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Heavenly Delusion’s focus on acharacter-driven plotand its uniquely nostalgic art style helps it stand out from the crowd. Its complex plotline and incredible voice acting make it shine. And its interesting powers and the world keep the viewer’s attention.
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Some of the characters are shrouded in mystery, and the show doesn’t do much to remedy that, preferring to let the viewers form their own theories. It’s content with the little nibbles it gives, and while it can be fun to dissect each scene and understand the intricacies of the plot on your own, sometimes you just aren’t in the mood for that kind of storytelling. One such mystery is that of Dr. Sawatari, a major character who barely gets any screen time. He plays an important role in Kiruko’s life but seemingly doesn’t have any further explanation regarding his character.
This post contains major spoilers for the Heavenly Delusion Manga.
Personality
Not a lot of detail is given to Dr. Sawatari’s character in the anime. He’sshown from Haruki’s perspectiveat differing points of the show as a mysterious character who seems to be experimenting with Maneaters, but there’s nothing concrete to work off of.
In the manga, Dr. Sawatari appears in some of the latest chapters. He explains himself to Kiruko, unraveling the mystery behind the body swap and proving that he wasn’t the bad guy everyone assumed him to be. Later on, hesacrifices himself to give Maru a chance to kill a Hiruko, presumably because of his underlying guilt from his days in Takahara Academy and his role in creating the Hiruko in the first place.
All in all, he’s a kind person who values the lives of others but made some misinformed decisions that led to a whole bunch of death and destruction. When he finds out about the director’s plan to switch bodies to keep on living, he questions the morality and legality of the procedure, though he gets shut down almost immediately. His own role in Takahara Academy would implicate him as a bad actor, even if his actions were purely governed by scientific curiosity and the desire to progress as a society.
Dr. Sawatari is a complex character. He goes through different phases in his past. First appearing in Heaven as one of the teachers/researchers who look after the children, he gets a whole lot of screen time at the start, though the viewers don’t know his true identity. In the manga, it’s revealed that Dr. Sawatari is actually the physician Sakota from Takahara Academy, making a lot of things make a lot of sense.
Takahara Academy
In Takahar Academy, Dr. Sawatari was known asSakota Teruhiko, a physician who was the most likely candidate for Vice President of the academy. He was clued into the plans of the President but naively thought they wouldn’t impact the world, hence his repentance and guilt later on in his life. It’s unclear how much he knew of the plans. However, he thought that they wouldn’t affect the world at large and mostly did his work, considering it to be purely for scientific purposes rather than some grand goal like the Director.
In the academy, Sakota acts as a major authority figure for the students. When the academy gets bombed, he stays with Kona and Tokio with their newborn child, vowing to do his best to do better for the world. He switchesthe clone and the actual child, though he himself isn’t sure which is which. He helps forage for food and raise the child until a certain point, after which he leaves to help people in need all over the world.
Post-Academy
At some point,Sakota leaves the academyand goes on to treat patients at different locations. He briefly stays at the Asakusa racetrack, becoming the resident doctor for the orphanage, among others. Though he is perceived as a weird and dangerous person by many, with Haruki getting precautionary rumors from his friends about him, he is a nice guy at heart, doing his best to help people despite the misunderstandings he has to face.
When Kiriko is shot, and Haruki’s body gets destroyed during the Maneater attack, Dr. Sawatari is the one who does the brain transplant in order to save at least one of them, no matter how mentally unstable that might leave them.
Afterward, he leaves the race track and eventually encounters Kiruko again, explaining his actions and the mysterious body swap (a result of the brain transplant to save Haruki). The identity of the shooter is still unclear, though it is most likely Robin, the other person Kiruko was looking was, who did it.
Dr. Sawatari is an exceptionally good surgeon, being capable of performing even complex surgeries like brain transplants under severe time constraints. Furthermore, he was shown to be quite knowledgeable about both foraging and farming, acting as the caretaker for Kona and Tokio.
