The highly anticipated anime adaptation of Heavenly Delusion just got an amazing first trailer that also came with a release date window. The manga by Masakazu Ishiguro, who also created And Yet the Town Moves, debuted back in 2018 in Monthly Afternoon and has since then being very popular within seinen readers. The anime adaptation with the work of the studio Production I.G was announced about a month ago, and they already have a teaser and a first look at how the series transitions from paper to screen.Heavenly Delusion is a Sci-Fi seinen set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world, 15 years after an unexpected and unexplained disaster. The story starts with a facility where children are raised by robots, safe from the outside dangers. This facility is described as a slice of heaven, immune to external threats, and the rest of the world is nothing more than hell. At the other side of the walls the series follows Maru and Kiruko while they explore what once was Tokyo, encountering all types of super-natural creatures, in search of "heaven". However, the long pursue will start to fade away the idea and make "heaven" feel more like a dream than reality.The first trailer for the adaptation showed the devastated world of Heavenly Delusion, a first look at Maru and Kiruko, and the animation style they chose for this show. It also confirmed that it will come out at some point in 2023, but with no more information for the time being. Given the moment of the announcement, the most likely scenario would be a release no sooner than April, and likely placed somewhere in the second half of 2023.
The studio Production I.G, famous for being in charge of the animation for the first 3 seasons of Attack on Titan, also revealed some of the project staff. Hirotaka Mori will be directing Heavenly Delusion. He has been part of other productions such as One Piece, Haikyu!!, Erased or movies like Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Psycho-Pass the movie. To handle the scripts Mori will be joined by Makoto Fukami, who is also known for Psycho-Pass, both series and movies. Other members of the team are Yuji Kaneko as art director, Kensuke Ishio and Eriko Kimura for the music, Akira Takada, Shinnobu Tsuneki and Izumi Hirose in charge of the design, Shuntaro Waki as cinematographer and Kumiko Sakamoto as chief editor.
Unfortunately, the voice actors for Maru and Kiruko weren't revealed in the announcement, so make sure to be aware of any news or updates regarding the Heavenly Delusion adaptation in the upcoming months. In the meantime, the English version of the manga is licensed by Denpa and available to read up to the 4th volume, with the 5th coming out January 31, 2023.
Source: Production I.G/Twitter