Heaven's Design Team

Creating a thread for Heaven's Design Team now that the Anime's reached mid-season. Let's discuss animals, designers, and of course that delightful OP (which is pretty much the main reason I'm watching the Anime at all, since the adaptation cuts out a lot of the interesting chapters).

Curious which chapter they'll adapt for the final episode. The reverse aging perhaps?

Edited by Adept on Feb 19th 2021 at 11:37:57 PM

Planning to read the manga after the anime, so no idea, hahaha. I have been loving the anime so far though and I'm excited to know that the manga has more interesting material.

The otter episode was pure unadulterated squee.

Edited by fillerdude on Feb 19th 2021 at 11:11:19 AM

Well, to be fair, the Anime also adds a few stuffs that's not in the Manga as well. If you're actually interested in the topic of zoology however, the Manga is more informative, since they can cram more details/explanation in one page that would probably stretch the runtime by 10 minutes or so if animated. Sometimes the Manga also discuss about other animals that's not the main feature, which the Anime tend not to include. But since they don't adapt the chapters chronologically, I don't actually know if the parts they've skipped so far will simply be adapted for future episodes, or if they're really cutting out some chapters.

Also, the Anime's English subtitles have a few translation errors that misnames the animals or gives an incorrect description of their function—e.g. the transparent fish in Episode 07 is supposed to be an icefish, not whitebait; the animal that Tsuchiya/Saturn creates for his grandson is a tarsier, not a spectre lemur. And the ostritch's digestive system doesn't actually convert stones into diamonds, as seems to be implied by Episode 04's subtitles—rather, they swallow rough diamonds, which gets polished while in the ostritch's stomach.

And I agree (sea) otters are the best animal they've made so far, even with the wider range of animals they Manga has shown.

Edited by Adept on Feb 20th 2021 at 10:27:56 PM

I'm wondering if xenomorph will show up in the anime

It has. In Episode 06.

I'm personally looking forward to the possibility of them designing the platypus.

Seriously, bioluminescent skin, milk-sweating, venomous claws, duck bill, beaver tail, furry body...

The platypus is unlikely to happen anytime soon, though. It hasn't appeared in the Manga either, and there's still like 15 chapters they haven't adapted.

The anime usually adapts 3 chapters per episode (sometimes 2), so at best they'll finish adapting all the available Manga chapters by the time episode 12 rolls around.

New episode out. Some neat animal species on display. Heck yes hooded seals!

Hmm, is it just me, or did the art in this episode look particularly Off-Model?

Episode 09 is out. Finally, we reach the penguin battle! That's one of my favorite chapters, after the otter, and maybe the owl.

Not sure why the subs are still referring to Kanamori/Venus as a "he" despite showing her in the female bath in Episode 06.

The talk show segment was pretty fun. Really thought Unabara would run away with the victory at first. All in all we can agree that penguins are delightful.

Anytime Meido designs a creature, it’s comedy gold.

Yeah, not sure what’s up with that.

Episode 10's out. So they've adapted the Fountain of Youth episode here, huh? I was expecting this to be the final episode, since this is a two-parter. Well, there is one more two-part chapters in the Manga, where God Himself—or rather, his mount—appears, though there's no real conflict in those chapters, so it'd be surprising if that's what they choose to adapt for the season's Finale.

Naked mole rats shows us that those in power stay in power by feeding people bullshit. I kinda hope the VR simulator gets used for other animal societies, particularly the insects.

Second half was a nice cute primer on genetic recombination. Certainly did not expect that premise after seeing the demon in the summoning circle.

And speaking of tangents, now Shimoda and a de-aged Tsuchiya need to find the others in Galapagos? Should be fun.

Episode 10 feels weirdly different from rest of show x'D Though I didn't see them being naked mole rats since I really thought it was gonna be insects or something

Edited by SpookyMask on Mar 19th 2021 at 11:26:28 AM

Yeah, I think that would be most people's first guess, since it's a eusocial structure that is commonly seen in insects. I suppose the lesson to be learnt there is that "not all eusocial animals are insects"?

Episode 11: Whoa, are we going to see the Client in the flesh?

And confirmed that rabbits were spawned in hell. Re: Zero knew the truth all along.

Final episode out.

I knew the Client wasn’t going to show up. But I’ll take a garuda thank you very much. It also tickles me that a lyrebird was chosen as a denizen of hell.

The latter half is so wholesome. Perfect way to end the anime with.

Ah, after seeing the previous episode, I kinda figured they'd adapt that chapter for the finale.

At first, I thought they'd go with the Fountain of Youth fiasco because it has a more climatic feel to it, but I suppose that doesn't really fit the tone of the series, and they'd go for a more wholesome closing.

Just adding a mention that the Anime has adapted chapters 1-29 of the Manga. There's at least 6 more chapters that haven't seen the screen yet.

Nice. Easy to catch up to, then.

Surprise extra episode! In which we learn about eggs, the bird with live chicks at least until the fickle client changed his mind again, before the design team faces a group challenge: What kind of animal doesn't sink, can swallow needles, resists both heat and cold, can handle extremely rough terrain and doesn't need much water?

The second animal threw me at first because surely the easy answer - a camel - was misdirection? Maybe a giraffe? They can handle rather prickly trees, but needles? And the rest doesn't quite fit either... Turns out I was overthinking it and the first guess was correct.

Oh well. Still a good episode with great Kanamori moments.

Well, they already made the giraffe the first episode so they can't "make" it again. That last one is an interesting episode though, though mostly because it's not from the manga chapters I've read.

Wow, how come we get an extra episode? No objections from me though.

Haha, I had the same reaction! I immediately thought of a camel then second-guessed.