Haibane Renmei E1: "Cocoon — Dream of Falling from the Sky — Old Home" (continued)
With Rakka's name all picked out for her (notably without much input from her), it's time to give her her halo. Oh, that's a thing that someone else has to give to you I guess. Um. Sure. Okay. One of the other Haibane pulls out a...mold? It looks like a mold, for casting wax or metal...and opens it to reveal a halo. Which she warns Rakka not to touch bare handed, as it's still hot.
So, it's literally just a white hot metal cast.
The way they talk about it makes it sound like it will cool down eventually, even if it continues glowing. Which is good; I imagine it would be very disconcerting to go about your day knowing that there was a blazing hot piece of metal floating just above your head. Also, you'd probably set things on fire. Anyway, the anulus floats unsteadily above her head, making an eerie resonant humming sound. After a few seconds, it lists to the side and clatters to the floor. It's not hot enough to singe the wooden floorboards, so there's that at least.
Anyway, halo won't stick, and her dream involved falling from heaven. I'm calling it more likely than not that Rakka is supposed to be in hell and ended up here by mistake.
The others assure her that sometimes it takes a while for the halo to stick in place, though they didn't seem quite so nonchalant about it at the time. Hmm. Well, for now they rig up some very inelegant bracing to hold Rakka's halo in place until it can hold on its own.
It could take up to a couple of days if it didn't stick immediately, they say. Hmm. Maybe this isn't unprecedented after all, then.
For now, several members of the welcoming committee need to get back to work. Not everyone could get a couple of days off, it seems. Reki will stay here with Rakka and help orient her. The rest will check in on her again tomorrow, when her wings should be all grown in.
Are the wings something that happen on their own, or is that catalyzed by being given a halo?
Hmm. Rakka did have shoulder pains as soon as she woke up, before they braced on the halo, so probably the former. Now, are her wings going to grow in normally, or was the halo issue really a warning sign and she's about to get devil bat wings or something? We shall see.
Once everyone else leaves the room, Reki sits down beside Rakka's bed and tells her that now that it's quiet she can do some proper QnA. Rakka's first questions, understandably, are "where are we?" and "what the fuck is a Haibane?" In response to the latter question, Reki flaps her wings a little to demonstrate that they are real, and asks Rakka if she's feeling the growing pains in her own shoulderblades yet. When she answers in the affirmative, Reki examines her back and reveals yet another disturbing bit of haibane developmental biology.
This is normal wing development for this stage, according to Reki. Maybe a little bit faster than usual, but not abnormally so. She gets an ice pack to sooth the pains that are about to get much worse, and warns Rakka about the high fever that she'll be running overnight starting from when the skin first ruptures.
...fucking hell what's even the point of having a pupa if you STILL need to undergo a painful metamorphosis afterward?
Rakka asks for a mirror. Reki tells her that no, she's really better off not having to watch this happen. Huh. I feel like this show might actually be going to engage with the concept of...fucking...people in heaven getting body dysmorphia because of their new wings. Holy shit what.
Hmm. I wonder if there's also a theme being foreshadowed here, with everyone else being all superficially welcoming and friendly, but conveniently not being around for the painful and difficult part? Too early to say, but it does kind of jump out at me.
Rakka asks if they're even human anymore, if they ever were (for all she knows, "human" is just a concept from a dream of hers). Reki replies that no one is sure. They don't really know what they are, or why they ended up here. Even the name "Haibane" is just something that someone made up and ended up sticking.
And, to bring this back to Rakka's other question, no one knows where "here" is, either. In large part because they are not permitted to leave this town and the area of farmland surrounding it.
Not permitted by...whom?
She doesn't say who or what is keeping them from exploring beyond the area. But there must be someone or something doing it, and from the way she's phrasing it I don't think it's just ingrained tradition or taboo.
Also, the town apparently uses wind power for electricity, going by the visuals.
Did the Haibane build this infrastructure for themselves, or was it here before them?
...come to think of it, how long have "they" existed? Have there been multiple generations of haibane? Are they mortal? I've been working on the assumption that they're dead people eternally preserved at their age at the time of death, but this show really likes subverting expectations. So, they might not be dead people. And even if they are, they might well be as mortal in this life as they were in their previous ones.
Rakka says she wants to go home, wherever home is and whoever she has to return to. Reki tells her that that's not happening. As far as they're concerned, their previous lives don't exist anymore, even if they're sure they must have had previous lives. Reki also says that their previous families don't remember them either, which...wait, how could she possibly know that? Is this just a piece of mythology that the haibane invented to make their predicament easier to live with, so that they aren't tormented by the thought of their loved ones missing them? Or does Reki know much more than she's letting on?
Rakka starts to panic at the thought of never getting to see or even remember her family again, but her emotional distress is cut short by a new spike of physical agony as her wings start bursting through her skin. It's as bloody as my word choice makes it sound, and judging by Rakka's reactions just as painful.
Reki has an establishing character moment where she runs across the room to get some painkillers and bandages, falling over and knocking things off the shelf in her haste. Caretaking is clearly second, or perhaps even first, nature to her. She goes above and beyond by wrapping her thumb in a thick layer of tape and bandages and offering to let Rakka bite down on it, for fear of her otherwise biting her tongue.
Damn, you'd think it would be easier to just have her bite a pillow or something.
The music for this scene is well done. It's got an angelic violin sound to it, but also sad and depressing. Appropriate.
Rakka's shoulders pulsate and bulge under the flapping, bleeding skin, like there are parasites trying to chew their way out. Even through the tape she put around her thumb, Reki stumbles and winces at the force of Rakka's bite. Blood sprays all over the room as the wings erupt, their white feathers slick and heavy with crimson. Rakka screams loud enough to be heard far outside the building, but there's no one left in the area besides herself and Reki.
Neither of them appear to have slept yet by sunrise. Rakka has been in and out of consciousness, but that's not quite the same thing as sleep. Reki has been tending to her, and is now meticulously cleaning the blood and gristle off of her wings. Mumbling through her fever, Rakka whimpers that every involuntary twitch of her wings just causes her more internal back and shoulder pain. Her eyes are blinded by fever-sweat. Gradually, the wings are starting to send sensory feedback of their own and submit to voluntary control by her brain, but she can't tell if that's better or worse.
If Reki feels any resentment at having to take care of this on her own, seemingly not for the first time, it's indistinguishable from the general expression of tiredness and exhaustion. She retains a good bedside manner regardless. As the fever goes down, Rakka becomes coherent enough to ask Reki what she's doing. Reki explains that her wing feathers might be permanently stained if she doesn't wash all the blood off of them before it dries, so she's been making sure to get it all. Rakka thanks her, though she's so alienated from her surroundings and body alike that she sounds uncertain about this.
Once her vision has cleared further, Rakka notices that Reki's fingers are lined and wrinkled from overwork with the brush and ice pack, and that there's a ring of bruises around her thumb where Rakka bit down on it. Reki just deflects from these questions, and keeps the conversation focused om Rakka's wellbeing and not her own.e remarks that Reki's wings are a soft charcoal gray in color, which is considered rare and beautiful among the haibane.
Black is also an option, then? And more common than gray by the sound of it? All the people we've seen so far have had white wings, so black must still be pretty unusual even if gray is rarer still.
By the morning after this one, Rakka's fever has subsided entirely, and the sharp pains along with it. She and Reki were able to get a proper night's sleep, and are now dealing with the less serious problem of Rakka's halo magnetizing to her hair.
This might be the fault of the metal wire they used as scaffolding. If not, then Rakka is just going to have to learn to live with this.
Reki lets out her stress and exhaustion by laughing at the sight. Which Rakka is annoyed by, but they're clearly developing a playful sort of rapport.
After giving up on trying to de-magnify Rakka's cranial apparatus, they start to get Rakka settled in. When she gets a chance to examine her new wings in front of a mirror, Rakka manages to be enchanted rather than horrified or alienated by them.
She flaps them, the skin and muscles around them no longer paining her as they work. She might still be having some dysmorphia issues, but at least for not the conscious thrill of having angel wings is keeping it subdued.
And, that's the note that the show ends on, apart from the more eerie and ominous end credits screen.
Like I said. More eerie and ominous.
I don't think this is a series that I can say much of anything about from just the pilot. The premise hasn't even fully established itself yet, I don't think, and that's before getting to the questions raised within the pilot like "who is preventing them from leaving the town?" and "are they dead or what?"
It *appears* to be a subversion of pop culture depictions of heaven. The angelic wings are played for dead serious body horror, and it works. The question of how you can be happy when you've been separated from your living family and friends is confronted, and the answer so far appears to be "you can't." Even things like the cherubic children are played as being just as frustrating and tiresome as real life human children. The ubiquitous cheerfulness is shallow in most cases, and just because people are friendly and smiling doesn't mean they really care about you that much.
Again, that's just a very tentative, surface-level reading of the pilot. The story and characters haven't even really introduced themselves all the way yet, so I can't say anything with confidence.
On that note...while I like the style and look of the show, I feel like it spends just a little too much time trying to show off how weird and far-out it is. The bizarre cocoon entrance didn't need to have nearly that much time dedicated to it, for instance. Or at least, it could have done more character work during that time alongside it. If it hadn't been for that, I feel like this pilot might have been able to squeeze in more content, and I'd have more to talk about.
Still, it's a decent enough start. I'm interested to know where it goes from here.
