Episode 1

Episode 1 is the 1st episode of the Heaven's Design Team anime.

Proposal 1
It all started when God got a bit too lazy to create animals. So, he outsourced the project instead of the Heavenly Creative Agency's Design Department, where the animals are made.

It's Shimoda's, a rookie angel, first day, and he'll be the acting liaison between the Design Department and God. Typically, Shimoda is a bit nervous, seeing that it's his first day.

His supervisor, Ueda, explains to Shimoda the Design Department's role in the creation of animals. She and Shimoda go inside a conference room to take part in the meeting. Shimoda then introduces himself to the designers: head of the department Tsuchiya (Mr. Saturn), Kanamori (Venus or “Ven”), Kimura(Jupiter), Meido (Pluto), Mizushima (Mercury), and Unabara (Neptune).

One of the first projects is to create an animal that can eat leaves high up off the ground. The team has developed three proposals. Tsuchiya comes up with a Pegasus, much to the dismay of the rest of the team. Nevertheless, they start talking about the next proposal; however, each one comes with animals similar to their original masterpieces. Mizushima comes up with a carnivorous plant called a ping-pong tree. Unabara’s proposal is for a deer with an extended neck.

So, they send all their proposals to the engineering team to see if either of the designs will work. Just before Ueda and Shimoda reach the Engineering Department, Higuchi (Mars) opens the door. She's mad that Tsuchiya still wants to push the Pegasus idea, even though she had told him many times in the past that it won't work. Therefore, she rejects his idea much to his dismay. Not only that, Higuchi rejects all the Design department's ideas, emphasizing that they also have flaws. Mizushima’s idea wouldn’t be able to withstand Earth’s gravity, and Unabara’s idea fails because of complications with the heart. Higuchi had even built a prototype to demonstrate the problem.

All the designers start thinking of new ideas for the project. Since Unabara’s design was the simplest of the first three, they all brainstorm on how to improve it. With a few tweaks, the teams come up with a new animal, the Giraffe. God then sends his stamp of approval to Shimoda, who is happy to have witnessed the creation of a new animal.

Suddenly, Ueda receives a message from God. Mizushima’s ping-pong tree idea gets a stamp of approval as a sea sponge, much to the surprise of Mizushima.

Proposal 2
In a dark room, a spotlight turns on to reveal Mizushima as he makes a big speech to the other designers about a new creature he has designed. A horse without legs and one hole, the snake. But the rest of the team doesn't like it. Consequently, a massive debate begins after its introduction between two members of the team; Mizushima and Kanamori. They both argue about the pros and cons of snakes and birds, Kanamori's masterpieces.

Shimoda walks in on the debacle. Kimura, who was in the room listening, explains that since being introduced, Mizushima’s snakes have been causing problems for Kanamori’s birds down on Earth. Hoping to cheer Kanamori up, the four start brainstorming ideas on how to improve the egg. Aside from Mizushima’s ridiculous ideas of the parents carrying the egg during flight, Shimoda and Kimura come up with the idea of making the eggs hatch early when they sense a snake. Kimura even thinks that it could work for frog eggs. However, after testing some prototypes, there are a few flaws with the idea.

Later in the day, Shimoda informs Kimura that his idea for the frog eggs has been approved, much to his surprise. He explains that upon sensing movement when a snake starts eating the eggs, the rest immediately hatch into tadpoles and escape into the water. Both jealous and desperate, Kanamori demands that her colleague help her come up with a defense mechanism against snakes for her birds. After some thinking, the three come with an idea to have the bird’s nest hang from a branch. Kanamori writes a proposal requesting an upgrade and has Shimoda submit it to God. God then approvals the proposal and thus the weaver bird is upgraded.

A few days later, Shimoda walks in to find the team witnessing Kanamori hard at work with a look of resolute on her face. The situation on Earth between the snakesand birds has escalated with the weaver birds upgrading their defense mechanism to the extreme. In response, Kanamori has come up with a new type of bird and asks Shimoda to submit it. God approves this and the secretary bird, designed to hunt snakes, is born, much to Mizushima's dismay.

Characters

 * Shimoda
 * Ueda
 * Tsuchiya (Mr. Saturn)
 * Kanamori (Venus or "Ven")
 * Kimura (Jupiter)
 * Meido (Pluto)
 * Mizushima (Mercury)
 * Unabara (Neptune)
 * Higuchi (Mars)

Featured Animals

 * Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis)
 * Ping-pong Tree Sponge (Chondrocladia lampadiglobus)
 * Weaver Bird (Ploceidae sp.)
 * Egg-eating Snake (Dasypeltis scabra)
 * Red-eyed Tree Frog (Agalychnis callidryas)
 * Sociable Weaver (Philetairus socius)
 * Secretary Bird (Sagittarius serpentarius)
 * Ant Eater (Tamandua sp.)
 * Glyptodon
 * Armadillo (Cingulata)

Trivia

 * In the manga, when the team was discussing how the deer with the long neck wouldn’t work, the designers stated that they had issues with previous designs. One example that Meido mentioned was the acorn barnacle. The conversation was cut from the anime version to cut time, and possibly due to the sensitivity of the conversation.
 * In the manga, when Higuchi was berating Tsuchiya about wanting to make a pegasus, Higuchi uses Shimoda as an example by stating that he would have to have big muscles in order to fly. This causes Shimoda to imagine himself with wings and a large muscular physique. This did not appear in the anime.