Angel Sanctuary is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kaori Yuki. It was serialized in the shōjo manga magazine Hana to Yume from July 1994 to November 2000. It follows Setsuna Mudo, a human teenager who, as the reincarnation of a prominent angel who rebelled against Heaven, becomes entangled in political machinations between the angels and demons. The 120 chapters were collected and published in twenty bound volumes by Hakusensha from February 1995 to February 2001. Titled Coming of the Seraphim in the early stages of its development, Angel Sanctuary was inspired by the Japanese fantasy novel Nocturne and was originally slated to be only ten chapters long, which led Yuki to worry about being able to properly end the story. Angel Sanctuary made cultural references to various mythologies, including Greek and Norse, as well as to real-world people, music, literature, and places.
Cover of the first volume of the English-language translation by Viz Media (2004), depicting Sara and Setsuna
Orpheus's journey to the underworld to bring back Eurydice (pictured) is one of the references to Greek mythology in the series.
Hana to Yume , also known as HanaYume (花ゆめ), is a semi-monthly Japanese shōjo manga magazine published by Hakusensha on the 5th and 20th of every month. The magazine is B5-size, and always comes with furoku or free supplements, such as drama CDs, pencil boards (shitajiki), manga anthologies, stationery, and calendars. Hana to Yume was ranked 4th by Japanese girls as their favourite manga anthology in a survey conducted by Oricon in 2006.
Cover of the 17th issue from 2009 of Hana to Yume, featuring Yona from Mizuho Kusanagi's Yona of the Dawn