AIKAWA MEGUMI: A REFLECTION OF THE AUTHOR

RAHM JETHANI - Writer, 3rd Year, English

I finally get to write a real article about Heaven Burns Red. I can finally rest.

SPOILERS FOR HEAVEN BURNS RED!

My favorite anime auteur is Maeda Jun. Responsible for some of my favorite anime of all time, his work is always something I pay attention to, even if I have my rightful doubts about its quality. With this in mind, Heaven Burns Red, Maeda’s most recent story, is not his best, nor does it contain his best characters. However, Heaven Burns Red is notable for containing one character who is undoubtedly the most interesting character he or anyone from Key has ever created. I say this for two reasons: firstly, it seems like this character, Aikawa Megumi, is a reconciliation with Maeda’s own journey and current role within the anime industry. Secondly, and more importantly, Megumi’s character arc was not actually written by Maeda Jun.

The story of Aikawa Megumi has a happy ending, but it is not a happy tale. At a young age, she was unskilled, unpopular, and unhappy. She developed a terrible inferiority complex due to her lack of redeeming qualities, and nothing she ever did seemed to make people like her. However, this all changed when she discovered that she was a psychic. She began honing her skills, beginning to levitate soda from out of its bottle. She began posting her accomplishments online, which led to her being called by a group of other psychics to join them. At their temple, she realized that even within this elite realm of people, she again paled in comparison. She was weaker and less disciplined than everyone else, and she was once again brought back down to the realm of insignificance. However, when the leader of the psychics visited, she addressed Megumi. Gifted with the psychic power of foresight, the leader declared to Megumi and to the rest of the psychics: “You are the savior of humanity. Nobody knows it yet.” With this, Megumi’s ego rose exponentially, and she became a bragging, confident young woman as the years went on.

But then, the world ended.

Megumi joined the Seraph Corps, a group of soldiers who were tasked with defending the last remnants of humanity against the new threat of aliens, deemed “Cancer” by humans. Her unit, Squad 31A, was full of people stronger than her, despite no one possessing psychic powers, and once again, Megumi felt overshadowed. She became aggressive and ego-driven, always trying to show her worth to these new friends of hers through her power. This continued fairly smoothly until Squad 31A was tasked with exploring an abandoned scientific structure, the Aegis Tower. Inside, they all learned a shocking truth: everyone in the Seraph Corps was a clone of a person who had already died. With this, Megumi realized that the girl who had been told she was humanity’s savior had been dead for years. This broke Megumi’s idea of who she was, and what she was living for. Her ability to fight became infinitely worse, and she was unable to control her psychic powers. Ultimately, she decided to leave the Seraph Corps entirely, and try to forget who she was by living life as a normal earth civilian. Here, Megumi goes through her own journey of rediscovering herself and who she believes she is meant to be, and eventually rejoins her friends in Squad 31A afterwards with a peace of mind that resolves her character arc.

The story of Maeda Jun has not yet ended, but its path mirrors Megumi’s in quite a few ways. Maeda also started from very humble beginnings, with his breakout successes in Air, Clannad, and Angel Beats! making many people regard him as the king of nakige. However, Maeda would also face hurdle after hurdle, with each subsequent artistic venture never being able to top the last, resulting in more and more fan backlash. On his last legs after the critical failure of The Day I Became a God, Maeda began working on the story for Heaven Burns Red. At first, it was going well, but after a fan survey months later reporting dissatisfaction with the writing, Maeda stepped down as the creative director for Heaven Burns Red. Following this incident, after a few months under the creative direction of a new person in charge, Heaven Burns Red released the chapters focusing on Megumi’s story. Eventually, after deleting all of his social media and becoming radio silent, Maeda quietly returned to continue work on Heaven Burns Red, in a healthier state of mind. Maeda’s journey follows the same structure as Megumi’s, which I find to be uniquely interesting given that he was uninvolved with Megumi’s story (as she is not the primary main character, who he would have had more developmental agency over). I think that Megumi’s similarities with Maeda help enhance the theme that her story emphasizes to the audience, that of redemption and self-acceptance coming at one’s own pace, despite constant failure. Likewise, although Maeda’s work has undeniably suffered as the years have gone by, his own quiet redemption and self-acceptance is the only happy ending that should matter for him. Maeda Jun will always be the king of nakige to me, and nothing will take that feeling away.