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Chrono Crusade Review
Dec. 5th, 2018 08:17 pm**This is an old review that I'm cataloging and does not fully represent my Current thoughts on the matter**
Okay so I know I said I was going to review Trigun (and that is still on my agenda), but I just sat down and watched all of Chrono Crusade in two days, so I’m going to talk about that first. This is about the anime only by the way, as I haven’t read the manga and while I know it differs greatly from its anime counterpart, I don’t actually know in detail how or at what points. Also, SPOILERS, because I need to vent.
Okay, so for anyone who doesn’t know, Chrono Crusade is a story that takes place in America during the 1920s after the first world war. After the war, demons started coming out of the shadows and wrecking havoc and stuff. Now a girl named Rosette, a nun serving the Order of Magdalene (a church that battles demons and is a sort of religious army), is battling demons despite having contracted with a demon named Chrono while trying to find her missing younger brother Joshua. Eventually, they find out Joshua went crazy after receiving Chrono’s demon horns from a different, much nastier demon named Aion, and is currently working for Aion despite being mentally and physically unstable.
From the get-go, I really liked both our main protagonists; Rosette as the feisty, short-tempered, gun-slinging exorcist, and Chrono as the even-tempered, gentle demon side-kick. Throughout the whole series I really loved both of them, Rosette was kick-butt and kind-hearted and generally a really awesome character, and Chrono was sweet but with a complicated past and was an awesome friend to Rosette.
The other two main characters were Azmaria and Satella. Azmaria was a young girl who lived a dangerous, lonely life due to her powers of being an Apostle before being taken in by Rosette (and the church in general). She really grew on me, she was just so innocent and kind and basically was the actual definition of “cinnamon roll too pure for this world”.
Satella was an older (by older I mean actually an adult, she still looked pretty young) wealthy lady who could control demon-esque things that were within these gemstones. She had her family murdered by demons when she was younger except for her older sister, who was now missing. While a fan-service character by design (which generally annoys me a great deal), she had an interesting personality and backstory as well as solid character development, so I actually ended up liking her a fair amount too.
So all in all, the show did a GREAT job with main protagonists. My main complaint character-wise for this show is that they just HAD to have a Pervy Old Man character. He wasn’t there all the time or anything, but he was still annoying in almost every scene he was in. I don’t get Japan’s obsession with this trope, IT ISN’T FUNNY, and it’s overdone. But I was willing to ignore him for the other protagonists.
As for the plot itself, that went all over the place, both in what was happening and how invested it had me in it. At first it’s fairly straightforward; Rosette and Chrono fight off demons that cause trouble, Rosette is a crazy driver, and she argues with her boss a lot. Things got crazier with the introduction of Azmaria, because then we knew Aion was trying to capture the seven Apostles for his Evil Plan. There was a bunch of action stuff that went down, Joshua turned out to be an Apostle, and that was all pretty fun. And there was a bunch of cute friendship bonding along the way.
The point where I started feeling less interested is when Rosette was basically broken by Aion’s crazy “Atonement Ritual” and kidnapped and brainwashed by him for like, the bulk of the climax. Like, for five or six episodes our MAIN CHARACTER wasn’t doing anything aside from blindly starting riots under Aion’s control. And then I dunno there was a lot of failing on the good guy’s part, also Aion is THE BIGGEST CREEPER, I really hated him, he made out with almost every female character (usually against their wishes) and I just really wanted to see him go down. (plus he was, you know, a ruthless murderer who wanted chaos and all that) But it wasn’t until nearly the very end of the show when Chrono finally wips out his Full Demon Power and destroys him with a couple of blows? It was incredibly anti-climactic, especially since Rosette didn’t get to do anything in the final battle despite being the main protagonist with tons of gun and exorcism training.
And then the ending. At first, it was just INCREDIBLY SAD. IT HONESTLY MADE ME KIND OF EMOTIONAL. But then. After over half the cast of good guys were dead, at the very end, we find out AION WAS STILL ALIVE. HE GOT TO LIVE WHILE THE OTHERS DIDN’T. THAT HEARTLESS CREEPER SURVIVED. And everyone was getting ready for the second world war to start because of some prophecy, and just. I was really angry. WHAT THE HECK SHOW. WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO THAT. All I wanted was for Rosette to ruthlessly murder Aion and then I dunno some sort of happier ending than we got (and I’m not usually huge on Happy Endings, but I wanted there to be at least SOME joy). And they denied me that. >:(
So, in short, it was mostly a really good show. It was fun, had mostly lovable characters, and a relatively interesting plot. Also the animation and music score was GORGEOUS. But it did fall into several annoying fan-service tropes at times, and the ending, while not 100% terrible, kind of failed to be satisfying and left me rather bitter. I say 7/10. Now I have to add yet another manga series to my “must read for retribution against the anime” list.
Okay so I know I said I was going to review Trigun (and that is still on my agenda), but I just sat down and watched all of Chrono Crusade in two days, so I’m going to talk about that first. This is about the anime only by the way, as I haven’t read the manga and while I know it differs greatly from its anime counterpart, I don’t actually know in detail how or at what points. Also, SPOILERS, because I need to vent.
Okay, so for anyone who doesn’t know, Chrono Crusade is a story that takes place in America during the 1920s after the first world war. After the war, demons started coming out of the shadows and wrecking havoc and stuff. Now a girl named Rosette, a nun serving the Order of Magdalene (a church that battles demons and is a sort of religious army), is battling demons despite having contracted with a demon named Chrono while trying to find her missing younger brother Joshua. Eventually, they find out Joshua went crazy after receiving Chrono’s demon horns from a different, much nastier demon named Aion, and is currently working for Aion despite being mentally and physically unstable.
From the get-go, I really liked both our main protagonists; Rosette as the feisty, short-tempered, gun-slinging exorcist, and Chrono as the even-tempered, gentle demon side-kick. Throughout the whole series I really loved both of them, Rosette was kick-butt and kind-hearted and generally a really awesome character, and Chrono was sweet but with a complicated past and was an awesome friend to Rosette.
The other two main characters were Azmaria and Satella. Azmaria was a young girl who lived a dangerous, lonely life due to her powers of being an Apostle before being taken in by Rosette (and the church in general). She really grew on me, she was just so innocent and kind and basically was the actual definition of “cinnamon roll too pure for this world”.
Satella was an older (by older I mean actually an adult, she still looked pretty young) wealthy lady who could control demon-esque things that were within these gemstones. She had her family murdered by demons when she was younger except for her older sister, who was now missing. While a fan-service character by design (which generally annoys me a great deal), she had an interesting personality and backstory as well as solid character development, so I actually ended up liking her a fair amount too.
So all in all, the show did a GREAT job with main protagonists. My main complaint character-wise for this show is that they just HAD to have a Pervy Old Man character. He wasn’t there all the time or anything, but he was still annoying in almost every scene he was in. I don’t get Japan’s obsession with this trope, IT ISN’T FUNNY, and it’s overdone. But I was willing to ignore him for the other protagonists.
As for the plot itself, that went all over the place, both in what was happening and how invested it had me in it. At first it’s fairly straightforward; Rosette and Chrono fight off demons that cause trouble, Rosette is a crazy driver, and she argues with her boss a lot. Things got crazier with the introduction of Azmaria, because then we knew Aion was trying to capture the seven Apostles for his Evil Plan. There was a bunch of action stuff that went down, Joshua turned out to be an Apostle, and that was all pretty fun. And there was a bunch of cute friendship bonding along the way.
The point where I started feeling less interested is when Rosette was basically broken by Aion’s crazy “Atonement Ritual” and kidnapped and brainwashed by him for like, the bulk of the climax. Like, for five or six episodes our MAIN CHARACTER wasn’t doing anything aside from blindly starting riots under Aion’s control. And then I dunno there was a lot of failing on the good guy’s part, also Aion is THE BIGGEST CREEPER, I really hated him, he made out with almost every female character (usually against their wishes) and I just really wanted to see him go down. (plus he was, you know, a ruthless murderer who wanted chaos and all that) But it wasn’t until nearly the very end of the show when Chrono finally wips out his Full Demon Power and destroys him with a couple of blows? It was incredibly anti-climactic, especially since Rosette didn’t get to do anything in the final battle despite being the main protagonist with tons of gun and exorcism training.
And then the ending. At first, it was just INCREDIBLY SAD. IT HONESTLY MADE ME KIND OF EMOTIONAL. But then. After over half the cast of good guys were dead, at the very end, we find out AION WAS STILL ALIVE. HE GOT TO LIVE WHILE THE OTHERS DIDN’T. THAT HEARTLESS CREEPER SURVIVED. And everyone was getting ready for the second world war to start because of some prophecy, and just. I was really angry. WHAT THE HECK SHOW. WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO THAT. All I wanted was for Rosette to ruthlessly murder Aion and then I dunno some sort of happier ending than we got (and I’m not usually huge on Happy Endings, but I wanted there to be at least SOME joy). And they denied me that. >:(
So, in short, it was mostly a really good show. It was fun, had mostly lovable characters, and a relatively interesting plot. Also the animation and music score was GORGEOUS. But it did fall into several annoying fan-service tropes at times, and the ending, while not 100% terrible, kind of failed to be satisfying and left me rather bitter. I say 7/10. Now I have to add yet another manga series to my “must read for retribution against the anime” list.
