Character Profile: Aya Mikage

Aya Mikage is a normal average high school student... with genes of celestial goddess. The Mikage family is a descendant of a man who stole a goddess' Hagoromo (feathered robe) and hid it so she would settle down with him.

Now the Mikage family has celestial genes, and every woman is tested for them at the age of 16. If activated, they are killed by their fathers.

Aya and her twin brother Aki were both tested, with surprising results. Throw into the mix her loverboy, Touya, who isn't affected by her powers, and this becomes a great anime.

The Celestial Robes

One day a celestial maiden lost her robe while coming to the earth, and while she was searching for it she decided to look near a waterfall. Then a man came to her and asked if the robe in his hand was hers she said "yes it is mine, I lost it." He hands it to her and Ceres tells him "any man who touches my robe, I must bear his children". So he takes her to his village and after a while he asks her to marry him and she accepts.

After their second child, the village is attacked and Ceres's husband was badly injured. He was close to dying, so to save his life Ceres gives him a small fragment of her powers, but soon afterward he wanted more and told Ceres to give him more. When she refused, he beat her and everyday he would mistreat her. Then one day he got so out of hand that Ceres decided to leave him with her two children. But, sadly, her husband catches her trying to leave, and fatally wounds her. Knowing that he'd kill the children next, she then killed him with her last little bit of strength. Because she was killed without her celestial robe, she is to be reborn every 16 years through the body of one of her descendants.

I'm told the story is a little different in the manga. There, a fisherman falls in love with a bathing angel, Ceres, and steals her feathered robes, as she cannot return to heaven without them. The man marries her, and with the maiden resigned to her fate, she bears his children. But, one day she learns the location of her robes through her children's nursery rhymes, thus enabling her to retrieve what was taken so long ago. With her robes, she finally returns to her true home in heaven.

On Aya's 16th birthday, her destiny as the reincarnation of Ceres overtakes her and turns her world into a living nightmare! She falls in love with a man named Toya who has no clue about his past. She meets other Tennyo's, but they eventually die later.

Ceres had a grudge against the Mikage people and Aya promised Ceres to find and retrieve the Hagoromo.