An ambitious project to say the least. And this creative team rises to the challenge with only a few hiccups.

A gripping, apocalyptic tale of the consanguinity betwixt human and angel, "Angel Sanctuary" is laden by tag-team screenwriters Kiyoko Sayama and Kenichi Kanemaki (who divided the three episodes between them). Kiyoko Sayama's direction rescues the effort, keeping a lively pace even when the dialogue stumbles through back-story passages. Plagued with a complex identity and an unnatural love for his sister, Setsuna's salvation rests in his emotional strength rather than the size of his fireball.

Rather than separating art and story, Sayama sculpts the story with images, the script itself having somewhat failed to capture manga writer Kaori Yuki's vision. A chilling and judicious use of highly detailed still images offer glimpses of much larger concepts.

The gravity of the story calls for keen emotional nuances that never come through. The ADR director is to blame here. The translation, from a script wrought with the intricacies of human emotion, does little to distinguish character, and, at times, contradicts details both on screen and within the text itself.

The violence can approach the gratuitous, and the incest theme may prompt embarrassing questions in younger kids.

An image early in episode 2 depicts Sara and her mom talking to a mother superior in full nun regalia. But later dialogue reveals that Sara is traveling to England to meet a prospective fiancée. Poetically, sending Sara into the convent would expand on the Christian imagery and shroud Sara in a thicker cloak of the unattainable. But then, a pre-ordained marriage can be just as unhappy as a life in the habit.

Like hams in a melodrama, characters spit out back-story with the suavity of a DMV file clerk. Gems like Sara's, "Why do you think our folks split up. I suppose it had to do with dad having an affair," and Kira's wiser "Keep in mind, though, Setsuna. None of your persecutors has ever been in your shoes. These people are all observing from the gallery, smugly dispensing the smart but unoriginal moralist cliché," are good for a few guffaws. (Though Kira's line may sound like the pretentious babble that I sometimes come up with, I'm also not writing dialogue for an anime script).