Raphael!! from Tenshi ni Narumon

becomes  the most demonic one - just like Anthy was revealed to be the Witch

and in the end, turns out to be just a lil gay boy - similarly to how Anthy turn out to be a cool lesbian set out to find her girlfriend.

Here I would like to talk about a bit of foreshadowing in episode 13 when Raphael first appears in front of Mikael.

Earlier in that episode we see Noelle trying to fly by using mechanical wings that her sister Ruka created for her. When Dispel, one of Silky’s minions tried to catch Noelle and then get rid of Yusuke who just happened to be in the same place (the school tower) with child Natsumi by throwing them off the tower, Noelle jumped after them. After praying to Durian Comet for wings Noelle managed to catch them both and secure a safe landing. Much later at night we see Mikael wandering around the roof of a building next to the tower when he suddenly finds a single feather. He looks at the feather enthralled and muses to himself if it could be possible that Noelle became an angel - when he suddenly catches a glimpse of someone sitting on the tower’s clock. Turns out it’s his teacher from the Angel School, who greets him with a strum on his guitar and words ‘l missed you’. Mikael on the other hand seems less than happy about that and right away accuses Raphael of trying to mess up with him (he suspects that it was Raphael, not Durian Comet that granted Noelle the power of temporary flight) and then starts lecturing him about how angels should not interfere, etc, and it was Raphael himself who told him that in order to become an angel one has to surpass his teacher.

Throughout all this conversation Raphael is seen sitting on the clock’s needle, while Mikael keeps standing on the top of the roof holding the aforementioned feather. IMO, this scene perfectly captures how Mikael views angels. Even before Raphael reveals his presence to him, Mikael has his eyes fixed on the feather, admiring it in an almost enraptured way. And then when Raphael is revealed he, at first, is presented as just an angel, a distant figure sitting far away from Mikael (we don’t see him from up-close). In that moment, he represents the general angel image to Mikael. I believe that in Mikael’s mind angels are these perfect beings who should be respected and only admired from afar, and not be “sullied” by something so „unangelic” like feelings or desires. Yet at the same time, Mikael does desire angels, albeit mostly unconsciously and he would probably never even want to acknowledge that to himself. He thinks that the only way to reach angels is by acquiring angel wings. That is what becoming an angel means to Mikael and what, subsequently makes it impossible for him to become one - because he doesn’t want to save or help humans, but rather, he wants the approval from angels and also, he wants something angelic to be part of his own body, he wants to possess it.

So they talk for a while, Mikael visibly becomes more and more annoyed with his teacher (all the while holding the feather) and then suddenly and to Mikael’s surprise Raphael flies down to his side and Mikael at first doesn’t seem to know how to react. After acting so defensive just seconds ago, one would expect him to keep up this stance, but no. And then Raphael has an apparent coughing fit and starts staggering, which prompts Mikael immediately to hold out his arms and catch his teacher. Raphael then wraps his arms tightly around his student and just relishes the hug which also makes Mikael realize that it was just a joke and prompts him to free himself from Raphael’s arms angrily. We then see them exchange some more words, but we can clearly see that Mikael does not have the feather in his hand anymore. The next time we see the feather it lies on the ground completely forgotten and the camera lingers on it for a while in a nice contrast to the moment a while ago when it was shown in Mikael’s hand. This is a very peculiar scene, because it not only shows how Mikael’s instinctive side works, but it also contrasts nicely with Mikael’s attitude towards Noelle (he tries to make himself care about Noelle - and fails; on the other hand he pretends that he doesn’t have any desires towards angels, specifically Raphael - and also fails).

The feather is the most telling visual cue as to what actually happened in this scene - as long as Raphael was just one of the angels, a distant figure impossible to reach for a mere mortal - Mikael was clinging to the feather, a symbolic representation of something that could let him not only reach the angels, but what also would let him “possess” them. But the moment Raphael decided to stop being just one of the angels and came closer to Mikael’s side so that the boy could reach him, Mikael instantly forgot about the feather and sort of traded the feather off for the presence of his teacher, because now he had an actual angel by his side and also, he did not have to pretend that he cared about carrying out angelic deeds.

The original Angel Egg fell to the Monster World and got split into three parts, and one of them became Silky. Unlike Noelle, who was lucky to be picked up by a Frankenstein-looking guy who then proceeded to create an entire family for her, Silky grew up completely alone. She wandered around the Monster World and from what we can assume, at some point found some abandoned dolls and then hid in some cave in which she presumably spent her whole life. Due to this peculiar circumstances Silky grew up basically not knowing what love is, which understandably, made her very bitter. At the same time, it is implied that she was the one that tried to contact Noelle while they were both living in the Monster World, but Noelle, being not the sharpest tool in the box, failed to notice that, which made Silky even more resentful because now she felt that the only other being similar to her has rejected her. That would explain her love-hate relationship with Noelle as well.

But her unique circumstances had an interesting side effect - out of the three angel souls, Silky was the one who was truly independent and self-sufficient - qualities that are surely necessary to become an angel. The thing is, Silky does not want to acknowledge the fact that she is free to live her life in whatever way she chooses to. In the final episodes it is obvious that Silky could leave her little personal hell whenever she wanted - she just didn’t have any good reason or motivation too (I also think she did it out of spite and to attract Noelle’s attention). She got fixated on pretending that she does have a wonderful life - a castle in which she resides with her dolls as her servants, waiting for her prince to come and take up the place beside her on the throne that she prepared for him. It seemed as if she wanted to convince herself that even if she didn’t have any of the things that Noelle had (a loving family, a boyfriend, etc) she could have something even better. But if that was the case, if she was truly happy, would she need to pester Noelle like that? On some level Silky knew she was not happy, but her rage at Noelle and angels and her overall feeling of being all alone in the world made her unable to let go and live her own life.

So in short, Silky desires love (which she doesn’t know, because she has only dolls that she can only force to love her), is full of rage (which at the end she clings to the most), but what I believe is her biggest strength are the qualities of self-reliance and independence, which she unfortunately completely overlooks and dismisses as unimportant. But it’s when she makes that first step outside her cave that she finally opens herself to new possibilities and what’s even more important, to human connections, which is what she deep down likely desired the most.

Now moving on to Mikael, he sort of starts from a different side of the spectrum, but eventually ends up in a similar place that Silky is (just, for different reasons). It is kinda harder to talk about Mikael, because there is almost no information about his upbringing, but what we do know is that Mikael was brought up by angels and was told to protect Noelle since he was a child (and he believes that is all he has). It is hard to imagine that living in Heaven could be less than perfect, but the impression one gets from the way Mikael (and Raphael) act and talk about it, Heaven seems to be a matter-of-fact and a pretty... bureaucratic type of a place (we know there is an Angel School and that’s it). And even though Mikael was brought up there, according to the director Mikael doesn’t really have a family (it is emphasized that Mikael and Silky are similar in this regard). There is also the fact, that angels cannot be seen or touched by humans (and presumably by other angels), and especially from the way Raphael acts one can easily tell that if he could we would gladly go back to being a human again and live in Human World. Mikael is presumably the only one who, while being only a quarter of an angel soul, can see and touch angels (or just Raphael), which is further complicated by the fact that he can do that even without his halo (even Noelle couldn’t touch Raphael while she still had her halo). And if we follow what the show says about the requirements of becoming an angel (ex. having no desires or deep attachments), it becomes much clearer to point to where Mikael’s problem lies. Mikael has an unhealthy amount of obsession with - he idolizes them to the point of ignoring his true nature, identifies with them and wants their approval. Raphael calls him “a needy baby” and in the penultimate episode even sings about how Mikael idolizes and is in love with Angels. There are at least two instances in the show when other characters comment on Mikael’s weird fixation on angels by calling him “a fan of Angels” or “Angel freak”. But Mikael’s one-sided infatuation doesn’t seem to be reciprocated (at least, not until Raphael comes into the picture and even then, for the majority of the episodes Raphael’s advances come off more as an innocent teasing or a specific type of “mentoring”), and that shouldn’t really come as a surprise - after all angels are usually believed to be pure, perfect beings that do not have any desires. But Mikael has strong desires than he cannot suppress, and yet, those strong desires are exactly what hinders him from becoming an angel. And so, in the direct parallel to Silky, Mikael’s love for angels is his biggest strength, but in Heaven it doesn’t seem to have any real value, thus Mikael chooses to repress it and in order to become an angel tries to act as aloof, distant and self-reliant. Mikael wants to become a perfect angel (since in his mind, this is the only way to go back to Heaven and be with angels - notice the irony of him not wanting to be an angel to help humans even though that is another requirement of becoming an angel) and clings to Noelle (as he presumably sees her as the only way to become a full angel), but, as seen in episode 25, the biggest irony is that after spending two episodes prattling constantly on about how Noelle has to become an angel, how he, Noelle and Silky need to merge in order to become a full angel, how it is their destiny etc, when it came down to it Mikael seemed ecstatically content with having angelic wings stuck to his body, which he obtained by „simply” begging a Comet and didn’t seem to notice that it was his strong desire that made it possible (neither that nor the fact that his desired wings seemed to cause Noelle and Silky pain). So just as Silky needed to acknowledge her self-sufficiency and let go of her anger and resentment to able to get what she truly wanted, Mikael had to acknowledge that he does have desires and let go of the preconception that only by becoming a perfect angel he can get what he wants - because it turned out that when it comes to

strong desires even Heaven had to make some exceptions.