Ever since I started reading manga in middle school, I have always been drawn to the shonen genre, due to my love of angst, action, badness villains and Buckets of Blood. Unfortunately, this has meant I have also been forced to endure tired old plot lines, obnoxious heroes and hopelessly stupid female leads. I am sad to say that the anime adaptation fits this description more than a little, but thankfully the manga is a completely different experience.
I have never quite gotten over my pleasant surprise to find that a man had created a manga that exposed so much raw human emotion. I watched the characters I cared about fall into despair time and again and rise up out of the ashes. I felt myself empathizing, dare I say bonding, with the villains just as Azmaria did, realizing that that people, even demons, can not be categorized as merely good or evil. And of course, I cried over the ending, if only because it portrayed to me the harsh reality that most lives are not faerie tales, and there will not always be happily ever afters. Silly as it may sound, the impact of some of these realizations are still with me today.
Years later I have sold off most of my manga- the cheap thrill swordsman genre and the few corny shojo comedies have found homes on somebody else's shelves. But Chrono Crusade remains, and it isn't going anywhere soon.
For anybody looking for a gem in the middle of a whole lot of cardboard for something that makes them think and feel, I would recommend this series without hesitation.
A Surprisingly Atypical Shonen Manga
Ever since I started reading manga in middle school, I have always been drawn to the shonen genre, due to my love of angst, action, badness villains and Buckets of Blood. Unfortunately, this has meant I have also been forced to endure tired old plot lines, obnoxious heroes and hopelessly stupid female leads. I am sad to say that the anime adaptation fits this description more than a little, but thankfully the manga is a completely different experience.
I have never quite gotten over my pleasant surprise to find that a man had created a manga that exposed so much raw human emotion. I watched the characters I cared about fall into despair time and again and rise up out of the ashes. I felt myself empathizing, dare I say bonding, with the villains just as Azmaria did, realizing that that people, even demons, can not be categorized as merely good or evil. And of course, I cried over the ending, if only because it portrayed to me the harsh reality that most lives are not faerie tales, and there will not always be happily ever afters. Silly as it may sound, the impact of some of these realizations are still with me today.
Years later I have sold off most of my manga- the cheap thrill swordsman genre and the few corny shojo comedies have found homes on somebody else's shelves. But Chrono Crusade remains, and it isn't going anywhere soon.
For anybody looking for a gem in the middle of a whole lot of cardboard for something that makes them think and feel, I would recommend this series without hesitation.