You know, nobody's mentioned it the whole time because it's so obvious . . . but it's really rather interesting and quite bizarre the way this mangaka has reimagined angels with the little wings coming out of their frigging heads plus the main wings down around waist level sticking out the sides instead of the traditional out-the-back-around-shoulder-level gig.
It's more like the renaissance artists reimagined angels into the traditional template you described. There are definitely angels in fiction out there that more harken back to their original, bizarre roots.
Three pairs of wings in particular was considered standard for the highest orders of angels in Christianity, like the Seraphim and the Cherubim, and you will even find medieval depictions where the top pair of wings does indeed originate on their heads, while the lowest pair comes out roughly from their waists, and that is just counting the depictions where they are given a humanoid appearance to begin with (the further into the past you go, the descriptions read more and more like eldritch abominations with absolutely nothing human in their appearance). So this is not so much "reimagining" angels as it is playing with some of their original, older depictions.
last edited at Nov 27, 2021 7:09PM