Oh no, Ueda has been summoned to hell! How is the rest of the design team going to get her b–oh wait, Hell is just a new start-up affiliated with Heaven and might even become a client for the design team?!
Sometimes the best way to solve a creative block on one problem is to work on another and the team has been fielding dozens of requests from God lately, they could use a few distractions!
Heaven’s Design Team continues to be an absolutely charming ride and I’m so excited that more people will come to appreciate it once the upcoming anime airs. Heaven’s Design Team also remains a series that I could safely and cheerfully recommend to the middle school and up manga crowd and, with practically every page bursting with wild animal facts, I’m sure it would have been a hit with my friends and I when we were that age.
Since the story continues to revolve around the latest request the design team has received from God, with no romance, bigger plots, or anything like that to distract from their work, the stories still remain incredibly self-contained, little bite-sized chunks (if you can resist bingeing the chapters that is, I certainly can’t). That does mean that there’s a little less to talk about in this low-key office drama than in other series, but part of it is that I just don’t want to “spoil” anyone on some of the wild details about animal biology! The team’s side-trip to Hell was an especially fun example of how you can’t judge an animal by it’s appearance or it’s skeleton, they can sometimes tell completely different stories!
Plus, there was something amusing about how the team’s “client from Hell” actually has fairly detailed requests, a timeline, and even a rough drawing of what kind of creature they want, aka he’s the kind of reasonable client that people across design fields want to work with.
I was a little surprised however that one or two mythical creatures snuck their way into this manga, especially in Hell where apparently the setting functions a little differently than Earth, as “actual” creatures and it would be fun to see some more of them. I would want the story to remain focused on real world creatures (since, as they say, fact is stranger than fiction) but at the same time I want to see how the creators justify a creature like a dragon existing, especially after continuously showing why Saturn’s attempts to create a pegasus or unicorn from his equine masterpiece simply wouldn’t work.
Simply put, this manga brings a lot of joy to my life. It’s the perfect series for your friends who enjoy Twitter threads on “weird animal biology” or for anyone who has ever wondered why animals are “like that.” Here’s to hoping that the design team is gainfully employed for many volumes to come!