In the entire Angel Sanctuary cast, no single character fascinates me more than Belial/Mad Hatter. Belial condenses the ambiguity of the story as a whole and performs it more vividly than any other character. And, let's face it, I'm a sucker for butterflies and I love Belial's tattoo.

The more I think about it, the more that butterfly interests me, particularly since it's used as a metonymy for Belial so often. Japanese symbolism has an interesting range of associations for the butterfly: the soul; transformation; women; sexuality.

Lucifer's reading of the butterfly is explicitly sexual. With good cause--Belial wages an ongoing campaign to seduce him, after all. The fact that hir fascination with him seems to stem in large part from his contempt for hir frequently fatal sexual predation in no way changes the methods se chooses. In this register, as in the others, Belial showcases something that affects the entire cast. Nearly everyone is troubled by some sexual desire that is marked forbidden or wrong; the successful characters throw off the guilt of transgression, and the unsuccessful ones die of it one way or another. Belial, liminal creature that se is, does neither. Hir own acceptance of both guilt and shame are explicit in how se claims hir name (Belial--worthless; alternatively masterless or unyeilding interesingly enough). At the same time, that acceptance is strictly limited; only Lucifer, the one who despises hir acting out of the name, can call hir by that name, everyone else is required to use a different identity--Mad Hatter. Belial does not kill hir identity--everyone knows who Mad Hatter is--but rather manipulates it visibly, highlighting the way in which many other characters attempt to conceal the same issues by destroying their identities completely.

Transformation is certainly covered, considering that Hatter changes clothes and hair just about every frame, and certainly every appearance. This is deeply contrary to standard anime/manga practice, where stable character design is something readers count on to help them recognize one stylized character from another. In fact, Kaori notes that she recieved fan letters asking who these new characters she kep introducing were. Again, this emphasizes the identity transformations of the other characters, and the extent to which those transformations are incomplete or troubled. Equally, however, transformation is denied, very determinedly; this is, after all, the character who resorts to drugs to halt the (post-natal in this universe) development of gender. Belial explicitly refuses to gain gender, to become a woman in particular, which seems to cut out that association.

But that brings me around to the alphabets. The few bits of Hatter's dialogue I've seen in the original are entirely in hiragana--no kanji. That's the way one typically writes a female character. Certainly the level of formality Belial speaks with is extremely atypical of a masculine character, and the mode of transcription just reinforces that. Yet, Hatter shows no sign of interest in the primary marker of femininity available in this story: being protected. The gender association is very conflicted, which fits well enough with how Belial seems to feel about the whole thing. Hatter refers to hirself once or twice as male, only to show up in hir next appearance wearing a dress and point out that se is not male. For Hatter, gender is about denial and negative evidence.

And then there's the soul, quite possibly the most conflicted category of all. I mean, souls are practically played for shuttlecocks in this story. Having an unchanging soul does not mean having an unchanging identity, quite the contrary based on the examples of Setsuna/Alexiel and Sara/Gabriel, to say nothing of Kira/Nanatsusaya/Lucifer. The soul encodes power, and origin, but not identity; rather, the soul seems to contain identities to the extent that experience forms then. So, is there anything particularly soul-ful about Belial? One thing that occurs to me is that perhaps no character has a better grip on their soul than Belial. Belial does not suffer any of the forgetfulness of those whose souls are in motion (Setsuna, Sara, Kira) nor the deliberate self-erasure of those who are overwhelmed by the guilt or shame of their pasts (Sevothtarte/Layla, Uriel). One of the derivative associations on this theme is truth--the butterfly guides one to truth or revelation. That could fit. Belial is certainly one of the characters in the know about a lot of things, the one who remembers. Belial also seems to have grasped a certain truth about the corruption of heaven right from the get-go, and although this leads to a certain despair it does not lead to attempted escape in oblivion. And while Belial lies cheerfully, se does not do so directly; se omits things and uses euphemisms in a deeply misleading way, instead. Yet, because of this and because Belial is one of the few who knows what's going on, se becomes a guide for the reader, hir words being the most reliable ones available.

The fact that Belial is with us to the very end is the best possible indication that this is not a story that can be wrapped up. Neat summations, neat romantic pairings, in short endings of any sort, just won't stick. And there's our butterfly, flittering over the last pages, to make sure we remember it.

I love this story.