Of Swords and Parasols

When Chiaki, a young woman who’s been plagued by spirits her entire life, finds a wounded young man on the streets in the rain, she takes him home. Rather like a stray cat. There, the young man reveals himself to be a demon named Ororon, and tells Chiaki that she is not a medium, as she’s always thought, but the offspring of an angel and a human, a being that isn’t supposed to exist. Soon, Chiaki learns that Ororon is actually the king of Hell, but has grown tired of the job, and the two must deal with those after Chiaki’s power and Ororon’s head, including his own brothers.

The series starts well, and is wonderfully moody and gothic. My usual “but why on Earth would these immortal angstmuffins even be interested in these girls?” hangup doesn’t seem to apply when angels and demons are involved and the whole bit with Chiaki hating killing and Ororon not knowing how to do anything else started well. Unfortunately, the series soon turns into seemingly endless fights and explosions as more and more people came after Ororon. That started off well, actually, with Othello, Ororon’s half-brother who rules Hell’s armies, Ororon’s maid, Lucy (possibly the most awesome maid ever) and Shiro and kuro, two cat demons who originally wanted to eat Chiaki, but switched sides when they learned her boyfriend could eat them for breakfast.

But as soon as Ororon and Chiaki’s allies were in place, it became an endless stream of enemies coming after Ororon. Chiaki’s story and Chiaki and Ororon’s relationship as a plotline were pushed to the side. I wanted them to investigate the mystery of her parents and for the books to go into the politics of Heaven and Hell, and what it meant for the king of Hell to be in love with the offspring of an angel and a human (especially once we learned what that made Chiaki) but instead it was endless fights and “to kill or not to kill” angsting.

The action is hard to follow. The art is interesting, with oddly elongated bodies that strangely work, character designs that remind me a bit of Kazuya Minekura’s art in the faces, and some very interesting uses of blacks and whites, but it’s also very stylistic, and the panel layouts aren’t that great. They’re easy to follow in non-action scenes, but the fight scenes are very hard to follow, and there are a lot of them. Increasingly gory ones, at that.

( ending spoilers )

Still, it has an interesting premise and characters, and a lot of themes I like, it just lost focus after a strong beginning. Everything set-up in roughly the first two volumes is great, and then it gets off-track. I should also mention that it has one of the more interesting cases of manga eye loss that I’ve encountered. From what I can tell, the mangaka’s other licensed works deal with similar themes. Overall themes, not the eye loss. Or maybe both. Are they worth checking out, or should I just reread Angel Sanctuary, and maybe read more Angel Diary? (Not that I won’t end up doing those two anyway.)

For that matter, what other manga and manhwa are out there that deal with angels and demons and the politics of Heaven and Hell that I might be interested in? (Though things that actually resemble the Judeo-Christian versions don’t seem to work for me. But the less they resemble anything I’m familiar with…)