This is a 3-volume manga series that was released here in the States over the last year, and which I picked up over the last six months (next manga review I do will be volume 1 of this book, actually.)
Eniale's an angel. Dewiela is her best friend, who happens to be a demon. A fair number of the stories revolve around Dewiela trying to convince a mortal to give up their soul, and Eniale trying to stop her. Probably an equal number of stories are simply the two of them getting up to various hijinks and rapidly escalating things by calling on the resources of their respective realms. The very first story is the two of them fighting in Rome about clothes until they find a baby abandoned on a park bench and both deciding to help reunite it with its parents.
Which eventually involves a leviathan-sized poodle stomping through the city. That sort of absurdity is fairly common. Eniale tries some rejuvenating lotion of Dewiela's she finds, but it causes her to sprout multiple extra sets of wings, which would elevate her in the Heavenly Host. Right into a position where she'd been stuck behind a desk forever. The struggle over a priest who has potential to be an angel, but desires to be a devil leads to a full-on zombie outbreak.
In practice, the two of them just seem to be the sort of friends who enjoy squabbling. The fact they're on opposing sides is part of the fun for them, maybe. Like those cartoons about the sheepdog and the coyote. Fight tooth and nail while they're on the clock, go clothes shopping or hang out at the beach when they aren't. I don't know if Shirahama really likes drawing clothes, or just likes drawing the two of them in different outfits, but they don't tend to stick to one look for very long.
There's a fair amount of invoking classical painting styles in Shirahama's work, especially in the full-page splashes that involve one the two leads really using their powers. So naturally that's not what I used. The kind of painting with fancy borders meant to evoke a scroll or a tapestry, with smaller imagery in the corners and characters in poses evoking The Last Supper. The light of God shining down from the top of the painting to backlight the character. That kind of thing.
One thing I didn't expect was that, even when Dewiela wins, she ends up losing. Not that Eniale's doing great at her job, but when the two of them are pitted against each other over someone's soul, it's always the angel that wins out. I know Christianity is part of the religious landscape in Japan, but I wasn't figuring a manga to be so hung up on Hell not prospering.
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