This contains spoilers for Heavenly Delusion, Episode 4, "Kuku", now streaming on Hulu & Disney+.
It's no surprise that Heavenly Delusion has many secrets built up beautifully over the past few weeks and continues to be explored with thoughtful and tense execution. But the only thing more rewarding than the prospect of these questions being paid off in the weeks to come is the answers right in plain sight for those with a keen eye for them.
Last week, viewers were treated to Kiruko's backstory, her origins as a boy named Haruki, and the circumstances that led her to wake up in the body of her sister Haruki. When the episode ended, a man-eater was attacking the ship that Kiruko and Maru were on, while Kuku told Tokio that she's seen what babies really look like after seeing Kona's drawing of one. This week picks up where both of those stories left off and the implications within both of the stories are quite fascinating, yet rather understated in their execution, trusting in the viewer's intelligence to piece things together. The story is hinting further and further at the connective tissue between its two plots, and the most damning evidence might have eluded you if you didn't catch it.
Kona's Drawings
This is one of the more obvious clues, but Kona's drawings are reflective of the Man-eaters that have appeared in Kiruko and Maru's path, most notably this week's fish monster. Between its shark-like body encased in an almost gelatinous liquid coating and its long human arms, it's a dead-ringer for the drawing from Episode 2.
There are a lot of ways to read into Kona's ability to imagine such things. Perhaps it's a premonition of monsters in the wild, or perhaps while some like Taka have increased agility, Kona's active imagination might be creating - or at least designing - the Man-eaters. It's too early to tell, but it's the kind of reveal that makes one second-guess every one of his drawings up to this point.
But that's nothing compared to another colossal hint in the background of the series up to this point that many have likely caught onto by now: the timeline. When a series juxtaposes two stories side-by-side, with no explicit mention of them happening at different times, it's natural to assume that they are more or less happening simultaneously. But this is not what is happening.
The Dates
In Episode 2, security camera footage of Tokio shows a date that looks to be in a format like [day/month/year], and which could be read as June 17, 2023 (17/06/2023). But similar footage in Episode 4 reveals that the dates are actually formatted in the reverse, as [year/month/day], meaning that Tokio's story takes place on July 1, 2017 (2017/7/01) as of the new episode.
Furthermore, the very beginning of Episode 3 shows a sign for the electro-kart race that reveals that the episode takes place in the year 2034, as evidenced by the kanji for nen(年), meaning year. Since the third episode's synopsis specifies that it takes place five years before Kiruko tells Maru her story, we can conclude that 22 years have passed between the two timelines.
Once again, the implications of this are staggering as it completely changes what to expect going forward. In the beginning, it felt like both stories were bound to collide as they were, but if that much time has passed between them, then there's truly no telling what awaits Kiruko and Maru when they reach "heaven," if there even will be one to discover.
The Inside of the "Outside"
Apart from the occasional appearance of an adult within the nursery, this episode is the first time when viewers have been treated to the goings-on of the facility and the employees observing the children. There's an incubation room with the faceless "babies" that Kuku mentioned, a surveillance room observing the children, and Mina, a mysterious robot to whom the facility is its "body."
But most interesting is the suggestion that someone or something is protecting Tokio during his travels into these restricted areas. The misdirection when the alarm goes off, and the tampering with camera footage imply that traces are being erased, but there's no clear idea of what who/what is responsible.
It could be Mina, given their implied power within their limited screen time thus far. However, it could also be Mimihime, whose intuition regarding the facility's secrets has been spot on. It was even her photo that was sent to Shiro and then mysteriously disappeared. Although, she said she knew nothing about it when he confronted her about it.
It was never in doubt that Heavenly Delusion was a show adept at pulling viewers in, but symptomatic of its skill at creating mystery is its ability to present clues - even major ones - without drawing too much attention to itself. The result is an experience that is nevertheless entertaining, but extremely rewarding to viewers who pay good attention to the details.