Heavenly Delusion: Are Maru & Kiruko in Love? Will They End Up Together?

As fans will know, Heavenly Delusion is a very peculiar manga and anime series. It combines many known elements but still manages to create a uniquely special story that has succeeded in capturing the attention of fans worldwide. Aside from the plot itself, Heavenly Delusion also offers us a series of amazing characters, and in this article, we will talk about not one but two of them and explain their relationship in the story. The characters we will talk about are the protagonists, Maru and Kiruko, who have very close but also peculiar relationship. In this article, we will tell you whether Maru and Kiruko are in love and whether they will end up together.

Maru and Kiruko are the two protagonists of the story, and they are very close; Kiruko is escorting Maru to a place called Heaven. And while Maru is in love with Kiruko and he has confessed that to her, Kiruko rejects him and explains her complex backstory, revealing that she is actually a boy (in mind) in a girl’s body, which is why she cannot reciprocate these feelings, although she does care for Maru.

The rest of this article is, of course, going to focus on the relationship between Maru and Kiruko, 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 will provide more details about the question in the following paragraphs. Also, since the article will 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.

Maru likes Kiruko, but…

Fans of Heavenly Delusion will know that the manga definitely has one of the more intriguing stories out there since every character and aspect of Ishiguro’s world is a story of its own, has a frightening background, and is 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, so we’ll quickly recap it for you here. We know Kiruko is one of the series’ two protagonists, 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.”

Now, it is quite obvious that Maru and Kiruko have a close relationship, and as the series progresses, the two of them become closer. At one point, while they are on the smugglers’ ship, before being attacked by the fish-like man-eater, Maru actually confesses his feelings to Kiruko and tells her that he likes her and that he would like her to be his girlfriend. Her true story is revealed at that moment, and the flashback scenes showing the operation are explained. Namely, as it turns out, Kiruko is actually Haruki, whose mind and consciousness have been transplanted into the body of his late sister, Kiriko Takehaya. This happened some years ago.

One day, during a kart race, Haruki, who was observing the track, noticed a large man-eater on the racetrack; the man-eater could become invisible, which is why it was such a danger. He tried to stop the race but failed, so he went to face the man-eater by himself. This mistake was fatal, as the man-eater quickly used its powers to eat Haruki. As he was being eaten, Kiriko approached the monster, and as soon as she saw Haruki being eaten, she attacked it and tried to save her brother.

And while she did manage to pull her brother out of the creature’s mouth, she was shocked to see that – literally – half of her brother was missing and that he was on the verge of death. Moments later, she was shot in the head, and the next thing we see is a hospital, an operation, and Kiruko waking up in the hospital. It is revealed that after the attack, dr. Sawatari took them and operated on them so that he could save them, as in any other scenario; both of them would have died immediately.

And this is how Kiruko actually rejected Maru; she simply explained that despite the body, she was actually a boy, and in that aspect, she did not share his feelings. This shocked Maru a bit, but they continued their travels, and despite this fact, their relationship deepened with time. In one episode, Kiruko even offered Maru to let him touch her breasts if he did what she wanted, but she later backed out, claiming that it was just a joke; Maru was stopped by Totori, who took him away and tried to have sex with him herself, although that failed as well in one of the show’s most hilarious moments.

As we’ve said, the nature of the relationship between Maru and Kiruko is platonic at this moment, as Kiruko does not have the same feelings for Maru as he does for her. Still, they are quite close, and they care deeply for each other, which is seen in numerous situations later in the manga; we won’t be revealing too many manga details in this article, as it would go against the specific nature of the show and the mystery it is building. If you want to know more details, we advise you to check out the manga.

Maru and Kiruko will most likely not end up together

As for the future, it is difficult to predict how things in Heavenly Delusion will play out since Ishiguro is doing a great job of surprising us. This is why it is almost impossible to predict the future of the relationship between Maru and Kiruko, regardless of everything we’ve said above, as things might change in the future (some things have already happened that have swayed Kiruko’s self-image, but again – no spoilers in this article). So, despite how things stand now, the future might hold something new for the two protagonists, and we cannot really rule out the possibility of the two ending up together.

Still, we don’t think this is very likely, despite not being impossible. Maru and Kiruko both have strange and odd stories behind them, which is certainly something that connects them and can be a solid foundation in a world as strange as the one created by Ishiguro.

But still, regardless of that, the nature of their relationship, as it has been portrayed thus far, hints at the two of them remaining friends or “siblings,” which rules out the possibility of a romantic relationship in the future.