Follow TV Tropes

Following

Manga / Ceres, Celestial Legend
aka: Ayashi No Ceres

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/71r3d3ck7l_sy445.jpg

Ceres, Celestial Legend, known in Japanese as Ayashi no Ceres ("Mystery of Ceres"), is a 1996-2000 manga by Yuu Watase. It draws on ancient Japanese myth and mixes it with a cynical modern perspective to produce a dark yet compelling tale of a young girl caught up in supernatural events beyond her control or understanding. It is also one of Watase's darkest, most violent works, featuring several characters with varying degrees of insanity. This manga was a big turning point in Watase's career, and many people consider it to be her best work.

On the day of their sixteenth birthday, Aya and her brother Aki, twins born into the wealthy Mikage family, were driven into their grandfather's estate. Upon arrival, they are made to view a family relic: the mummified hand of their clan's founder. At its sight, Aya starts to manifest a strange aura while bloody images appear on her mind, while lacerations suddenly manifest all over Aki's body. When Aya asks why no one is helping him, her grandfather, supposedly a kindly man, orders her death, disposing of the twins' father when he objects. Suddenly, Aya's aura grows stronger, and in her place appears a blue-haired woman who disposes of her would-be assassins before Aya returns to her body and makes her escape.

Along the way she meets Touya, an amnesiac, crimson-haired young man in her family's employ, who helps her seek refuge in the household of Yuuhi Aogiri, a boy from a well-to-do clan of her age, together with his sister-in-law Suzumi and their retainer Mrs. Q. Suzumi, realizing Aya has the same power as hers (albeit stronger), explains her situation — her clan descended from a tennyo ("celestial maiden")... in particular, Ceres, who was trapped on Earth after losing her hagoromo ("celestial robe") and forced into a marriage, now hell-bent on avenging her misfortunes through her reincarnation: Aya herself. Though initially at odds with each other, Aya strikes a deal with Ceres — she will help the latter find her hagoromo in order to return to heaven, provided she doesn't harm any more people than is necessary. But whereas Aya and Ceres learn to cooperate, Aki is being taken over by his past-life self: Mikagi, the ancestor of the Mikages from thousands of years past, who married Ceres, then went insane over trying to protect her and is now on the hunt for her. To make things worse, the rest of the Mikages, led by Aya's cousin Kagami, are trying to create their own army of tennyos through various scientific methods.

Though not easy, Aya, Ceres and their allies travel across Japan, seeing many places and meeting new friends, enemies and other descendants of tennyos.

A 24-episode anime produced by Studio Pierrot premiered in 2000. It was initially licensed by Viz Media for its U.S. release on VHS and DVD, and has since been licensed by Discotek Media for a DVD rerelease.


This series provides examples of;

  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Aya for Touya, though she's less attracted to his "bad boy" nature than his drive to protect her without possessing her, something which she is threatened with almost constantly since her awakening as a tennyo.
  • All Men Are Perverts: Played with. Watase said in one of her freetalks that all of Yuuhi's behaviour towards Aya is totally normal and that he is not a pervert. He is a teenager, after all, and at the end of the day he never crosses any moral lines, not even when Aya offers herself to him out of sheer spite (although there are times when he gets very damn close). However, in another one, explaining Mikagi's actions and the intent of a group of schoolboys who try to rape Aya, she said that "the desire of raping women was part of the male instinct to preserve the species." On the other hand, the heroic Yuuhi shares a disturbing connection with the possessed Aki: both see love as a declaration of possession ("I must protect that which is mine.") where Touya sees it more as a declaration of service ("You are important to me, thus I must protect you.") This is part of what makes Aya choose Touya in the end.
    • This trope is also invoked by the tennyo themselves. Being a Single-Gender Race, the tennyo's sole purpose is to pick the strongest men and have children with them. They are well aware that human men lust for their bodies, so they use that to their full advantage.
  • Ancient Conspiracy: The Mikage Clan has risen to incredible power and influence in Japanese society due to their descent from Ceres. In order to maintain that, they kill any daughters that Ceres influences. And they've been doing this for millennia.
  • Anyone Can Die: On top of a large pile of dead mooks and minor characters, most of the maidens end up dead by the end of the story, including Chidori and Shuro. Then there's majority of the Mikages (save Aya; Kagami's mother doesn't count, seeing she's an outsider). Bonus points for Touya, who manages to die twice — one onscreen, and one implied to happen sometime after the series ends.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Yuuhi and Suzumi pick on each other so much that they seem more like actual siblings than brother and sister-in-law. However, when the Mikages try to force Suzumi to reveal her tennyo form, we see that... well... they really do love each other.
  • Babies Ever After: Subverted, where Aya learns about being pregnant in volume 12 and is in her last month of pregnancy at the end of the series. A side-story in another one of Yuu Watase's works showed on the last page, that Aya gave birth to a daughter. And Touya, who had stated that due to having given up the Mana that he was made of he is slowly dying and might have a year or few more left, although still alive. Retains a bittersweet note as Toya is still slowly dying.
  • Badass Boast: Upon returning alive after he was shot in the head by Mikagi, Touya is by a witness asked how he could possibly be alive. His response?
  • Badass Longcoat: Touya sports one as part of his initial outfit.
  • Bifauxnen: Shuro Tsukasa, raised as a man out of fear of her powers manifesting.
  • Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Aya found out that she was pregnant with Touya's child at the exact same moment that Mikagi emptied a handgun into his head. Only he got better. Sort of.
  • Bittersweet Ending: At the end of the series, Aya and Touya survive with their unborn child, while the Aogiris return to a normal life. However, most of the tennyos are dead, and so are the Mikages, their name sullied beyond repair by a record of their criminal activities disclosed at Kagami's request. Aki also has to die in order to stop Mikagi's rampage. And the kicker — without Ceres's Mana from which he grew, Touya apparently only has a few years to live, but not before entrusting Aya and their child to Yuuhi's care.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Played completely seriously and creepily; suffice to say, Mikagi knows his physical vessel Aki is a fraternal twin to Ceres' physical vessel Aya... and doesn't care. Of course, what sets up the whole plot is that after thousand of years, Aya is a near genetic duplicate of Ceres and Aki is one of Mikagi, which enables them to fully manifest themselves. Still, the twins grew up together meaning Mikagi's obsession with Ceres (in Aya's body) grosses the Hell out of everyone else involved, especially Aki, who sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between Mikagi's feelings and his own, which Mikagi happily exploits to corner Aki and take over his body (whereas Aya attributes it to Mikagi alone).
  • Catapult Nightmare: Aya after dreaming about seeing Touya on the beach only for him to turn into the bleeding, mangled corpse of Miori.
  • Character Development:
  • Child Soldier: Assam was one before he started working for Kagami.
  • Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: At the end Touya knows that he will die soon, so he entrusts Aya to Yuuhi, who has apparently hooked up with a clone-daughter of Chidori carrying her memories.
  • Coming of Age Story: For Aya particularly, but it also applies to Yuuhi.
  • Companion Cube: Ceres's mana acts as such for her, as she is seen talking to it in the extra story at the end of Genbu Kaiden volume 6.
  • Driven to Suicide:
    • Suzumi attempted this in the past following the death of her husband and her subsequent miscarriage, but was stopped by Yuuhi. Later, in a much more malicious case, Aya's cousin and fellow tennyo Miori kills herself in a very gruesome manner, purposefully traumatizing Aya as revenge for her mother's death at the hands of Ceres.
    • In volume 3, we have Urakawa setting her physics teacher and lover Hayama and herself on fire, after he mocked her and revealed he never actually loved her. She had a Friendless Background to begin with and this, along with Aya's supposed betrayal, was just the final straw.
  • Eldritch Abomination: If a man tries to touch a hagoromo and wasn't chosen by it to be the tennyo's husband, he'll get blasted away. If a woman tries to, however, she'll morph into a hideous, immortal monster, as shown in volume 10 of the manga.
  • Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas:
    • Kagami's only Pet the Dog moment comes when he's shown visiting his insane, delirious mother (who turns out to have been abusive).
    • Also, the death of Miori's beloved mother was her Start of Darkness.
  • Expy: Touya inherited the looks and the fighting skills of his cousin Tamahome.
  • Eye Scream: Wei Fei-Li gets one eye sliced by Touya's dagger in his first appearance. Perhaps even more wince-inducing is the scene near the end of the manga where, ironically enough, Touya restores Wei's eye.
  • Fake Memories: This happened to Touya during his time with Miori.
  • Fate Worse than Death: The fate of the non-Tennyo woman who put on a hagoromo. She became grotesquely disfigured and immortal, meaning that she spent hundreds of years locked in the underground tunnel until Ceres puts her out of her misery.
  • Fighting from the Inside: Aki when possessed by Mikagi will often struggle to regain control, without much success.
  • First Girl Wins:
    • Male version—Touya was introduced before Yuuhi, during which time he had already stolen a kiss and indefinitely her heart. First Guy Wins seems to be a recurring theme throughout Watase's works.
    • This also applies somewhat to Aya, since Chidori could never fully win over Yuuhi since he was always pining after Aya. The mini-sequel subverts this, showing that yes, Chidori (or at least a clone with her memories) does get Yuuhi.
  • Forceful Kiss: Aya and Touya's first kiss. How Yuuhi changes Ceres back to Aya... and the majority of Yuuhi and Aya's kisses. Poor Yuuhi.
  • Foregone Conclusion: In the extra story focusing on Ceres and Mikagi, we already know what's going to happen eventually, but Kumara and her brother still warn Mikagi that getting involved with Ceres would only end in misfortune.
  • Foreshadowing: When the protagonists first meet Miori, she is stepping into the sea and Yuuhi thinks she's trying to commit suicide. Miori does eventually kill herself in order to hurt Aya.
  • Forgotten First Meeting: While trying to retrieve the hagoromo as well as Touya's memories, Aya and Touya find out that they had met years ago on a beach when Aya was just a little girl and Touya had finished developing from the mana. She gave him a sea shell and then they parted ways, and after that, Touya went off to find her, leading him straight to the Mikages.
  • Freudian Excuse: Kagami and several members of his team of specialists have this. Wei wants to rid the world of poverty and class differences. Rurik lost his wife and wants to prevent similar tragedies. Assam was raised as a Child Soldier. Kagami himself was driven too hard by his ambitious mother and despised by the Mikage family for not being a blood relation.
  • Go Out with a Smile: Well... you gotta give Watase some credit. She kills characters left and right, but at least most of them die with a genuine smile on their faces.
  • Go Through Me: When trying to escape from Mikagi, Ceres's young daughter tried to put herself between her mother and her father when Mikagi caught up to them. It didn't end well.
  • Godiva Hair: Ceres, sometimes (seeing how she's naked when Aya has visions of her).
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Used in Miori's suicide.
  • Groupie Brigade: Manga only. Aya goes to see the band GeSANG (which consists of two Ambiguously Gay Bishounen ... one of whom is really a Sweet Polly Oliver) and is literally trampled by a horde of crazed fangirls.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Dr. Alec Howell eventually defies Kagami in order to save Touya and Aya.
  • Heir Club for Men: As far as grandfather Mikage was concerned, any young woman who was destined to have Ceres reincarnated into her was better dead to him, while any young man destined to have the Progenitor reincarnated into him would save the Mikage family line. Too bad the Progenitor could give two shits about what the old man thought.
  • High-Pressure Blood: Most of the series' blood-shed is done this way, especially when Touya is involved.
  • Hot for Student: Yuki Urakawa and her teacher, but this is subverted in that he was just using her.
  • Humans Are Flawed: Kagami literally thinks this, believing that normal humanity is at its end. Ceres is introduced into the series thinking that Humans Are the Real Monsters, but realizes that humans are just flawed, and that her kind weren't exactly perfect either. By the end of the series, Ceres admits that by being reborn in Aya, feeling the love she had for Touya, and getting to know Yuuhi, Suzumi, Chidori, and Shuro had restored her hope in the human soul.
  • If I Can't Have You…: If Mikagi couldn't have Ceres to himself, then nobody could — even their own children.
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Confrontations between the Mikagi-possessed Aki and Aya (who has rather more control over her possession by Ceres) go like this. Each time, Aya tries to keep Ceres from killing Aki, in hopes that he might get free. In the end, since Mikagi will not let Aki regain control, Aki chooses to tell Aya/Ceres to kill him.
  • Important Haircut: Aya gets one of these when she gets depressed over the idea of Touya leaving her for Miori.
  • Joshikousei: Aya is a high school girl, as is Chidori.
  • Just Friends: Aya and Yuuhi. In this case, Yuuhi falls for Aya, but she just can't love him back for being already in love with Touya. However, Aya cares for him deeply, and considers herself, as she says out loud, "his best friend in the entire world".
    • The exact same happens with Yuuhi and Chidori, with the genders reversed: Chidori loves Yuuhi, Yuuhi doesn't love her back because he's already in love with Aya, but cares for her as a friend (point drove home when Chidori dies in Yuuhi's arms). Boy! First Girl/Guy Wins indeed!
  • Kissing Cousins:
    • Played darkly with Kagami and Aya, and in a more positive (albeit tragic) light with Shuro and Kei.
    • Kagami mentions that the Mikage family is quite known for marrying their cousins, so as to keep the tennyo bloodline in the family - which has numerous benefits; health, long life, etc - it's actually credited as the source of their wealth and influence. Case in point, Aya and Aki's parents are 2nd cousins (of course, this actually sets up the whole plot - the reason Aya manifests Ceres so strongly is because after thousands of years, she's essentially Ceres' genetic twin). Consent seems to play a huge role in determining the light such relationships are seen in.
  • Love Makes You Evil: You just have to look at Mikagi and his obsession for Ceres. And that's only one example of many.
  • Magical Floating Shawl: Aya Mikage learns that she is the genetic duplicate of her ancestor Ceres, a celestial maiden descended supposedly from heaven that was forced into marriage to Mikage family progenitor Mikagi after he stole her hagoromo, which prevented her from returning back to heaven. The story takes an A Mythology Is True interpretation by making celestial maidens a Superior Species of only women from Another Dimension, who reproduce by mating with exceptional human men, preferably willingly, and for only a short time. The hagoromo itself is Organic Technology that enables them to not only shapeshift, but change their genetics at will, without which they cannot survive for more than ten years.
  • Mama Bear: Though she was put through a hellish relationship and refused to retaliate against her husband, Ceres finally lost her cool when Mikagi brought harm against their children — BIG TIME.
  • Mana: Well, the mana, though it acts more as the generic form of Life Energy, since a tennyo's mana won't "run out" unless she is separated from it, which if prolonged, will lead to the maiden's death and the disintegration of the mana.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: As insinuated in the extra story, tennyo will eventually outlive their partners if they don't die from being separated from their mana first.
  • Medical Rape and Impregnate: Was done to Chidori when she was captured by the Mikages. And then it was subverted due to her untimely demise before they could implant the fertilized embryo back into her.
  • Mercy Kill: This is done by Ceres twice. First, to a woman who mistakenly touched some Mana and had become an immortal Eldritch Abomination and was locked up for centuries. Much later, she does this to Aki as well, as his body has been irreversibly damaged by exposure to the fake Mana, not to mention what Mikagi has done to him.
  • Mooks: Anybody working for the Mikages.
  • Must Make Her Laugh: A non-comical version concerning Mikagi and Ceres, in which Mikagi just wanted to make Ceres smile from her heart. Aya has shades of this when it comes to Touya.
  • My Death Is Just the Beginning: Miori's suicide, which is her Take That! to Aya since her beloved mother was killed in the rampage of the beginning.
  • My Girl Is Not a Slut: To begin, the celestial maidens' sole purpose is to procreate with human men in order to sustain their species, requiring them to bed several men and produce lots of children. Ceres was no exception, and when she revealed the truth to Mikagi — at the same time egging him on by saying that Touya was a much better lover than he was — he was NOT happy.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Aya and Yuuhi both react like this during their almost Sex for Solace moment. Aya was ashamed at herself for seducing Yuuhi and Yuuhi felt equally ashamed at himself for taking advantage of her emotional vulnerability in the wake of Touya leaving Aya.
  • Occidental Otaku: Alec, an anime/games fanboy from Scotland.
  • Offing the Offspring: Several failed attempts in the series, as well some successful ones pre-series.
  • Older Than They Look: Chidori is actually a high schooler (and half a year older than Aya), but looks like a pre-teen girl when not using her powers.
  • Ordinary High-School Student: Aya and Aki, until the beginning of the series.
  • Parental Abandonment: Aya is actually set up for death by her parents to stop Aya's awakening as a Maiden. Logically, it fails big time: the father is killed and the mother is comatose. Yuuhi, being an illegitimate son, was abandoned by his mother because she couldn't face Yuuhi's father's family. Chidori lost her parents in a bus crash in her backstory. Miori is driven pretty much insane with grief when Ceres kills her mother.
    • In the beginning, the legend of Ceres was told as though she abandoned her earth-born children willingly and she actually did do this cyclically over time with numerous husbands, but she stopped when she fell in love and settled down with Mikagi. However, later in the story, it was revealed that she died as a result of growing weak from being without her hagoromo, and that she never wanted to leave her children behind.
  • Please Put Some Clothes On: In a side story focusing on Mikagi and Ceres (present at the end of one of the Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden volumes), Ceres is taken to Mikagi's house after he finds her on the beach. There, she removes her robes and more or less tells Mikagi to have his way with her. However, Mikagi refuses, throws her robes back at her, and tells her to reevaluate herself because she seemed so sad. She's left dumbfounded that a man didn't immediately want to have sex with her.
  • Power Makes Your Hair Grow: When Ceres takes over Aya's body, Aya's hair grows longer and darkens from a. light brown to jet black.
  • Raised as the Opposite Gender: Shuro, because her mother thought that if she knew she was a tennyo she'd take the family Celestial Robe and fly away. According to the tie-in novel about her backstory, she figured out she was a girl when she was about eight, but kept up the charade to please her family.
  • Rape as Drama: Looooooots of it, from Attempted Rape to medical rape, all the way down to marital rape.
  • Rape Discretion Shot: Used in both the anime AND the manga concerning Mikagi's marital rape of Ceres, in which both mediums more or less show Mikagi forcefully kissing or disrobing Ceres, with the next scene/panel showing Ceres half-naked and crying on the floor.
  • Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Mikagi's modus operandi after he got powers from Ceres, as he began terrorizing nearby tribes and attaining followers who had a thirst for blood.
  • Rescue Romance: Aya and Touya's relationship started out like this. Same goes for Mikagi and Ceres.
  • Restrained Revenge: Even after Alec openly defies the Mikages and lets Aya and Touya go, Kagami needs his work and lets him stay on the team. His only punishment is having his anime and video games confiscated. (Of course, he's enough of an otaku that he legitimately suffers from that punishment.)
  • The Reveal: Touya's true origin: He is Ceres's Mana evolved into a human form.
  • Royal Inbreeding: The Mikagis are a high status family that frequently arranged marriages between close cousins in order to induce the manifestation of a Mikagi host. It has the undesired effect of also increasing the odds of a Ceres host. The reason why Aya and Aki are both hosts is because they are the end of a long line of inbreeding, their parents being second cousins, and are now basically genetic duplicates of both progenitors.
  • Sick and Wrong:
    • Aya thinks this as the Ancestor, who has possessed Aki since volume 5, tries to rape her in Volume 10 using her brother's body.
    • She has the same reaction much earlier on, when Kagami tries to rape her, in order to lure Ceres to appear.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Significantly on the cynical side. And Watase seemed to like it, as Fushigi Yuugi's prequel Genbu Kaiden can attest to.
  • Someone to Remember Him By: Volume 12 has Aya realize that she might be pregnant while there's an important infiltration mission going on at Mikagi HQ. And shortly after, upon overhearing Suzumi's phone conversation indicating that Tooya has gone MIA, she learns that she is indeed pregnant and in her third month. Considering that her lover had just apparently died, she had mixed feelings about the news. This gets subsequently subverted by Touya being alive after all. However, the epilogue gives shades of a double-subversion, given that Touya's remaining lifespan is probably not particularly long.
    • Subverted by Suzumi's past: the shock of her husband's sudden death caused her to miscarry their child.
  • Snow Means Love: When Suzumi sends Tooya out to do a dangerous mission, Aya runs after him in worry. He reassures her that everything will be fine by giving her a lovebite and then kissing her, at which point it starts snowing. But since this is Aya-slash-Ceres we're talking about, it's a subversion: The snow turns out to be flower petals.
  • The Stoic: Touya, though he softens up over time.
  • Taking the Bullet: Aya's father does this for her early on. Much later, Chidori does the same for Yuuhi. Both cases are fatal. And near the finale, in the manga, Gladys died shielding Ceres from Mikagi.
  • Together in Death: In the finale, Ceres and Mikagi share their afterlife together. Despite the things they put each other through, Mikagi admitted that he just wanted to protect Ceres; Ceres in turn admitted that she still loved him, and so they both decide to finally leave their descendants alone.
  • True Companions: The friends that Aya meets — Touya, Yuuhi, Suzumi, Chidori, Shuro and Mrs. Q — not only helped her through the most tumultuous time of her life, but it also made Ceres realize that humanity wasn't a lost cause.
  • Twincest: When Mikagi is in control of Aki he frequently attempts to rape Aya as she is the reincarnation of Ceres, his past wife. He does not care that Aki and Aya are twin siblings.
  • Twins Are Special: Subverted and deconstructed to horrifying effect.
    • Aki and Aya are revealed to be able to host the spirits of Mikage family progenitor Mikagi and his reluctant wife/powerful celestial maiden Ceres, respectively. But they learn it's not because they are twins, but because they are near genetic duplicates for the two due to Royal Inbreeding. Possession by Mikagi is considered an auspicious sign by the Mikage family, as he is prophesized to lead the family to continued prosperity, whereas possession by Ceres is viewed as a Doom Magnet and the family typically kills the host. Because Aya and Aki are twins, this also creates an inadvertant One Twin Must Die scenario.
    • Before they realize they are hosts, Aki and Aya have a close, but very normal sibling relationship. However, Mikagi is still romantically and sexually obsessed with Ceres, does not care that his vessel is the brother of her vessel, and has no qualms of acting on his desires. While both Aki and Aya are disgusted by this, Aki has a hard time keeping his platonic love for Aya separate from Mikagi's feelings for Ceres the more he gets possessed. In fact, his increasing shame regarding those feelings makes Aki's consciousness retreat more and more, which makes it easier for Mikagi to gain control over his body. Aki's anguish shows just how awful it would be to feel irrationally and inexplicably attracted for one's own twin.
  • Uncanny Family Resemblance: Deconstructed during the story arc involving Miori. Since she and Aya were cousins and therefore had a strong physical resemblance, she was the perfect implement to screw up Touya's mind.
  • Walking the Earth: More like "Wandering Japan" as Aya and her friends transfer from school to school, occupation to occupation, trying to find clues to Ceres's missing hagoromo.
  • Was It All a Lie?: During their final moments on the mortal plane, Ceres asks Mikagi if he ever really loved her. His response? He was so madly in love with her and wanted to protect her so badly that he went crazy.
  • Wham Episode: The Miori arc. What seems like another run-of-the-mill journey to one of the legendary tennyo sites results in Touya supposedly regaining his memory and leaving Aya for Miori, whom he recognises as his fiancée from before his amnesia; Aya almost sleeping with Yuuhi while on the rebound; Ceres taking over Aya's body for a long time while Aya is paralysed with shame over the above; Miori turning out to be another of Ceres' tennyo descendants and killing herself to get revenge on Aya; and Touya walking out of Aya's life for an extended period.
  • What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: In the extra story at the end of Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden Volume 6, after her failed attempt at seducing Mikagi, Ceres mentioned how the tennyo can emulate human feelings to better fit into human society, but that they don't actually empathize with human emotion. This all begins to change as Mikagi continues to woo her and show her acts of kindness in order to make her smile.
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: After Mikagi was beaten by bandits, Ceres was perfectly willing to give Mikagi a small fraction of her power so that he would never be harmed again, hoping that it would protect him. If only she knew what her gift would bring...
  • What Measure Is a Humanoid?: As stated by Ceres, the tennyo don't really know what their true form is suppose to be, but they assume a human body for obvious reasons. Touya himself was made into a human by the mana (sorta making him a homunculus).
  • What the Hell, Hero?: At the finale, as Aya and Touya mourn Aki, Kagami gets a punch from Yuuhi, tearful with rage, chewing him out for the tragic consequences of his experiments.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Mikagi, a Non-Action Guy, wanted to not be a burden to Ceres, so he asked her to give him some of her power so he could protect her. When he had them, he soon went completely mad and killed one of their daughters, which prompted Ceres to go Mama Bear and kill him.
  • World of Technicolor Hair: The Celestial Maidens have usual hair colors in the anime. In the manga they have black hair. However, Touya's hair is mentioned to be an unusual shade of red (by a doctor when Touya used a fake personality to work as a doctor, who had lived in America beforehand).
  • Worth Living For: Suzumi's suicide attempt following her husband's death and her subsequent miscarriage was stopped by her husband's brother Yuuhi. At this point she realized that had to keep living for Yuuhi's sake, and has since warmed up to him like a real sibling.
  • Would Hurt a Child: He wasn't exempt from hurting kids either. First exemplified this by killing his own daughter.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Mikagi. Wouldn't stop at hitting either.


Alternative Title(s): Ayashi No Ceres

Top