Book Review-Angel Sanctuary by Kaori Yuki

Title: Angel Sanctuary

 Author: Kaori Yuki

Series:  Angel Sanctuary #1

Published:    10 March 2004 by Viz Media under a Shojo imprint

Length: 198 pages

Warnings: graphic violence, a little gore, incest, demons, angels

Source: Library

Other info: Kaori Yuki

Summary :When Sara's classmate, Ruri, received a computer disk from a strange man, Setsuna shows up to whisk her away from him. After lecturing Ruri about talking to weirdos, Setsuna comments she's much cuter without glasses, which she dropped in the confusion. Unfortunately, neither of them have been watching the news which reports of mysterious deaths occurring in connection with the CD-ROM "Digital Angels." The disk Ruri received is this same "Digital Angels" disk, and without knowing the danger, Setsuna lets her keep it. As soon as Ruri uses the program, her personality starts to change, and strange things begin to happen as Evils and angels seek the Setsunas's soul for their own mysterious motives...

Review: Setsuna doesn’t know it, but he’s actually the reincarnation of the angel Alexiel, who has been sentenced to reincarnation into the mortal world until she has paid for her sins. So then two demons turn up praising him as Alexiel, and he obviously doesn’t know what’s going on. On a side note, Ruri, after being blinded in an accident, communicates with an angel called Raziel, who is Alexiel’s brother and almost-murder-victim, via means of a computer game she received from a stranger, called Angel Sanctuary. The game that is, not the stranger. On another note, Setsuna has feelings for Ruri’s friend Sara. Who happens to be his sister.

The plot is very confusing. It doesn’t help that half the characters look extremely similar to eachother, and that that was the intended effect. Demonic, or in this case, angelic, possession is not the best topic to approach in manga, when you can easily be confused and your understanding of the characters comes mainly from the art work and how they look. Differentiating the characters is something you need to be able to do to understand it.

When I read this last year, I gave this two stars out of five. This was on the basis that while I liked the art and could pick out little bits, following the main story is impossible. Now, I managed to string together a plot by being fully awake when reading. Just about. This is not a book for whne you want a quick light read.

The characters are easy to distinguish if you pay attention to their personality. Which, when reading manga, I don’t.  Some of these characters are very likeable, some of them aren’t, and some of them change as you read through the story. For example, at first I liked Ruri, but when she XXXXXX(you’ll probably understand if you’ve read it) I started to hate her. Even though I didn’t particularly like the person she wanted it to happen to. But anyway.

I love the art. As always, Kaori Yuki’s unique style fits with the story, and the detailed style makes it look  realistic.

Overall: Strength 3 tea to a manga with a long winded plot that improves a little if you get through the first few chapters.

Links: Goodreads | 

Book Review- Godchild vol 1 by Kaori Yuki

Title: Godchild vol 1

 Author: Kaori Yuki

Series: Godchild #1  

Published:  7 March 2006  by Viz Media under Shojo Beat

Length: 208 pages

Warnings: graphic violence and gore

Source: Library

Other info: This is a sequel to another (incredibly hard to find) work, the Earl Cain saga. Other works by Kaori Yuki include Angel Sanctuary and Grand Guignol Orchestra (review here)

Summary : Deep in the heart of 19th century London, a young nobleman named Cain walks the shadowy cobblestone streets of the aristocratic society into which he was born. Forced to become an earl upon the untimely death of his father, Cain assumes the role of head of the Hargreaves, a noble family with a dark past. With Riff, his faithful manservant, and Mary Weather, his 10-year-old half sister, Cain investigates the mysterious crimes that seem to follow him wherever he goes.

Review: Cain Hargreaves is a seventeen year old earl in Victorian London. Murder and destruction seem to surround him. With his ten year old half sister Mary-Weather and his manservant Riff, who turns up more in later volumes, Cain goes and investigates.

For example, someone has been going around chopping off girl’s heads in the style of the Queen of Hearts. Cain investigates this White Rabbit Killer, which ends in the suicide of the murderer and the saving of a would-be murder victim. The other stories in this book fall along this line, such as a crooked house, with the girl living in it wanting to create a living doll out of Mary-Weather, a mystery involving a black sheep and a suit of armour, and another where girls take a potion to look beautiful, then die in pain later as a mysterious man removes and collects their eyeballs. These stories aren’t all random; the last introduces Cain’s half brother, who we’ll see later on in the series.

I like the clever little plots that you see. There’s always a slightly ironic twist to everything, which is hard to explain here but you’ll understand if you read it. I also like the way there’s always a little bit of backstory revealed in the chapter.

Cain is your typical young, tortured hero, with an extremely good reason (his father’s dead and his half-brother wants to kill him). My favourite character is Mary-Weather, who takes being put in a cage above what is basically poison and almost becoming a living doll quite well considering her age and the circumstances. Riff didn’t seem to do much, but I’m glad we’ll see a lot more of him later.

As with all of Kaori Yuki’s work, the art is very detailed, realistic, and atmospheric. There’s a lot of detail in things like costumes, even in the background. The art is also a little bit cleaner than other works such as Angel Sanctuary, so it flows a bit better. It’s also good that all the characters are easy to distinguish.

It’s very historically accurate. You get a very good idea of Victorian London, the darker side of the nobility, and everything. However my favourite Victorian-set manga will still be  Black Butler, probably because I like the supernatural element. This is a very good realistic Victorian manga.

Overall:  strength 5 tea to a manga with a great plot and excellent artwork.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads |

Book Review: Grand Guignol Orchestra by Kaori Yuki

Title: Grand Guignol Orchestra vol 1

Author: Kaori Yuki

Series: Grand Guignol Orchestra #1

Published: October 5th 2010 by VIZ Media, under Shojo Beat. First published January 2011

Length: 208 pages

Warnings: gore, zombies, guns, violence (my rating) "Fantasy violence and some mature themes" (Viz rating)

Other info: Original title The Royal doll Orchestra. Kaori Yuki has lots of other manga to her name such as Angel Sanctuary and Godchild.

Summary : Lucille and his orchestra encounter a town overrun with the worst kind of audience: the Living Dead! Well, not really. They’re people who have been turned into doll-like zombies. And they are definitely not a crowd to take lightly. Can a group of roving musicians use their skills to calm the beasts? Or is this curtains for the Royal Orchestra?!

Review: We start off with a quick part of Coppelia, the part when everyone becomes dolls. However this spans only two pages and really only sets the scene. Then we have a Guignol, which is basically a cross between a zombie and a wooden doll, attacking a carriage as it rolls into a town. Someone fights off the Guignol off and they get into the town. The drawbridge is pulled up, leaving the Guignols outside.

The black carriage carries the Grand Orchestra: long straight haired quiet cellist Gwindel, scarred trigger-happy violinist Kohaku and long curly haired  vocalist Lucille. Making it clear now: Lucille is male. Despite what it looks like, Lucille is a man. And the Grand Orchestra, because this is the unofficial one, is in possession of the the Black Oratio, a book containing forbidden songs that the Orchestra will play for the right price.

We also meet Eles, young 'son' of the lord of the town. Who, it becomes apparent, is actually sister Celes because Eles died in a Guignol attack. But she wants to keep being taken as a boy, and carries on pretending to be Eles.

Various things happen and Eles becomes part of the orchestra.

They then travel on to  another town where Lucille is mistaken for a girl and the Grand Orchestra ends up having to defeat another lot of Guignols. Underneath all this there is also the story of (C)Eles trying to seperate herself from her brother, because it was her piano playing that caused her brother to die, and Lucille attempting to find someone for the Royal Court.

I picked this up because I've read Kaori Yuki's other works, Godchild and Angel Sanctuary. And this was advertised in the back as a historical manga with zombie dolls.

So the story. Some parts of it were a little confusing because there's a lot going on. Which is similar to Godchild and Angel Sanctuary. Really, I think all her works need to be read twice through to get perfect sense.

The characters were fun and original. They all had individual personalities that made it easy to tell them apart. However there are still a lot of things I want to know more about them, such as why Kohaku gets pain whenever there's a Guignol around, what's up with Gwindol and his overprotectiveness of a hedgehog, who's that girl with ringlets Lucille's thinking about that seems to haunt him and exactly what is the relationship  between the members of the Orchestra because it seems they're not together just because they're musical and friends.

On a completely different note, both Kohaku and Gwindel remind me of Undertaker from Black Butler: Kohaku's scar and Gwindel's hair that is almost always covering his eyes.

The art is pretty, obviously a shojo style but in Kaori's signature style. Its realistic and the speciall effects such as the speedlines and blood splatters work well where they are.

However some of the sound effect lettering is a bit distracting and some of via actual speech and thoughts were a little out of the way and unnoticable meaning I skipped them out when reading sometimes. 

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to another amazing manga with a different spin on zombies.

Links: Amazon ¦Goodreads ¦ Author Website¦ Shojo Beat website