), he still has the memories of those experiences and those 'altered' states of being, which seem to have left marks on him and affected his behavior, even though he tries to deny it.
After Lucifer wakes, Setsuna first wants to rescue his sempai from whatever is making him act like Lucifer. Then he decides that Kira is dead and Lucifer is his enemy. Later, he seems to realize that Kira has left a mark on Lucifer, and begins to call him 'sempai' again. Lucifer tells him, "There's only me in here now," which is true so far as it goes, but kind of misleading, since he cares enough to check on his human father after the final crisis, and watch Sakuya's spirit go to be with Kira-san. Also, it's extremely hard to say what parts of Lucifer's behavior are genuine and what parts are him play-acting so Rosiel doesn't realize that the blood-crystal (which supposedly controls him) is a fake.
Who next, who next...?
Kato, I think. Kato Yue is also very interesting. He doesn't have any previous incarnations (or if he does, they're human and irrelevant), but his identity is an absolute mess. First of all, he's the product of his mother's extramarital affair, which he doesn't know until he's about twelve years old. That knowledge shakes him so badly -- he had based so much of his self around trying to win his father's approval and love -- that he changes his entire persona and throws himself into delinquency (and thus into Kira's orbit).
When Kato dies, and when he's escorting Setsuna through Hades, he's still trying to act like he doesn't care. Setsuna snaps him out of that, and he changes again, this time devoting himself to helping Setsuna... to the point where he willingly 'kills' his soul. Uriel rescues him and gives him an artificial body whose form depends on the strength of Kato's memory and personality. In other words, he can look like (and be) anyone he wants to, but if he forgets himself -- as dead souls seem to do, Lethe or no Lethe -- he will degenerate into a mannequin of sorts.
At one point, Kato forgets himself enough that he takes on the identity of a dead angel and lives that man's life for several days, until he runs into Setsuna, which jogs his memory. He finally sacrifices himself (yet again -- over the course of the story, Kato dies three times and comes damn close at least twice more) in order to save Setsuna's life and help people get into Atziluth in search of God. What's interesting is that even without most of his memory, he still knows who Setsuna and Kira are; Kato really seems to base his life around his friends. And he still thinks he's not the sort of person who belongs in paradise.
I think he couldn't be more wrong.
Anyway. Kato and Kira both lie about who they are, for reasons that change over the course of the story. Other people also construct false or misleading identities. The ones who most readily spring to my mind are Sevothtarte (Lailah), Zaphkiel, Mad Hatter (Belial), Arachne, and perhaps Sandalphon. Rosiel also wears a deeply misleading public persona, but he's insane so it's questionable how much of that is on purpose and how much is just a facet of his particular obsession.
Sevothtarte spends centuries trying to erase his/her previous identity, to the point where he almost seems to have convinced himself that Lailah never existed. When his original identity is forcibly revealed, she breaks down. Granted, Rosiel and Sandalphon push that madness along, but Lailah is messed up all on her own.
Zaphkiel conceals several facets of himself, from several different people and groups. Even in his first appearance, when he stops Setsuna from committing suicide, he is misleading -- he poses as a human priest instead of as an angel. He hides his status as a fallen angel from everyone except Sevothtarte. He hides his role as the leader of Anima Mundi. He hides his brutal, bloody past from Raziel, and wears a goofy, playful persona instead. He even hides the deepest wish of his heart from himself.
Belial is a bit different in that se doesn't actively conceal hir true identity, but still wears a flamboyant persona -- Mad Hatter -- that masks hir true power, danger, and obsession. Belial is also rather contradictory. Se is a devil, and firmly believes that people, left to their own devices, always turn on each other selfishly... and yet hir entire life is based around service and devotion to Lucifer. Belial loves sex and uses carnal desire as a weapon, and yet is perfectly happy knowing that Lucifer will never desire hir; in fact, Belial seems to depend on Lucifer's lack of sexual interest in hir. Belial's 'magic tricks' fascinate me, because on the one hand it's very hard to take Mad Hatter seriously, and yet, anyone with the power to pull off tricks like that (and some of them are quite deadly) is very, very dangerous. Belial thus undercuts the joking nature of hir persona with every step. And I think that's quite deliberate.
(In a random identity-related point, Mad Hatter changes hir clothes, hats, and hairstyles with every appearance. Se also occasionally changes hir stylized clown makeup, though that's more consistent than the rest. These changes are an interesting counterpoint to the way hir personality and goals stay constant.)
Arachne hides several things, in layers. First of all, he's a cross-dresser. Second, he's not actually Kurai's cousin -- he's really her older brother, who's presumed dead. Third, he's a traitor to the Evils, who serves Belial. Except it turns out that he really does love Kurai, and in the end he betrays Hatter instead... except his betrayal fulfills the ritual Hatter was attempting to carry out, and thus actually serves both Belial and Kurai. Interestingly, there are a couple hints that the original Arachne was a true woman. And we never learn the false Arachne's original name; he goes to his death wishing that his lie had been truth and he'd really been Kurai's beloved cousin all along, instead of the brother she never met.
(What I find saddest about Arachne is that the original deception in his identity wasn't his fault. His father knew that Kurai would be the next dragon master and ruler of the Evils, but in order to protect her, he set Arachne up as a decoy. So Arachne's identity was built around being the next dragon master and crown prince, and when that was forcibly destroyed, he snapped.)
Sandalphon plays savior to Lailah, and confidant/toy/advisor to Metatron. To everyone else, he plays dead... at least until the later volumes of the series. Sandalphon's particular ability to manipulate people's dreams makes it easy for him to cloud minds, possess bodies, and get people to trust him. He also pretends to be Metatron a few times. He's a hard character to grasp, perhaps because his mental and emotional age is so slippery. Despite Metatron's age, he has the body and mind of a small child. Sandalphon seems to slide between Metatron's age and an extremely violent, selfish teenager -- he appears as an adult at one point, but I think he only does that so Metatron will trust him as an authority figure.
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Love and other obsessions:
Angel Sanctuary seems to be built around themes of identity, of sin, of selfishness, and of the thin line between love, hate, and other forms of obsession. I especially like that last one.
It is very hard to say exactly what either Nanatsusaya or Lucifer feels for Alexiel, for example, particularly since you can't completely trust what Kira says about his past, and Lucifer's words seem to belie the two flashbacks to his meetings with Alexiel in Eden. It's equally hard to define what Rosiel feels for his sister. Both men want to possess her, both seem to hate her to some degree (or hate her power over them), both are obsessive over promises relating to her, and both do seem to love her to some degree as well.
Setsuna, who spends most of the series passionately hating Rosiel, says near the end that his hatred began to pulse almost like love. Much earlier, when he confesses his love to Sara, he tells her that if he could kill her and hold her body while he died, he'd be happy. These are not straightforward emotions.
When Sakuya's spirit asks Kira if he loves Setsuna, Kira hesitates, and says yes. Sakuya then qualifies that by saying, "[He's] like a wayward kid brother?" and there's another pause (okay, not in the wording, but in the panel division and the page-turn) before Kira says, "Yeah, I guess so." That second, implied pause intrigues me. Kira later thinks that of all Alexiel's incarnations, Setsuna was the only one who made him forget about Alexiel. And yet he still obsesses about Alexiel; he's extremely conflicted over which of Setsuna's identities to choose, or how to define his emotions in either case. I think he genuinely loved Alexiel, but I think he hated her just as much.
(Earlier, at the end of volume 1, Kira and Setsuna have an interesting conversation that can be read at least two ways. In one, Kira refuses to admit his knowledge of Alexiel, and the way his feelings about her influence and complicate his feelings about Setsuna, probably because Setsuna has just said that only Sara and Kira see him for himself instead of seeing only Alexiel's shadow. In the other reading, Kira is hinting that he's in love with Setsuna, but won't say anything because he knows Setsuna loves Sara. Or, you know, both interpretations could be true at the same time. I like the ambiguity.)
Kato is extremely obsessive over Kira, though he tries to hide it. Kira's words mean a great deal to him -- besides a drug dealer, Kira is the only non-relative who appears in Kato's lengthy flashbacks in Hades -- and his dying wish is to see Kira again, instead of Lucifer. Kato is also obsessive over Setsuna, though in a different way. Kira is an impossible goal he's trying to reach. Setsuna is his inspiration to keep trying.
Kurai is obsessive about Alexiel -- she spends centuries searching for the angel's body -- and later becomes equally passionate about her love for Setsuna. Kurai and her people are also passionate about their cause -- their war with heaven -- which is interesting because not all that many people in Angel Sanctuary have motives other than the personal. Even Zaphkiel, the rebel leader, is working to honor Anael's memory and to find Adam Kadamon and ask him a question, not because he truly, deeply cares about the state of heaven.
Katan is massively obsessive about Rosiel -- with certain justification. What I find most interesting about him is the way he clearly sees that Rosiel is mad and dangerous, but all he cares about is the way Rosiel is suffering. He is willing to serve Rosiel without the induced loyalty of Rosiel's pills or blood, and, in fact, says that he's Rosiel's only true servant, because he still has his mind and is able to question Rosiel's actions when necessary. Rosiel sometimes ignores Katan for long periods of time, and seems ungrateful for Katan's sacrifices, but his reaction to Katan's near death, and to discovering that he himself has killed Katan, prove that their bond runs both ways... much thought Rosiel might like to deny it.
Who am I missing... Oh yes, Sara! Well, Sara's feelings for Setsuna are equally strong and possessive; at one point she tells him that she'll kill him if he ever leaves her, and I think she means that literally. However, while Setsuna focuses on Sara-as-Sara, she focuses both on her brother and on a ring he once gave her. To Sara, the ring is a symbol of their love, and is, in some ways, just as important as Setsuna himself. This may be because Setsuna spent a long time trying to hide his emotions toward her, convincing himself they were wrong and Sara would never accept him, which may have led Sara to fear that he was rejecting her and using the ring as a reminder that he cared.
I could bring up Belial, or Michael (oh man, Michael is obsessed with Lucifer, and I think he doesn't understand half of his emotions), or Raphael (now Raphael is a fascinating mess, though I don't have much emotional attachment to him), but I am running out of brain power.
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More on this later.
Thoughts on Angel Sanctuary
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This is not anywhere near all of my thoughts on Angel Sanctuary, but this is all I have organized enough to be worth posting. I think my next goal is to handwave all the kludgy bits; or to talk about the treatment of morality, sin, and love; or to analyze the portrayal of selfishness and altruism; or to do some really detailed character analysis... but only after I write some actual fiction, since I am not really in the business of literary analysis these days!
WARNING: I am spoiling just about everything in the manga. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't read!
Okay.
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(Almost) all the backstory:
Before I can figure out what I think about the story (besides the fact that I really, really like it), I want to get straight what the story is -- the backstory, that is, which is explained in bits and pieces throughout the manga, and which is often incomplete, misleading, or flat-out wrong for one reason or another. Therefore, a timeline of sorts:
In the beginning, God left/escaped/survived his/her/its previous universe.
God created the universe, presumably starting with the mostly spiritual dimension that contains heaven and hell, and then the physical dimension that contains the earth. The completely spiritual dimension of Hades and the random in-between places were probably also created at this time. The purpose seems to have been some sort of experiment, which relied heavily on oppositional dualities -- good and evil, heaven and hell, spirit and body, male and female, life and death, love and hate, etc.
At some point in here, God created Adam Kadamon (also known as Seraphita), who has six wings, who can stop, reverse, and accelerate time, and who is both male and female. Adam Kadamon seems to be the parent of all the angels, though how this worked at first is unknown. After a while, Adam Kadamon began to speak against God's rules, and God cut up hir body, locked hir away, and essentially used hir as a living spiritual battery and artificial womb.
God created humans, who at first lived in the garden of Eden in Atziluth, the highest heaven. Then they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree and got kicked down to earth. Exact details are somewhat vague, especially since the only significant tree in the garden during the manga storyline is the Tree of Life, which is... well, more like a tree of death. It grows from Adam Kadamon's left eye.
Anyway. God began experimenting with ways to divide or recreate Adam Kadamon's power, resulting in several sets of twinned angels. (Angels are not otherwise supposed to have families.) The first set was Alexiel and Rosiel, the Organic and Inorganic angels. (What, precisely, Kaori Yuki means by 'organic' and 'inorganic' is unclear, though the current form of Rosiel's power seems to have something to do with electronics.) The second set was Lucifer and Michael. The third set was Astoreth and Astarte. The fourth set was Metatron and Sandalphon. No others appear in the story.
All four pairs got thoroughly screwed over by God, though in rather different ways. Alexiel is the older twin in her pair, and Rosiel's body seems to have been created from hers. Apparently this didn't work terribly well, or his power is somehow incompatible with living flesh, and his body began to rot. Alexiel bargained with God to fix her brother; the price was that she couldn't ever see him or talk to him, and was locked up in Eden, where the Tree of Life suppressed her powers. Rosiel knew nothing of this. Rosiel also had a massive inferiority complex, as well as an obsessive love for his sister and a need for her attention. And God's 'fix' wasn't really a fix, since it left Rosiel slowly going insane as his body decomposed, recomposed, and (I think) aged in reverse. (This may have been intentional, since near the end of the manga God says something about Rosiel being a legendary angel of destruction, now that his power has been released. I think, therefore, that Rosiel was one of the failsafes to terminate God's experiment.)
Meanwhile, Lucifer and Michael had a prophecy made at their birth (or release from Atziluth) that said one would be a child of light, and the other was destined to fall into darkness and become the prince of evil. For various reasons, everyone thought Michael would be the dark one. Then Lucifer was summoned to meet with God, whereupon he learned God had decided that humans needed an example of absolute evil as well as an example of good, and Lucifer was designated to rebel and become the enemy of heaven.
Lucifer was furious at having his life decided for him, but he couldn't figure out how to effectively rebel against God when he was supposed to rebel. On his way out of Atziluth, he broke into Eden and decided to kill Alexiel to spite God. (Possibly he also meant to rape her; this is unclear.) However, Alexiel took his sword from him and revealed that she had sinned by eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, which was the flesh of Adam Kadamon, her parent, and God hated her anyway.
Lucifer decided he liked her.
The first holy war followed, wherein Lucifer rebelled against heaven, and, rather than actually fighting Michael, simply left the battlefield. (Maybe he didn't want to fight his brother. Maybe he didn't feel like playing along with God's plans. His motives aren't stated.) The fallen angels ended up in hell, which was unfit to support life. Lucifer used his own body to stabilize the seven layers of hell.
After a while, he somehow left that body (Uriel may or may not have been involved in this; it's not terribly clear in the scanlations I read) and sneaked into Eden to talk to Alexiel. She agreed to escape with him. However, they got caught, and someone stuffed Lucifer's soul into Nanatsusaya, the Seven-Bladed Sword, which was used by various people for a while until they realized that the sword projected hatred and bloodlust and drove his users insane. The sword was then locked away under a mountain until Alexiel tracked it down. She knew Nanatsusaya held Lucifer's soul, (though Lucifer couldn't remember his previous identity) and she was able to wield him without losing herself.
Around this time, the second holy war began. Human sins and pollution were reflected in the upper layers of hell, which left those regions vulnerable to a heavenly invasion. Alexiel joined forces with the inhabitants of the upper hells, called Evils, and fought against heaven. More specifically, she fought against Rosiel. Rosiel, you see, had asked his sister to kill him if he went insane, and he finally had.
But Alexiel couldn't bring herself to kill her brother. Instead, she sealed him in the earth. Nanatsusaya was stained by Rosiel's blood and shattered into several pieces, which somebody (possibly his own spiritual form) later gathered and put back together. Alexiel was tried and convicted in heaven, and sentenced to an endless cycle of reincarnation, wherein all her lives would be short and troubled, and she would died in great pain. This was enforced by Uriel's curse.
Nanatsusaya, now a disembodied spirit given strength by Rosiel's blood, spent the next thousand years or so following Alexiel from life to life, watching over her and occasionally possessing human bodies to protect her. Kurai, the princess and dragon master of the Evils, who had fought by Alexiel's side, slowly tracked down what had been done with Alexiel's body.
Meanwhile, in heaven, God's latest experiment with twins -- Metatron and Sandalphon -- had gone badly wrong. Sandalphon was stillborn, but his soul was tied to Metatron's life, so he lived on as a disembodied presence within his brother. A research project was created in order to give Sandalphon a real body. (And yes, feel free to imagine a really nasty cross between Frankenstein and Nazi doctors in concentration camps.) The angel in charge of this project, Lailah, was attacked in an attempted rape, and was so traumatized that she accepted Sandalphon's aid to make herself 'vanish.' She disguised herself as Sevothtarte, a male angel who had died in the second holy war, and, acting as regent for Metatron (who was the highest-ranked angel in Alexiel and Rosiel's absence), began to take over heaven.
Sevothtarte was opposed by Zaphkiel, who ruled the order of Thrones (and secretly ran a rebel organization called Anima Mundi), and by Jibril, who ruled the Cherubim and was Guardian of Water. (Here I should pause and say that there's a fair amount of 'elemental' shtick in Angel Sanctuary, but it's not excessively played up, and is no more stupid/inexplicable than any other angelic power.) The other elemental guardians -- Raphael of the Virtues, Guardian of Wind; Michael of the Powers, Guardian of Fire; and Uriel (possibly of the Dominions, since their leader isn't mentioned in canon), Guardian of Earth -- either withdrew from public affairs or left heaven altogether.
In Alexiel's last incarnation prior to the start of the manga, Nanatsusaya killed her guardian angel and also killed her, thus letting her die relatively quickly/peacefully instead of in drawn-out physical and emotional pain, which started to upset the working of Uriel's curse. Sevothtarte took advantage of the situation and had Jibril's soul incarnated as a human close to Alexiel's next incarnation, thus neatly assigning a 'secret' guardian angel and getting Jibril out of his/her way.
In 1999, Kurai finally found Alexiel's body, and stole it from heaven.
In 1999, Katan, an angel who loved Rosiel, found a way to unseal his master, using black magic and the sacrifice of human lives.
In 1999, Nanatsusaya had altered his usual pattern, and had taken on human form for over a decade instead of simply watching and intervening at crisis points.
And in 1999, Alexiel had been reincarnated as Mudo Setsuna, a sixteen-year-old boy who was in love with his sister Sara.
This is where the story of Angel Sanctuary begins.
(Yes, I know I'm leaving out all the stuff about Raphael, Belial, and Michael -- and everything about Zaphkiel, Anael, and Raziel -- but there's only so much I can work into one rough narrative.)
One thing that fascinates me about the manga is the way this overwhelming amount of backstory is dealt with. Kaori Yuki is telling Setsuna and Sara's story (well, mostly), so she starts in 1999 and works all the other information in gradually, as various characters learn it or are reminded by current events. I think she could stand to be clearer in several places, but overall, it's very well handled.
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Things to handwave:
There are some significant plot and world-building inconsistencies in Angel Sanctuary. Let me list a few.
One of the most obvious is the order of the seven layers of hell. In the first few volumes, Kurai says that Anagura is the third layer, to which she was temporarily exiled on a training journey. However, Mad Hatter (Belial) later lists the layers from top to bottom, thusly: Anagura, Stomach, Silence, Gate of Death, Gate of Death's Shadow, Destruction, and Sheol. This is a minor point, but it kind of sticks out.
Second, it's unclear what happens to souls when they die. Humans go to Hades, which seems to be in yet another dimension -- not earth, but not heaven/hell either. Spirits can interact with the earth in Hades, but they can't touch solid things, like Yggdrasil and teacups in Uriel's house. (Angels seem to be able to touch both solid objects and spirits. No explanation is given.) Anyway, human souls are gathered into a place called the Crucible, from which they can apparently go to heaven, go to hell, or be reincarnated. However, there aren't human souls wandering around heaven or hell, not that we see or hear of (and I'm pretty sure that if there were human souls in heaven, the angels would make a stink about it at some point). This makes me wonder if they 'go to heaven' by getting incarnated as angels... or if all this talk of going to heaven and hell is bullshit and everyone gets reincarnated anyway.
This leads to the problem of the river Lethe, which runs through Sheol. Apparently it's used to wash away memories of past lives so souls can be reincarnated... but then why is it in hell and not in Hades?
Really, the whole treatment of death and the afterlife is sloppy.
Moving on. There are nine official orders of angels: Seraphim, Cherubim, Dominions, Thrones, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. The tenth order -- the Grigori -- is problematic. According to Katan, who once was a Grigori, they originally had physical bodies and were set to doing work on earth, where they had a tendency to fall in love with humans and have half-breed children. Those children became demons.
(Side note: I wonder if those demons were the ancestors of the Evils. I think that might explain a lot about why the Evils have largely rejected the rule of the seven Satans -- the remnants of Lucifer's court -- and turned instead to the worship of dragons and other nature spirits. The origins of said dragons and nature spirits are, of course, never explained. *sigh*)
Because of this, the Grigori were cursed to exist as bodiless spirits and forced to use all their energy to carry out the wishes of 'true' angels, even if those tasks drained them to death. Kirie says that this is okay since the Grigori aren't aware of their fate. Katan doesn't disagree with her assessment of his people's intelligence; he claims that they can feel and understand pain, but doesn't otherwise contradict Kirie.
Rosiel hears Katan lamenting the fate of his people and says that perhaps it's significant that some Grigori are beginning to be able to think. Then he creates a body for Katan, which is apparently a very big thing. However, by the time of the manga, it seems to be standard to make bodies for Grigori. All these bodies are female, and the former Grigori are called Sisters. Some of them have certain brain functions paralyzed; they are known as Stakers.
Moonlily, a Staker Sister, tells Sara that she thinks she could think better when she was a Grigori. Either Katan seriously underestimated his people, or things have significantly changed since he got a body. Also, it's plausible that Sevothtarte, who knows all about Frankenstein's monster creations, could build bodies for Grigori to inhabit... but this doesn't explain the presence of Sisters all the way back in Rosiel and Alexiel's memories of their childhood and her imprisonment in Eden.
Moving on again. Angels are apparently born without gender. However, when they develop gender is somewhat unclear. Belial's decision to quit halfway through becoming a woman implies that se was an adult at the time, but when Rosiel embodies Katan, Katan has gender despite having the physical age of a child. And all of the twinned angels seem to have been born gendered. So I think that God changed his/her/its mind at some point and started gendering angels before they were born.
Anyway, there are a fair number of other points throughout the manga that need some extensive handwaving, especially the whole OMGWTFBBQ mess with the Embryos of DEATH!!! at the end. I think almost all of them can be handwaved, but it's still very sloppy.
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Identity (and complications thereof):
Let's talk about identity. Identity is a big, big theme in this story -- false identities abound, and even true identities change at the drop of a hat.
Setsuna is the most obvious case. He is human, and male, and yet his soul was originally a female angel. He spends a while denying this, and then after he accepts it, he still clings very tightly to his identity in his current incarnation. What's interesting is that Alexiel is almost like a split personality, the way she appears off and on during the story. None of Alexiel's other incarnations pop up -- just the original personality to stamp the soul. This makes me wonder what's going to happen when Setsuna dies. The curse seems to be broken, so presumably Alexiel can go back to her original body after this final incarnation... and yet Setsuna has such a strong force of personality that it seems strange to think of him fading away and Alexiel being all that's left.
(Setsuna also struggles with various labels and expectations people impose on him. The two strongest ones are 'sinner' and 'savior,' which are interesting in their seeming opposition. He's a sinner because he loves his sister -- loves her sexually and romantically, that is. He's a savior because he's Alexiel's incarnation, and a lot of people are relying on him to support their causes.)
Sara also has a dual identity -- her human life and her previous incarnation as Jibril, the Guardian of Water -- but either her personalities are more similar than Setsuna and Alexiel, or Jibril simply doesn't have the overwhelming mission that drives Alexiel to keep waking within Setsuna.
Then we come to Kira Sakuya. Ah, Kira. I love Kira. :-)
Kira has even more issues than Setsuna, I think. You see, Kira is really a blend of two people -- the soul of the original, human Kira Sakuya, and the soul of Nanatsusaya, the Seven-Bladed Sword... and Nanatsusaya is really Lucifer with a very long case of amnesia. So Kira is not exactly human, but he isn't exactly Nanatsusaya either, just as Nanatsusaya isn't exactly Lucifer. And when Lucifer remembers himself and ends up separated both from the human Sakuya and from the sword (which turns out to have a certain 'life' of its own, ironically enough), he still has the memories of those experiences and those 'altered' states of being, which seem to have left marks on him and affected his behavior, even though he tries to deny it.
After Lucifer wakes, Setsuna first wants to rescue his sempai from whatever is making him act like Lucifer. Then he decides that Kira is dead and Lucifer is his enemy. Later, he seems to realize that Kira has left a mark on Lucifer, and begins to call him 'sempai' again. Lucifer tells him, "There's only me in here now," which is true so far as it goes, but kind of misleading, since he cares enough to check on his human father after the final crisis, and watch Sakuya's spirit go to be with Kira-san. Also, it's extremely hard to say what parts of Lucifer's behavior are genuine and what parts are him play-acting so Rosiel doesn't realize that the blood-crystal (which supposedly controls him) is a fake.
Who next, who next...?
Kato, I think. Kato Yue is also very interesting. He doesn't have any previous incarnations (or if he does, they're human and irrelevant), but his identity is an absolute mess. First of all, he's the product of his mother's extramarital affair, which he doesn't know until he's about twelve years old. That knowledge shakes him so badly -- he had based so much of his self around trying to win his father's approval and love -- that he changes his entire persona and throws himself into delinquency (and thus into Kira's orbit).
When Kato dies, and when he's escorting Setsuna through Hades, he's still trying to act like he doesn't care. Setsuna snaps him out of that, and he changes again, this time devoting himself to helping Setsuna... to the point where he willingly 'kills' his soul. Uriel rescues him and gives him an artificial body whose form depends on the strength of Kato's memory and personality. In other words, he can look like (and be) anyone he wants to, but if he forgets himself -- as dead souls seem to do, Lethe or no Lethe -- he will degenerate into a mannequin of sorts.
At one point, Kato forgets himself enough that he takes on the identity of a dead angel and lives that man's life for several days, until he runs into Setsuna, which jogs his memory. He finally sacrifices himself (yet again -- over the course of the story, Kato dies three times and comes damn close at least twice more) in order to save Setsuna's life and help people get into Atziluth in search of God. What's interesting is that even without most of his memory, he still knows who Setsuna and Kira are; Kato really seems to base his life around his friends. And he still thinks he's not the sort of person who belongs in paradise.
I think he couldn't be more wrong.
Anyway. Kato and Kira both lie about who they are, for reasons that change over the course of the story. Other people also construct false or misleading identities. The ones who most readily spring to my mind are Sevothtarte (Lailah), Zaphkiel, Mad Hatter (Belial), Arachne, and perhaps Sandalphon. Rosiel also wears a deeply misleading public persona, but he's insane so it's questionable how much of that is on purpose and how much is just a facet of his particular obsession.
Sevothtarte spends centuries trying to erase his/her previous identity, to the point where he almost seems to have convinced himself that Lailah never existed. When his original identity is forcibly revealed, she breaks down. Granted, Rosiel and Sandalphon push that madness along, but Lailah is messed up all on her own.
Zaphkiel conceals several facets of himself, from several different people and groups. Even in his first appearance, when he stops Setsuna from committing suicide, he is misleading -- he poses as a human priest instead of as an angel. He hides his status as a fallen angel from everyone except Sevothtarte. He hides his role as the leader of Anima Mundi. He hides his brutal, bloody past from Raziel, and wears a goofy, playful persona instead. He even hides the deepest wish of his heart from himself.
Belial is a bit different in that se doesn't actively conceal hir true identity, but still wears a flamboyant persona -- Mad Hatter -- that masks hir true power, danger, and obsession. Belial is also rather contradictory. Se is a devil, and firmly believes that people, left to their own devices, always turn on each other selfishly... and yet hir entire life is based around service and devotion to Lucifer. Belial loves sex and uses carnal desire as a weapon, and yet is perfectly happy knowing that Lucifer will never desire hir; in fact, Belial seems to depend on Lucifer's lack of sexual interest in hir. Belial's 'magic tricks' fascinate me, because on the one hand it's very hard to take Mad Hatter seriously, and yet, anyone with the power to pull off tricks like that (and some of them are quite deadly) is very, very dangerous. Belial thus undercuts the joking nature of hir persona with every step. And I think that's quite deliberate.
(In a random identity-related point, Mad Hatter changes hir clothes, hats, and hairstyles with every appearance. Se also occasionally changes hir stylized clown makeup, though that's more consistent than the rest. These changes are an interesting counterpoint to the way hir personality and goals stay constant.)
Arachne hides several things, in layers. First of all, he's a cross-dresser. Second, he's not actually Kurai's cousin -- he's really her older brother, who's presumed dead. Third, he's a traitor to the Evils, who serves Belial. Except it turns out that he really does love Kurai, and in the end he betrays Hatter instead... except his betrayal fulfills the ritual Hatter was attempting to carry out, and thus actually serves both Belial and Kurai. Interestingly, there are a couple hints that the original Arachne was a true woman. And we never learn the false Arachne's original name; he goes to his death wishing that his lie had been truth and he'd really been Kurai's beloved cousin all along, instead of the brother she never met.
(What I find saddest about Arachne is that the original deception in his identity wasn't his fault. His father knew that Kurai would be the next dragon master and ruler of the Evils, but in order to protect her, he set Arachne up as a decoy. So Arachne's identity was built around being the next dragon master and crown prince, and when that was forcibly destroyed, he snapped.)
Sandalphon plays savior to Lailah, and confidant/toy/advisor to Metatron. To everyone else, he plays dead... at least until the later volumes of the series. Sandalphon's particular ability to manipulate people's dreams makes it easy for him to cloud minds, possess bodies, and get people to trust him. He also pretends to be Metatron a few times. He's a hard character to grasp, perhaps because his mental and emotional age is so slippery. Despite Metatron's age, he has the body and mind of a small child. Sandalphon seems to slide between Metatron's age and an extremely violent, selfish teenager -- he appears as an adult at one point, but I think he only does that so Metatron will trust him as an authority figure.
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Love and other obsessions:
Angel Sanctuary seems to be built around themes of identity, of sin, of selfishness, and of the thin line between love, hate, and other forms of obsession. I especially like that last one.
It is very hard to say exactly what either Nanatsusaya or Lucifer feels for Alexiel, for example, particularly since you can't completely trust what Kira says about his past, and Lucifer's words seem to belie the two flashbacks to his meetings with Alexiel in Eden. It's equally hard to define what Rosiel feels for his sister. Both men want to possess her, both seem to hate her to some degree (or hate her power over them), both are obsessive over promises relating to her, and both do seem to love her to some degree as well.
Setsuna, who spends most of the series passionately hating Rosiel, says near the end that his hatred began to pulse almost like love. Much earlier, when he confesses his love to Sara, he tells her that if he could kill her and hold her body while he died, he'd be happy. These are not straightforward emotions.
When Sakuya's spirit asks Kira if he loves Setsuna, Kira hesitates, and says yes. Sakuya then qualifies that by saying, "[He's] like a wayward kid brother?" and there's another pause (okay, not in the wording, but in the panel division and the page-turn) before Kira says, "Yeah, I guess so." That second, implied pause intrigues me. Kira later thinks that of all Alexiel's incarnations, Setsuna was the only one who made him forget about Alexiel. And yet he still obsesses about Alexiel; he's extremely conflicted over which of Setsuna's identities to choose, or how to define his emotions in either case. I think he genuinely loved Alexiel, but I think he hated her just as much.
(Earlier, at the end of volume 1, Kira and Setsuna have an interesting conversation that can be read at least two ways. In one, Kira refuses to admit his knowledge of Alexiel, and the way his feelings about her influence and complicate his feelings about Setsuna, probably because Setsuna has just said that only Sara and Kira see him for himself instead of seeing only Alexiel's shadow. In the other reading, Kira is hinting that he's in love with Setsuna, but won't say anything because he knows Setsuna loves Sara. Or, you know, both interpretations could be true at the same time. I like the ambiguity.)
Kato is extremely obsessive over Kira, though he tries to hide it. Kira's words mean a great deal to him -- besides a drug dealer, Kira is the only non-relative who appears in Kato's lengthy flashbacks in Hades -- and his dying wish is to see Kira again, instead of Lucifer. Kato is also obsessive over Setsuna, though in a different way. Kira is an impossible goal he's trying to reach. Setsuna is his inspiration to keep trying.
Kurai is obsessive about Alexiel -- she spends centuries searching for the angel's body -- and later becomes equally passionate about her love for Setsuna. Kurai and her people are also passionate about their cause -- their war with heaven -- which is interesting because not all that many people in Angel Sanctuary have motives other than the personal. Even Zaphkiel, the rebel leader, is working to honor Anael's memory and to find Adam Kadamon and ask him a question, not because he truly, deeply cares about the state of heaven.
Katan is massively obsessive about Rosiel -- with certain justification. What I find most interesting about him is the way he clearly sees that Rosiel is mad and dangerous, but all he cares about is the way Rosiel is suffering. He is willing to serve Rosiel without the induced loyalty of Rosiel's pills or blood, and, in fact, says that he's Rosiel's only true servant, because he still has his mind and is able to question Rosiel's actions when necessary. Rosiel sometimes ignores Katan for long periods of time, and seems ungrateful for Katan's sacrifices, but his reaction to Katan's near death, and to discovering that he himself has killed Katan, prove that their bond runs both ways... much thought Rosiel might like to deny it.
Who am I missing... Oh yes, Sara! Well, Sara's feelings for Setsuna are equally strong and possessive; at one point she tells him that she'll kill him if he ever leaves her, and I think she means that literally. However, while Setsuna focuses on Sara-as-Sara, she focuses both on her brother and on a ring he once gave her. To Sara, the ring is a symbol of their love, and is, in some ways, just as important as Setsuna himself. This may be because Setsuna spent a long time trying to hide his emotions toward her, convincing himself they were wrong and Sara would never accept him, which may have led Sara to fear that he was rejecting her and using the ring as a reminder that he cared.
I could bring up Belial, or Michael (oh man, Michael is obsessed with Lucifer, and I think he doesn't understand half of his emotions), or Raphael (now Raphael is a fascinating mess, though I don't have much emotional attachment to him), but I am running out of brain power.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-01 08:42 pm (UTC)(I would not be at all surprised to learn that Kira and Kato had sex at some point pre-manga. Then again, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn they'd never even thought about that possibility. This is why subtext is a beautiful thing -- you can take it any way you like. *grin*)
I tend to think Nanatsusaya was genuinely ambivalent toward Alexiel, if only because he doesn't like being controlled or toyed with, and Alexiel did hold her knowledge of his previous life over him. She rubbed his face in his lack of memory and power, essentially, whether she meant her words that way or not. So while he never hurt her or Setsuna with his actions -- which you can see as the influence of Lucifer's love/obsession and promise -- he sure as hell played nasty with his words at times... and words can be just as hurtful in their way.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-01 08:52 pm (UTC)Mmm. Possible for another reincarnation but the point of Setsuna is that he, unlike all the prior lives, was he wasn't Alexiel at all. That's why Kira saw him as his own person by the end (it's quite possible in the early stages, though).
I tend to think Nanatsusaya was genuinely ambivalent toward Alexiel, if only because he doesn't like being controlled or toyed with, and Alexiel did hold her knowledge of his previous life over him. She rubbed his face in his lack of memory and power, essentially, whether she meant her words that way or not. So while he never hurt her or Setsuna with his actions -- which you can see as the influence of Lucifer's love/obsession and promise -- he sure as hell played nasty with his words at times... and words can be just as hurtful in their way.
Actions in AS, speak louder than words, it seems also a theme. Alexiel lied her entire life about Rosiel. The vain compliments at Rosiel. Mad Hatter itself. I think Nantatsusaya was angry as hell towards Alexiel, but he didn't hate her. Strong emotion like love and anger combined can be mistaken by hatred, I'm sure. Because he didn't even hesitate to catch her as she fell (and his only wish was to caress her hair).