Haibane Renmei is… actually, that’s probably going to be the hardest part of this review: defining what Haibane Renmei is. As a show it’s a little too plot-heavy to really be called Slice of Life, but also a little too low-key to be called a drama. Perhaps it would be best to term it as a Slice of Life show that evolves into an emotional drama, since there is absolutely a point where the show takes a turn for the dramatic?
It is, without question, a beautiful
show. Despite being very down-to-earth, without a ton of places to
show off impressive spectacle or visual wonder, I can say that
everything looks amazing. The color, lighting, backgrounds,
character design, and motion are all quite striking in their own
ways, despite being fairly humble. This is a show that takes things
that are plain, and makes them memorable and beautiful with its focus
and care.
One thing the story absolutely is, is
an ontological mystery. That is, we’re thrown into this world and
neither the audience nor the main character know why things are the
way they are, the customs of this place, or anything like that.
Learning more about the world, and the people in it, consumes a great
deal of the show’s focus. In a sense, that means this review is
going to be even more of a spoiler than usual, because I won’t
restrict myself to talking about things without terms that are
learned later if it makes sense to talk about it that way.
The story opens with a girl falling
through the sky for what seems like eternity. A crow appears and
tries to help her, tugging the hem of her dress upwards, but much as
a five ounce bird cannot carry a one pound coconut, even a big crow
can’t carry a teenage girl. She thanks the bird, and sadly reminds
it that it can’t as she continues to fall.
Cut to a dusty old building. A young
woman with small off-white wings and a glowing halo appears to be
cleaning a dusty old building when she discovers, in a sealed room, a
giant cocoon. As strange and possibly even creepy as it looks, this
seems to be an exciting but happy find for the other angel-folk
(Haibane) who live there. Everyone pitches in to try to make the
place nice and keep the little kids running around from interfering
in anticipation of the cocoon hatching, which is apparently how
Haibane come into the world.
Sure enough it does hatch, delivering
us the girl who was falling before. The Haibane, particularly Reki
(the one who found the cocoon, older-looking than the others by a
little bit, dark haired, kindly but stern with the kids as we’ve
seen, and incongruously with her angelic appearance a chain smoker),
take care of her as she negotiates her first day of life as a
Haibane. Wings erupt from her back, and she goes through a period of
high fever. When she comes out the other side, she’s also given her
halo, though she needs a headband with a wire holder to keep it up at
first. She also needs a name, since she (like all Haibane) has no
memory of who or what she was before, just a vague sense that there
was a before somewhere else that wasn’t here and a dream from their
time in the cocoon. The girl, when prompted, manages to relate that
she was falling in her Cocoon dream, and thus is accorded the name
“Rakka” (meaning “Falling”) in accordance with the traditions
of the Haibane.
Names in this show are something of
interest, and it probably helps to have some knowledge about the
Japanese language and its conventions going into this show, because
it does end up doing some work with wordplay. Each Haibane is named
after some element from their dream. In addition to Rakka we have
Reki (“Small stones”), Nemu (“Sleeping”), Hikari (“Light”),
Kana (“River Fish”) and Kuu (“Air”). But it’s not as though
their names are simply nouns – since different words or sounds can
be written different ways in Japanese, it’s not necessarily
immediately apparent or fixed what the names of the Haibane mean.
Reki, the first to introduce her name to Rakka, actually has to go a
bit to explain. The fact that multiple meanings could result in one
name depending on how that name is written will come into play in a
big way later.
We then enter the Slice of Life section
of the show, as Rakka is introduced to the facts of her new
existence. We learn that we’re in the town of Glie, a place
inhabited by both human townsfolk and the mysterious Haibane, and
that the upkeep of the Haibane is managed by an order known as the
Haibane Renmei. Haibane over a certain physical age are expected to
work to help maintain their place in the town. Most of the people
seem very nice, but there are also a lot of rules: Haibane can only
wear used clothing, their currency is in the form of notebooks issued
by the Haibane Renmei, they work specifically in the oldest of each
sort of establishment in town… and most importantly, they are not
to touch and preferably not to even approach the walls that encircle
Glie.
The area surrounded by Glie’s walls is
large, at least in terms of a walled town, containing both the fairly
sizable town and large outskirts areas with both managed and wild
territories. Old Home, where Rakka’s cocoon was and where she and
her friends live, is decently out of town proper, and the foreboding
Western Woods loom wild and mysterious… but all that is inside the
walls. They walls are massive, taller than the buildings of Glie and
presumably quite broad as well. There’s only one gate, but the only
people who pass through it are the mysterious traders called the
Toga, who appear swaddled in cloths and neither speak nor are spoken
to while in Glie, communicating in a secret sign language with the
Communicator, a priest of the Haibane Renmei, in order to organize
their business. Other than the Toga, the only beings that can cross
the Walls are the birds, and though Rakka feels a strange kindness
towards the crows and now and then as though they’re calling to her,
birds are not commonly known to give up their secrets.
For all the mystery, the dominant
feeling when getting our bearings in Glie is one of comfort. It’s
somewhat rustic, but quite comfortable, giving the impression of a
place that’s timeless, with the convenience and pleasantry of the
modern but without what people would tend to call ‘corrupting
influence’ (at least in terms of modernity; Reki must be getting her
smokes somewhere). We don’t see televisions, for instance, but we do
see electric lights and scooters
Rakka spends at least a day working
with each of her friends: Reki at Old Home taking care of the child
Haibane who can’t work, Nemu at the Library, Hikari at the Bakery,
and Kana at the clock tower get particular focus. Through these
interactions, Rakka learns more and more, and she tries to work out
what she wants to do. Combined with the introduction, just getting
Rakka’s feet under her in her new world, this takes up the first five
episodes. We get a sense for life in Glie and do learn a few
tidbits, like the facts about the Toga and the birds and that Reki
was once a troublemaker who tried to run off with a boy from
Abandoned Factory (the other Haibane home in Glie).
The next episode starts something
similar. In this case it’s not about job visits – Rakka is trying
to find a room of her own in Old Home so she can move out of the
guest room and Kuu, coming off as even more sage than usual despite
being the youngest in body of the “adult” Haibane, helps her by
guiding Rakka to the room in which her Cocoon was discovered. The
room brings Rakka a sense of peace and familiarity, which is good.
Kuu imparts a few more pieces of wisdom, about the turning of the
weather (along with a jacket for Rakka) and a cryptic bit of talk
about imagining a glass in her mind filling up drop by drop, and now
being completely full, with Rakka to thank for some of the drops. As
she exits the scene, we (with Rakka) notice Kuu’s halo flicker.
Rakka meets up with the other Haibane,
and gets a little backstory on the jacket – it was the first thing
Kuu bought for herself, but was always too big because Kuu
overcompensated for being the ‘youngest’ of her peers. Despite that,
Kuu had never given up on growing into it before…
As you may have guessed from this sort
of setup, it soon becomes clear that Kuu has gone AWOL. The
situation goes from considering it just a little weird, to actually
concerned, to frantic when Rakka mentions that she saw a light rising
from the Western Woods. Fearing that Kuu has left and hoping to meet
her “while there’s still time”, the Haibane race off into the
woods, dangerous though they are, using Old Home’s bell tower as a
beacon to guide them back. Deep in the forest they find a strange
ruined altar, and on it scattered feathers and a burned-out halo.
This is how Rakka and the audience alike learn about the fact of
Haibane life that will dominate the rest of the show: the Day of
Flight.
The Day of Flight is the end of a
Haibane’s life in Glie – it comes eventually to all good Haibane, a
day when they experience a calling, disappear from the lives they’ve
known, stretch their wings, and soar to whatever awaits on the other
side of the Walls. In many ways it’s both good and bad: those who
cared about the Haibane, such as Kuu in this case, are left to deal
with their loss, a friend gone from their lives as surely as if that
friend had died. But in other ways, it’s more a coming of age than a
death: the Haibane is full fledged, and has passed beyond to
something grand that awaits them. It’s the culmination, not
termination, of the Haibane’s existence as they are.
That said, Kuu’s Day of Flight (the
first in a long while) hits the cast hard. Rakka, in particular, who
had no idea that the Day of Flight was a thing that could happen, is
devastated, and sinks into a deep depression. In the pit of her
melancholy and despair, black blotches begin to appear on her
feathers.
This disturbs Rakka. She tries to pull
afflicted feathers, and as the discoloration progresses, cuts out the
blotches and hides her wings with the covers used to keep them warm
in the winter. Reki eventually discovers what’s been happening to
Rakka, and does her best to take care of it, treating Rakka’s wings
with a special medicine that will at least hide the mark. At this
time, we also learn from Reki what it might mean: some Haibane are
“sin-bound” – they can’t properly remember their cocoon dreams,
have blackened wings, and never reach the Day of Flight unless this
condition is resolved somehow. Reki assures Rakka that she’s done
nothing wrong and isn’t likely truly sin-bound, as Reki was there and
saw Rakka’s wings first come in the charcoal gray of good Haibane.
Reki herself, however, has borne that curse since she was born into
this world.
The truth, however, does little to lift
Rakka’s spirits, as her depression clings to her, beating her down to
the point where she comes to believe she has no place and no right to
live in a world as nice and kind as Glie. In this state, she once
again hears the crows calling to her, and this time she follows. The
birds really do seem to be leading her, and bring her to an old dry
well in the Western woods. Rakka sees, at the bottom of the well,
the bones of a dead crow. Rakka climbs down to see it closer, but
one of the bottom rungs, rusted ages ago, crumbles when she puts her
weight on it, leaving her trapped at the bottom of the well with a
twisted ankle.
There, seeing the old dead crow up
close, Rakka begins to remember, her cocoon dream and fragments. She
believed before, as she came to in her darkest moments that led her
here, that she had no place in the world, and that no one cared about
her… but also that she was wrong. As we saw the crow trying
futilely to save her in her dream, so does she remember that the crow
was someone who cherished her, though she can’t remember if they were
a mother, a father, or a dear friend. Despite her predicament, being
trapped in the bottom of a well in the deep woods in early winter
when snow is beginning to fall, reclaiming her cocoon dream, and
feeling that the crow wanted to help her, that she was never really
alone, fills Rakka with a strange sense of peace. While she waits,
trapped, she buries the bones, building a makeshift grave. About as
she’s done, help arrives in the form of a pair of Toga travelers.
True to their requirements, the Toga
don’t speak, but they do work together to help her out of the well,
one carrying Rakka on his back to the top while the other handles the
winch to make it easier to get in and out. They let Rakka down and
leave quickly, but something still weighs on her mind: remembering
that the Toga can travel beyond the Walls, she asks if they’ve seen
Kuu, offering that they could just nod if they can’t use their
voices. The Toga, however, move away, leaving Rakka behind, refusing
to answer her query with either yes or no. Following them leads
Rakka to the walls. Exhausted, she ends up reaching out and touching
them just as the Haibane Renmei’s communicator appears.
Initially, the Communicator is upset
that Rakka has been breaking rules (rules like not touching the
walls) but ultimately he is more of a helper and guide than a judge,
and lends her his cane so they can walk back to civilization. Along
the way, they talk about what brought Rakka out to the woods – the
birds, her experience in the well, and her Sin-bound curse. The
Communicator listens carefully to what Rakka says, especially once he
realizes she’s quite serious and the things she’s talking about
aren’t just matters of symbology. He helps her interpret the crow’s
presence and will, how it was trying to help and forgive her even
across the boundary of the walls, and in response to her sin-bound
nature gives her a riddle known as the Circle of Sin: “One who
recognizes their sin has no sin”. Rakka puzzles over the paradox
for a bit, but seems to take it seriously. At the edge of the woods,
in sight of the road, the Communicator leaves Rakka, just as Reki,
frantically searching on her scooter, comes around. Rakka collapses,
and Reki takes her back to Old Home to care for her, hearing some of
her story and, in the process of tending to the terrible illness
that’s swiftly coming over her from having touched the Walls,
noticing that Rakka’s feathers are once again a pure charcoal gray:
she’s no longer Sin-bound.
Rakka recovers from her sickness and
receives her punishment for her violation from the Haibane Renmei: a
job to earn her keep in the town. It’s not exactly nothing, but it
clearly is meant more to teach and help her rather than hurt her.
She’s taken to the depths of the temple, donning a special protective
suit that looks a great deal like a hazmat suit, and down to a
mysterious canal lined with etched monuments, deep underground. The
communicator reveals that this place is inside the Walls themselves.
Rakka is told her new job will be to tend to this place, cleaning the
monuments and collecting tiny flakes of light that are the substance
Haibane halos are made out of. She’ll be working alone in the
relative dark, and is warned to not remove the suit, but also to not
fear anything she might see or here down there, because nothing can
hurt her while she’s wearing the suit. As gloomy and creepy as it
may seem, though, there does seem to be a meditative quality to
Rakka’s job, so you don’t actually feel like she drew a bad one, and
the mysterious occurrences inside the Walls seem to help and guide
her more than threaten her.
Rakka’s solution, however, does little
for Reki, who’s warned that she doesn’t have much time left as a
Haibane. Rakka eventually hears the same from the Communicator: the
Day of Flight may never come to the Sin-bound, but eventually they
lose their wings and halos, becoming something else, doomed to enter
a life of quiet solitude without hope of true salvation, eventually
growing old and dying. It’s not the worst thing, but neither is it
what anyone should desire. Rakka, during that conversation, notes
the wing design of the Communicator’s robes, suggesting that the
ranks of the Haibane Renmei may be filled by failed Haibane, though
other interpretations are possible.
Rakka resolves to help Reki, as the
bird helped her. The critical moment for this comes at New Years.
Though with Reki’s fate hanging over us, we get one last slice of
Glie’s customs, as colorful “bell nuts” are given to signify
feelings. Reki, trying to set her affairs in order, offers a white
one (“thank you and goodbye”) to Hyohko and Midori, her former
friends from the Abandoned Factory, a rift having come between them
when Hyhoko tried to help Reki climb the Walls to escape and nearly
died for his trouble. Rakka tries to bring Reki out of her shell by
helping reconcile her with Hyohko and Midori, the Abandoned Factory
setting up fireworks instead of nuts (yellow, which prompts Reki to
say “I’ve been stupid” in a way that’s easy to take as the
meaning but I doubt is.)
Along the way to that exchange, Rakka
made another discovery: lead by whispers of Kuu’s voice, she finds a
monument in the Walls that, combined with having seen a petrified
book in the library with the same symbols as are on the monument,
she’s able to use as a rosetta stone for the Haibane Renmei sign
language, which the symbols transcribe. She shows that to the
Communicator, explaining how she realized that particular monument
was Kuu’s name. The Communicator reveals, though, that the nuance is
not Kuu meaning “Air” – she received her true name, a
reinterpretation that meant she found herself. He also gives Rakka
two more: her own (Rakka meaning not “Falling” but “Involved
Nut”, relating how she shut herself within a shell but ultimately
reached out her roots to all around her in the friendships she made),
and a sealed box containing one for Reki, to give her after the
festival. He also imparts to her the true meaning of the Circle of
Sin: no one can forgive themselves, as attempting to do so leaves
them trapped in the circle, there must be someone outside to help.
Reki’s problem is that she pushes people away.
In the dead of night, after the
fireworks display, Rakka awakens and searches for Reki, finding her
in the sealed room in her studio, which has been made entirely into a
recreation of the dark and horrifying dreamscape she was able to put
together from her nightmares of the Cocoon. There we have a charged
confrontation between Reki and Rakka, with Reki, doing very poorly
mentally, pushes Rakka away, declaring that she only was ever kind
out of a selfish desire for salvation, and never cared about Rakka as
anything other than a potential get-out-of-sin ticket. The
communicator’s true name for Reki doesn’t help: “One who is
trampled upon”, with a note relating the story of Reki as
interpreted with her suffering.
Reki drives Rakka off, to the other
side of the interior door, as she realizes what her dream was: the
path of small stones was no path, but a track along which something
making a distant and terrible sound approached, something that would
destroy her when it arrived. With Rakka out of the room, Reki stares
down her work, and finds herself transported into a more real
nightmare, the world twisting around her and bringing her face to
face with a younger version of herself, who petrifies and crumbles
away, leaving Reki on what the audience can realize are train tracks,
with a locomotive distant but approaching.
Outside, Rakka finds she’s still
holding Reki’s name tag. She thinks sullenly on the situation until
a breeze from the dark shifts a cloth and reveals Reki’s painting of
Kuramori, the Haibane who cared for her when she was young. With
both Reki’s diary, which had been placed with the painting, and her
own memories, Rakka puts together that Reki wasn’t the liar she
painted herself as, but someone who did earnestly want to help and
protect her. Though unsure what she can do, she returns to the room,
discovering the phantasmal scene. She tries to run to Reki, calling
out for her, but another phantom of Reki’s younger self holds Rakka
back, declaring that Reki has chosen to disappear, to be destroyed,
and can’t hear her. Rakka cries out, begging Reki to do the one
thing she must do: accept another’s help, and actually ask to be
saved. At the last moment, in a voice little more than a whisper,
Reki manages, asking Rakka to save her.
The illusionary world is shattered, and
with it the name tag for Reki. But all is not well in the studio.
The wall seethes in ghastly imitation of the oncoming train, boiling
and surging like some awful, malevolent thing while Reki still stands
transfixed. Rakka rushes forward, bowling Reki over and throwing
them both out of the way of the oncoming light, darkness, and noise.
The girls come to, and the room is as though nothing supernatural
ever happened… and Reki’s once blackened wings are the charcoal
gray of a good Haibane. In asking for help rather than heedlessly
going her own way, she was finally forgiven.
The name has changed too: the tag is
unbroken, but now reads “Small Stone” and the Communicator’s
letter continues with the conclusion that her name can remain should
she find her way (though Rakka ultimately has another interpretation
of the same character: “Stepping Stone”, representing how Reki
lead and supported others).
Of course, Reki’s time is still up, and
after a last little heart-to-heart with Rakka. asks Rakka to close
her eyes so she can leave for the Day of Flight unseen, as all good
Haibane do. Rakka wakes the others, and they watch from the guest
room balcony as light rises from the Western Woods, signifying that
Reki has found her way, while in the Abandoned Factory Hyohko and
Midori talk, Hyohko at first morose that he “already has” Reki’s
reply in the form of the white Bell Nut, while Midori gives him
(ultimately, rests on his halo when he refuses to take it), the lemon
souffle Reki sent back after their meeting for the fireworks,
suggesting that the yellow of lemon is the real reply Reki wanted to
give. Rakka continues on in Old Home in high spirits, sure she’ll
see Reki again someday, and finds a twin pair of cocoons just
sprouted, ending the show more or less how it began.
So, that’s the story of Haibane Renmei,
but (and I don’t ask this often) what does it mean? I think part of
the beauty of the show is that there’s enough left up for
interpretation that the audience can bring with them what baggage
they want. How you read Haibane Renmei is going to depend, at least
in part, on who you are and how you come into it. The text is what
it is: the life and customs of Glie and the struggles of a few
(mostly two) Haibane girls as they try to work out their relationship
with isolation, sin, trust, and other big issues.
Obviously, there’s a lot of religious
imagery, what with the wings and halos of the Haibane recalling the
popular image of an angel (though how “cute girl with wings”
became an angelic image is itself an entirely separate art history
story, the shortest version seeming to be that it combines the Greek
Eros and Norse Valkyries, recast to different sensibilities), but the
faith of Glie and the existence of the Haibane Renmei doesn’t recall
any particular earthly religion.
It does seem most likely that this is
something of a purgatory for the Haibane. Reki (though in the depths
of her despair at the time and thus possibly off the mark) identifies
the Walls as Death, which separates the world of the Haibane from any
other world. The Haibane do have a strong sense, as we see with
Rakka in the first episode, that they came from elsewhere, somewhere
else that they’ve forgotten. And the Cocoon Dreams of our two
Sin-bound Haibane are powerfully suggestive of suicide (Rakka having
jumped from somewhere high while Reki stood on train tracks and let
herself be hit), which would fit their battles with depression, as
well as being something that’s often considered a sin (though the
problem that binds them as Haibane seems to be less their deeds and
more the misery and despair that would have lead to it). All the
Haibane we see are young (Kuramori being the eldest, before her Day
of Flight), so perhaps this existence is meant to be some sort of
second chance for one who didn’t get a full first go?
I’m just glad it leaves the truth for
us to decide, rather than shoving an idea down our throats. For me,
this is a stark contrast with a show like Angel Beats which, while it
had its own good qualities, was much more concrete in its
interpretations and ultimately had a lot of bits that didn’t line up
or that felt off because of it. Haibane Renmei, by contrast, simply
shows you Rakka and Reki’s existence in Glie, and lets you put
together the meaning you inevitably feel is lurking under the
surface. About some things (like the afterlife nature of
arrangements) there are solid hints. About others, like the Toga or
what awaits Haibane who take their Day of Flight, there’s… not
nothing, but little enough that it becomes something of a Rorschach
test. Which is a good deal like what it is for the characters too:
they can view things a number of ways, depending on how they look at
it, such as in the contrast between Kuu’s day of flight and Reki’s.
In a sense, the show as a whole is not dissimilar to Rakka’s
on-the-job experience in the walls: Placid and quiet most of the
time, sometimes fearful or sad, sometimes laced with wonder, and with
the whispers of a guide leading us to discover the truth for
ourselves.
For summation… one trap I like to avoid, that I think way too many people fall into, is that something is good if it “means something”. Call me a nihilist, but I don’t think meaning has an intrinsic value to art. It doesn’t matter if you have a message, even a good one, if the fiction that carries it isn’t also good. And if the fiction is beautiful, or if it’s fun, then it doesn’t necessarily need to say anything to be good or even great. Robotics;Notes, to which I gave the highest grade, doesn’t really say anything about the human condition or big issues, it’s just a great story that gets the viewer deeply invested and carries you along with the characters and their world. Another such trap is the idea that something is great art if it’s hard to understand. I hate, really hate, the “you just don’t get it” defense of deliberately obtuse work, because communication is a two-way street. The burden is not entirely on the one sending a message, because the receiver can be expected to do some work with their mind in order to interpret it, but neither does the onus lie entirely on the receiver: the sender must communicate with clarity and in good faith. Incomprehensibility is actually a fairly deep negative, even if there’s something to be said for going a layer or two deeper than some viewers seem to be willing or able to follow. If you’re not getting at least a decent subset of people following along, you haven’t done a good job.
With that said, Haibane Renmei is
meaningful (even if the meaning must be deciphered individually).
And it can be obtuse at times (see the aforementioned work that needs
to be done to decipher the meaning). And it is something that’s
truly great, but not because of those facts. What makes Haibane
Renmei not just good but great is how it manages to reach the viewer
on every level. The darkness and comfort stir very primal emotions.
The cute girls doing cute things (or, later, the intense dramatic
scenes in the well or Reki’s world) hit the more common viewer
engagement, giving you something to watch that’s instantly
understandable and has an easy-to-access point of engagement. And,
lastly, the ontological mystery elements engage the viewer’s brain on
every level. I’m fairly certain someone could write a thesis on just
Haibane Renmei; with analyzing all the possible interpretations and
possibly coming up with new ones, there’s certainly enough material
here for that.
For me, Haibane Renmei is an A+. And, to an extent, not just any A+, the big A+. If I had to pick one show and say that, from the standpoint of attempting to judge and rate art even when that’s often apples and oranges, one show would be declared the absolute best… I’d have to say that Haibane Renmei is that show. It’s not my “favorite” show, in that it’s not the one I think I would most likely like to rewatch any given day, but in terms of the craft and art of animated storytelling, in the form of a series? I do believe that Haibane Renmei may have everything else beat. There are other strong contenders, such as Madoka Magica or Made in Abyss, and maybe I would end up with one of them if I sat down and went through the shows with a fine-toothed comb, putting tally marks in a rubric, but my initial judgment gives it to Haibane Renmei.
If that wasn’t a clear enough
endorsement, do yourself a favor and watch the show the next time
you’re in the mood for something quiet, artistic, and meaningful.
You’ll be glad you did.