Ceres: Celestial Legend
Ceres: Celestial Legend or Ayashi no Seresu (Mystery of Ceres) in Japanese is a twenty-four-episode anime based on the same name’s manga. Based on the manga written by Yuu Watase, the anime aired from April 2000 to September 2000.
Ceres: Celestial Legend was produced by Studio Pierrot and directed by Hajime Kamegaki. Production and additional licensing is handled by Bandai Visual, Viz Media, and Discoteck Media. At the time of writing, Ayashi no Seresu is available for viewing on most popular streaming outlets in sub and dubbed versions. It is rated TV-MA.
The plot of Ayashi no Seresu, rooted in angel folklore, tells the story of Ceres, a celestial maiden who, while bathing, has her hagoromo (celestial robe) stolen. Mikage, the man who stole her robe and the future progenitor of the Mikage family, becomes her husband, and later after stealing her robe, her enemy. After losing her hagoromo, which contains her mana (spirit energy), Ceres reincarnates through the Mikage clan until a suitable host can be found and her robe returned so that she can return to heaven.
Several millennia removed from Ceres, the story’s protagonist Aya Mikage has recently turned sixteen. She and her twin brother Aki are invited to a birthday celebration at the behest of her grandfather. What was perceived as a celebratory event becomes tragic as the naive Aya is to be assassinated.
Aki Mikage learns she is the reincarnation of Ceres, and she possesses extraordinary powers that are a threat to the Mikage clan. Before the Mikage clan can kill Aya, Ceres manifests and mortally wounds a sizeable number of those in attendance allowing for Aya’s escape. Aya would find herself bombarded on all sides; a clan who wants her life, her desire to save her twin brother, and a future requited love under the backdrop of Ceres, the unstoppable force shaping Aya’s destiny.
Ceres: Celestial Legend is classified as shojo anime as it is marketed to girls. It falls under the genre of occult fantasy, romance, comedy, and fantasy shojo. It shares some leanings towards the psychological genre and seinen anime as the anime deals with themes of abuse, neglect, redemption, and trauma. It also deals with scientific morality as it relates to evolution and eugenics. The anime also touches on elements of Social Darwinsim.
The anime consists of both major and minor players throughout the story who drive it to its ultimate conclusion. The main protagonist Aya Mikage is the reincarnated manifestation of Ceres, the angel who lost her angelic robe to Mikage.
Mikage was a kind and gentle man and loved Ceres. After an attack on their village, Mikage battled with inadequacy feelings as he was unable to protect his family. Ceres chose to share part of her mana with her husband granting him superhuman strength. Mikage became power-obsessed and abusive towards Ceres, even to the point of hiding her robe and murdering their child that Ceres dare not leave him. Ceres would kill him, and he too reincarnates eventually into Aki, the twin brother of Aya.
Aki, like his ancestral dad, was kind and gentle. He loved his sister Aya unconditionally. When Ceres manifested through Aya during what Aya thought was a birthday party, Aki became covered in scars, his ancestral dad’s retribution when he fought against Ceres millennia ago. The Mikage clan saw his scars as a sign that the progenitor lived and that Aki was to be the heir of the Mikage empire.
Aya, after her manifestation, is saved by Suzumi Aogiri, a C-Genome carrier and the sister-in-law of Yuhi Aogiri. Yuhi Aogiri is the adopted brother of the late Kazuma Aogiri, Suzumi’s husband. Suzumi would charge her brother-in-law with protecting Aya from the Mikage and their agents.
Within the Mikage organization, a project known as the C-Genome Project (Celestial Project) was headed by Aya’s cousin Kagami Mikage. Kagami became obsessed with finding Ceres in hopes of extracting her DNA to produce the perfect human. Kagami would send his agent Toya to track down Aya in hopes of gaining access to Ceres.
Toya, an amnesiac whose memories were being manipulated by Kagami, would foster a requited relationship with Aya making for a minor subplot love triangle. A significant amount of minutes are devoted to the love triangle and its worth the watch if you’ve ever been friendzoned.
Studio Pierrot handles the art and animation. You Naruto fans have already fainted, I’m sure! Most of the animation appears to be hand-drawn, with digital animation seen in later episodes. There are budget-cutting scenes where the blood appeared the color of tobacco rather than “movie ketchup” red.
This is to be expected and should not be a deal-breaker. At the time of its release, Japanese animation studios had not entered the renaissance that we see now. Released in 2000, it shows its age and looks on par with some late eighties anime instead of its mid to late nineties peers.
The opening theme for Ayashi no Ceres is “Scarlet” by Junko Iwao. There are a total of three closing themes. The ending music for episodes 1-15 is "One ~ Kono Yo ga Hatete mo Hanarenai" by Day-break, "Cross My Heart" by Day-break (16-23), and "Scarlet Ver. II" by Junko Iwao (ep 24). The OSTs are good throughout the series and help with the progression of the show. I can not say with certainty that I found any selection overbearing. The music is not the focal point; the plot is, so it takes a secondary role.
Ayashi no Ceres or Ceres: Celestial Legend starts strong. It reels you in with the first episode and does enough to hold your attention. It adds the right mix of plot, comedy, and action and then throws you to the next episode, which is appreciated due to the subject matter’s heavy-handed nature. There is a great deal of depth, and I would have liked to see it hashed out as the love triangle clouds the show’s seriousness a bit. It allows for Toya’s backstory to hash out.
Nevertheless, that may be the point as we humans often self-medicate in various ways to cope with past hurts. In Aya’s case, it was relationships, and in Kagami’s case, it was perfection through eugenics. Kagami’s ideal is similar to the elder protagonist in Witchblade; in fact, both anime though six years apart, are identical.
The anime does not end with the usual happy ending found in most shonen anime, but it does come to terms with itself in the end. I recommend Ayashi no Ceres with a few caveats. It is a worthy shojo anime but the anime depicts scenes of violence, nudity, and suicide. That latter is graphic and may not sit well with viewers.
