Ceres, Celestial Legend

Ceres, Celestial Legend (妖しのセレス, Ayashi no Seresu) is a fantasy shōjo manga series written by Yuu Watase. It was originally serialized in Shōjo Comic from May 1996 through March 2000 and later reprinted by Shogakukan in fourteen collected volumes.

The series focuses on Aya Mikage, who learns on her sixteenth birthday that she is the reincarnation of a celestial maiden (天女, Tennin) named Ceres, and her twin brother Aki the reincarnation of Ceres' former husband, Mikagi. Ceres begins manifesting in Aya. To try to save her brother, Aya must find Ceres' lost celestial robe (羽衣, hagoromo), while trying to avoid being killed or captured by her own family, who wants to use Ceres's supreme celestial abilities for their own personal gain.

The manga series is licensed for English language release in North America by Viz Media. In 1998, it won the Shogakukan Manga Award for shōjo. Studio Pierrot adapted the series into a twenty-four episode anime series that premiered in Japan on WOWOW on April 20, 2000 and ran until September 28, 2000. The anime series was also licensed by Viz, but has since been re-licensed by Discotek Media.

Plot

Aya Mikage and her fraternal twin brother, Aki, went to their grandfather's home for their sixteenth birthday unaware that it's actually a test to see if they have enough angel or celestial maiden blood in them. Aya is the reincarnation of a supremely powerful celestial maiden called Ceres. When she transforms into Ceres, Aya obtains many supernatural abilities such as flight, long-distance teleportation, telepathy, incredibly strong and powerful telekinesis, premonition, projecting powerful and destructive deep pink glowing energy blasts from her hands, creating incredibly strong impenetrable shields and barriers of pure deep pink-colored energy, and superhuman speed.

According to the legend, Ceres will kill the entire Mikage family for revenge upon stealing her hagoromo/celestial robe, thus preventing her returning home to Heaven, so Aya's family attempts to kill her. However, she is saved by Suzumi Aogiri, another Tennin descendant with supernatural abilities, (since not all Mikages have Tennin blood) and Suzumi's brother-in-law, YÅ«hi. Aya tries to control Ceres' power and hold over her and Aki is eventually completely taken over by the vengeful and hateful spirit and soul of "Mikage", the original ancestor of the entire Mikage family who first stole Ceres' celestial robe, forcing her to stay with him on Earth. Aya also wrestles with her strong romantic feelings for Toya, a servant of the Mikage who is trying to kill her, but lost his memory of his past. However, he begins to fall deeply in love with Aya, who reciprocates his feelings, and they conceive a child together. Aya promises Ceres to help her find her celestial robe in exchange for not killing her family (especially Aki) who hunts her down, since Aya still loves them as family. Toya regains his memory and learns that he was the immortal living humanoid organism that Ceres' celestial robe (otherwise known as "the manna") had created to help it reunite and become one with Ceres. At the end, Aki, having resisted Mikage's spirit, sacrifices himself to save Aya, and Toya sacrifices his own manna and immortality to save Aya and their unborn child. Months later, Aya and Toya await the birth of their child, although they know that Toya has limited time left with her.

Characters

Aya Mikage (御景 妖, Mikage Aya)

• Voiced by: Yumi Kakazu (Japanese), Mariette Sluyter (English)

A sixteen-year-old high school girl and the protagonist at the beginning of the story who discovers she is a direct descendant and reincarnation of a Tennin named "Ceres" and is Ceres' latest medium for existence. The Mikage family takes this as a threat and continuously tries to take Aya's life. Her father is killed attempting to protect her. Her mother is forced into a coma for the majority of the series. While Aya is initially horrified that her life has been turned upside down, she is determined to right the past doings of her family and recover Ceres' hagoromo so that her family will no longer suffer in fear of her. As the series progresses, she strongly falls romantically in love with Toya, and they conceive a child together. In the sequel, Aya gives birth to a girl named Miku. Three years later, she gives birth to a boy named Aki, who is the look-alike reincarnation of her late twin brother.

Ceres (セレス, Seresu)

• Voiced by: Junko Iwao (Japanese), Onalea Gilbertson (English)

A supremely strong and powerful celestial maiden or Tennin from the legend, who married the founder of the Mikage family, Mikage. While she is vastly strong and powerful, and volatile, she seeks to recover her hagoromo, or celestial robe, to acquire her true form and full abilities as a celestial maiden. She has repeatedly attempted to manifest herself through certain female descendants of her bloodline, who mostly closely resemble her, when they reach the age of sixteen, only to be thwarted each time as they are relentlessly killed by the Mikage family. Ceres hides a tragic past misinterpreted by descendants who seek to kill Aya to prevent Ceres from manifesting through another female generation.

Toya (十夜, Tōya)

• Voiced by: Katsuyuki Konishi (Japanese), Victor Atelevich (English)

He is Aya's main love interest and officially beloved person in the series.

A mysterious young man who has absolutely no memory of his past or the nature of his being; his only clues are two names: "Toya" ("ten nights", his name), and "Mikage". He was found and hired by Kagami and works for Mikage International, and later rebels against them. It is later revealed that he met Aya when she was a six-year-old child. Toya later falls strongly romantically in love with Aya as he protects her. Toya is the embodiment/offspring of the hagoromo which Ceres is searching for. As he gradually regains his lost memories, he sacrifices the immortality bestowed upon him by the celestial robe to save Aya. He is determined to protect Aya and their two children, Miku and Aki. At the end of the series, he tells YÅ«hi that he may not live for long and that YÅ«hi should take care of Aya in his place once he dies. However, it is important to note that he is just not sure how long he will live as he is only a normal human being now. He doesn't have mana that will let him live forever as an immortal anymore. He can die at any point in time just like any normal human being.

Aki Mikage (御景 明, Mikage Aki)

• Voiced by: Susumu Chiba (Japanese), Tommy Campbell (English)

Aya's twin brother, a gentle and caring person who is subject to becoming a medium for the spirit of Mikagi, the founder of the Mikage family who aggressively pursues Aya and Ceres, and almost raped Aya. In the end he sacrifices his life to destroy the violent and hateful soul and spirit Mikage. In the sequel Episode of Miku, he is reborn and reincarnated as Aya and Toya's second child who, too, is named Aki.

Suzumi Aogiri (梧 納涼, Aogiri Suzumi)

• Voiced by: Mayumi Asano (Japanese), Maizun Jayoussi (English)

A widow and a C-Genomer (Tennin descendant) from the Kansai region, Suzumi is a head of a branch of one of the Aogiri family's schools of Japanese dance. She welcomes Aya into her household when she discovers Aya has become Ceres' latest medium. Suzumi cannot become a Tennin like Aya, though she does possess some psychic/psionic abilities, such as clairvoyance, premonition, and great telekinesis. She is capable of making protective celestial charms that possess enormous power for YÅ«hi as he strives to aid Aya.

Yūhi Aogiri (梧 雄飛, Aogiri Yūhi)

• Voiced by: Kentarō Itō (Japanese), Matthew Erickson (English)

Suzumi's brother-in-law, the adopted younger brother of Suzumi's deceased husband. Early within the series, he wears a headband tremendously strengthened and enhanced with supremely strong Tennin magic made by Suzumi, which helps to designate him as Aya's bodyguard. YÅ«hi has strong unrequited romantic feelings for Aya. Though attracted to YÅ«hi, Aya ultimately comes to see him as a close friend on a strictly platonic level, and YÅ«hi is able to accept the fact that Aya only has romantic eyes for Toya. Later, he begins to care deeply for Chidori Kurama. A notable martial arts expert, he is also an extraordinary cook.

KyÅ« Oda, "Mrs. Q" (小ç"° 玖, Oda KyÅ«)

• Voiced by: Kujira (Japanese), Doug McKeag (English)

The Aogiri's household help, a gnome-like woman known for her reckless driving and ridiculously ugly appearance, despite her consistent claims that she is a beautiful woman. She's convinced that she and Toya are made for each other.

Chidori Kuruma (来é–" 千鳥, Kuruma Chidori)

• Voiced by: Ayako Kawasumi (Japanese), Carol-Anne Day (English)

Another C-Genome from Tochigi Prefecture; a cheerful, high-school girl who looks and acts child-like until she transforms into a Tennin. Chidori cares very deeply for her younger brother, Shota, who was hospitalized upon her introduction into the story. She can transform into a Tennin at will or whenever she gets really mad or upset. She seems to have developed really deep and strong more-than-platonic feelings for her huge romantic crush YÅ«hi, and later, sadly dies for his sake just as she was about to confess that she had always really liked and cared for him very much. The Mikage scientists identify Chidori's Tennin type as Pallas.

Yuki Urakawa (浦川 ç"±è²´, Urakawa Yuki)

• Voiced by: Akiko Kimura

A high-school girl and a C-Genomer who goes the same school as YÅ«hi and Aya. Yuki is quiet and has a weak constitution. She can't transform into a Tennin, but she can manifest the amazingly strong and powerful power and ability of pyrokinesis, the power and ability to create, control, and manipulate fire, flame and heat at will. She has a relationship with her teacher, who is actually an agent sent by the Mikage International to capture and eliminate Aya (Ceres). In the end, Urakawa burned the agent and hugged him, which causes her to get severely burned and die.

Miori Sahara (佐原 美ç·'里, Sahara Miori)

• Voiced by: Akiko Yajima (Japanese), Meredith Taylor-Parry (English)

Aya's distant cousin and a C-Genome (celestial descendant) from Shizuoka Prefecture. She was Toya's romantic lover in the fake past that Kagami had implanted in him. She is an ordinary, high-school girl living a normal, happy life with her mother. Her mother was summoned by the Mikages and was killed at the main house when Aya first transformed into Ceres. When Aya comes to a new school, the two meet and become friends. Although Aya doesn't know about her personally, Miori is only pretending and has an agenda of her own. She transformed into a Tennin to take on Aya (as Ceres) to avenge her mother's death. She later committed suicide as her final act of "revenge" against Aya. Miori is identified by the Mikage scientists as possessing the same Tennin type as Aya.

Shuro Tsukasa (司 珠å'‚, Tsukasa Shuro)

• Voiced by: Shizuka Sasaki (Japanese), Elizabeth Stepkowski (English)

An Okinawan C-Genomer raised as a man by her family in fear that Shuro would one day take away the family's heirloom hagoromo and ascend to heaven. She is GeSANG's famous pop star alongside her cousin Kei Tsukasa, of whom she shares more than cousin feelings for. She dies near the end of the series attempting to free the C-Genomes. Shuro has the ability to magnify her voice to epic amplitudes when she transforms into a Tennin, to a degree that people near her had their hearts rupture. Mikage scientists identify Shuro as Tennin type Juno.

Kagami Mikage (御景 各臣, Mikage Kagami)

• Voiced by: Tomokazu Sugita (Japanese), Dave Kelly (English)

Aya's distant cousin and director of C-Project (Celestial Project) conducted by Mikage International. He is one of the few members of the family who actually wants to meet Ceres and does not fear her. In fact, he almost seems in love with her. Kagami wants her captured for study, so that he can harness the exceedingly strong and powerful power and ability of the Tennin and wishes to learn their true nature in hopes of bettering humanity, though his methods are less than moral. When Kagami was young he suffered a tragic childhood and was beaten by his mother for not being the best at things. Because of this it has an effect on his personality. His objective on C-Project is to create the "perfect" human race.

Alec (アレク, Areku) / Alexander O. Howell (アレクサンダー·O·ハウエル, Arekusandā O. Haueru)

• Voiced by: Tomokazu Seki (Japanese), Jonathan Love (English)

Studied in the USA, Alec is a Scottish scientist hired by Kagami for the research of Tennin legends. He speaks Japanese with a thick accent, a certified genius with a very high IQ and is a complete otaku. He works for Mikage International and provided advanced technology for the development of C-Project. As the project progresses, Alec soon finds out that things are not really going to what he expected and tries to back out from it. The only thing keeping him from doing his job ends up being his own moral convictions.

Gladys Smithson (グラディス·スミソン, Guradisu Sumison)

• Voiced by: Yuko Nagashima (Japanese), Maureen Jones (English)

An American colleague of Alec who works for the C-Project at Mikage International. She's responsible for the C-Genomer's power growth and development. She dies when she puts herself between Mikagi and a pregnant Ceres.

Wei Fei Li (偉 飛麗, WÄ›i FÄ"i-lì)

• Voiced by: Kouichi Toochika (Japanese), Ethan Cole (English)

A young, skilled martial artist from China hired by Mikage International. Wielding a vicious chain whip and various tiny throwing blades, he is often sent out to bring in captured C-Genomers or other covert tasks. When Toya tried to leave the headquarters together with Aki, Wei was sent stop them. His left eye was taken by Toya during their fight. He is Aki's (and Shiso's) caretaker and bodyguard, and as Toya's replacement. He seems to be calm most of the time and does not complain, but harbors a grudge against Toya for the injury he caused.

Shiso Mikagi (始祖·ミカギ, Shiso Mikagi)

• Voiced by: Shinichiro Miki (Japanese), Jonathan Love (English)

A man from the Jōmon period of Japan and the founder of the Mikage family. In the legend, he hid her hagoromo in the ocean forcing her to become mortal. Toward the end, it is revealed that he had begun as a gentle, kind young man. Ceres falls in love with him, to the point of granting him power after their family is attacked and he is ashamed at his own inability to protect them. As Shiso grows strong, he went mad and his love becoming an obsession that drives him to hide the hagoromo, and Ceres comes to fear for her children's safety. When she leaves, he chases her and is killed by Ceres (after he kills their first child), who covers him with lacerations identical to the ones that appear on Aki Mikage when Mikagi manifests himself in his descendant. He will stop at nothing to ensure Ceres is his again.

Assam

An young assassin from Indonesia hired by Kagami Mikage to kill Toya after Toya cut his ties with Kagami to join Aya. He is also a replacement for Toya. His goal for the C-Project is to stop using children as objects of war.

Production

Ceres, Celestial Legend is the third manga series written by Yuu Watase. She based it on the legend of the Tennin and her stolen hagoromo. This legend is the basis for one of the most performed Japanese Noh plays, Hagoromo. It is the Japanese version swan maiden, with versions from other cultures also being mentioned as the series progresses.

As with most of her serials, Watase planned the basic story line of Ceres through to the end before beginning work. She notes that it is easier to work this way, but that even with planning sometimes the characters will "move on their own" and refuse to follow her original plans. When she reaches the end of the work, though, she found she could understand why they did so. Watase noted that one of the hardest parts of writing a serial manga was having to plan for the cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. She wanted each to be something that made the reader want to know what happened next, so they would want to keep reading.

To enable her to accurately depict the many locations used within the series, Watase traveled to Miyagi, Okinawa, and Tochigi to visit the locations where legends say Tennin landed. She was able to negotiate entry into some normally closed to the public. The characters in Ceres are not based on real people, however Watase notes that each one reflects some part of herself, as does the story as a whole. For example, Watase incorporated her thoughts on genetic engineering and other new technologies through the character of Kagami. While she feels such technologies can be useful to society, she feels that they should not be abused. Kagami is Watase's reflection of her view of how people should not be, in his cruel disregard for the lives of the celestial beings he creates. Watase purposefully left Ceres' true nature ambiguous in the manga ending, never clearly stating if Ceres is an alien or truly a being descended from heaven. She notes, however, that part of the reason for this was that it wasn't something she'd thought about. In reflection, she felt Ceres was a symbol. In Japan, men are considered the dominant sex, and Watase notes that as a woman there are things about the system that anger her, such as men saying she is "just a woman." Ceres became a story about the relationship between men and women. She also wanted to show that while the Tennin and the humans in the story may have come from different origins, and evolved differently, they also were still the same living creature in the end, with similar feelings and thoughts.

Media

Manga

Written by Yuu Watase, Ceres, The Celestial Legend premiered in Shogakukan's Shōjo Comic May 1996 issue and ran through the March 2000 issue. The chapters were collected and published in fourteen collected volumes, with the first volume released on December 11, 1996. Starting October 15, 2005, Shogakukan began re-releasing the series in six special edition volumes, with the final one released December 15, 2005.

In 2001, Viz Media licensed the manga for an English language release in North America. The series was originally released in a flipped trade paperback format, however Viz stopped publication after four volumes. In 2003, Viz re-released the first four volumes in unflipped standard manga size volumes, along with the remaining ten volumes. In the table below, the dates and ISBN numbers given for the first four volumes are for their second edition re-releases.

Volume list

Anime

Directed by Hajime Kamegaki and produced by Studio Pierrot, the Ceres, Celestial Legend anime adaptation premiered in Japan on WOWOW on April 20, 2000. It ran for twenty-four episodes until its conclusion on September 28, 2000. It was released to VHS videotape and DVD by Bandai Visual in twelve volumes, with each volume containing two episodes.

Ceres, Celestial Legend was licensed for Region 1 release by Viz Media, which also owns the North American license for the source manga. Viz released the series to VHS and DVD in eight three-episode volumes, with the first volume released on July 24, 2001. The VHS editions were dubbed in English, while the DVD volumes offered a choice between the dubbed English audio track and the original Japanese audio, with optional English subtitles. The DVD versions also offers extra features, including art galleries, character profiles, and interviews with Yu Watase. In 2003, Viz re-released the series in two volume collector's edition sets that contained twelve episodes on two disc, and all of the on-disc extras from the earlier releases. The English dubbed version of the series were broadcast in Southeast Asia by AXN-Asia. In 2014, Discotek Media announced their license for the series and will re-release the series in 2015.

Novel

The Ayashi no Ceres novels, like the Fushigi Yuugi novels, were written by Nishizaki Megumi, illustrated by Watase Yuu, and the storylines were created by both Watase Yuu and Nishizaki Megumi. As with the Fushigi Yuugi novels, each novel deals with a side story of one of the characters, though there are only three of these for Ayashi, while there were nine for Fushigi Yuugi. And the last novels make up the sequel to the story. Unlike with the Fushigi Yuugi sequel, Ayashi no Ceres's sequel has three parts to it.

References

External links

• Official PIERROT anime web site (Japanese)
• Official Viz Ceres: Celestial Legend manga web site
• Official Viz Ceres: Celestial Legend anime web site
• Ceres, Celestial Legend (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Ceres, Celestial Legend (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Animerica article