Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Heavenly Delusion
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Theozilla
 Posts: 138 Location: Oakland, California |
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For those interested in keeping up with the manga, Episode 6 adapted all of just chapters 16 and 17. With the remaining 7 episodes of the season adapting anywhere between 17-20 chapters of manga, the pacing of those episodes will on average range from about ~2.43~2.86 chapters adapted per episode.
And if anyone needs a refresher on the ages of the cast of characters: Maru is 15 years old, while Kiruko is mentally 18 and physically 20. The approximate ages of Tokio, Shiro (the white-silver haired teen who was sent the nude photo), Mimihime (the subject of said photo), Taka (the super strong/durable kid), and Anzu (the black haired girl who is good at dancing) are all 14 years old. The approximate ages of Nanaki & Iwa (the two kissing girls), Kuku (the frog-like girl) and Tarao (the sick and now dead kid) are all 10 years old. And Kona’s (the kid who draws the strange drawings) approximate age is 17 years old. And Totori, the girl who came onto Maru this episode is 13 years old (the anime cut some dialogue from the manga where she explicitly stated age). Also a another interesting bit a trivia, Totori’s asking rate in the manga was a lot cheaper. Instead demanding only 80 (presumably Japanese Yen) for her offered “services”, compared to the anime having Totori request an 800,000 fee. And if anyone didn’t realize it by the end of the episode, the guy/“Boss” who got mauled by the bear and later died from his wounds, was indeed the leader of the gang that Maru beat up in the previous episode (and was the specific individual responsible for breaking Maru’s tooth). In case it wasn’t clear, the reason why Kiruko initially didn’t try to use/aim the Kiru-Beam directly at the bear, is because at that point in the episode Kiruko still thought the bear was a Man-Eater (which as far as the characters and audience know, can’t be killed/finished off by anything except the Maru-Touch) and was prioritizing incapacitating it in order to give Maru the chance to safely use his Maru-Touch ability. Also it originally took Kiruko 3 shots to topple the concrete column in the original manga (hence why Kiruko later in the episode says they only have their unreliable 4th shot left), I don’t why the anime decided to change it to only requiring 2 shots. Also a funny detail from the manga that got cut from the anime, when Maru does his “Fatal Dive”, the manga has a visual indication that Maru came up with the name “Fatal Dive” from using a English-Japanese dictionary he found with the porno magazines from the previous episode. Presuming that the bear wasn’t a surviving escaped Zoo animal, the types of bears that are located in that region of Japan are the species known as the Asiatic Black Bear (also known as the Moon Bear). And while bears in general can climbs trees and other similar things (that can support their weight), they cannot climb completely vertical concrete or rickety unstable ladders (hence why they said “bears can’t climb”). Also if anyone was confused as to why Kiruko and Maru asked about Totori’s background, it’s because Maru was able to use the Maru-Touch on her (and thus saw/sensed a core/organ inside similar to what he crushes inside Man-Eaters). The scene isn’t trying to imply that Maru can now use the Maru-Touch on all humans now. In the post-credit scene, we see more instances of the surveillance video footage being manipulated/modified. And to be clear, this is not a case of Tokio being invisible, as the differences in what the camera footage “sees” and what is actually happening is far more different than if it was simply a case of Tokio being invisible (e.g. the camera seeing Tokio still in bed after Tokio got out of it, or the footage seeing Kona as asleep with the lights out, when in actuality the lights are on and Kona and Tokio are sitting together and about to undress. And believe it or not, currently, the manga has still not explicitly revealed the who and/or why behind the surveillance footage was being manipulated. So not even caught-up manga readers know the answer for sure presently. Also when Kona said that while he did like/love Asura in the past but it was not the same as how he likes/loves Tokio, that’s him essentially claiming he didn’t love Asura in a romantic and/or sexual sense (it presumably being platonic or familial). And if anyone was confused about the framing of final part of the after-credits scene with Tokio, it is meant to be understood as a “reveal” of Tokio’s sex being female. Until this point manga, readers were intentionally (mis?)lead to think that Tokio was a boy. Unfortunately, due to the change in medium (manga not having voice acting and such) and the English language not having gendered first-person pronouns and honorific suffixes like Japanese, I believe this intentional misleading wasn’t conveyed as well to (English-speaking especially) audiences, and thus many anime watchers assumed that Tokio was a girl from basically the start. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 1888 |
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The author himself noted that he wrote several erotic scenes for this episodes.
On another note, he highly praised Kiruko's voice actress for her emotional breakdown when the character could not find Maru last week. Apparently, he provided instructions for that scene. |
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tintor2
Posts: 1888 |
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The torture scene was insane but I kinda wonder why Kiruko was the only affected.
Also, even with the gender twist, it really seems Maru likes his companion. Wonder if there are plans for a second cour considering the official site already confirmed the series will be divided in two blurays. |
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Theozilla
Posts: 138 Location: Oakland, California |
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Presumably it's because only Kiruko stared directly into the eyes of the Man-Eater that was in its near-death stasis. Maru didn't so he was unaffected. For those interested in reading along with the manga, Episode 7 adapted all of chapters 18 and 19, and the first 13 pages of chapter 20 (13/32 pages), which is about 2.41 chapters worth of manga. With this first season being planned to adapt up to about chapters 34-37 of the manga, the pacing of the remaining 6 episodes will on average range from about ~2.43-2.93 chapters adapted per episode. If anyone was confused as to why Maru was “kissing” Kiruko when the latter was hallucinating in today’s episode, according to an interview Masakazu Ishiguro (the mangaka of the series) gave in August 2022 (published in a recently released Heavenly Delusion guidebook), Maru was attempting to induce unconsciousness on Kiruko (by way of suffocation) in order to break them out of their hallucination. As for why Maru didn’t use his hands instead (to cover Kiruko’s nose and/or mouth), I can only guess Maru had to use both his hands to restrain Kiruko from flailing about when they were hallucinating (and Doylistically I also assume Ishiguro simply just wanted to write a scene that involved a “wake-up kiss” between Kiruko and Maru). Also one small difference between the English subtitle translation (and dub) and the official English manga translation, when Maru was thinking about Kiruko’s current demeanor/mood, in the anime Maru uses she/her pronouns when referring to Kiruko, while in the manga Maru uses they/them pronouns. This is likely only an issue/discrepancy that exists for the English translation, as in Japanese (gendered) third-person pronouns aren’t really a thing like they are in English. |
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tintor2
Posts: 1888 |
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Yeah, I remember an article where Ishiguro coined the term "sci transexual" when commenting on a possible romance relationship between the two leads. Maru still seems attracted to Kiruko whose character could be an analysis of how people can identity themselves with their gender. The scene where Maru gets jealous in the aftermath of the illusion seems to hint on that. Still, in regards to Kiruko's feelings, it seems she (he? sorry I have no idea which pronoun should we use) just seem like she sees him as a little brother. It confuses me she uses the new name Kiruko which seems like a common girl name due to its ending but when it comes to the bath scene she had no problems at all about appearing to Maru naked.
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Theozilla
Posts: 138 Location: Oakland, California |
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The name Kiruko is the result of the named HaRUki and KIriKO being combined into one name. That’s why Kiruko goes by Kiruko.
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
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Theozilla thanks for adding some context with your posts it helps and is appreciated.
I hope fans aren't missing out on this show (it seems kind of quiet out there), its been really great so far and my favorite of the season. 
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Theozilla
Posts: 138 Location: Oakland, California |
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There's a Discord server dedicated to Masakazu Ishiguro's works (the mangaka of Heavenly Delusion) that has a decent amount of activity (primarily for Heavenly Delusion) if anyone is interested
https://discord.gg/p8nR6em |
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Panino Manino
 Posts: 747 |
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Episode 8 was absurdly good.
And why japan doesn't makes more series with histories like this with little exposition and explanation flashbacks? |
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Aerdra
Posts: 343 |
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It's also my favorite of this season. Unfortunately, it streams on the Disney+/Hulu network rather than Crunchyroll or HIDIVE, so a lot of anime fans are missing out. |
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Theozilla
Posts: 138 Location: Oakland, California |
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For those interested in reading along with the manga, Episode 8 adapted the remainder of chapter 20 (19/32 pages), all of chapter 21, the first 7 pages of chapter 22 and then 5 pages from a different middle part of chapter 22 (so 12/24 pages), and then finally the first 6 pages of chapter 23 (6/30 pages). Total, this is equivalent to about 2.3 chapters worth of manga.
According to Masakazu Ishiguro on Twitter, the remaining parts of chapter 22 had to be cut completely from the anime for like run-time related reasons (i.e. apparently they won't be included at the beginning of episode 9). Those with an eye for detail may have noticed that when the bald Liviumen member tells the protestors that their leader Mizuhashi had died, the exact scene before that has their leader bedridden shows Mizuhashi’s mouth still clearly moving/breathing. There is some cut dialogue from the manga, specifically when the Liviumen are laying siege to the Immortal Order, where an Immortal Order member (one of the guys with a mustache) try to tell the invading Liviumen that Mizuhashi’s leg had been necrotic when she was originally admitted to the Immortal Order, and that if her leg hadn’t been amputated, she would have been at serious risk of dying. And if it wasn’t obvious by the end of the episode, yes the insignia on the button Dr. Usami was holding before he killed himself, is indeed the same design as the one on Kiruko’s Kiru-Beam/laser-gun. Also those who have watched this series’ ED enough times may have noticed that this episode contained a neat visual parallel/reference to one of the visuals located near the end of the ED. |
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Panino Manino
Posts: 747 |
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@Theozilla
These cuts scenes are not being missed, all this information isn't hard to infer from the remaining scenes and context. I just have one doubt. In the cave scene Mimihime's clothes is missing one button. That's the button Usami is holding, that's why I know it was a button. And is only on that moment that we could see that these buttons haves that insignia. I don't remember any previous scene with those kids in the research facility were we could see those buttons close enough to notice the insignia. Os those buttons are drawn without details or with no sufficient details. Is the manga different? Is there any pages in the manga that are drawn with enough detail where the insignia is visible? |
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Aerdra
Posts: 343 |
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Back in episode 5, there was that rumor about the "Ministry of Reconstruction". Well of course Chekhov's Rumor is never just a rumor. Ironically, they posed as members of a group opposed to the ways of the previous civilization.
If we're going with the theory that the "Heaven" scenes are set in the past, then episode 8 would seem to imply that spoiler[Usami is Shiro and Hoshio is Mimihime. It was shown in an earlier episode that Mimihime has some ability to see into the future, so the dream she had might be something that will happen in the future. The person likely to go to her aid is Shiro, based on the interactions we've seen so far.] |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Well I'm impressed, it's not often the hippie people who oppose civilization are the bad guys while the science people are the good guy.
I think this episode is easily the best of the show, which also expose an unfortunate side of the show. The dual story with the weird school section don't really work and the show would be better if they massively cut those shorter and focused more on the main duo. I get it's supposed to be a time difference things and we'll eventually find out plenty of the character we're seeing are actually the kid in the school (that post credits sequence was kinda on the nose), but the reveal isn't worth spending so much time on them. Similarly, the whole "brother is in dead sister body that he was actually romantically in love with" also doesn't bring much to the story. Once again, this episode literally doesn't spend a second on it and it works far better this way. |
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tintor2
Posts: 1888 |
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Oh boy. This got quite dark. The inclusion of Mimihime having the dream at the end of the episode can't be random at all.
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