Manga / Heavenly Delusion

Maru (below) and Kiruko (above).

In a walled-up nursery, children are taught their fundamentals by robots. During a pop quiz, one of these children, Tokio, finds a weird and unexpected question:

"Do you want to go outside of what's outside?"

Tokio tries to address this to the teaching robot, but the question disappears on paper as fast as it appeared. Later, Tokio brings this up with the nursery's director as well, who claims that the only thing beyond the walls is hell. Still, several of the children including Tokio wonder what goes on beyond the walls, all the while living mundane lives doing school work and learning how to control their supernatural abilities.

Meanwhile, the outside world has gone to hell in more ways than one. In Japan, not only has civilization devolved into ruined cities and desperate people, there are fearsome monsters roaming the ravaged lands: horrific creatures known as "Hiruko" and “Man-Eaters” who prey upon what remains of humanity while using supernatural abilities to hunt down even the sturdiest survivors. Despite this, a fifteen year old teenage boy named Maru (who looks a lot like Tokio) travels on a journey with his bodyguard, a young woman named Kiruko.

However, neither of them are your average survivors. Maru can kill Man-Eaters using the “Maru Touch,” an ability that allows him to enter a spiritual-like realm inside the monster’s very being and kill them by crushing a heart-like core within, so long as he can physically touch the Man-Eater. Combined with his tough durability and martial arts that he honed during his time on the streets of post-apocalyptic Tokyo, he became a self-made survivor in his own right. Meanwhile, Kiruko is armed with her “Kiru-Beam,” a special (if somewhat unreliable) ray gun that can kill most things in one shot and is also capable of inflicting heavy damage on the Man-Eaters themselves. Having spent many years wandering the harsh environment to survive, all the while using the teachings her Big Brother Mentor Inazaki Robin passed onto her in the past, she has survived many grim scenarios in order to find her place in the world.

Maru is on the hunt for two things: someone who looks just like himself and a place his previous guardian Mikura called “Heaven.” On the flip side, Kiruko tags along to protect him as part of her job, but is also searching for several people she knew — including Robin — hoping to discover what happened to them after they disappeared five years ago under mysterious circumstances. However, the tasks before them on their journey are easier said than completed, not to mention there are other dangers on the road besides the Man-Eaters...

Heavenly Delusion (天国大魔境 / Tengoku-Daimakyou)^note "Makyou" literally means "realm of demons" and is a Buddhist term referring to delusions caused by attachment to experiences in meditation or everyday life is a sci-fi post-apocalyptic Seinen manga written and illustrated by Masakazu Ishiguro (best known for And Yet the Town Moves), which began serialization in Monthly Afternoon in 2018. The manga is published in English by DENPA. There was an anime PV made to celebrate the first volume's publication, and on October 18, 2022, it was announced that the manga would be receiving a full-fledged TV anime from Production I.G in 2023.

There are two Plot Threads that the story follows, both of which are nicknamed here on TV Tropes for ease of understanding the story. The first one, “Post-Disaster,” features Maru’s and Kuriko’s adventures in a post-apocalyptic setting that ended up this way as the result of an unknown calamity. The second one, “Nursery,” features several children in a nursery surrounded by walls who have special abilities. However, learning more about one plot will spoil details in the other due to several plot twists taking place over the course of the story, so tread lightly. You Have Been Warned.

---

Tropes in this series:

• Action Girl: Zig-zagged with Kiruko, who is resourceful and has survived many years on the road even before she met Maru, yet is up against horrifying monsters with supernatural abilities and bandits who sometimes coordinate with each other. Still, while her strength and durability isn’t up to par with Maru, she is a skilled sharpshooter with her trusty “Kiru-Beam” and uses the environment to her advantage whenever possible. She has even won some fights due to outsmarting her opponent instead of relying on her firearm e.g. the giant fish Man-Eater).
  However, she also has to face real life issues in the wilderness and abandoned cities, ones that even an Action Girl would have problems with. For instance, suffering her period in the midst of hostile territory, having to make sure Maru is alright, and keeping a careful watch on their supplies out on the road since they have to eat as well as rest, meaning they could die of mundane reasons like starvation. And no matter how tough an Action Girl she is, being betrayed as well as raped by someone she trusted (Robin) was a harrowing experience. The artwork showcased brutal and realistic details of how terrifying rape is for a victim, alongside the story making it clear that even brave women who fight literal monsters on a regular basis can be traumatized, especially if the victim had trusted their rapist beforehand with their lives. Fortunately, she has Maru to help her when things get too rough for her alone, and overcoming these grim experiences has made her a stronger person.
• Age-Gap Romance: 15-years old Maru has a major crush on 20-years old Kiruko though only physically that age - mentally, she's 18.Though it's initially very one-sided, signs that Kiruko starts developing mutual feelings appear as the story goes on.
• After the End: The Post-Disaster plot follows this theme in particular, showing how people in Japan are getting by with living fifteen years after an unknown disaster occurred. The Nursery plot is revealed to have taken place about fifteen years before the Post-Disaster plot begins, and in chapter forty-four Mikura said that an unknown source of power called “The Jeweled Spear of Heaven” unleashed massive worldwide destruction via increased natural disasters; Japan itself was targeted by powerful earthquakes and she claimed it would be the only place that would be affected “lightly” by this calamity.
• All Periods Are PMS: Before entering the basement of the “Immortalite” group’s stronghold Maru noticed Kiruko was acting sluggish and unfocused, but she dismissed his concerns for her. This led to a number of problems, like a psychic Man-Eater’s hallucination attack driving her mad with ease until Maru calmed her down. As time went on, Kiruko’s condition worsened until she collapsed, forcing Maru to find a safe place for her sake. What made things worse was this took place during a violent confrontation between the Immortalites and the Liviuman groups, but to the duo’s fortune a former member of the Liviuman group found and sheltered them both until Kiruko recovered from her period. It’s also the first period that Kiruko suffered, which is why she didn’t recognize any of the symptoms.
• The Alleged Car: Juichi's van, later given to Maru and Kiruko as a parting gift. It's beaten up and rusted, and conks out on them briefly when they first depart with it in their possesson. While it remains mostly reliable in the manga, it stalls a second time at the end of the anime, much to Kiruko's embarassment.
• Ambiguous Gender: Many of the children within the nursery are rather androgynous in appearance. One major example is Tokio, who is later confirmed in chapter seventeen to be female, which was revealed when she had sexual intercourse with a boy named Kona in secrecy and later gave birth to a child.
  • Later, this turns out to be deliberate by the nursery’s experiments as it's revealed that about half the population of nursery are intersex, first showcased by the shaggy haired child who is fully grown in the Post-Disaster storyline and was assumed by others to be male, but has defined breasts and apparently a penis as well as a vagina.
• Animal Motif: Maru shares similarities to the Japanese Macaque Monkey, a group of which makes an appearance within the story. Besides having white colored hair, he has a curious personality and is acrobatic.
• Apocalypse How: The event that led to the founding of the Post-Disaster plot line is believed to be either “Continental” or “Planetary” in scope, complete with a Societal Disruption level of severity. Humans are intact, but they must deal with creatures of unfathomable levels of creepy, plus some humans have resorted to desperate measures in order to survive.
• Arc Symbol: A bird emblem that Maru discovered on the handle of Kiruko's “Kiru-Beam” ray gun serves as a clue for them both to find “Heaven,” the destination Maru is looking for. The children of the Nursery plot line had a pin on their outfits that has the exact same icon, making it clear the bird emblem has a direct connection to the nursery.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: One major question that many people in the fan base had when the story of Haruki Takehaya and his sister Kiriko was released had to do with the nature of their “surgery,” which led to Haruki’s brain being placed into his sister’s body via Brain Transplant. While it did “save” Haruki’s life in a matter of speaking, it led to people wondering how effective a procedure that seemingly wipes out the mind/memories of the original body would be in terms of “saving lives.” Thus the fan base came up an idea: what would happen if a Brain Transplant in that universe was instead done to let someone live a theoretical immortal life, having their brain swapped to new bodies when one was getting too old.
  As it turns out, that is indeed the plan of the Director from the Nursery plot line. She wanted to transplant her brain into Tokio’s child and gain access to their supernatural abilities, but since the child was too young it wouldn’t work before the Director died of old age. She instead decided to have it transplanted into one of her aides named Aoshima and wait until the child was old enough for another procedure, but Sawatori — the scientist who would be responsible performing the surgeries — had little interest in the Director’s plan, having chosen to instead work with Aoshima behind the Director’s back.
• Asshole Victim: There’s no shortage of them in this story, but even then some cases make you wonder if the victim deserved their fate.
  • Maru was harassed by a vigilante gang that drew his full wrath when their leader, Iwata, knocked out one of Maru’s teeth. Afterwards, Iwata swore vengeance and planned on ambushing Maru along with Kiruko, but a wild bear mauled Iwata to near death; he ended up being saved by the duo. Maru later found out that Iwata had been watching over Totori, the young innkeeper of the inn they were staying at that night, which made Maru realize Iwata wasn’t a bad person at heart. Maru had been part of a gang in the past and believed they could’ve been good friends if he had grown up in that town, thus he became depressed upon learning that Iwata died later that evening.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Maru once disguised himself with a women’s wig in order to infiltrate a cult of misandrist women alongside Kiruko; it was convincing enough that even she got turned on a bit by looking at him.
• Bad Powers, Good People: While many children of the Nursery have benign abilities and/or enhanced physicality, others aren’t as lucky. Some of the children are oblivious to this, others are painfully aware their abilities are dangerous.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Kiruko wanted to know the whereabouts of Robin, her Big Brother Mentor who disappeared years ago, and a doctor she knew in the past. She later finds Robin during the “Inazaki Robin” arc, reunites with him, and finds out when they were alone that he was a twisted sadist the entire time who had no problems raping her.
  • After Helm was raped, she told the people in her town who went on to find a man wearing glasses who she believed was her rapist. Upon condemning him, the man had one of his arms chopped off and was exiled with his family in tow. But she later discovered the true culprit had avoided detection by not wearing his glasses in-town during the hunt, almost raping her again until she threw up on his crotch and got the attention of a nearby woman, forcing the Glasses Man to flee town. Helm had to live with the realization that in her haste to get vengeance, she blamed an innocent man by accident, which broke her to the point that she chopped off her left forearm with an axe in retribution for her mistake.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Maru is a kind and empathetic person, but he’s more than willing to give a brutal beat down if the situation calls for it; a vigilante group learned this the hard way after one of them sucker punched him and made him lose one of his teeth. Also, he does not like it when anyone harms Kiruko. When Robin raped Kiruko and taunted Maru about this, he showed how vicious he can become when pushed too far.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Kiruko and Kiriko from the Post-Disaster plot have these, as do some of the children in the Nursery plot.
• Bodyguard Crush: Maru has a crush on Kiruko. While she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, they end up becoming good friends after having survived many dangerous encounters throughout their travels.
• Body Horror: Anyone the Man-Eaters have captured will not have a clean death.
• Book Burning: Kiruko explains that she burns any useful books she's done reading, thinking that information is more valuable if she's the only one who knows it.
• Break Them by Talking: Kiruko does this often to avoid having to kill people in self defense. For instance, she once talked down a group of bandits who intended on robbing both Maru and herself as well as raping her by threatening them at gun point. Despite their threats, she made it clear she was in charge as well as continued to make fun of them. Once they charged the battery for her “Kiru-Beam”, they found out she was bluffing the entire time — her ray gun was out of shots, yet they had unwittingly recharged it. In the end, the bandits gave up and let Maru and Kiruko go out of frustration rather than put up with any more of her berating.
• Broken Tears:
  • Dr. Usami, aka Shiro, does this after he read the final words on Mimihime’s tablet, proclaiming her love for him and never holding anything against him for the actions he took to keep her alive — knowing full well she would’ve become a Man-Eater had Shiro not acted.
  • In the “Inazaki Robin” arc, after Kiruko had been raped for days by her former Big Brother Mentor Robin and gaslighted by him into realizing she doesn’t know who she is anymore, she cried out in anguish for Maru to save her. Fortunately, he happened to hear this while he was infiltrating Robin’s facility, which led to Maru finding and saving her.
• Cerebus Call-Back: Kiruko once made a deal with Maru that if he accomplished a dangerous task he would get to grope her breasts (which he accomplished in haste after initially complaining before she made the deal with him). But when it came time for him to collect she panicked and tried to dissuade him with multiple reasons, including trying to convince him that because she had Haruki Takehaya’s brain, she considered herself a guy, therefore Maru would be feeling up a man instead of a woman. This didn’t work because Haruki’s brain was inside Kiriko Takehaya’s body (Haruki’s sister), a beautiful and well-endowed woman, although she managed to escape because she screamed out loud by accident and caught the innkeeper’s attention of the hotel they were in, who dragged Maru out of the room in order to seduce him instead for valuables in return.
  Later, Kiruko ends up a similar situation, but this time around it’s not played for comedy. After Robin handcuffed Kiruko in an abandoned room when they were alone, he began to rape her while she was screaming and resisting. She attempted to appeal to Robin by telling him that she was “Haruki” like she had done with Maru in the past, but Robin didn’t believe this either. He rebuffed this by telling her that he was going to rape “Kiriko” and that “Haruki” needed to save her. This confused Kiruko because she had believed she was Haruki Takehaya the entire time due to having his memories… until she started to hallucinate and saw “Haruki” in the reflection of a mirror trying to reach her in desperation. This made her realize Robin had a point that Kiruko’s mind may have been “Kiriko” all along, which led to her gaining the ability to see memories from Kiriko’s point of view later on; this made Kiruko realize she didn’t know who she was.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Kona’s paintings from the Nursery plot foreshadow a great deal of future events in the storyline.
    • One of the paintings has two babies inside of an egg covered in wings. Tokio gave birth to a child who was mysteriously duplicated, and due to Maru’s similar appearance to Tokio — plus the fact they both have supernatural abilities — it’s possible that Tokio is Maru’s mother.
    • Another painting features four human-like silhouettes that have their heads converging into one. This is a possible reference to Kiruko’s situation.
    • A third painting featured an angry sun with markings on its face. During the Nursery plot, the nursery itself suffered a major disaster that opened up an entrance to “outside of the outside,” some of the children went out to investigate. Upon doing so, they discovered that the air outside was warm and hard to breathe in. However, the people living during the Post-Disaster timeline deal with the cold on a regular basis, indicating whatever caused the unusual temperature spikes in the past has ended.
    • The fourth painting had several humanoid-like figures with wings flying together. It’s eventually revealed the Nursery was developing winged humanoid alien soldiers armed with laser guns.
    • The fifth painting featured a strange fish-like creature that had multiple long humanoid arms stretching from its body. This particular painting was held by a girl named Kuku who had the ability to stick to walls with her hands and feet at will, making her an adept climber. Maru and Kiruko fought a Man-Eater that looked exactly like the creature in the painting, which had the ability to climb on objects using “hands” formed from telekinetic abilities involving water, and it’s later revealed the creature was indeed Kuku transformed after she later died.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Maru. If he’s not finding a way to make a romantic move on Kiruko, he’s often replacing this with fantasies about her. However, despite announcing his love towards her several times and sometimes being a bit aggressive about it, he still treats her with respect as a true friend and she reciprocates this throughout their journey. If given the opportunity though he’d prefer to be more than friends with her.
• Combat Pragmatist: Kiruko and Maru have no qualms about using dirty and underhanded tactics to get the edge in a fight.
• Cool Big Sis: Kiruko is the Tomboy variant. She behaves this way towards Maru, who looks up to her and nicknamed her “Sis.”
• Cozy Catastrophe: Deconstructed in the Post-Disaster plot line. While cozy is a stretch in a post-apocalyptic setting, civilization is still up and going in the major cities and pre-collapse currency is still used alongside bartering for good and services. Surviving settlements trade, people run businesses, electricity and technology is still available (albeit rare outside the major cities), and there are even orphanages in some of those cities who are taking care of children who've lost their parents. You’d be forgiven for believing that the series is a slice of life considering people tend to be helpful, even in a devastated world... which is why whenever something horrifying does happen it takes people off guard. In fact the most horrifying events tend to be started by regular people who presented themselves as well-meaning and charismatic, a point not far off from reality in regards to cunning sociopaths, and its this reason why these events are so jarring in a series that otherwise has plenty of heartwarming moments.
• Crapsack World: Downplayed. The Post-Disaster plot spares no details on how awful people can become after a major disaster occurs, albeit in major cities people tend to be more kind than not. The Nursery plot plays this straight, however. Some of the staff working in the nursery mentioned the nursery as a whole has “crossed several taboos,” indicating there were horrible experiments being performed in secrecy, and its clear that many elite groups have been at war with each other that may have played a part in the downfall of mankind’s dominance during the Post-Disaster plot.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Kiruko’s past in general is this. She’s the result of a surgery that put the brain of a dying boy, Haruki Takehaya, inside the body of his sister (who was believed to be dying for reasons not yet known). Since she believes she’s Haruki — due to having his brain — she lives life believing she’s a man trapped in a woman’s body, leading to all kinds of psychological issues when she contemplates who she is as a person. And neither sibling lived a grand life beforehand, instead living in a post-apocalyptic world where people wouldn’t hesitate to murder you for the clothes on your back; it’s no wonder she also became cynical about life.
  • Maru grew up not knowing anything about his parents, having instead been brought up by random strangers who did their best to keep him alive in a post-apocalyptic world. One of his guardians was even murdered, yet he was forced to follow said murderer into their gang because Maru otherwise wouldn’t have survived, leading to an uncertain life of not knowing who really cared about him and who was just using him. He lampshaded his situation at one point, mentioning to Kiruko that he lived his entire life following random adults, one after another due to various circumstances with her being the latest one, albeit in her case he does warm up to her over time.
  • Helm was raped when she was a young girl, but her attempt to get revenge ended horribly wrong when she learned that she had accused the wrong man. She didn’t take it well at all, seeking retribution by chopping off her left forearm, mirroring the punishment that the innocent accused man suffered from the townspeople when they condemned him.
• Defiled Forever: In the aftermath of the “Inazaki Robin” arc, Kiruko thinks this way of herself, having put up little resistance against Robin raping her and instead resigning herself to her fate until Maru saved her.
• Dented Iron: Kiruko’s body is in this condition due to having spent many years on the road in post-apocalyptic Japan.
• Detect Evil: Maru later gains the ability to detect the presence of any nearby Man-Eaters in the Post-Disaster plot; it’s nicknamed the “Maru Sense” by Kiruko later on. This includes the “Hiruko Humans” introduced in the Nursery plot and their descendants in the Post-Disaster plot. They have a Hiruko Core that Maru can see with his power like the Man-Eaters, such as Juiichi’s son.
• Developing Doomed Characters: The story alternates between Maru and Kiruko's travels through a post apocalyptic Japan with the various people they meet and monsters they kill and a mysterious bunker filled with children being taught by robots, with much time spent fleshing out the various children and the mysterious abilities they seem to possess. Eventually, it becomes clearer and clearer that the bunker side of the story occurred before Maru and Kiruko's side of the story rather than along side it as initially implied. Furthermore, it's implied by that side of the story that many, if not most, of the children have either turned into the monsters that Maru and Kiruko fight or died in one way or another (such as the one eyed scientist and the heavily bandaged girl he was taking care of). But with the structure, said characters die before we realize who they really were.
• Dirty Coward: Robin taught Haruki how to fight, passing on lessons like watching your opponent’s body movements by looking at their collar; cowards will try to intimidate their opponent by staring at their face; and the losers are those who only focus on their opponents. These lessons made a huge impression on Haruki when he fought hostile survivors which Kiruko (who has Haruki’s brain and memories) continued following to protect Maru.
  Later, Robin does everything he preached against in a fight to Maru in chapter thirty three, which happened after Maru discovered that Robin had raped Kiruko. During the entire fight Maru didn’t focus on Robin, nor react to anything he said, choosing instead to stare at the wall and thwart every attempt Robin made to run away by grabbing his jacket and throwing him at the wall, showing that Maru didn’t even need to see Robin to defeat him.
• Disaster Scavengers: In order to survive, Maru and Kuriko loot abandoned cities to obtain useful goods for themselves or for bartering with other survivors. In Maru’s case, he started scavenging as early as age seven out of necessity.
• Driven to Suicide: After Tarao dies from a disease, Tokio asks Kona if another kid who died, Asura, had the same disease. Kona says yes, but a brief flashback shows that she hung herself.
• Dub Name Change: Rather than a character, the gun that Kiruko uses has two different names depending on the translation. In Japanese, it’s called the “Murder Beam,” whereas in the English translation it’s known as the “Kiru-Beam” to follow suit with her name-themed descriptions of her companion’s abilities like the “Maru Touch” and “Maru Sense.”
• Eaten Alive: This happens on occasion when a Man-Eater devours a human being via absorbing them, but what makes it worse is that the process is slow and painful for the victim. Haruki suffered this gruesome fate, who had his limbs and lower portion of his stomach area “swallowed” by the Invisibility Man-Eater.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Man-Eaters are alien-like beings, most of them appearing as the animalistic variant, but there are some exceptions like the giant armored Man-Eater who could turn invisible and the tarantula armed with freezing abilities.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Robin raped Kiriko for almost two days straight until Maru showed up and bashed Robin’s face in. It’s made more dramatic by the fact she had spent over five years looking for him, only to be betrayed by her former Big Brother Mentor in one of the worst ways possible.
• Everyone Has Standards: While Maru would love nothing more than to fondle Kiruko’s boobs, he won’t stand others doing the same and even manages to restrain himself from letting his perversion get the best of him (most of the time). It doesn’t help matters that Kiruko herself knows this, even tempting him on occasion for fun and to get him to accomplish difficult tasks for her.
• Expository Hair Style Change: At some point in the past Kiruko's haircolour changed from black to reddish brown. She figures it's probably from a traumatic injury she suffered in the past and also sees it as a reminder from her sister to take care of her body.
• Fighting from the Inside:
  • Maru and Kiruko were stopped by the innkeeper from dealing the finishing blow on the Bird Man-Eater because she claimed it was her son Yuuto. She told them it protected her from bandits after it ate him, thus it has Yuuto’s memories and should be left alone. When she approached the Man-Eater, yet it refused to harm her, the duo believed there was credence to this theory and that Man-Eaters that won’t harm humans should be spared until the monster sliced the woman’s head in half and began eating her remains, forcing the duo to destroy the monster before it could fool anyone else.
• Fire-Forged Friends: While there wasn’t any animosity between the two, Maru wasn’t an open book for Kiruko starting off, due to his previous history of following strangers out of necessity and not knowing what to make of her at first. He even didn’t mind Kiruko leaving him alone on his journey, but after they defeated the Bird Man-Eater and he saw her sensitive side they developed a true friendship. However, Maru wants to upgrade this if given the opportunity.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The Nursery plot shows that Kona is an artist with his artwork bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Man-Eaters. This is followed up by the Man-Eaters being shown early on having supernatural abilities that are similar to the children of the nursery. Later on, a grown up Shiro who goes by the name Dr. Usami revealed to Maru and Kiruko that the Man-Eaters were once human, but they died from an illness that eventually warped the corpses into the monsters we see today. Future chapters even showcase humans who have a Hiruko core that Maru can interact with using his “Maru Touch” ability.
  • Kiruko from the Post-Disaster plot line had several odd instances that appeared in the first couple of chapters. Besides forgetting if she was eighteen or twenty years and claiming the mixup was due to being bad at math, there was a scene where she was examining her own body and attempted to kiss her own reflection in a mirror, but bailed when an innkeeper entered the room. Also, Maru later discovered a large stitch wound on her head when he helped dry her hair, which she stated came from a surgery in the past. Then during chapter seven a man from the “Tomato Heaven” vineyard thought Kiruko was a famous kart-racer named Kiriko Takehaya, who went missing years ago, but she denied the resemblances.
    It’s later revealed that “Kiruko” is an alias for Haruki Takehaya, the younger brother of the aforementioned Kiriko Takehaya, whose body Haruki’s brain is inhabiting due to a medical procedure done by a doctor — one that he knew five years ago. When he tried to kill a Man-Eater who could turn invisible before it attacked his sister during one of her kart races, his experimental crossbow weapon failed to bring it down, thus most of his body was eaten before his sister managed to pull his body out. In the end, Haruki passed out with his sister crying over him, making him believe he was dying.
    When Haruki awakened, he looked at himself in a mirror and saw Kiriko’s body in the reflection instead, then panicked while screaming he was Haruki — much to the confusion of the people in the room who tried to correct him by saying Haruki had passed away. The people stated that a doctor wasn’t able to save him, but the doctor did save her before he left town, indicating something bad might’ve happened to Kiriko while Haruki was unconscious. After “she” recovered, having accepted her new strange fate^note albeit referring to herself as a man to whoever knows the truth about her brain surgery, like Maru, she named herself “Kiruko” and set out on a journey to discover the truth, plus look for Robin who had disappeared. The reason why Kiruko forgets her age is because she has a tendency to think of herself as “Haruki” instead of as “Kiriko,” who was about two years older than him. It’s also revealed that Haruki had a secret one-sided crush on his sister, which is why Kiruko was admiring her body in a lustful manner.
  • A picture of Shiro and Mimihime from the Nursery plot is used as the chapter cover of chapter nineteen, hinting at the true identities of Dr. Usami and Hoshino respectively as now grown up in the Post-Disaster plot.
  • The Chief of the Water Filtration Center, Robin, panicked when he saw Maru for the first time and ran away, hinting that the Chief knew Maru was a dangerous threat despite appearing to be a mere teenage boy. This was even before the Chief found out all the guards had been knocked out by Maru. Five years ago Robin had disappeared for several months before the orphanage closed down, making it possible he came into contact with some the people of the nursery where children with supernatural abilities had been — thus he may have known who Maru was.
  • The anime's opening only shows the Post-Disaster part of the story, with a single Forced Perspective shot involving a decoration representing a child in a school uniform and several large archways arranged to look like a windowless building being the only recognizable allusion to the Nursery plot. To make the shot fit with the rest of the opening, both props are just as weather-worn as everything else.
  • Mikura, Maru’s previous guardian before he was passed on to Kiruko, has several mysteries surrounding her. While she took good care of Maru she treated him more like an important tool — rather than a person — and was the one who set Maru and Kiruko on their quest to find “Heaven.” Mikura also seemed to be bitter about life, having named the Ray Gun she carried around “The Thankless Weapon” before she gave it to Kiruko. She’s later revealed to be the Director of the Nursery herself, having had her brain switched with one of the Nursery’s children who had fallen into a coma they weren’t waking up from after the Nursery suffered severe damage in an attack. The Director lived on for over fifteen years after the disaster, but had to deal with the fact that several plans she had set up to advance humanity never came to fruition, so she wandered around in post-apocalyptic Japan embittered until she came across Maru.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The Glasses Man, a sinister criminal who raped Helm when she was a child and escaped judgement by not wearing his glasses when the town searched for him. Years later, Helm found him once again with a child prostitute chained to him, thus she asked Maru and Kiruko to help her end the Glasses Man’s perverted crimes towards children once and for all.
• Future Imperfect: No one quite knows what caused the collapse, despite it being just 15 years ago. Maru mentions a theory that it was caused by people pushing their own rules on each other, leading to everyone killing each other (known as the War Collapse Theory in-universe). Kiruko thinks that's stupid.
• Genre Deconstruction: For all the crap with monsters and the world's state is in during the Post-Disater plot society hasn’t collapsed yet, but rather it adapted pretty quickly and is making do with everything left. Post-apocalyptic works usually show the world being a hell hole, but Man-Eaters aside, the world is presented somewhat as a slice of life scenario with good people still running the show in many of the major cities. In fact it’s quite rare to see a city that has fallen to dystopian rule under a brutal tyrant or sinister cult group. Which, ironically, is why the biggest and most horrifying threats tends to be people who initially were portrayed as likable and charismatic like Robin, Kiruko’s Big Brother Mentor who later rapes her and reveals he never really cared about her personally other than “she was interesting.”
• Giver of Lame Names: Kiruko. She named Maru’s Man-Eater core destroying ability his “Maru Touch,” her Ray Gun the “Kiru-Beam,” and Maru’s ability to detect the Man-Eaters as his “Maru Sense,” all of which he hates. Though it turned out his naming sense wasn’t any better, such as when he named his own ability “Fatal Dive” for a day until even Kiruko called him out on how cheesy it was.
• The Government: It’s hinted during the Nursery plot that the Japanese government is involved with the various tests being conducted on the children from the nursery. A benevolent variant appeared in the “Post-Disaster” plot known as the Ministry of Reconstruction, whose goal is to revive Japan back to its pre-disaster glory albeit they too have resorted to hiding details from the public, like the existence of a dormant Man-Eater in the water filtration center as well as the horrific human experiments that had taken place by Robin in secrecy.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In the Nursery plot, Shiro observed Mimihime talking with Tokio and had a menacing look on his face as he watched the two together, making it apparent he had a fixation on Mimihime. Later on this was subverted when it turned out he had terrible social skills and was benevolent towards the other kids, albeit he didn’t talk much to others. Mimihime herself was a kind girl who recognized that Shiro wasn’t a bad person, despite him once trying to explain his feelings towards her in a way that made him look like a deranged stalker.
  • A straight example is Sawatori, a scientist who was passed up as the next Director in line to a woman named Aoshima. He attempted to confront her on this, but reneged when he noticed the facility AI Meena was talking with her, instead doing his best to swallow his rage. That is, until he learned in horror the real reason why she was chosen by the current Director: Aoshima was the chosen body vessel that the Director wanted to remove the former’s brain out of in order to insert her own brain into due to her own body failing, thus giving her a form of immortality so she could live long enough to possess the body of Tokio’s child.
• Groin Attack:
  • The Glasses Man is a victim of this when Helm detached her prosthetic arm and latched it onto his groin using fishhooks built into the glove’s fingertips, inflicting immense pain on him. Then she revealed the arm had explosives in it, blowing up the pedophile rapist when it successfully detonated at his groin, which guaranteed that even if he somehow survived the blast his groin wouldn’t.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Maru and Kiruko’s respective combat roles are this. However, Kiruko does have a nasty kick if the situation calls for it.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Haruki suffered this, having everything except his head and torso consumed by a Man-Eater. Conveniently, his head was completely untouched, allowing his brain to be transplanted into Kiriko's deceased body since she had been shot in the head at some point before the doctor found them both.
• Handicapped Badass:
  • A few of the children from the Nursery plot are hinted to have mental disorders of sorts, none of which prevents them from using their special abilities and/or enhanced physicality to great effect. Also, Tarao has super human strength — able to lift large boulders with ease — but is often bedridden due to his poor health and moves around on a wheelchair.
  • Helm has a prosthetic left arm. If she unhooks it from her upper arm it activates a timed bomb within, which she attaches to her intended victim by using the fishhooks built in to the glove’s fingertips.
• Hard Truth Aesop:
  • No matter how well you think you know someone, there’s always a chance they may betray you. While that doesn’t mean you should be paranoid of everyone, it does mean you should remain vigilant around others. Case in point, while discovering the Chief of the Water Filtration Center was abusing their authority and power to take advantage of others isn’t too big a surprise at the end, the knife twister is knowing the Chief is Robin himself, the man who took care of Haruki and Kiriko when they were children. Kiruko^note who has Haruki’s brain and considers herself to be him had received guidance by Robin for a long time, thus she believed that she had no reason to think he had a sinister motive for inviting her to stay overnight at the facility and left caution to the wind — something she never would’ve done otherwise.
    This is Truth in Television; many victims of rape were targeted by people that the former trusted, which is the point of a criminal earning the trust of their intended victim in the first place. Robin himself admitted that the reason why he looked after Haruki and Kiriko when they were kids is because “he thought they were interesting,” not because he cared about them.
• Hate Sink:
  • The Chief of the Water Filtration Plant becomes one after he raped Kiruko. He was earlier revealed to be Robin, who at one point was Kiruko’s Big Brother Mentor she looked up to — even going on a long journey for several years to find him, only to be betrayed in one of the worst ways possible. The authorities of the town later discovered Robin had also been performing experiments on a woman, whose limbs had been removed with her body connected to a docile Man-Eater via tubes. Even worse, she appeared to be aware of her situation and in complete pain, unable to do anything about her situation.
  • The Glasses Man raped Helm when she was a young girl and skirted the authorities by not wearing his glasses; he managed to escape after another attempt at raping Helm was botched. During the present time in the Post-Disaster plot, he’s seen walking through a town with another young girl chained to him, making it clear she was a child prostitute the Glasses Man was taking advantage of in exchange for food.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Totori, a thirteen year old girl who also runs an inn within a town inhabited by a vigilante group. Totori helped Maru and Kiruko when she discovered they had saved her boss from a wild bear by telling the vigilantes that the duo had already fled town, ensuring the duo could have a peaceful night in the inn. She also attempted to seduce Maru that same night, which ended comically since he preferred older women like Kiruko and was too freaked out to want to make love when his “Maru Touch” ability activated on Totori, which happened since she had a core like the Hiruko, making him realize some humans were fair game for his ability.
• Hopeless with Tech: Maru, who is a Type Two variant. Justified, as he lived most of his life scavenging while he drifted between different groups of people before meeting Kiruko, thus he didn’t have the same exposure to advanced tech as she did.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Several of the kids from the Nursery plot line make romantic moves on each other over time, some of them even leading to actual couples like Shiro and Mimihime. Maru also wants to upgrade his friendship with Kiruko into a romantic one, but fails due to her being too preoccupied with keeping Maru and herself alive as well as trying to find Robin and the Doctor. It doesn’t help Maru’s case later on that Kiruko secretly believes herself to be trash who is Defiled Forever after being raped by Robin, thus she denies Maru because she considers him to be too kind and pure a person for someone like her.
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: Kiruko sometimes resorts to this with Maru when faced with a task she’d rather not do herself. For instance, when the duo were trapped on a concrete pillar because of a wild bear trying to eat them, Kuriko dropped the battery that powered her “Kiru-Beam” ray gun by accident. She then told Maru if he went down to fetch it that she would let him feel up her breasts; he jumped down without hesitation and got the battery, which led to the bear’s death a short while after. Unfortunately for him, she managed to escape her end of the deal later that night due to the innkeeper Totori’s meddling.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: In a world with horrible, nigh-invulnerable monsters that randomly appear and leave death in their wake, the most horrible and despicable beings are completely mundane humans who commit mundane crimes like rape. In fact, once you learn what they actually are, the Man-Eaters are more tragic monsters than truly evil beings, and killing them can be considered a mercy kill.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: The “Inazaki Robin” arc reveals this is Kiruko’s Fatal Flaw.
• It's Been Done: During one chapter, Maru and Kiruko are escaping a giant Man-Eater in their van on a bumpy road, so to give Kiruko stability Maru ties her down to the seat with some cloth. Once they escape, Kiruko praises Maru much to his satisfaction, saying that he came up with a brilliant invention. But in the shot of her saying this and the shot of his reaction you can see the car's unusued seatbelts behind them.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • While the Chief of the Water Filtration Center was gaslighting Kiruko, he decided to make his victim more submissive by questioning who she really was: “Haruki” or “Kiriko.” Terrified, she kept insisting she was “Haruki” because she had his memories. However, the Chief (aka Robin) pointed out that even if it’s Haruki’s brain in Kiriko’s body, it doesn’t mean that Kiruko is “Haruki” for sure, it was possible that her mind was actually “Kiriko” who was able to access Haruki’s memories instead. This broke Kiruko because she had no way to rebuff Robin’s theory, so when she started to see memories of “Kiriko” later on for the first time Kiruko realized she didn’t know who she was anymore. While she does recover later on, she continues to believe she is “Haruki” to spite Robin for raping her, even though she hasn’t disproven his theory yet.
• Kick Chick: Kiruko. Downplayed, as most fights in the manga during the Post-Disaster plot involve either Maru overpowering his opponent(s) or the duo being forced to flee. However, when given the opportunity, she can do an impressive crescent kick.
• La Résistance: During their travels Maru and Kiruko discovered a group of people who called themselves “Liviuman.” They claimed another group they called the “Immortalites” were kidnapping people and performing gruesome surgeries in order to test prosthetic body parts on them, thus the Liviuman group formed to oppose them after their spokeswoman had one of her legs surgically removed by the Immortalities in an apparent “test.” It later turns out the Immortalites were innocent people who were being helped by a grown up Shiro from the “Nursery” plot, having any limbs that couldn’t be saved via surgery replaced with prosthetics instead. Furthermore, while the spokeswoman wanted to help people she thought were being kidnapped, The Dragon of the Liviuman group instead desired all the advanced technology housed in the Immortalites’s home base, deciding later to take full control of the Liviuman group after plotting to have the spokeswoman assassinated by one of his followers. The spokeswoman escaped this fate thanks to one of her close aides helping her escape undetected, but the corrupt Liviuman group still managed to force the Immortalites out of their home and steal their technology after Maru and Kiruko eliminated the Man-Eater that lived in the Immortalite’s basement area and “protected” them from hostile invaders. Unfortunately for the Liviuman group, Maru and Kiruko missed one of the Man-Eaters in the basement…
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • During the “Inazaki Robin” arc of the Post-Disater plot line, there is the Chief of the Water Filtration Center, Inazaki Robin himself. When Maru found out Robin had raped Kiruko, Maru took it upon himself to punish Robin. However, Maru toyed with Robin by throwing him at a wall numerous times, mirroring the humiliation that he had subjected Kiruko to, which ended with Maru deciding to murder Robin after he was knocked out cold. While he was an evil and remorseless rapist, Maru’s actions against Robin steered unnervingly close to turning Maru into a cold-blooded murderer seeking vengeance, but was stopped by Kiruko before he threw the final punch. Yet he still has bad blood, having planned in secrecy to murder Robin if the opportunity arises.
  • In the “Dream of Hell” arc of the Post-Disaster plot line, the Glasses Man is tricked by a teenage Helm into allowing her to attach her prosthetic left arm unto his crotch, which activated a bomb that blew him up to near death. This was done to ensure he could no longer rape young girls like what he did to Helm when she was a child, though he succumbed to his wounds after Helm mocked him about the “dream of hell” she gave him.
• Lightning Bruiser: Maru. He’s able to take punches from adults like they smacked him with a pillow, dish out serious hurt of his own, and can run fast compared to a normal human being. Due to his “Maru Touch” having obvious supernatural origins, it’s possible his enhanced physicality isn’t because of training alone. Given that he bears a heavy resemblance to Tokio from the Nursery plot and she had supernatural powers of her own, Maru’s impressive physicality may have come from her.
• Little Useless Gun: The "Kiru-Beam". On the one hand, it only has four shots before the battery dies; takes thirty seconds to charge up before it can be used; and misfires often, much to Maru and Kiruko’s chagrin since the gun won’t regain a misfired shot. On the other hand, when it works, it can be seen as the laser gun equivalent of the Noisy Cricket. And it turns out the weapon was mass-produced for a group of winged humanoid alien soldiers under the control of the Nursery’s leaders.
• Loss of Identity: In the aftermath of the “Inazaki Robin” arc, Kiruko told Maru after the former had been gaslighted and raped by her Big Brother Mentor Robin that the “Haruki” persona she identified as was gone forever, stating she was also weak since she needed to be saved numerous times by Maru. She then concluded everything she believed about herself was lies, so as a result she no longer knew who she was. However, Maru declared that he didn’t care who she was; he loved her regardless and would protect her from then on, which made her snap at him because it irritated her that he wanted to protect her — that was supposed to be her job as his bodyguard. This helped calm her down and led to her ripping apart her photo of Robin before the duo left the town. Later on, Kiruko resumed believing she is still “Haruki” whose brain is occupying the body of “Kiriko,” but it’s made apparent Kiruko is forcing herself to do so despite the fact she has no proof that Robin’s theory is wrong.
• Martial Pacifist: When against human opponents, Maru and Kiruko refuse to murder and will even avoid killing in justifiable self defense, instead using their wits and surroundings in combat to disable opponents or try to talk them down. That is, unless you push Maru’s Berserk Button and violate Kiruko, as Robin found out the hard way.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Man-Eaters are sometimes called “Hiruko” by other people like Maru and his original guardian, Mikura. “Hiruko” was the name given to the children of the Nursery plot, so whenever a character in the Post-Disaster plot calls the Man-Eaters “Hiruko” instead it’s a good sign that person had some kind of involvement with the nursery.
  • The title name itself is a reference to how some people chase after pleasant dreams, only to become delusional because they either refused to acknowledge the reality of their situation or ignored any potential negative attributes of what they pursued.
  • Kiruko’s name is revealed to be a combination of the two people who makes up her body: Kiriko Takehaya’s body and Haruki Takehaya’s brain. Believing herself to still be Haruki because she has his brain and memories, she combined the two names together to create a cover name for herself.
  • Helm’s name in Japanese characters is written as “dream of hell.” Which is what she planned on giving the Glasses Man who raped her years ago with a bomb.
• Mercy Rewarded: When Maru and Kiruko spared the life of a gang leader named Iwata — who had planned on ambushing the duo with an accomplice but fell victim to a hungry bear — and helped him return back to the nearby town, the manager of the hotel that the duo were staying at lied to the local gang by saying the duo had already fled town. This gave Maru and Kiruko a chance to relax after a harrowing experience with the same bear.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Zig-Zagged. Kiruko believes she is actually Haruki Takehaya because his brain was transplanted into his sister, Kiriko Takehaya, resulting in Kiruko having Haruki’s mind. But while Robin was raping Kiruko, he pointed out that even if she has Haruki’s brain that doesn’t mean his mind is the one in control, and that she might instead be “Kiriko” who only has Haruki’s memories instead. After seeing a memory from a viewpoint that belonged to “Kiriko” later on, Kiruko realized that Robin had a point, albeit she continues to believe her own theory to spite him for betraying her.
• Mistaken for Incest: The hotel lady tells Kiruko and Maru that even in After the End they shouldn't get too close to each other becuase of all sorts of biological issues. Annoyed Kiruko tells her that they are neither siblings nor dating.
• Morality Chain: Zig-Zagged in the Post-Disaster plot. While Kiruko has no problems with Maru killing the vicious Man-Eaters as well as giving bandits a brutal beatdown, she does her best to talk him down from ending humans’s lives, even if it’s in self-defense. However, she has no problems with both of them assisting someone else who plans to kill another person if the latter committed an egregious crime to the former, such as assisting Helm to assassinate the Glasses Man who raped her when she was a child. The only stipulation is that Maru and Kiruko themselves will not kill the criminal, it must be done by the original victim.
• Mundane Fantastic: The children in the Nursery plot either have a supernatural power or enhanced athleticism like being able to climb walls with ease. At the same time, none of this seems out of the ordinary to them as well as the adults living/working in the nursery.
• Mundanger: In the Post-Disaster storyline Maru and Kiruko occasionally have to deal with violent humans as their opponent(s).
• No-Sell:
  • Maru’s “Maru Touch” ability doesn’t work on normal wild life and humans until Maru learned the latter wasn’t always true when he was able to reach a Hiruko Core upon touching Totori, a young innkeeper.
  • A Man-Eater shaped like a dome that Kiruko fired her “Kiru-Beam” at deflected the beam right back at her, though fortunately she was too far away for the beam to hurt her.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Man-Eaters are Immune to Bullets and even melee weapons like knives are absorbed harmlessly - the only things that are shown to be able to kill them are the Kiru-Beam and Maru's touch, both extremely unique assets.
• Parental Incest: At one point, Maru and Kiruko come across a large family living alone in the wilderness while being drawn towards a Man-Eater. While staying with them, one night Maru senses the Man-Eater is close to the house, following it's presence towards a well-tended cave along with Kiruko. At the entrance, Maru notices a graph of some kind that he believes is a map of the cave. It’s later implied that it's the family tree of the family they were staying with, and if so, then the grandmother's husband impregnated their two daughters plus the family tree shows even more inbreeding has happened over time with different family members.
• Posthumous Character: During the “Immortalite” arc of the Post-Disaster plot line, Maru and Kiruko come across a facility where a tech savy man is keeping a woman alive. He explains to the duo that she is slowly turning into a Man-Eater, being kept human through a rather brutal method of him cutting off the parts of her body that are beginning to turn. By the time they arrive, she is missing parts of her limbs and is covered in bandages — save for her right eye — and the man admitted that she had finally reached her limits. Having seen Maru kill the Man-Eater in the building’s basement using his power, the man believed that Maru could end the woman’s misery without turning her into a Man-Eater. Maru complies after the duo and the man help the woman see the sky one last time. It later becomes clear that the man and woman are an older Shiro and Mimihime from the Nursery plot line. Their first major interaction in the story, aside from Shiro watching Mimihime from a distance and some miscellaneous interactions between them, doesn't occur until about 20+ chapters later, though other breadcrumbs are given like Mimihime having the same fascination with the sky like the woman and a chapter title showcasing the two of them on the picture during the “Immortalite” arc.
• The Power of Trust: This is one of the major themes of Heavenly Delusion and the “Inazaki Robin” arc within the Post-Disaster storyline featured this prominently. At the end of the arc, Kiruko learned the Awful Truth that people are complicated beings and can change over time if they weren’t hiding their true nature from the beginning; Robin ended up being a twisted sadist who had no problems raping her after using gaslighting tactics to try and make her more submissive, which worked for a while. However, that doesn’t mean people cannot be trusted. Maru always respected her, avoided doing things that made her uncomfortable and apologized if he felt he went too far, ran through hell and back to save her from Robin, and cherished her since Maru was in love with her. But at the same time one must keep vigilant around others, even if it’s someone you knew and especially if you haven’t seen them in a long time, which isn’t helped by the nature of their world having corrupted many individuals.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: For the anime; the events of the Post-Disaster and Orphanage storylines are generally kept to their own episodes instead of being mixed together like in the manga.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Maru is the emotional, fiery and somewhat impulsive red variant, whereas Kiruko has the blue’s analytical, cool-headed and wiser stance on life.
• Refusal of the Call: Zig-zagged. While Maru seemed at first to take the journey to “Heaven” in stride, the reality was he didn’t have anything else to do — having lived a life of constant partings from different groups and being taken under the wing of an adult who saw potential in him (like Mikura). This reached a point where he outright told Kiruko that he thought they should abandon the journey; this way he could instead team up with her as a fellow handyman since he fell in love with her (much to her shock, though she was flattered by it regardless). Kiruko, on the flip side, was hoping to find Robin or the Doctor she knew from her childhood during their journey, all so she could find out what happened to them. Since Maru realized she still wanted to travel, he decided to continue the journey, all the while making constant romantic moves on her with comedic results oftentimes.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: During the “Immortalite” arc, the spy who helped the Liviuman group gain access to the Immortalite group’s headquarters was murdered by one of the higher ups within Liviuman, who went on to declare the execution was justified because the spy was part of the Immoralites. One of the Liviuman members realized the executed spy had been faithful to them the entire time and never saw this coming, thus the spy had been unfairly executed, but the man decided to do nothing out of fear of being executed as well for speaking up.
• Sequel Hook: For the anime, after Maru and Kiruko head off after its events of the “Inazaki Robin” arc. Leavving it on an And the Adventure Continues-style ending due to the manga's incompleteness.
• Sequencing Deception: At first it seems as though the two plotlines are occuring at the same time, that the nursery may be some sort of bunker that survived the disaster which destroyed Tokyo, but it’s eventually revealed that the Nursery plot line happened before the disaster struck.
• Shown Their Work: A good number of real life survival tips/tactics are showcased in the Post-Disaster plot.
  • When Maru and Kiruko were being chased by a wild bear, they managed to escape by climbing up a make-shift ladder to wait out the bear on a concrete pillar… except the bear had no intention of letting a rare meal escape and remained in the area. Kiruko feared that the concrete would sap their body heat, meaning they would die from hypothermia long before starving or from dehydration, not to mention the cold weather would speed the process up.
  • Knowing how to start a fire has helped survivors numerous times. It has numerous uses, such as cooking meat to edible temperatures; maintaining a heat source to keep warm; and creating a beacon in the darkness that would allow other survivors to know of one’s location (it’s even mentioned that the smoke the fire produces can be seen from further distances). Alternatively, fires can attract unwanted attention, making it imperative you keep a close eye on your surroundings.
  • Kiruko oftentimes mixes vegetation she finds with Maru’s meal and her own while resting on their journey. Proper nutrition is vital for survival, which is why eating only preserved food from containers they looted can lead to serious illnesses like scurvy if the food is lacking in nutrients. However, at one point Kiruko made the mistake of mixing unknown vegetation with an entire can of food for dinner, which led to their dinner being inedible as well as gross tasting. If you want to eat plants in the wild it’s best to know what you’re dealing with, but if you’re not sure then only mix it with a small portion of the main dish set aside as a taste test. And be prepared to feel sick if the plant you couldn’t identify was poisonous and/or contaminated.
  • A tunnel environment can get dangerous if you don’t know the layout of the area. If you enter a tunnel, yet the original entrance you used either gets blocked off by a freak accident (e.g. cave-in caused by an earthquake) or a hostile being cuts you off from the outside that you cannot overpower, you’re forced to either wait and hope your resources on hand can sustain you until help arrives or explore deeper for a new exit. And if the rest of the tunnel(s) is cut off (e.g. flooded with water) then you’re trapped, further limiting your options.
• Superhero Speciation: In the "Nursery" storyline all of the children have different supernatural abilities, none are alike. The fact that the Man-Eaters have similiarly wildly different powers that are also awfully familiar of those the children have is a major hint they are one and the same.
• Super-Toughness: Downplayed with Maru who can take hits from adults with ease, yet the Man-Eaters or a wild bear can turn the tables on him.
• Tamer and Chaster: Very downplayed, but the manga isn't afraid to show nipples and Kiruku's rape is a lot more explicit and cruder. The anime, meanwhile, covers them with convenient censorship.
• Tragic Keepsake: The “Kiru-Beam” ray gun’s first owner was a woman named Mikura, who took care of Maru before she passed away a short while after meeting Kiruko. Mikura gave it to Kiruko, telling her to take it in order to protect Maru’s life on their journey.
• Trans Relationship Troubles: Maru and Kiruko's relationship definetly has some shades of this, especially if Kiruko is interpreted as a trans woman rather than a trans man. The scene in which she tries to deter Maru from touching her breasts by holding up a picture of her past self can definetly be read as an allegory of internalized transphobia and not wanting to 'trick' him. Maru, on the other hand, doesn't seem to particularly care one way or the other.
• Trauma Button:
  • Kiruko panicked when Maru wasn’t in the room they were staying in until he revealed he was hiding in another room looking at a porn magazine. But when he tried to assure her that he was ok, she started crying, much to his dismay. He remembered that she grew up in an orphanage, which shut down at one point because when Kiriko “died” the money she brought in from winning electric cart races stopped, therefore the orphanage couldn’t support itself and she sometimes begged out loud for Robin to save her when she’s in extreme danger. Maru realized at that point she has a fear of being abandoned by people she cares about, thus he decided to stay at a location that Kiruko wanted him to from then on. Which unfortunately meant that he waited two days before he went to check on her at the Water Filtration Center, finding out upon seeing her that she had been raped the entire time by Robin.
  • Helm was terrified when she saw the Glasses Man who raped her years prior, leading her to try and kill a Man-Eater by herself since she believed doing so would make her strong enough to face her former pedophile rapist.
• Vague Age: When asks, Kiruko claims that she's 18 or 20, explaining the 2 year gap as her being not sure herself. She later lets slip that she was 3 during the Disaster, which would make her 18. Since her mind was transplanted from a younger boy to an older girl, she's mentally 18 years old but physically 20.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • In the “Nursery” plot, the Director is this. Many people see her as a wise old woman who oversees the entire operation of the nursery and cares about the children, but it’s all an act.
  • In the “Post-Disaster” plot, Inazaki Robin is this. He’s the Chief of an important water filtration center in a town run by the Ministry of Reconstruction, using his charisma and smarts to woo everyone — especially women. However, he uses this prestige to lure innocent women into the facility where he can rape and experiment on them.
    • However, this is subverted later after Robin was pummeled unconscious by Maru after he rescued Kiruko, which spooked Robin when he awoke later into running away from the town after stealing equipment from the facility. This earned him the ire of the Ministry of Reconstruction, who assigned a squad of government officials to hunt him down.
• Was Once a Man: The Man-Eaters are revealed to have been humans who contracted an unknown disease and were corrupted into their current, monstrous form upon death. However, it turns out that this disease doesn't hit regular humans - only the Hirukos of the Nursery, explaining their surprisingly low number and infrequency.
• Walking the Earth: Many people in the Post-Disaster storyline do this, but have no choice given the circumstances; Maru and Kiruko are merely two people in a long list of wandering survivors.
• Weak, but Skilled: Kiruko. While she’s no slouch in the athletics department, she’s up against horrific monsters and gangs of human bandits who wouldn’t think twice about violating her. Therefore she had to rely on her survival skills, sharp intuition, and her trusty “Kiru-Beam” in order to deal with anything Maru cannot beat on his own.
• Wham Episode:
  • Kiruko and Robin are catching up on old times after many years had passed, enjoying each other’s company and Kiruko believing everything will be alright again since she found her Big Brother Mentor. Then he rapes her, and reveals his true nature to her horror.
  • One of the injuries on Kiruko’s head has its true nature revealed: It was an old bullet wound when Kiriko Takehaya had been shot in the head. The Doctor realized she couldn’t be saved, but her brother Haruki — who still had his brain intact even after losing half his body from a Man-Eater’s attack — wasn’t beyond help. Therefore the Doctor performed the surgery of replacing Kiriko’s deceased brain with Haruki’s still intact one, resulting in the birth of “Kiruko.” She was shocked to find out the Doctor had been trying to save Haruki’s life, albeit with unintentional psychological consequences that Kiruko had to live with afterwards.
• Wham Line:
  • Kiruko told Maru when he unsuccessfully tried to romantically woo her that her body is female... but her brain is a male's. She has Haruki Takehaya’s brain and memories, who was male, therefore she considers herself a man. Maru has mixed feelings about this, mainly because he doesn’t see Kiruko as either “Haruki” or “Kiriko” and chooses to sees Kiruko as her own individual.
• What Have I Done:
  • When Maru learned that the Chief of the Water Filtration had raped Kiruko, Maru realized he could’ve stopped him earlier if he hadn’t obeyed Kiruko’s wishes to stay put in the apartment they were renting.
  • Helm didn’t take it well when she realized she had blamed an innocent man of raping her as a child, all because he wore glasses like her true perpetrator.
• Worthless Currency: A rare aversion for a post-apocalyptic setting in the “Post-Disaster” plot. Yen is still accepted by some pockets of civilization in Japan, although bartering goods/services is still seen as the more reliable way to get what you need.

---