Heavenly Delusion: Is Kiruko Transgender?

Heavenly Delusion is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masakazu Ishiguro. The series has been published since January 2018 in publisher Kodansha’s Monthly Afternoon magazine. Heavenly Delusion was voted best manga of the year by the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! magazine in 2019. An anime television series adaptation produced by Production I.G studio under the name Tengoku Daimakyo was announced and premiered on April 1, 2023, on Disney+ and has been received well by fans and critics. In this article, we are going to talk about the series’ protagonist, or, to be more precise, one of the series’ two protagonists, Kiruko, as you are going to find out whether she is transgender or not.

Kiruko is not transgender, but her situation is quite complex. Namely, Kiruko’s body is female and it is the body Kiriko Takehaya, but the mind inside that body is that of her brother, Haruki Takehaya. After she was shot in the head, the Doctor transplanted her brother’s brain inside her body. She is thus technically not a transgender person, as there is no willed transition, but her situation is rather complex.

The rest of this article is, of course, going to focus on Kiruko, one of the two protagonists of Heavenly Delusion. We have given you a short answer to the question, so you know what happened in general, but we are going to provide you with more details about the question at hand in the paragraphs that follow. Also, since the article is going to go deeper into the story of Heavenly Delusion, we have to warn you that there will be a significant amount of spoilers in the article.

Kiruko’s story is an odd one

Fans of Heavenly Delusion will know that Kiruko’s story is one of the odder ones in the whole series, which says a lot seeing how odd the whole series is in general. Heavenly Delusion is definitely one of the more intriguing stories out there since every character and every aspect of Ishiguro’s world is a story of its own and has a background that is both frightening and extremely likable.

The general idea of the world created by Ishiguro is that it operates in a strange reality where everything seems normal – in the context of its post-apocalyptic setting – but is actually weird and full of mysteries. This is a world in which Kiruko’s story is one of the more intriguing ones, which, as we have proclaimed, speaks for itself. But who is Kiruko anyway, and why is she so special?

Kiruko is one of the two protagonists of the series, a young girl who runs a “handyman” business and is 18 or 20 years old according to her own words. At Mikura’s request, she escorts Maru to bring him to “Heaven.” Mikura also bequeaths him his pistol, the only weapon capable of killing the monsters that keep attacking them. She is quick-witted and possesses excellent insight and judgment even in unfamiliar situations, but she is also slightly clumsy. Although they are not siblings, Maru calls her “sister.”

Kiruko is a true leader, and while she seemed, like Maru, different from the other children, it later turned out that there was a very sad and grim story behind her identity. Namely later, Kiruko’s true identity is revealed: she is actually a boy named Haruki in the body of a girl, a former karting champion Kiriko Takehaya, who was also his sister. After being attacked by a monster, he wakes up in the hospital in Kiriko’s body and now sets out to find the Doctor who allegedly carried out the operation.

When Kiruko finds the Doctor later on, she attacks him, thinking that he is a villain, but he explains that Kiriko was actually brain-dead from a bullet wound. After the attack on Haruki, he simply transplanted his brain into her healthy body. Kiriko then apologized after having concluded that the Doctor was actually a good person and not a villain.

And that is her story. As you can see, it is a very intriguing one, and her history reveals the whole context of her tragedy. We are going to discuss Kiruko’s gender in the next section, but we’d just like to add that the name Kiruko is an amalgam of the siblings’ previous names, Kiriko and Haruki. Now, let us continue.

Kiruko does not meet the definition of a transgender person, but her situation is nevertheless complex

A transgender person is “someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth.” This is the most basic definition that classifies someone as a transgender person. Now, as far as Kiruko is concerned, despite what we have said about her and her background story, we don’t really think that she satisfies the following criteria.

As far as Kiruko’s identity is concerned, she behaves and identifies herself as a female; okay, sure, an occasional male pronoun can be heard here and there, but it’s not very common. She is also classified, officially, as a female character, with a disclaimer that her original body was male. Now, Haruki was undoubtedly a boy at birth, and it did not seem like he had any issues with his gender, but after waking up in Kiriko’s body, he embraced his female gender fully and did not seem to identify himself as a male in any aspect. This is an important fact why we think that Kiruko is not transgender.

As for her gender expression, she is definitely female in every aspect. Somewhat tomboyish from time to time, Kiruko is definitely a female in this aspect, and if you did not know that there was a male brain inside her, you could never guess that she isn’t a female since birth. This is the second reason why we do not think that she could be classified as a transgender person.

What Kiruko lacks, ultimately, is the transitional aspect of this definition. Haruki’s brain was forcefully inserted into the body of his late sister, and there seemingly was no decision on either side to do it. Haruki did not want it, nor Kiriko.

But it happened as a way of saving both of them, in a way. And it seems that Haruki has completely embraced his new female persona, and he does not consider himself male, which means that there was no transition – the change was forced, and everyone just accepted it. Since Kiriko’s birth gender was female, Haruki simply accepted the gender assigned to the body he was in. Still, despite all of this, Kiruko’s situation is definitely complex, and the author deserves credit for crafting such a great character with a great origin story.