multi-national theories of heaven

[branchandroot]

It finally occured to me what Angel Sanctuary reminds me of: the Sandman.

AS has none of Sandman's sheer scope, of course, none of the literary hide and seek. The dialogue isn't near as subtle or ravishing. But the tone struck me as very similar, particularly to Season of Mists, and the whole thread about heaven and hell in Gaiman's world. Even moreso if you add the short story "Murder Mysteries".

I'm reasonably sure part of that is simply a case of a common source text. Yuki Kaori really did take a good deal straight from Judeo-Christian texts, particularly the Apocrypha. So did Gaiman. The hallucinatory aspects come through pretty well intact.

More than that, though, the sense of world-shape seems similar. One major shape being that Jehovah is a puppetmaster, especially when it comes to Lucifer, and that the only real way to rebel is to step outside the continuum of heaven and hell entirely (as, for instance, Gaiman's Lucifer and Setsuna do). The idea that there really isn't much difference between those two extremes is stated in both stories. Yuki makes God a more explicit selfish bastard, but that reading is certainly available in Gaiman as well.

The fascination with gore is quite alike, too.

No wonder Belial keeps nagging at me to write something.

Comments

[ex-res-judic324.livejournal.com]

I always thought that the story of AS was sweeping in its implications and narrow in its focus. I thought that it did have the same sort of literary play, the same sort of ... inference/implication with the body of literature as a whole. She references bits and pieces of Japanese literature, myth, and collective unconscious. The story isn't really the biblical story, or a biblical story, so much as it is the story of the Japanese pantheon told with biblical characters. Which is why, I think, God is more of a selfish bastard. Which is why the moral differences aren't so different. Why everything is on a continuim.

Or something like that.

[hugs] Belial is a wonderful character. I keep trying to find a way to write for hir, but it escapes me.

[branchandroot]

so much as it is the story of the Japanese pantheon told with biblical characters

Now there's a thought. That would explain why the reiterations of the androgyn are so relentlessly gendered. Though not always male-female. Lucifer/Michael are another six-wing-twin-pair, to all appearances. And both Metatron and Sandalphon identify as male. The loss of the feminine in those pairs could be one of the things that destabilizes them... It's certainly the loss of the feminine twin that destabilizes Rociel particularly. Hmm.

I don't think I would say AS reaches the same depth as Sandman, but you have a good point about the sweeping implications. And that's a very Japanese way to tell a story, too--implication, hints, context.

*glomps* Se's making me write hir a happy ending, of all things. Well, mostly happy, anyway. Se's not hugely happy right at the moment, because Lucifer seems to have brought back enough of Kira to enjoy messing with hir head, but happy in general direction.

[annotated_em]

...no, I'm going to ask.

Where *did* you lay hands on (all of) the translated manga? e_e

[branchandroot]

*grins* I love my p2p. Would you like me to slap the zips on a disc and send them to you?

[ex-res-judic324.livejournal.com]

gimme! I have the raw, but my Japanese is shaky when Yuki starts the big kanji & complicated sentence structure. I think I'm missing a lot of the explination.

[branchandroot]

You got it, babe. Send me your snailmail at ravenwood@alltrees.org, and I'll get it out to you.

[annotated_em]

Oh god yes please. I've been dying to read AS since I first stumbled over the art books.

[branchandroot]

It'll be in the mail tomorrow, my dear.