Haibane Renmei (E11-13)

On one hand, that's three out of three for Yoshitoshi Abe anime series ending up frustrating me.

On the other hand, I ended up finding each of them frustrating for entirely different reasons.

That's not to say that my feelings about HB or its ending are negative, per se. They're not. Just...the finale did frustrate me, even as it made me feel more positive things as well.

If anything, my issue with Haibane Renmei's ending is the opposite of the ones I had with Serial Experiments Lain's ending (even if there are some thematic throughlines). SEL ended with the revelation that everything in the series - all the haunting mysteries - were all just part of this Schoolgirl Noosphere God plot that was much goofier than the sum of its parts.

Haibane Renmei, meanwhile, ends by resolving what seemed up to this point to be one subplot out of many, with myriad plot threads left hanging and many questions that...look, I don't think an ending needs to explain everything and answer all the mysteries, necessarily. In this case though, it really feels like a lot of these questions just shouldn't have been raised in the first place (or at least, they shouldn't have had nearly as much time spent on them) if they weren't going to play any role in the ending at all.

If I didn't know otherwise, I'd be sure that this was the first of many planned seasons of a show that unfortunately suffered an early cancellation. It isn't, though. This is all that was planned from the beginning. Which makes me wonder if perhaps it got here the opposite way; some of these go-nowhere plot and lore tangents are actually filler that they inserted to turn what was supposed to be a movie-length story into a 13 episode cour.

As frustrations go, this is a much more minor one than the issues I had with Lain or Texhnolyze. I enjoyed Haibane Renmei as a whole quite a bit more than the other two. After finishing it, I am confident that I know what the story was about and what happened in it, and it's a good story. It's just a much smaller story than the show telling it. Like a petite angel girl floating around inside a much-too-big cyst.

Because of the ending's narrow focus, I'm not sure if it would be productive to keep doing the loose episode-by-episode summary that I've been doing for this show so far. I'll tackle the story as a whole, while also acknowledging the things that (disappointingly) ended up not actually having much to do with the story.


In the wake of Rakka's experience with the wall and the well, and her new near-daily work in the tunnels underneath the wall, she has much more frequent contact with the Emissary. Turns out that he's not nearly as tight-lipped about things once you're around him as a matter of course; much of the mystery about what's going on is actually on the individual haibane for not wanting to share the information he tells them. Largely because of how personal the framing tends to be, to be fair, but I'll still judge them for not letting newbies like Rakka in on some of the underlying rules.

For instance, there's a seven year time limit on the existence of a haibane. If they haven't had their Day of Flight after that long in the town, then they become a different type of being instead. It's a lonely existence, for those who fail to ascend, but still one that has its rewards and satisfaction as they perform important work. And, eventually, they do grow old and die. What sort of afterlife-for-the-afterlife it is that awaits them after this point, the Emissary doesn't know.

The camera lingers on the Emissary's mask from a number of different angles as he talks about this part, complete with long, meaningful pauses between sentences. He changes the subject before Rakka can ask more questions about this particular topic, but the implication is pretty obvious. Especially with the detail about how failed haibane continue to age like normal humans, and the Emissary being the only elderly character in the main cast.

This also recontextualizes Reki's whole deal. She's just a season away from her deadline, and we see that she's been really devoting herself to helping other haibane (particularly newcomers and children) handle their own obstacles as she despairs of getting to overcome her own. Intentionally or otherwise (probably the latter; this seems to be more like a result of one way a person can end up becoming, rather than something you do on purpose), she's preparing herself to be the next Emissary.

...

It's not clear at all what the touga are. The Emissary says that it's a very rare occurence for a haibane to fail, but there appear to be an awful lot of touga. And they, unlike the Emissary himself, seem able to come and go from the town's walls, despite them having very similar uniforms to his. I'm pretty sure they're something different. Possibly something that was never human to begin with.

...

The "grow old and die" reveal is important in another way as well, because these last three episodes make it very clear that Haibane can die. I hadn't been sure, until now, what the consequences of various sicknesses or accidents characters suffered throughout the series could actually be. I'd sort of assumed that the haibane were immortal (or rather, post-mortal) in this afterlife realm, and things like hunger and sickness only threatened them with pain and discomfort rather than actual death. But no, it's not only the failed Haibane who can still die.

In fact, there are some arc words in these final episodes to the effect of "nothing is eternal." This is heavily implied to be true of whatever ascended state the haibane achieve after their days of flight too. No concrete answers or explanations, but I get the impression that this world works somewhat along the lines of the Buddhist dukkha. A whole bunch of different forms of life in different realms, with one's next incarnation being determined by where and how they lived and died in their previous one. This might have all be much more intuitive to a Buddhist audience than it was to me, but in my defence the decision to go with pop culture Christian aesthetics for the haibane did sort of predispose me toward NOT assuming Buddhism rules, heh.

Rakka's work under the wall - collecting old halo metal to remake it - leads to her discovering some other things as well. Things which the Emissary is, again, pretty willing to explain once she asks about them. For instance, the tunnels she's working in seem to be haunted, with the water trenches often rippling with ghostly footprints accompanied by cheery, disembodied laughter. Sometimes, Rakka is sure that the laughing sounds like the recently ascended Kuu, to the point where she tries chasing after it calling Kuu's name in the hope of catching sight of her. She's not here anymore, though. What Rakka is seeing and hearing are the echoes of a cast-out identity. She stopped being "Kuu" when she took flight. Presumably, her next incarnation, in whatever realm she's born into next, will be more autonomous and less of a reflection of who she was as a suicide victim on Earth. Liminal realms like this town seem like they're only there to help souls transition between other ones, one way or another.

Well. Sort of. It's liminal for the haibane, but it appears to NOT be liminal for the majority of its inhabitants.

...

This, like the mystery of the touga, is one of those things that's presented as a mystery and given a lot of focus throughout the series, but then gets dropped by the wayside of the more focused ending.

Who are the "humans" of the town?

These final three episodes (up until the very end) seem to be drawing attention toward rather than away from that question. A backdrop for the final events is a local New Year festival that has unique practices and traditions associated with it. We learn about all these bits of local culture that don't seem to be for or about the haibane. These little "new year nuts" whose plants grow in specially treated soil to make them different colors, that you can give or send to people to tell them something about your interactions in the previous or upcoming years. A carolling-like tradition. Fireworks displays, with color-coded explosions with meanings similar to the nut shells.

The humans also have children through a mechanism not involving demonic plant-pupae. We see a woman going from "heavily pregnant" to "new mother" over the course of episodes 10-12.

This is obviously a fully fleshed out society with a history behind it, built around typical human material interests and developing recognizably human cultural practices.

But they live in this one walled town that also has some forest and farmland attached to it, with a mysterious unknown beyond that only the touga can penetrate.

It doesn't seem like the land encircled by the wall could be producing all the goods that we see the townsfolk use, and there was an early mention of the touga being a conduit for trade with other communities, so there's definitely some kind of interconnected economy in this world. There ARE other towns out there. Why can't people travel between them? Why is this world of normal-seeming humans also being used to purify the angel-winged souls of suicide victims from Earth (or rather; if this is how it works, then why isn't Earth also being used to purify the angel-winged souls of suicide victims in yet a different realm?).

None of these questions are relevant to the ending. We explore the town and the humans a lot in these last episodes, but it never goes anywhere, and we never learn anything about them.

...

Over the course of her conversations with the Emissary, Rakka learns a little more about her situation vis a vis Reki's. While a (now completed) part of Rakka's challenge was acknowledging the vain sacrifice of the "raven" and being appreciative of it and what it fruitlessly gave up for her, Reki's problem is that she never had a raven to begin with.

Rakka is also told that it's every haibane's own burden to ascend or fail to ascend by their own will. The Emissary never explicitly says that it's Reki's "fault" that a raven never tried to pull her back, but the way he describes her situation kind of has that implication.

Rakka resolves to become Reki's "raven." It's not the same, probably, since she's also a haibane and the two almost certainly didn't know each other prior to their respective suicides, but she'll try. The Emissary just tells her up front that she can't do that, though. This is a problem that Reki needs to solve, not anyone besides Reki. Even though the problem is that she needs another person.

The subplot of some "little feather" children going back to visit the Abandoned Factory haibane community is also one that gets a lot more attention in these late episodes. Rakka, on account of having had the factory bunch apologize to her after being jerks to her that one time, ends up being the haibane with the most positive social connections to both sides (accidental Benjamin Franklin effect in action). So, she's the one who kind of oversees the visitation of the "adopted" little feathers as they move between locations as per the terms of their WTF custody agreement. While having these dealings with the Abandoned Factory group, Rakka learns more about Reki's own fraught history with them.

Apparently, not long after running away from the monastery group and joining the factory gang, Reki convinced her new boyfriend to try and skip town and scale the wall together. He, being one of the dumber and more impulsive members of that already more rebellious group, didn't take much convincing. However, Reki let him try to climb the wall first. Meaning that he, rather than her, was the one who got zapped with the fever and illness curse. Also, he had extra injuries on top of that on account of making contact while at the top of a stepladder.

I feel like Reki's multiple lightning-shadows are supposed to look like something here. Devil horns? Not sure.​

According to the other factory-dwellers, Reki demonstrated very minimal remorse for this incident. Which is what led to her being exiled from that community and forced to come crawling back to the monastery. And also, at least in part, what led to the monastery and factory groups having such an icy relationship in the present (even if it already wasn't that great to begin with).

...

This is another pair of "why didn't this end up being relevant?" elements right here.

Rakka does learn more about Reki from her interactions with the factory group, but at least as much time in those sequences is spent just showing the abandoned factory, the cultural differences between this punky group of haibane and the monkish ones, etc. But we never learn why there are two groups to begin with, or why they have a different ethos despite their common nature and situation.

We never learn why one group includes only women, while the other has both women and men.

The Little Feathers in their custody arrangement are a plot device in letting Rakka have these conversations and meetings. They aren't just that, though. We also see them playing with their more rogueish group of elders, with there even being a little subplot about one little feather boy learning how to skateboard from Reki's ex (he's one of the ones who always tries to hide his halo and wings).

There's a whole little thing about how the boy's accidents and falls are important for him learning to skateboard, and also an important part of him bonding with the otherwise standoffish ex. This is obvious thematic foreshadowing for what happens between Rakka and Reki, but it also is a very prominent reminder that the Little Feathers exist and are effectively dependents of the adult haibane community.

And...we never learn where the little feathers (who also include both boys and girls, notably) come from. We never see child-sized plant cocoons, or hear mention of them. It's never mentioned if they have their own Days of Flight. I assume they must go *something else,* *somehow,* eventually, since there's a theme of impermanence and inevitable transitions, but I have no idea what.

I also have trouble buying that there are this many child-suicides relative to adult ones. Granted, the manifestation a haibane has in this world might not actually be reflective of what they looked like at their time of death. Maybe the little feathers only look like children here because of some personality trait of death circumstance or karmic status or whatever, but were actually adults in their previous lives.

They sure do ACT like normal children, though. Nothing about their behavior indicates that they're just particularly immature adults in child bodies or the like.

So yeah. I don't know. They're weird enough to demand the audience's attention, but the show isn't interested in exploring any further, and they have nothing to do with what ends up being the story's ending.

...

On the topic of haibane possibly not looking like their previous selves...I'm going to be a bit harsh on the show's aesthetic choices for a moment.

Suicide, both in Japan and elsewhere, is a disproportionately male phenomenon, and this was the case back at the time this series was being made just as it is today. Haibane Renmei has the (adult) haibane divided into the all-female monastery group, and the majority-but-not-entirely-female factory group, plus whatever is going on with the children. And, while my last post praised the show for subverting the usual suicide-fetishization tropes, here I think it's really blatantly indulging in them. The suicides almost all being these waifish, ethereal-looking women with delicately haunted faces, always engaging in chaste hugs and sobbing into each other's shoulders, it just...you see what I'm saying here, yeah?

There are plenty of potential Watsonian explanations. This current crop of haibane is just a statistical outlier in terms of gender, or if most of the men are manifesting here in female bodies for some reason, or if there are other towns in this weird world that host mostly-male haibane communities, or whatever. But the choice of the creators to make it this way really seems like them doing purity fetish shit about suicide, while also telling us not to fetishize or glamorize suicide.

It's not intrusive enough to be a major problem, but it did make me uncomfortable at times.

...

Anyway. The climactic dramatic question of Haibane Renmei ends up being "is Reki going to manage to ascend before her time runs out in six months?" Rakka repeatedly tries to be a "raven" for Reki, but Reki keeps either just asking her how the hell she's supposed to put this into practice, or coldly shrugging her off.

The ultimate test comes when Rakka tries to help smooth things over with Reki and her erstwhile companions at the abandoned factory on the local New Year holiday. She even gets the "we forgive you," "we're sorry," "we want you back," etc tokens from some of them. Reki refuses to even leave the monastery for the celebration, though. She's been increasingly withdrawn as the winter wears on, and her ducking out of New Year and then doing the explosive reveal at Rakka when Rakka pushes her on it. Even a token from the Emissary that hints at a potential new name and new identity for Reki doesn't awaken any hope in her at this point.

When Rakka begs her to please show some sign of caring about any of this, Reki reveals that the only reason she mothered over her during her hatching, the growth of her wings, and onward, the only reason she's helped guide her and protect her, and the only reason she dotes on the Little Feathers, is because she's desperate to escape from this fucking place. She never liked any of them. She never cared about any of them. She's just been pretending to in desperation to avoid being left alone here to become the next withered old masked boss person stuck watching other people ascend passed her for decades. Rakka was just her potential ticket out of here, no more or less, and now that it seems like it hasn't actually helped her status she has no further interest in her.

This corresponds to what Rakka was told by the factory group, about Reki's caring exterior just being a disguise around a cold, selfish, and highly manipulative individual.

However.

That conversation takes place inside of Reki's painting studio, in which she's managed to mostly recreate her coccoon dream. It turns out that the "stone road" she remembers traveling down was a highway, with train tracks crossing it. The tracks that she laid down over in front of an oncoming train. And, for some reason, her anger seems to be mostly sparked by Rakka seeing her inside of this painted panorama.

Implying that she remembered her dream (and, indeed, what the dream reflected about her manner of death) perfectly well for some time now. She's been lying about not remembering it. Why would this be so?

If you haven't figured it out yet, Rakka and Reki are basically complimentary opposites. Rakka's sin was ignoring the people who cared about her when she made the decision to jump. Reki's was being so afraid of weakness and shame that she made sure no one would care about her in the first place before she laid on the tracks. She pushed everyone away when they seemed to be getting close. She did this to both groups of haibane. She's done it to the Emissary whenever he tries to give her a hint. She's doing it to Rakka now.

Rakka finds a diary of Reki's that reveals that she was lying about her feelings for the person in the cocoon, both before and after Rakka hatched from it.

True, she didn't know anything about Rakka yet during the "before," and it wouldn't have mattered much who she ended up being, but like...that's how mothers feel about their unborn children. No one would say that a mother's love is any less for that.

When she returns to confront Reki about the truth, Rakka gets...pulled into a phantasm or something. There's this weird reenactment of Reki's suicide-by-train. Rakka manages to play the role of the raven that she ignored in her own "dream," but that Reki never originally had in hers. Begging her to get out of the way. Telling her that she knows she was lying about not wanting her friendship or care. And, hearing her voice, Reki is able to whisper the words "help me" just loud enough for Rakka to hear.

Rakka listens, heeds, and pushes her out of the way of the train. Leaving them back in the painted-over studio.

Unfortunately, this scene looks so similar to Lain and Arisu embracing in the ruins of Lain's tech cave after Dr. Masami's dopey-ass Fischer Price mouth nan'd its last ni that it kinda ruined the gravitas. I wish I'd seen this show before SEL.

Anyway. We'd already been told that haibane get withdrawn and asocial when their flights are coming up, and Reki shutting herself up in the monastery when everyone else was celebrating was just her version of that. Reki couldn't leave the walls because she couldn't get over herself. For her, the walls of the town were the walls she locked herself away with. Once again, the byline of this series is "we send ourselves to hell." Granted, this is a pretty cushy hell, but you know what I mean.

This time, Rakka gets to see the departure herself, and has a considerably better attitude about it than they all did with Kuu before.

Rakka (and possibly some of the other haibane who were distraught over Kuu's ascension) has already had her karmic punishment of having to deal with a friend's suicide. With her new understanding of what the world the haibane live in (or at least, of their own role within that world), she knows that this is...well, it's still a kind of death, but a haibane's life is short and transitional enough that it's really more of a birth.

Maybe they'll even see each other again. They probably won't recognize or remember each other, but somehow they're both optimistic.

The epilogue has the monastery haibane putting up Reki's less depressing paintings (turns out she had a bunch of those, she just never let anyone see them) around their living space to honor her long tenure and role in all of their lives. As spring approaches, Rakka finds herself being handed the next challenge on her own road to ascension; two new incubation pods sprouting side by side, in need of love and patience to help them along their own routes just like Reki helped her.

A double suicide? A soul split into two separate bodies due to the nature of its damage? Whatever the challenge might be, Rakka is inspired by Reki's example to rise to it.


It's possible that a lot of material went over my head, and was actually more relevant to Reki and Rakka's story than I realized. Even if that's the case though, I still maintain that the scale and complexity of the setting was mismatched with the small scale and character-driven nature of the main story. Reki taking off and leaving Rakka to be the new mother figure for fresh haibane in need of healing feels like the ending of a good two-part episode, not like a series finale. If Haibane Renmei had been a movie, I'd have no complaints on this front.

Reki and Rakka are both plenty interesting. The fate of Reki's soul, and the self-invented and self-reinforced nature of its peril, had my investment all the way through. But I cared at least as much about learning about the people of this world, the origins and eventual fates of the Little Feathers, and several other things. They deserved their own stories, or at least to share a much bigger one.

I enjoyed Haibane Renmei on balance, but I feel like I'm just getting a taste-test for a meal that doesn't exist.