Angel Sanctuary - Development

Development

According to manga artist Kaori Yuki, the concept for Angel Sanctuary has been with her "for the longest time." As a middle-school student in her second year, she found the story of fallen angels, particularly Lucifer, fascinating; in Angel Sanctuary, she offered her own interpretation of fictional angels, which differed from her thoughts on actual angels. In Angel Sanctuary, Yuki drew on a variety of material, and occasionally included quotes from the Bible in it. She decided to set Angel Sanctuary in Japan in "near future," partially because the setting would be largely unchanged and partially because she had a wish to draw modern clothing styles and sailor uniforms. She considered "forbidden love" to be manga's theme. She used assistants to help her; for example, one was in charge of drawing Michael's facial tattoo. Her editor wrote the captions for the chapters.

Because she had been already working on a serial, the gothic mystery manga Earl Cain, others opposed her wish to begin another. Initially, only ten chapters of Angel Sanctuary were scheduled, which led her to worry about being able to properly end the story; she was eventually allowed to continue the series. She worked on both serials simultaneously, and later put Earl Cain on hiatus, which prompted some fans to send her letters asking her to resume the serial instead. During the serialization of Angel Sanctuary, she mistakingly titled the Gehenna story arc as the Yetzirah arc, and was unable to correct it as several chapters had already appeared under the title; she corrected it for the tankōban release. As the manga takes place in July 1999, Yuki expressed a goal to complete the series by then. For the conclusion, she originally had planned to use a tragic ending, but decided against it in favor of a happy one, because she thought that it would be too upsetting for the fans to read after twenty volumes. She wrote in her final afterword that Setsuna and Sara have reached emotional maturity after their adventures and will live happily together.