Heaven’s Design Team – The Devil’s in the Details

Production

I wouldn’t say Heaven’s Design Team is a masterwork or anything like that. The animation is modest and although the backgrounds are nice, there are very few of them and can be occasionally spartan. And the majority of the creatures are in fact real animals that exist so it’s not like there’s anything unexpected in those visuals although it’s occasionally very interesting to see the early drafts of those creatures. That’s more of a story aspect so I’ll get back to it later.

I would say all in all Heaven’s Design Team is a competent but not very flashy production with two exceptions. First, everything is patterned. World Conquest Zvezda did something similar. It adds a lot of dimension and texture to the image and it’s a simple visual add-on that I tend to appreciate a lot. Second, would be the character designs. These come straight from the manga and they are filled with little touches and Easter eggs. My favourite is that the angels have scalloped collars. I love that detail. And there are little things like that for every member of the team, that connect back to their Roman pantheon roots.

Story & Characters

Like I said, Heaven’s Design Team is essentially a children’s educational program. It’s very much like Cells at Work in that regard but I liked Heaven’s Design Team better. Mostly because I’m pretty familiar with medicine and human biology but I know much less about zoology and I find it fascinating. The naked mole-rat episode is one of my favourite things I learned this year.

And because the subject matter spoke to me so much, I frequently found myself googling the animals featured in one episode to learn more and fact-check the crazier-sounding stuff. Some things were simplified but all in all, I couldn’t catch Heaven’s Design Team in any unfactual statements.

At its core, what this show is trying to do is teach us fun and little-known facts about everyday animals. The story, such as it is, is contained in only weekly episodal events that string this information together. There are no arcs, no deep character development to speak of and no real story structure. Much less so that Cells at Work, this Sesame Street or something of the kind.

However, it uses all the time that would have been devoted to these storytelling elements, to bulk up the educational aspects. Early drafts of creatures walk us through biological evolution in an interesting way. Not the simple creature A becomes creature B stuff but the basic traits that living organism develop depending on their environment and the odd paths they take to get there. It’s really a pretty solid foundation on evolutionary biology livened up with some crazy animal fact.

I figure if you are not interested in this type of stuff, there’s not too much else to be found in Heaven’s Design Team. But if you are, then it’s one of the best educational shows I have seen in a long time.

You might like this anime if:

You liked the notion of anime edutainment. You enjoy learning about animals.

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.