Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
Let me say it again, if you didn’t happen to check out the Spring Let’s Watch poll article. Heavenly Delusion (officially just Tengoku Daimakyo on Disney+, as the streaming service has chosen to forego the existing English title of the series for some reason)—both that it exists at all and that we’re able to sit here and talk about it—is pretty remarkable. The original manga is the still-ongoing project of Masakazu Ishiguro, of And Yet The Town Moves fame. These are very very different properties—And Yet The Town Moves was an often-surreal comedy series, something that does not describe Heavenly Delusion at all—but if you squint, you can spot a few similarities. Some are obvious, like Ishiguro’s general character design sensibilities—natural hair tones, round faces, a certain specific sort of facial proportioning—or the timbre of some of the moments of genuine comedy in this opening episode, of which there are a surprising amount. Less obvious is the sheer sense of tactility that Ishiguro, and the staff of the anime, bring to Heavenly Delusion‘s setting. For lack of a better term, this show’s world—a post-apocalyptic landscape overrun with vegetation and unease—feels real. There is a grounded feeling to even the more fantastical elements.
The plot itself is actually rather simple, so far. Maru (Gen Satou) and Kiriko (Sayaka Senbongi) wander what was once Japan in the wake of some society-destroying disaster known only by the maddeningly vague name of “The Collapse.” Kiriko has been hired as a “bodyguard” of sorts, by somebody, in order to escort Maru to his destination, a place that both characters are short on details about, but they know is called “Heaven.” Along the way, Kiriko hopes to find two men who she keeps photos of sealed in a plastic baggy. Their relationship to each other—and to Kiriko—unknowable at this early point in time.
At the same time, somewhere else, a sealed-off facility hosts an entire generation of children who know nothing of the outside world but seem to be cared for in relative comfort. One of the children there, Mimihime (Misato Fukuen), wonders of the world outside the dome, telling her friend Tokio (Hibiku Yamamura) that she dreams of it, and that in her dreams, a person outside the dome looks just like Tokio. The latter mentions this notion to the facility’s mysterious administrator, who all-too-happily tells them that life outside the facility’s walls is a hellish, unforgiving struggle. Given some of the other things we see in this episode, and regardless of whatever else she’s up to, she might not be wrong.
Most of the opening episode focuses on Maru and Kiriko, who have a sibling-esque relationship complete with plenty of affectionate bickering despite not actually being related at all, as Kiriko points out. You’ll forgive me for talking around the episode’s events in general instead of addressing all of them individually—this is a busy first episode, albeit not in a bad way—but the two do go through some pretty intense stuff here, and how they handle it raises tons of questions. Kiriko has some kind of laser gun* and Maru seems to be capable of some truly bone-cracking martial arts that makes one wonder why he needs protection in the first place.
Even more bizarre are the man-eating monsters that seem to stalk the world’s nights. Something very bad clearly happened here, and this episode does a dizzyingly excellent job of hooking you in by making you wonder what that could’ve been.
On top of that, the production is just absolutely top-shelf stuff. If that seems like a rather unromantic statement given everything else I’ve said, know that this is only because I don’t really think I can compete with just posting screencaps for this particular part of the show. Look at this!
I’m very cynical about tierlist-bro descriptors like “movie quality visuals” but if people resort to terms like that to describe this show I don’t really blame them, Production I.G. have done an absolutely stunning job, and it’s good to see something carrying the torch for truly wonderful TV anime visuals after the finale of Trigun Stampede last week.
So what to make of this thing, all told? Well, it’s firing on basically every available cylinder. Sometimes there are no nits to pick or further points to raise. If anything, I’m even impressed with how Disney+ are handling the show, which is not something I expected to be saying even a week ago. (Last year they sidelined the intermittently-brilliant Summertime Render by simply not releasing it until months after it concluded. I’m still salty about that.) As far as opening episodes go, this is basically perfect, a gorgeous adaptation of already well-loved source material. You can’t go wrong here; 10/10, no notes.
*In part, I think this is actually a reference to And Yet The Town Moves, which to my recollection featured a similar weapon in a gag plot, but I assume there is some in-universe explanation for it as well.
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