Chrono Crusade Gospel 2: Holy Way - Anime From Japan
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- 11/16/04
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"Once again Chrono Crusade has delivered yet another delightful batch of episodes that continue to build upon the great story that was delivered by the first volume."
Chrono Crusade Gospel 2-'Holy War'
Score: 9/10
As Said by ADV Films:
Chrono and Rosette are back, and there's a whole new legion of the damned out to get them! But this time they've got a little help in giving the devils hell, as Azmaria and a new demon hunter join the fight.
Unfortunately, there are bigger, badder demons yet to come, and when the devil who kidnapped Rosette's brother resurfaces, it looks like the Magdalene Order may have met its match. Can our heroes cheat the devil out of his bargain?
The first volume of Chrono Crusade dealt with a plethora of content that it essentially threw at us viewers without remorse, pumping us full of content as it tried to set up this storyline as best as possible, not that it?s a bad thing, mind you. Luckily for us this time around though, we?ve already gone through the first volume and this time around we get a volume that begins to set the pace for the series and gear it toward its intended direction.
Chrono Crusade originally aired in 2003 and is presented here with a wonderful transfer. The animation itself has a rather soft look to it, and some might say that it suffers from a color gradient problem. That may be, but I have a feeling that this ?problem? is something on the source materials that is there to give this show a certain look and feel. Other than this potential problem, there is absolutely nothing bad about the transfer for Chrono Crusade. As for the audio, as with almost all ADV series, Chrono Crusade is offered up with a 5.1 English track, so I went with that. I?m not sure if I?ll be sticking with this track though. The voices just don?t seem to match the characters, and Rosette?s voice is just a little too high pitched for me. There are some nice moments of directionality here though, so this track has some good and some bad to it.
Building upon the revelations made in the first volume, Rosette takes action in this volume once more as she?s rather set upon finding the remaining Apostles to try and figure out what Aion?s plans are. But, as you could imagine, Sister Kate isn?t too thrilled about Rosette?s plans and isn?t behind her in any way, as she doesn?t really see Rosette as a mature enough person to take on such a job as this one. Luckily for Rosette, Minister Remington has more than enough faith in her to persuade Sister Kate enough to get things to go their way. It sure is a shame that some of Remington?s plans don?t really go as planned. He ends up taking Rosette and Chrono down to one of the Order?s underground chambers so they he can train them for the perils they may face on this quest and he releases a real bona fide demon down there.
Actually though, he unleashed this demon upon them so he can provide Sister Kate with a reason to allow them to go on their crusade, because he figures that if Rosette can handle a rather high class demon, like the one he released, then she should be able to take on this mission. As you would imagine though, things do go wrong, as Remington never actually got approval for this training exercise of his, and Sister Kate just happened to be using another chamber to help Azmaria with some of her training since she?s becoming a special member of the Order seeing as how she?s an Apostle. You can probably see how things play out here with Sister Kate and Remington, and it provides for a rather interesting scene, as it changes things up a bit and it was something I wasn?t expecting?I thought he got approval from her and we just didn?t get to see that?guess I was wrong.
Interestingly enough, we also get a new character in this volume in the form of the bounty hunter called the Jewel Witch, who is also known as Satella. She?s kind of like Rosette in that she has magical type powers, but they aren?t the same kind that Rosette possesses. She is a hunter for hire and generally has some of the same goals as Rosette, but she?s never too happy to run into Rosette and the two of them generally get into it when they come across each other throughout this volume. The two of them meet for the first time just as Azmaria is being integrated into Rosette and Chrono?s team. Satella?s meeting of this group doesn?t go too well the first time around as she learns that Chrono is a demon, and in her life long pursuit to destroy all demons she completely writes them off as not being a threat to her at all, which is really odd if you ask me, since she isn?t nearly as surprised about it as one might think.
Once again Chrono Crusade has delivered yet another delightful batch of episodes that continue to build upon the great story that was delivered by the first volume. The addition of Satella is something I?m not quite sure about yet, but for this volume she added some nice content that helped to progress the storyline, I?d just like to see more conflict with her and Rosette?s team in future episodes. The storyline, characters and humorous additives make this series a joy to watch and this volume only adds to that sentiment.
Posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2004 (Archive on Thursday, December 16, 2004)