Angelic Inspiration

I've recently noticed that the subject matter of most of the reading I've been doing lately has dealt with angels and demons and a war between heaven and hell. The scary thing is that I didn't even make the connection when I chose which books to read. Is it something subconscious, I wonder...? Perhaps it has something to do with the number of shojo manga which use this subject...

Whatever the motivation for my reading choices, I recently finished Wish, a short, four book series by CLAMP, my favorite group of collaborative ladies in the manga industry. This is an older series of theirs, made before their style matured into mediocrity. The plot centers around a misfit, airheaded angel named Kohaku and her desire to repay a human's kindness with a wish. As can be expected from the first chapter practically, Kohaku eventually falls in love with this human named Shuichiro and this causes all kind of havoc in heaven and hell. But Kohaku isn't the first one to break the taboo. Her mentor and one of the four Angel Masters has also fallen in love with someone she shouldn't, a demon, and the son of Satan no less. It's a tangled story of forbidden love and before the end of the story, the threat of an all-out war between heaven and hell looms on the horizon. In classic Clamp fashion, hints of shonen ai creep in at various points through the story, and heaven has an incredibly cute bunny for a messenger.

One of my favorites aspects of Wish were the omakes at the end of each book. I wish that CLAMP had time to make omakes for their later series. I adored them in Rg Veda, and they were fun in Wish as well. I would love to see them in Tsubasa and xxxHoLic. But alas, they are too busy for their own good. And too busy to finish X... but that's another story entirely.

Speaking of X, the other angelic series I've been reading lately has a major apocalyptic theme centering on the year 1999. I can't help but make the connection between the two. Angel Sanctuary is one of those series I've looked at countless times in the bookstore and considered buying, but I didn't actually decide to pick it up until the art book came out in English and I couldn't resist the beautiful, tragic artwork. I've seen the OVA twice now, and enjoyed it quite a bit though it's rather confusing. The books are barely less so because the story moves rather quickly and involves quite a bit of mythology--even the manga-ka admits she had to cut out more of the plot than she would have liked due to space constraints. Still, I'm enjoying the story a lot despite Kaori Yuki's strange affection for incestuous love quadrangles. She often talks about how weird her tastes are, but I love her even more for her attitude about it.

The story of Angel Sanctuary is a bit more complicated than Wish, but it also involves forbidden love and taboo among angels. There is also an impending war between heaven and hell as well as intrigue among the angels. Heaven is painted as much less righteous in this story, and many of the angels are more corrupt than the demons. Now that I can finally read through the series in order (I had bought the first book and books 4-6 months ago but held off on buying 2 and 3 because they didn't match in design, but I finally decided to buy them anyway, even though the numbers on the side were reversed out of black boxes instead of white on black), I also have the opportunity to get addicted--which I have done. Thankfully, I already own a number of the books, so I shouldn't be stuck on a cliffhanger for awhile.

I don't know if any of the readers of my blog (if there are any of you still out there) will really enjoy this post, but perhaps there is someone out there who will do a search for one of these series and find my brief reviews of them helpful... Otherwise, it's still kind of nice for me to have a record of what I've read.