Heavenly Delusion

apoc9 Jul 11, 2023

9

After watching the anime adaptation I’ve picked up the manga, because I’m not waiting for the next season. I wanted to compare source material with the anime as well. For that very reason I did start reading from the beginning. For those, who want to skip and read the continuation, the first season of anime ends approximately between the last chapter of volume six and the first chapter of volume seven (ch. 37-38). The anime reorders some events. At the end there is even scene pulled from following chapters without context to tease viewer. For that reason, it’s hard to pinpoint the end of anime in the manga. If you didn’t watch anime, let me briefly introduce you to the series. The story is post-apocalyptic sci-fi, psychological drama and action series with some mystery elements. The civilization is in ruins after mysterious cataclysm and people live mostly on resources from the past, while few relatively small groups try to reestablish order. The surface is also populated not just by wild animals, but by bizarre monstrous man-eating and practically immortal creatures with super-powers. Despite dangers those creatures pose humans tend to live somewhat mundane life. The story follows two groups of characters. The first group are two teenagers, boy and girl, traveling around Japan in search of place with sole clue being word “heaven”. The second group are rather peculiar children in mysterious high-tech facility. What I like about the series how intriguing the settings are from the outset. The postapocalyptic settings have unusually good balance between surviving people acting morally and being downright savages. The mystery of what did happen to the world and what is going on is slowly explored through eyes of characters without obvious info dumping. It’s also interesting how the two storylines are gradually converging towards each other. What isn’t so much fun are some weird sexual and disturbing scenes [1]. If I were to give it the most charitable interpretation it does reflect on topics of self-identity the series tries to dig into. On the opposite spectrum of possible interpretations, I think the author projects his perversions into the story for little or no reason. If you watched anime some of these elements are bit less explicit in the manga at the beginning, but there is more of those happenings in story, when going beyond the first season of the anime. Visually the manga looks good. It has good balance between realism and manga style design. When it comes to environment – buildings, machines, etc. – those look really good. The series does contain nudity from bare breasts to full nudity. Violence is quite graphical in some instances as well. Overall, I think the manga is slightly better, than the anime adaptation. I did enjoy reading the series from the beginning to the latest chapter. The story is quite interesting with some twists I should see coming, but I didn’t. I do recommend to checkout this series, if you didn’t yet. This review is written after reading 9 volumes (all existing at the time) equivalent to 54 chapters. Japanese difficulty 5/10 (see my profile for details about various difficulty scores) The series is seinen without furigana except for introduction of names. It does use occasionally some not so common expressions and vocabulary. Text volume is bit below average. Text density is mostly average. Spoilers [1] Robin raping Kiruko.