About.com Rating

The Bottom Line

Across the backdrop of New York City in the Roaring Twenties, Sister Rosette Christopher of the Order of Magdalene and her demon partner exorcise all manner of demons—with guns blazing.

This partial adaptation of the manga has most of its best moments in the first half or so, before the overly-serious plotline gets the better of it. It does sport some fun period detail and some lively action—but again, mostly in the first half.



Pros

• The premise pays off well in the first half, with action and humor.
• Fun Roaring Twenties period details.

Cons

• Story grows leaden and overly serious, and less interesting, in its second half.

Description

• Director: Yu Ko
• Animation Studios: Gonzo
• Released By: Kadokawa Shoten
• Released Domestically By: FUNimation Entertainment
• List Price: $49.98
• Age Rating: TV-14 (violence, thematic material)
• Audio: English / Japanese w/English subtitles
• Anime Genres:
  • Comedy
  • Fantasy
  • Action
  • Horror
• Related Titles:
  • Trinity Blood
  • Baccano!

Guide Review - Chrono Crusade

Sister Rosette Christopher and her partner Chrono may be the best exorcists in the Order of Magdalene, but like Kei and Yuri they tend to leave behind as big a mess as they’ve been tasked to clean up. They’re an unusual pair in many ways—not least of all being that Chrono is a demon who’s been soul-bonded to Rosette, that she can amplify his powers at the cost of shortening her own lifespan, and that her exorcisms involve shooting guns that fire holy bullets.

Rosette’s exorcisms are driven by an ulterior agenda: she’s looking for whatever clues she can find to the whereabouts of her brother Joshua. He was apparently spirited away by the demon Aion, himself a brother to Chrono, and bestowed some of Chrono’s own power onto Joshua to give him the strength he never had in his mortal life.

These two are in time joined by others. There’s Azmaria, a girl whose power of healing, but who also curses others with misfortune, much to her chagrin. Another demon hunter, the tall and haughty Satella Harvenheit, would just as soon do away with Chrono as work alongside him, but she too turns out to have a connection to Aion and Joshua that ties their fates together.

It’s a shame the show as a whole isn’t better, when it starts off on a promising note. The first portion of Chrono Crusade is a lighthearted romp, with shoot-‘em-up action, gags as broad as the side of an airplane hangar and many, many running jokes about Rosette’s penchant for destruction. Then it grows incrementally more serious and leaden—far too much for its own good, especially when Joshua enters the picture and a whole slew of fierce battles between the Order and the demons are unleashed.

Still, that first portion is fun, with plenty of Roaring Twenties period flavor to burn—not just in the visuals, but even in the English-dubbed dialogue (via slang like “Everything’s jake”). The interactions between Rosette and Chrono (and some of the other characters) are also fun, but they too get progressively bogged down by the heavy-handed seriousness of the storyline—which includes, among other things, the Fatima Prophecies as a plot element.

It’s all too clear that the show was adapted while the manga was still in progress, given how the final third or so makes a rather wide break from what came before. A revelation about Rosette’s own past sidelines her from much of the climactic action—a bad idea, since her whole personality as a rough-and-tumble, can-do type gets undermined because of that. In the end, the promise of the first half or so of the show feels like it’s unfulfilled in too many ways. Maybe they should have stuck closer to the manga and not been so impatient.



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.