 The Stigmata-Free
ROSSMANMan, those nuns in that Catholic school I went
to as a kid completely fupped up their history classes something
awful. They failed to tell us about all the warrior-clergymen
and women in New York City in the roaring twenties who exorcised
horn-stealing demons with crucifix swords, holy bullets and
friendly demons of their own. All we learned about in school
was prohibition, flappers, Black Tuesday and jazz music. Thank
God for the Japanese and their more accurate records of American
history! Thank God for Chrno Crusade (And yes,
it's spelled "Chrno" and not "Chrono"...
It's spelled that way something like 20 times during the course
of the show, and after such wonderful products as Chrono
Trigger and Chrono Cross I think the
Japanese know how to spell it that way if they wanted to. The
lack of an "o" is deliberate, moron).
Chrno Crusade is a mix of period
piece, religious drama and wacky, soulless demon fights. Oh,
and warrior nuns too. Kinky. I do find it quite humorous that
the Japanese use the image of the "young Catholic nun"
as a kick ass demon hunter in more features than Western pr0n
makers use the womanly career path-taker as a horny angel who's
just looking for some earthly lovin'. But I digress. Chrno
Crusade is all about the Magdalene Order of the Catholic
Church who's job it is to keep disruptive and destructive demons
off of our plane of existence. The main characters are Rosette
Christopher (think either of the Dirty Pair
in a sexy penguin habit) and Chrno (hornless demon who's life
is now entwined with Sister Rosette). Things start off slowly
(veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slooooooooooooooowly) as the pair go out
on mission after mission to stop renegade demons or rescue orphans
with great singing voices. Honestly, up until episodes 18 and
19 I wasn't even planning on reviewing this show. CC
was all blah, cookie cutter anime. Monster of the week with
a *gasp* mysterious mystery surrounding Rosette and Chrno and
their unending hunt for Rosette's younger brother, Joshua. But
episodes 18 and 19 showed that CC had balls...
And fangs. That's when some pretty huge things happened and
I realized that the writers were willing to actually take some
big risks and sacrifice (major pun intended) some of their characters
and storytelling sensibilities. Then episode 24 came... And
with it came my love for this series. That was a better ending
than I could have ever HOPED for. It's the kind of ending that
you pray (yup, religiously humorized) your favorite
show will have. There's just one image that sticks with you
after you see the last half hour; it kind of makes you tear
up whenever you think about it. *Sniff* And I ain't no sissy!
I will not go into it or even come close to describing it for
that would be a total disservice to you if you ever chose to
watch CC and stick with it till the end. The
ending completely makes up for the averageness of the beginning
and middle (seriously, only the last 1/5th of the show is really
fun), but you have to wade through the beginning and middle
to get to and fully appreciate the end. It's your call. But
oh man, the emotions the finale plays with and the way
it plays with them should be illegal... Or at least a sin. Heh
heh, I can't stop with the religious humor... Sorry.
Anyway, CC's use of Catholicism
to tell the story is actually pretty much on the ball. Probably
more so than it would have been if it had been written by Americans
(who would have felt they had more room to mess with the faith
and its beliefs). The Fatima Prophesies (which aren't even Catholic
dogma), the beliefs in the saints, the occurrence of stigmata...
I was very impressed at how serious and cordial they were in
their presentation. Honestly, I was hoping they would have screwed
it up a little for some much needed "Japanese trying to
interpret Western religion" humor. But alas, the writers
actually did their homework. They even got most of the American
history of the time correct too! But they did seem to miss the
fact that the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't built until 1937.
As for the prophecies of Fatima, yeah, they got
the first two right, but they chose to run with the official
Vatican release of the third secret foretelling. They play it
out that the third one was all about the 1981 assassination
attempt on JP the Second, though most scholars agree that the
few lines that were even revealed about the final prophecy point
to something else which is still being kept a secret (possibly
the arrival of the anti-pope... Yeah, I can't make that kind
of shit up). Oh, and contrary to Chrno Crusade,
JP stands for JOHN Paul, not Joan. But that's the biggest and
funniest cultural or language mistake in the whole show. It's
still worth a chuckle though.
Back to the story and characters. Satella, the
freelance demon hunter, is a hottie, Rosette is a firecracker,
Chrno is cool when he wants to be, and Azmaria is the wide-eyed
newbie. Along with a couple dozen priests and nuns, and some
unholy and nihilistic demons this series would seem to have
almost too much to wrestle with in a mere 24 episodes of planning,
but after all is said and done it really should have only been
a 13 episode show which would have been packed from opening
to ending with nonstop intrigue and holy-hell busting out all
over the place. It's just waaaaaay too stretched. Too little
story for so much time. Oh well. Whatever. Maybe suffering through
the boring parts is your penance, and your salvation is the
final 5 or so eps. Or is that too deep?
What did I think of Chrno
Crusade? Well, I liked parts and I disliked parts.
I give it a 3 1/2 out of 5 Crosses of Rossman Servitude. None
of it outright sucked, but like I stated many times before in
the above review it was only the ending which made this show
memorable in the least. Before that it was "been there,
seen that, ate the Jesus wafer."
Monkey.
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The Akuma DEVILTsk tsk. A very difficult show to review for me.
See, it did have lots of evil in it, and evil was kicking good's
ass for most of the series. And even in the end I'm not really
all too sure that good even won. Seriously, what the hell was
Aion's plan? I didn't get it, and he was originally one of my
minions in the first place. That's just fucked up.
And then there was that Battle Nun, Rosette...
She was kind of heretical with her demon boy-toy and all, and
her slutty nun outfit. So that was good. But then her personal
demon pet kept putting the kibosh on some of the eviller demons
who were just trying to end the world... Or were they? Seriously,
what the hell was the main plot about? And what were those "Apostles"
all about? Weren't there like only 7 in the show? What the?
I mean even I, the Princess of All Wickedness, know that there
were a couple more of the goody-goodies than that. I call "bullshit!"
If you're going to fuck around with a religion
for the basis of your entertainment show, at least
have the common courtesy to not make the bad guys out to be
lamers without a real purpose, and to make sure you count out
the number of followers a man/God had when he was walking around
the planet a couple thousand years ago. That's just a pet peeve
of mine. Jeesus!
Screw it, I give Chrno Crusade a Negative
5 Stars of Hellaciousness. Fuck them all.
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