Heaven's Design Team

Design Team

• Tsuchiya (土屋) / Saturn
• [3]
• Tsuchiya is the chief of the design team, and he is perpetually obsessed with horses, his greatest masterpiece. He often tries to insert his horse design into the various design requests that God sends, though despite the modifications to the horse design that they submit, they are often rejected such as the Pegasus and Unicorn due to biological complications. Despite his insistence, his team remains supportive of him and encourages him to push forward, even though the final designs are often un-horse like in the end.
• Kimura (木村) / Jupiter
• [3]
• Kimura is the most carefree of the team and rarely gets into arguments with his fellow team members. His is a foodie by nature and a vast majority of his designs are meant to be eaten. He also does not hesitate to sneak a taste of his fellow team members' animals, even if they are poisonous, just to find out if they are tasty. He also enjoys acting like a detective on occasion whenever a mystery is afoot in the department. His greatest masterpiece is the cow.
• Mizushima (水島) / Mercury
• [3]
• Mizushima is an aloof and somewhat stoic member of the team. Unlike most of his teammates, he does not have a particular quirk in designing his animals aside from making them as efficiently designed as possible. Besides Higuchi, Mizushima is usually the one to point out issues with his teammates' designs. His greatest masterpieces are snakes, which he is particularly passionate in defending, usually resulting in him conflicting with Kanamori whose bird designs are often preyed upon by his snakes.
• Kanamori (金森) / Venus
• [3]
• Kanamori is a male cross-dresser with an eye for beauty and style, the basis for his designs. Most of his designs are birds since he is the one who designed the original bird model, his greatest masterpiece. He is the only member of the design team to regularly change attire. He has a tendency to be overly dramatic in most situations and hates to settle on his designs if they are not absolutely aesthetically beautiful in his opinion. He has a strong dislike of insects in general, but is more than willing to use the insect department's input to finish a design if absolutely necessary such as his hummingbird.
• Meido (冥戸) / Pluto
• [3]
• Meido dresses in a punk-lolita fashion and has a deep obsession with creating morbid features into her design. Many of her creatures are poisonous, cannibalistic, and parasitic, all of which she considers to be cute. Her designs tend to have the widest range of appearances from a shark to a koala. Before the events of manga, she used to work in plant department but was transferred after designing a carnivorous plant. She carries an Anomalocarida shaped plush. Her greatest masterpieces are poisonous frogs.
• Unabara (海原) / Neptune
• [3]
• Unabara is the tallest and biggest of the design team, but inversely the most gentle and sensitive of the crew. He has an eye for creating cute animals as noted by the stuffed rabbit doll that he regularly carries. His greatest masterpieces are the kangaroo and later the sea otter.
• Higuchi (火口) / Mars
• [3]
• Higuchi is the primary engineer of the design team and creates the drafts of the animals the team creates for testing. She is opinionated about the end designs and can identify most of the issues the drafts have. Her passion for creating the animals can be aggressive at times but is overall very friendly to the rest of the team. She also runs and maintains the Galápagos Islands, a simulation island meant to test out new submissions in the wild, of which she can freely change the Biome and manipulate the weather to fully test out the animals.

Other recurring characters

• Yokota (横田)
• [3]
• A representative of Hell, Yokota is not a member of the design team, but in similar fashion to God, he tasks the design team with creating hellish creatures to inhabit the realm, namely for a Hell theme park in production. Before the events of manga he was an angel, and closely resembled Shimoda, except his hair was white. He speaks in a fashion.
• Mushibu (虫部)
• [3]
• Mushibu is a side department dedicated to designing insects, though the design team sometimes come to them for inspiration when creating features of their animals. There are seven members of the team, but they all share the same appearance aside from different colored shirts. They also occasionally talk in unison.
• Kenta Tsuchiya (土屋 ケンタ)
• [3]
• Kenta is Tsuchiya's grandson who visits the heaven's design team on occasion. His childish drawings sometimes becomes an approved animal. Like his grandfather, he loves horses.

Manga

Heaven's Design Team is written by Hebi-zou and Tsuta Suzuki and illustrated by Tarako. The series began in Kodansha's manga magazine Morning Two on February 22, 2017.[4] The magazine ceased print publication and moved to a digital release starting on August 4, 2022.[5][6] Kodansha has collected its chapters into individual volumes. The first volume was released on November 22, 2017. As of December 23, 2025, nine volumes have been released.

In North America, Kodansha USA announced the English digital release of the series in April 2018.[7] Kodansha announced the print release of the series in November 2019, with the first volume released on October 20, 2020.[8]

Volumes

Anime

An anime television series adaptation was announced in April 2020.[26] The series is directed by Sōichi Masui at Asahi Production, with series composition handled by Michiko Yokote, character designs by Sachiko Oohashi, and music composed by Hayato Matsuo. It aired from January 7 to March 25, 2021, on AT-X and other channels.[27][28] A special was released on April 2, 2021. The opening theme song is "Give It Up？" performed by "96Neko" (96猫), and the ending theme song is "DESIGNED BY HEAVEN！" performed by "Paraiso☆Employee Stars" (パライソ☆社員スターズ).[29] Crunchyroll streamed the series.[30] Muse Communication has licensed the series in Southeast Asia and South Asia.[31]