The first teaser trailer for Heavenly Delusion was revealed on Friday on the official avex pictures YouTube channel. This is the first trailer for the series since it was first announced in mid-October of this year. The trailer also lists the full staff that will be working on the upcoming sci-fi series which you can also read more about below. Heavenly Delusion is set to air sometime in 2023 with studio Production I.G. in charge of animating the series. No information regarding the cast has been revealed at this time.
Staff
Hirotaka Mori will be directing the series, making it his first big-time series directing debut. Mori served as the assistant director for a couple of big-name anime movies such as Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale and Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods. He also worked as an episode director for multiple big-name series such as Haikyuu!! (Season 2 Episode 6 and Season 3 episode 1), Erased (Ep. 6), Attack on Titan: Junior High (Ep. 2), and Joker Game (Eps. 8-9). Mori also worked as the episode director for the series finale of Moriarty The Patriot, which is considered by some the best episode of the series. Not to mention, Mori also worked on the storyboard for episode 10 of the hit sci-fi/drama/military series 86 Eighty-Six.
Mori will be joined by Makoto Fukami, who will be handling the series composition. And anyone that’s a fan of the iconic sci-fi series Psycho-Pass will love hearing this news since Fukami handled the script for the original series, including the first movie as well. So knowing Heavenly Delusion‘s composition is left in Fukami’s hands is something to be extremely excited about.
Kensuke Ushio is handling the music for the series. And if that name sounds familiar, it’s because Ushio composed the music for the iconic A Silent Voice film along with Japan Sinks: 2020, which was widely praised specifically for its soundtrack. Ushio also produced the soundtrack for the current hit-series Chainsaw Man and the widely popular DEVILMAN crybaby. The rest of the staff for Heavenly Delusion is as follows:
- Character Design: Utsushita (anime series debut)
- Art Director: Yūji Kaneko (Kill la Kill, Ranking of Kings, Trigun Stampede)
- Sound Director: Eriko Kimura (DEVILMAN crybaby, Japan Sinks: 2020, Sakugan)
- Director of Photography: Kentarō Waki (Sword Art Online: Alicization, Lycoris Recoil, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure)
- Mechanical design: Shinobu Tsuneki (Psycho-Pass, Akudama Drive, Moriarty The Patriot)
- Color design: Izumi Hirose (Guilty Crown, Penguin Highway, From Me To You)
- Editing: Kumiko Sakamoto (Dr. Stone, My Hero Academia, Noragami)
- Firearms Design: Akira Takata (Moriarty The Patriot)
- Hiruko Design: Ryōta Furukawa (Psycho-Pass – Animation Director)
- Motion Graphics: Hiromu Ōshiro (Moriarty The Patriot, Sword Art Online: Alicization)
- 2D Work: Akiko Hamanaka (Haikyuu!! Season 4, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Black Butler)
- Art Setting: Akihiro Hirasawa (A Place Further Than the Universe), Mizuka Ueda (Weathering With You), Osamu Ii (Ao Ashi), Stanislas Brunet (Hellsing Ultimate), Takeyuki Takahashi (Your Name)
Manga
Written and illustrated by Masakazu Ishiguro, the manga first began serialization in Monthly Afternoon magazine back in 2018. Heavenly Delusion currently has over 400,000 copies in circulation as of October 2022. While the manga doesn’t have an award history like many other manga series that recently received anime announcements, the sci-fi series also compared to the iconic story of Akira still has some impressive feats under its belt.
Heavenly Delusion came in at #1 on Kono Manga ga Sugoi!‘s “Top 20 manga series for male readers” list back in 2018, beating out other widely popular series such as Astra: Lost in Space, Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku, Record of Ragnarok, The Way of the Househusband, and Blue Period. Not only did Heavenly Delusion beat out very well-known manga series, but it also joins the list of other phenomenal manga that have also taken home the top spot including Chainsaw Man, Spy x Family, The Promised Neverland, A Silent Voice, Bakuman, and Attack on Titan.
That same year (2019), Heavenly Delusion joined Spy x Family on the “Most Dangerous Manga” list in Brutus magazine. But don’t let the name fool you, the list sheds light on manga with thought-provoking themes and all-around stimulating entertainment. Heavenly Delusion went on to be placed on the Jury Recommended Works list at the 2021 and 2022 Japan Media Arts Festival. The series placed among other popular manga such as Blue Period in 2021 and then Crazy Food Truck in 2022. Heavenly Delusion currently has seven volumes out as of October 2022 with a new chapter set to release every month. No release date has been set for the release of Volume 8. US-based publisher Denpa began publishing the series in English starting in 2019 and has since released the first four volumes with Volume 5 set to release on January 31, 2023.
Synopsis
Within the safety of the walls, youths are raised in a nursery-style setting by robots. While life there may appear stale on the surface, the children are full of potential and curiosity. In many ways it is like a slice of heaven. The outside world is a hell-scape. It is almost entirely void of anything mechanical and is now inhabited by bizarre, yet powerful super-natural beings.
Manga synopsis via Denpa
Maru, with the aid of Kiruko, is out there crisscrossing what was once Tokyo for heaven. But after searching for so long, maybe heaven is more of an untenable dream than a potential reality.
This is the first trailer for the Heavenly Delusion anime series that has been released.
Source: Official Twitter
