Heavenly Delusion

Episode 9

After last week's focused emotional tour-de-force, it's easy to forget that a typical Heavenly Delusion episode is all over the place, and that's certainly true of this week's expositional blitzkrieg. That's part of the series' appeal; it's a sweeping survey of speculative science fiction tropes built into an elaborate puzzle box that these characters occasionally stumble over in their search for purpose, salvation, and a hot meal. And on that front, this installment is a treasure trove of secrets and twists pointing to the sinister behind-the-scenes machinations of Takahara Academy, the place now positively identified as Maru and Kiruko's destination.

Asura's scenes are the best example of how much information Heavenly Delusion can pack into a couple of minutes. Asura looks the most inhuman out of all the children we've seen (and it's interesting to consider why Kona, in the same class, looks “normal”), yet none of the other kids treats them any differently. Was Asura a “prototype” for their human experimentation? Then we have to consider how their surveillance interference resembles the kind of technical glitches we've seen elsewhere in the academy. This is just one of the details that call into question how dead Asura is. Their wing patterns look an awful lot like the eyes we've seen on the maneaters, and the silhouette they create looks like the “angel” sightings Juichi later describes (these figures also pop up in the ED). While I'm tempted to criticize how quickly we rush through this material, its bluntness is an apt reflection of how traumatic their suicide was for Kona. And whatever Takahara Academy's ultimate fate will be, Asura's decisions will surely demarcate the beginning of it.

The present-day facility scenes focus on the two girls who comforted Kona in Asura's wake. Mimihime's precognitive abilities now have the additional whorl of causing hallucinations, letting her peek into the past, or opening her eye to Asura's lingering presence in the academy. Whatever it is, I love the understated creepiness of the image and Mimihime's cautious inquiries about it. She's less airheaded than she lets on. Meanwhile, the big cliffhanger goes to Tokio, whose pregnancy allows us a revealing look into Takahara's board of directors. Their ambitions align somewhat with the pamphlet Kiruko finds (raising kids in a cloistered environment removed from societal mores like gender), but it's pretty clear they have secret ulterior motives. I'm sure this all ties into why Asura committed suicide and why the outside world is overrun with monsters.

Elsewhere, Kiruko and Maru's encounter with Juichi allows the story to dump a lot of exposition in a characteristically irreverent way. He's a fun character whose shadiness lends just enough of an air of bullshit to his storytelling, so you can't tell how true any of this information is. That's part of Heavenly Delusion's game; you don't know what's a red herring and what's going to make you slap your forehead several chapters (or several volumes) down the line. I'd wager there are nuggets of truth in all of his potential Great Disaster scenarios (see the aforementioned Asura sighting), although, for the survivors, the origin matters a lot less than the day-to-day harshness of living in its aftermath. I like these moments where the characters' concerns don't align with the audience. We want to know everything we can about this world's backstory, but Kiruko and Maru just want to get this weirdo out of their hair.

Juichi's other tale of terror dips into the common speculative fiction technique of inverting a modern power differential and/or injustice. Wouldn't it be crazy if WOMEN treated men like a walking set of reproductive organs? While there's a long history of this kind of fiction, I think modern audiences (including myself) have a lot less patience for their allegories when real-world injustices are criminally blatant to anyone with a functioning brain and heart. The technique itself is valid, but it requires more thoughtfulness than "What if X were the oppressor?" And I like that Juichi's story doesn't present the women as a monolithic matriarchal autocracy because there is that couple who try to escape with him and his child. However, I would have preferred that this thought experiment be given more time in the oven.

Finally, I'm going to wrap up with something different and take a big stab at what I think Heavenly Delusion's big twist is going to be. If you don't like speculation or want to keep your theories unsullied, you can skip the rest of this review. Mind you, I don't know if I'm right or not. This is an inkling I had for a while when I got to this point in the manga, and I think the events of this episode provide enough information to support it. However, even the latest English-translated volume (which the next episode should cover the bulk of) doesn't provide answers. To put it simply, the two narratives aren't concurrent. The Takahara Academy story happened 15+ years in the past, and it's building up to the origin point of the Great Disaster. Therefore, many of the Hiruko we've seen are the mutated/diseased forms of the facility kids, and there are some examples where the powers line up enough (kuku's wall climbing and the hands on the giant fish) to positively identify them. This also means that Maru is most likely who Tokio is currently pregnant with, which explains the familial resemblance. There are still plenty of information gaps and plenty of wilder theories I'm keeping closer to my chest for now. But I'm pretty confident about this one—way too many details make sense if you look at them from this angle—and I think it sketches the overall tragedy in a way that feels true to Heavenly Delusion's tone and modus operandi. It's evil, and I can picture Ishiguro cackling while stringing the audience along, but it still leaves a window open for hope.

Rating:

Heavenly Delusion is currently streaming on Hulu as Tengoku Dai Makyō.

Steve is on Twitter while it lasts. He wants to try Kiruko's cooking. You can also catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.