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EP. REVIEW: Heaven's Design Team


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Dumas1



Joined: 20 Dec 2012
Posts: 75
PostPosted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 2:53 pm Reply with quote
I've been enjoying this series so far. Semi-educational shows like Cells at Work can be a lot of fun and the engineer character is my candidate for best girl having to rein in the crazy designers.

I really, really hope they have a platypus segment this season. The so-called "duck designed by committee" is an obvious target for this series.
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ab2143



Joined: 09 Jan 2021
Posts: 701
PostPosted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 3:01 pm Reply with quote
I do think it would have worked better as a half-length show. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still enjoying it but I have a feeling the ‘weird animal gets rejected’ gag might get a bit tedious. So far, it hasn’t been the case but, as you say, it will probably get a bit dull in the future.

Horse-obsessed old man is the best character. Also, loving the trivia at the end of each segment.

Just realised that Junya Enoki seems to be in a lot of leading roles this season. I like his voice so I’m happy with that. He’s doing a good job as Shimoda.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Fri Jan 22, 2021 3:26 pm Reply with quote
Yeah this needed to be a short or at least half length, there's some good joke and segment but everything is soooo drawwwwwwn ooooooooooout that can I call the joke before they're even setup and that's just not fun. Also I just don't care for the character based humour, I wish they'd focus more on the core premise of weird animal design and iteration. I don't get why they have the little trivia section, why not integrate that into the story by having the character add those feature to the animal, that's literally the premise.

Would have been cool if instead of randomly jumping from one animal to another they went along evolutionary route and shown animal evolving from one design to another.
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Covnam



Joined: 31 May 2005
Posts: 3627
PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 3:29 am Reply with quote
Wasn't sure what to expect with this, but I've been really enjoying it. That gorilla bit in the 3rd episode had me cracking up Laughing
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 6:28 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Barry, who is in fact a perfect combination of majesty and flatulence

Lol! Poor Barry, but that is one beautiful sentence.

There are a number of beasties that fly without wings, so I was wondering which one they'd settle on. I was expecting squirrels maybe, kinda hoping for spiders that sail on silk strands, but snakes are good too.

Are they only designing animals? Maybe later or in another season they could show the plant team.
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Oggers



Joined: 29 Nov 2017
Posts: 357
Location: Ontario, Canada
PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 11:09 am Reply with quote
This has been an enjoyable show so far. I've always loved learning about animals, even the weirder and grosser ones.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2599
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 11:58 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
Quote:
Barry, who is in fact a perfect combination of majesty and flatulence

Lol! Poor Barry, but that is one beautiful sentence.


Very Happy He's my special boy - he just turned ten this month. He probably wouldn't be quite so flatulent if his favorite food wasn't frozen carrots, but since he's a lab and basically a stomach on four legs, carrots are a safer treat than anything more calorie-heavy!

Quote:
There are a number of beasties that fly without wings, so I was wondering which one they'd settle on. I was expecting squirrels maybe, kinda hoping for spiders that sail on silk strands, but snakes are good too.


I was thinking flying squirrels or maybe something like dandelion seeds. But a flying snake probably had the horror factor they were going for.

Quote:
Are they only designing animals? Maybe later or in another season they could show the plant team.


I think we saw a plant in episode one? Or maybe two? There's definitely room for more plants and insects, at any rate. I'm kind of hoping for snapdragons now.
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 06 Jul 2015
Posts: 604
PostPosted: Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:03 pm Reply with quote
Princess_Irene wrote:
Gina Szanboti wrote:
Quote:
Barry, who is in fact a perfect combination of majesty and flatulence

Lol! Poor Barry, but that is one beautiful sentence.


Very Happy He's my special boy - he just turned ten this month. He probably wouldn't be quite so flatulent if his favorite food wasn't frozen carrots, but since he's a lab and basically a stomach on four legs, carrots are a safer treat than anything more calorie-heavy!



I don't know, I've never met a labrador that wasn't full of farts.

I remember Barry making a (very insistent) cameo appearance on the ANN Connect stream. Big Barry fan here, A+++++ would pet that dog.
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thedarkemissary



Joined: 07 Apr 2010
Posts: 88
PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2021 12:30 am Reply with quote
#919730 wrote:
I do think it would have worked better as a half-length show.


You know, I been thinking about why some of these "better at shorter length" shows come out at full length. I think it's cause some of these properties have way more material then a traditional 13 episode season. So instead of dropping 13 short, but fairly entertaining episodes and hoping to get another season, they drop 39 segments into the same timeframe.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2021 6:08 pm Reply with quote
I wonder where the planetary names came from. Yes, the characters have a theme naming in Japanese but it's not like they're actually called "Venus" and "Mars" and whatnot, they just have a kanji referring to the planets in their names (so Higuchi has "hi" which is the same kanji as the "ka" in "Kasei"/Mars, Kanamori has "kana" referring to the "kin" in "Kinsei"/Venus, Tsuchiya has "tsuchi" for "do" in "Dosei"/Saturn, etc.). No reference materials I found have anything indicating that the characters are supposed to represent the planets. And then I got curious and checked subs in other languages, and sure enough they all had the Japanese names.

And if they change the names of the designers, why not do the same with Ueda (up/boss) and Shimoda (down/subordinate)? How are they going to deal with the character Yokota (side/sideways)? Does Saturn really have a grandkid named Kenta? Consistency, what is it, does it taste good?
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Zhou-BR



Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1419
PostPosted: Thu Jan 28, 2021 8:30 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, I agree it was unnecessary to change the designers' names just to call attention to the fact that their original Japanese names include kanji from planet names. It's as if they changed the last names of the members of the Generation of Miracles from Kuroko's Basketball to "Yellowstone", "Greenfield", "Blueblood", "Violette" and "Reddington" just because they have color kanji in their original Japanese names.
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ab2143



Joined: 09 Jan 2021
Posts: 701
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2021 4:52 am Reply with quote
I wonder if Ueda will permanently stay in hell or will she be returned to heaven in next week’s episode?

The multiplying pandas (with starfish features) segment was my favourite part too.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2021 7:01 am Reply with quote
I really liked the little fairy pegasus that camouflages as a flower. I wish those existed. I was also glad to see them debunk the zebra stripes as camouflage thing. I'm not sure the fly-biting theory has been definitively proved yet, but it seems like the best one currently out there, with pretty good evidence to back it up.
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ab2143



Joined: 09 Jan 2021
Posts: 701
PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 5:23 pm Reply with quote
It was nice to see what Hell's employees were like. Keeps things fresh! For someone who works in Hell, Chuuni Yokota is very pure.
Hell’s design team spin-off when?


Quote:
Neptune and Shimoda represent all sentient beings when they just keep stopping to croon and squeal over the highly adorable animal.

This was pretty much me throughout the sea otter segment:
https://imgur.com/auqLceK.jpg

I would say this has been the best episode so far.


Last edited by ab2143 on Thu Feb 04, 2021 5:50 pm; edited 1 time in total
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 5:41 pm Reply with quote
I kind of love the idea of Hell being a theme park, it just vibes so well with the whole idea of Earth being, essentially, just a job for all these designers. Well yes, humans will eventually have a terrible time in Hell, but hey, that's the point of the theme park! That's what the boss asked for!

Re: the names, to be honest to me it feels like a translator (or editor) trying to be smart. "Oh hey, these characters have a certain theme naming that I can localize even though the story gives no reason for me to do so! Anime exclamation Hm, these other characters* also have theme naming, oh, but I can't localize them easily and their theme makes no sense with my choice of localization for the others, oh well, let's keep those in Japanese. Oh, and Saturn has a grandchild and he has an everyday Japanese name?** Oh well, what is consistency anyway."

*the angels, that is. Ueda is "ue"/above, Shimoda is "shita"/below, Yokota is "yoko"/sideways.
**really, why does a character named Saturn have a grandkid named Kenta? if you're localizing names, at least name the kid something relevant to Saturn. Oh, Iapetus or Titan would be weird and out of place? Well, so is Saturn for a guy named Tsuchiya who goes around in a traditional Japanese outfit.

Sorry for the rant, I work in translation and localization, and these choices always irritate me.
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