A Girl, Her Demon and a Race Against Time (Chrono Crusade)

Mostly putting this thread here because I do still get bunnies and ideas for this particular manga/anime.
This fandom had a larger presence on fanfiction.net. On AO3, most of the fic is stuff I wrote. >_< So, anyone with recs for stuff I haven't already read are welcome.

Have an excerpt from the overview I wrote for crackvan, a multi-fandom fanfic rec community on livejournal:

Chrono Crusade is an eight volume manga and twenty four episode anime by Daisuke Moriyama. The setting is America during the late 1920s, and chronicles the adventures of Rosette Christopher, a fifteen year old exorcist of the Magdalen Order, and her demon partner Chrono. The basic plot of Chrono Crusade is that Rosette and Chrono have spent the past four years with the Order trying to locate Rosette's brother Joshua, who was kidnapped by another demon, Aion. The basic plot complication is that both Rosette and Chrono are living on borrowed time; Chrono's horns, which are what supply him with "astral energy" were broken off by Aion in a fight that occurred fifty years previous to the story. Since a demon will eventually die without horns, Chrono uses the energy produced by Rosette's soul. The symbol of their contract, and the device that keeps Chrono from draining Rosette too quickly is a pocket watch that ticks off the amount of time Rosette has left.

Joshua it turns out is an Apostle, a human gifted with powers beyond those of ordinary humans, among them the powers to heal and to manipulate the Astral Line, the river of life from which all souls are born and eventually return when they die. Aion is seeking out Apostles for some unknown reason, and part of the adventure involves finding out what Aion is up to, and then finding a way to stop him.

The Manga: The manga has a more science fiction feel to it. The strong science fiction elements come into play as it's revealed that the demons are actually very powerful aliens whose ship had crashed ten thousand years ago. The concepts are basically steampunk combined with nanotech, and the villain's master plan involves a Gray Goo apocalypse.

The Anime: The anime took a more traditional supernatural approach. It's just as enjoyable in it's own way as the manga (though most fans will say the manga is better) but it follows the more standard "heroes averting the apocalypse" formula. In the anime, Aion has cast himself as the Anti-Christ, and is trying to rewrite the apocalypse, and make "Earth into Heaven, and Heaven into Earth."

 

It's one of my favorite manga!! Chrono/rosette was one of my first major otps >.>
The ending did a lot of things to my feelings.

I even sorta cosplayed rosette when I was fifteen haha I don't have any pictures, thankfully, but it was a fun costume to wear.

 

The ending of the manga made me cry. So did the anime (though the anime ending also made me completely furious because of what they did with Joshua. He *deserved* a redemption arc, dammit.)

 

hi hello i know this thread is supposed to be dead but i brought it back (/w permission from @OtherCat) b/c i love this manga. at one point it was even my Favorite Manga Ever, and i am still hella fond of it.

honestly i could probably talk for long periods of time about how good this manga is???? like....it has some absolutely amazing relationships in it. plus: worldbuilding!!! the time period stuff is kinda wonky b/c i heard that moriyama admitted that he got most of his info on the 20s and i think america via movies and junk but like. literally everything else.

also the characters??? are really good??? including the antagonists??? like. i'm p sure i used to really not like aion when i first read it but i think even then i knew he was a well-written character and i felt bad for him? like...he has ptsd (i think moooost of the sinners if not all of them have ptsd. it kinda sucks a lot) and he is So Bad at dealing, and then he is like I Must Shoulder This Burden Alone regarding certain things and i'm torn b/c the kind of stuff he saw was Really Bad but i still think he should have told someone. but of course he feels like he Can't and everything just. completely sucks.

also: fic! i have so many ideas even though i'm mostly interested in reading for one particular fandom right now, but i'm probably going to stick with my post-canon stuff and then the liaison group AU, in which demons are beings from another dimension and the...barrier? i guess? between their world and ours is going all wonky so there are actually noticeably weird things going on across the country that can't be explained by science and Everyone Has To Be A Team in order to solve things. only it's not that easy b/c one of the groups that knows about demons, the Order, isn't exactly fond of them, and the feeling is somewhat mutual, so they have to go through a mediating group: the liaison group run by remington (which rosette is part of).

but yeah! chrono crusade!

 

I don't remember the thread being declared dead @pinnedbutterfly . :P It's just that there aren't many CC fans here.

I think I was surprised by how much I ended up liking Aion. I did not like him in the anime because anime Aion is kind of disgusting, but manga Aion...wow. He's a horrific mess, but that's largely why I like him? I'm trying to bring some of that across in Blood and Salt. How very much not-fine he is, while also trying to do an accurate portrayal of the prejudice of the time, and Aion's feelings about it. (I kind of feel a lot of Aion's "humans need to be replaced" is a response to prejudice he observed or encountered, and it reminding him of what the Elder demons did to him and the other Sinners. Everything was horrible and corrupt to him, and none of the surviving Sinners except Chrono really disagreed.)

 

I haven't seen the anime but I loooved the manga and now I want to reread...

 

@OtherCat oops! my bad. ^^; also YES aion is such a disaster but that is definitely what makes him an interesting character??? annnnnd aion would 100% be Irritated/w prejudice to the point that he's like "yeah no all humans are bad please Erase them" but like. i'm p sure he also cares a lot about joshua beyond him being useful to his cause + he has a weird grudging sort of respect for rosette. i think he also respected mary, but i'm not sure he really ever considered her completely human??? since that's sorta the thing about mary--she knows so much about humans but i think it's more based on observation+the memories that she has of other people's lives...which. probably sucks. her life has never ever been normal.
(i also have Feelings About Mary Magdalene but i'm not gonna get into those right now)

also @Enzel if you do that would be awesome! i'm. probably gonna restart the reread i started over a year ago sometime soon so i can do research for fanfic, since i didn't get very far.

 

*Nods!* I strongly felt that Aion cared a great deal about Joshua, in a more or less brotherly fashion. (I ship Joshua/Aion *sob*) And it's pretty clear Joshua thinks Aion hung the moon.

I am not sure Aion feels "respect" for Rosette. I think, baseline, he can't help challenging/pushing people to improve. And he was willing to push Rosette like that (challenging her to shoot him, tsking when she failed to really put a dent in him), even though she's his enemy, because she's connected to Chrono. (And connected to Joshua: he set the scene by the fountain in hopes that Joshua would come back to something resembling reality. I feel he set the test/interaction up wrong. Because Aion is emotionally manipulative while also being emotionally clueless.) This makes her Important, even though he doesn't really get why. Also, he was surprised as hell when she broke his sword.

I am pretty sure he cared about Mary, and considered her a friend, and in a way, another Sinner. I think he was pretty terrified both of Pandaemonium taking Mary over, but also of Mary no longer being Mary.

 

The anime is...not bad? But is screws up the plot and the characterization of the characters, and also steals Joshua's Moment of Clarity/Power, which pretty much enraged me to the point I wrote fix it fic.

 

ok yeah remembering that whole scene he probably doesn't respect her. he just knows she's Important b/c she's important to chrono, and doesn't think very much of her, while enjoying pushing her, b/c aion. i would hope that he'd get it by the end, but honestly? he probably still didn't, hence him asking chrono "so why do you care about this human???" (in an AU, though, under better circumstances, i can Dream......).

oh heck yes!!! i will never be over how much aion cares about those he cares about, especially chrono and mary.

 

Yes (although when I first saw this post I got it super tangled up with Chrono Trigger in my head)! I gotta read the manga, only watched the anime (with my mom, lol).

 

@Saro the manga is So Good but unfortunately is out of print since the publisher went under some years back. you can read it on mangafox here though! i will say that i'm pretty sure that it leaves out one of the bonus chapters, which does affect the plot a little, but not to a super noticeable degree.

 

also: if anyone wants to talk about ships i am super game because shipping is Fun and i have a ton of ships! i will list some of mine (i.e. ships that i currently care about). spoiler b/c some of these ships are kinda spoilery! sorta.

Spoiler

chrono/rosette (the otp)

sinner fam (i do have sinners friend-family feelings. can also include mary b/c she's an Honorary Sinner)

joshua/azmaria (i know they don't get a Ton of Development but their dynamic has the potential to be really good. i just don't want authors to one-note either of these characters b/c it wouldn't do them justice at all)

aion/chrono/mary (and all variations thereof, i.e. mary/aion. my we could have had it all ship)

shader/fiore (a Very Good Ship)

azmaria's grandson/satella (i know he only appears for like 5 seconds and doesn't have much of a personality but like....i at least feel like she might end up getting to know him b/c she's not going to try to contact her sister right away, if ever, and he might be able to tell her more about az's life, b/c i highly doubt she was able to get *everything* in that video of hers. there are more reasons but it mostly boils down to i want satella to be happy and the personality i came up for him really works well/w hers)

i have more ships too but i'm not gonna bother listing all of them right now.

 

Spoiler: My shippy feels

Rosette/Chrono= The first canon het pairing I Believed In. Loyalty/Partnership and the interplay between the characters, the way Chrono would be gently (or not so gently) sarcastic with her, the way she relied on him. Just, wow. So much love.

Aion/Chrono= Yes, this is twincest. Sadly, a) I like their dynamic pre-Mary getting possessed by Pandaemonium. b) I have Fandoms where twincest is canon.

Aion/Mary/Chrono= I really love them as a triad.

Mary/Chrono= Though I am not sure if Mary loved him, or was romanticizing her (death). I know she cared about him and the other Sinners, but still, the set up of that scene was incredibly upsetting. (Upsetting Headcanon: I have a headcanon that the dress she was wearing was purchased/procured by Aion.)

Aion/Mary= I like them as a couple, though I don't have a specific reason why, and Aion seems to be both pushing Chrono and Mary together and also teasing the hell out of Chrono about it. (I like the idea/image of The Seer and the Strategist though. Definitely a "power couple")

Joshua/Azmaria=I mostly like this pairing because of the dream Azmaria has of Joshua. Why I'm not entirely sure.

Joshua/Aion= I am pretty sure Joshua was crushing on Aion. And I like Aion's big brotherly attitude and fussiness with Joshua.

Joshua/Fiore= I like the unrequited crush Joshua has on Fi, okay?

Aion/Fiore= I apparently have a thing for mildly snarky and gentle-but-strong types taking care of/bossing fussy perfectionist types?

 

Re:ships

Spoiler

aion and chrono do have an awesome dynamic. In canon I think I ship it to a degree since demons don't really have a concept of siblings I think??? Other than what they know from humans. i don't think about them much as being a pair outside of canon since I tend to have them be siblings when I'm writing fic and sibling incest is usually a bit of a squick for me.

Aion and Mary are SO good. Strategist/Seer heck yeah! Also they would both probably team up on poor Chrono and tease him, since they both have a penchant for that, even if it's less so for Mary.

With Mary/Chrono I see her as maybe falling in love with him eventually??? But not right away. Like at first she might have been romanticizing her death but then she did eventually fall in love with him.

Joshua and Az I honestly have no idea why I like so much??? I really liked the dream bit too, and I think there are other bits in volume 8 that I'm forgetting or misremembering--it's been too long.

Aion/Fiore is also good, although I'd never considered it prior to a few years ago. Their relationship was always p interesting though.

I don't have much to say about the other ships other than yes good.

 

I wrote long, long fics about Aion/Mary Back In The Day that were all about what happened after The Thing if it had been them together instead of Mary/Chrono. thankfully they were all wiped out the face of the earth when my hard drive set itself on fire because they weren't actually any good, but it was one of my first What If pairings.

also SAME on the rosette/chrono being the first het ship i Believed In, what a wonderful term.

 

Re: demon relationships

It's more that demons all consider each other siblings.

Thought: I wonder how aware Chrono would have been of how human families were organized? Chrono and the other Sinners would most likely have been raised in a creche, which wouldn't have been too dissimilar from the orphanage Joshua and Rosette were at. (Though I suspect he would have thought Joshua and Rosette's situation particularly enviable and idyllic until he understood what an "orphan" was.)

 

Re re: demon relationships oh! i forgot that bit. I reeeeally need to finish that reread;;;

also: i was the shipper who only shipped canon stuff for a long time, so i used to fall hard for pretty much every het ship. that thankfully has passed, but it's still a little embarrassing to think about;;;

but i digress! i am currently working on AUs for this series off and on, and i'm curious as to other people's thoughts?

Spoiler

one is VERY LOOSELY inspired by miraculous ladybug because that show is back to eating my brain again, and i call it the superhero AU (unoriginal, i know). i have messages on tumblr that detail more of what exactly goes on in it but rosette is basically batman with special guns If they're fighting monsters or something, chrono has time powers, az is a hero-in-training... rhere's more but i can't think of it right now.

the other is the liaison group AU, which started off as an inuyasha-hell blazer AU and morphed into a cc AU b/c it worked better. basically demons are from another dimension and the line between their dimension and ours is starting to blur and our heroes, including aion (who is a snark master but doesn't have as many issues), have to figure out how to stop that from happening because if their dimension merges with ours chaos will break loose. also demons have to work together with the order and it's (not) a lot of fun for everyone involved.

last AU is the reincarnation AU aka my baby, which is like a 3 part series consisting of what happens after canon, what happens during the time gap in canon, and the reincarnation AU itself. i know it's been done a million times i know but chrono and rosette deserve to be HAPPY, darn it!!!

 

I have mentioned this on my LJ: In the anime, Central Park has some kind of Sealed Hellmouth Thing going on, right?

Okay, in the Real World Manhattan was purchased from a Native tribe, and as usual, the white guys making the deal cheated.

But. in the anime, it would have been the white guys getting cheated. Because Hellmouth.

This thought amuses the hell out of me.

 

I like this one, but am terrified of the concept of the original hellblazer-inuyasha au! (I also like it because it somewhat reminds me of a story-universe created by an author on LJ that I follow.) Were you going to go with a Universes are Prevented from Colliding (With various possible endings including Lovers and Friends are Separated Permanently) ending or Universes Go Smoosh Despite All Efforts (With various possible endings including It Was Not Good But Not as Horrible as We Thought it Would Be) ending?