Talking Forever About Haibane Renmei

[Scheduling note: the next Let’s Read will begin on the 12th of April]

(There were a bunch of names mixed up in the original version of this; Big thanks to Braak for pointing it out)

Welcome to the first of a new series of posts here on Doing In The Wizard- Talking Forever About!

A few times over the years I’ve gotten self-indulgent enough to go on long-winded screeds about some of my favorite media, whether they be children’s book trilogies or horror games, and I’ve decided to make a semi-regular (as in once every few months) feature out of it.

I’m going to start out by talking forever about anime, but after that well has run dry we might end up talking forever about other things as well. Who knows what you’ll get! Even I don’t know!

A warning up-front: these posts will contain varying degrees of unmarked spoilers. While I’ll be giving my honest critical appraisal, this isn’t intended to be a straight forward review and I’m going on the assumption that anyone reading this is looking for something other than a recommendation.

Therefore, if I cover something you’ve been meaning to get to yourself you may want to give that post a miss. That said, let’s talk forever about the 2002 series Haibane Renmei- or to give it its full title, “Haibane Renmei, une fille qui a des ailes grises” which apparently translates to something like “Charcoal Feather Alliance, the girl with grey wings”. Yes, it’s a weird title. The show itself is pretty weird too.

Yoshitoshi ABe is a Japanese illustrator who is (or at least was) held in fairly high regard among the more hardcore segment of anime fandom, which is something of a rarity as celebrity doesn’t usually attach itself to anyone lower down on the creative ladder than director. ABe’s prominence owes itself to two factors: his moody, distinct art style and the fact that he’s had a higher than usual degree of creative influence on several cult classics.

Most people’s first encounter with the guy was through the 1998 series Serial Experiments Lain, a show that a younger me encountered just when I was starting to move beyond Pokemon and Dragonball Z. A lot of Lain’s appeal is down to the writing and directing of Chiaki Konaka, a dude with an interesting (to put it mildly) output who we may be hearing more about in future posts, but ABe’s distinct visual style was all over the final product (literally- he did all of the promotional and DVD art) and the show is often thought of inaccurately as his alone.

In 2001 ABe scribbled out some comics about angels living in modern day Japan and encountering wacky scenarios like getting their halos stuck in train doors. Somehow this combined in ABe’s head with visual elements from Haruki Murakami’s novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World to produce Haibane Renmei.

So what’s the show about?

Glie is a vaguely European-ish town with a few unusual features, most prominently the giant wall that surrounds it and the nearby countryside and which none of the inhabitants can cross. Most of the people of Glie are born, live and die within the confines of the wall, their only contact with the outside world being merchants who are forbidden by ancient custom to speak to them. Despite the prison-like nature of this setup the people of Glie are a pretty carefree bunch.

At least, the humans are. It’s said that only birds can cross the wall, but that’s not strictly true- sometimes a special seed blows in on the wind and takes root in abandoned, forgotten locations, growing into a massive cocoon and heralding the arrival of a new Haibane.

The Haibane are kind of hard to sum up. Yes, they have wings and halos like traditional angels, but they’re also “born” from their cocoons in fully-formed bodies. They once existed outside of Glie, but they retain no memories of their past life apart from a mysterious dream that they have inside the cocoon. Their lives seem no less idyllic than those of the human townspeople, but why are they relegated to abandoned buildings in the countryside? Why do their wings cause such agony when they emerge shortly after birth? And why does the mysterious Haibane Renmei organization enforce an array of strange, seemingly arbitrary rules on them?

All of these are questions faced by Rakka, a teenage-ish Haibane who joins a cadre of other young women in Old Home, one of the Haibene’s secluded enclaves. It’s not quite accurate to describe Rakka as a rebel- she’s far too timid for that- but she finds herself ill at ease in Glie and unable to settle into her new life as easily as the other members of her de facto family. She’s particularly unwilling to accept the fact that all of her new friends are going to leave her eventually-  because it turns out the Haibane’s time in Glie is limited, as once they achieve whatever purpose they’ve been brought there for they vanish into a pillar of light, bound for somewhere else unknown.

Reki, the unofficial matriarch of Old Home, helps her through all of this, but she’s wrestling with her own demons. She’s “sin-bound”, born with black wings and unable to recall her dream in the cocoon. If she can’t remember it before her time in Glie is up then she’ll be stuck there forever, resigned to a life of misery and despair. Can Rakka save her, even knowing that it will cost her another friend?

So. The very first thing people tend to ask about Haibene Renmei is “are the Haibene supposed to be angels”? This is usually followed by “is Glie purgatory”? No, and sort of. To be honest these aren’t the most interesting questions you can ask about Haibane Renmei; I’ll be getting to them in due course, but first I want to talk about the role of the Haibane and how they fit into the society of Glie.

It would have been easy to cast them as a persecuted group. They live on the fringes of society; they’re only allowed to purchase clothes and other goods that the human residents of Glie have discarded; certain buildings are marked for their use; in an early episode we see Rakka and co step respectfully out of the way of a passing farmer on a tractor, who doesn’t acknowledge their presence; later, Rakka trips in the street and is hauled gruffly to her feet by a human man, who promptly walks off without a word. What is going on here? Are the Haibane second-class citizens?

Yes and no. To get the full picture you have to consider other facts of their existence.

We open shortly before Rakka’s birth. Reki is determined to make this process as pleasant and smooth as possible for her, surrounding her with a supportive and loving “family”, believing that this will ensure Rakka’s future happiness. Much later on we discover that Reki hatched from her own cocoon alone, in an abandoned part of Old Home, and on some level she seems to attribute her present difficulties to this unhappy start in life (notably, Reki was quite a bit younger than Rakka upon hatching). In other words, early experiences are said to shape the circumstances of the Haibane’s life- those born surrounded by warmth and happiness will do well, whereas those who hatch alone and neglected will be plagued with sorrow. Is this starting to sound familiar?

Let’s go deeper. Shortly after their birth the Haibane are placed under the authority of the Haibane Renmei. They have no choice in this; all Haibane become members. The HR imposes a series of seemingly arbitrary rules on the Haibane (for example, they’re told not to speak while in the HR’s temple, or in other words, they’re to be seen and not heard), and breaking them is met with swift punishment. The Haibane themselves don’t really understand why this system is in place- they have to simply trust that the HR really does have their best interests at heart and that everything will make sense some day. Or what about the fact that the Haibane can’t use money? Instead they give shopkeepers IOUs, which are fulfilled by the HR. Doesn’t this imply that the Haibane can’t be trusted to handle money on their own?

In case it’s not already obvious enough, one of Rakka’s friends at Old Home spells the situation out explicitly in an early episode when she says, in reference to how the Haibane are treated by the humans of Glie, “doesn’t it seem like we’re they’re children?” The Haibane are living through a kind of second childhood. They are literally children in many cases- Rakka seems to be at the upper age range for a Habaine at birth, and she doesn’t look older than about fifteen at the most- but they also live in a state that is designed to be overcome and left behind; those who fail to do so are considered to be pitiable creatures, living in a kind of permanent twilight. It’s very heavily implied that the quasi-priesthood of the Haibane Renmei are actually themselves Haibane who have met with this fate, and it’s notable that they wear fake wings on their backs. They’re clinging to artificial symbols of childhood, either as a mark of shame or a desperate attempt to reclaim what they’ve lost- they can’t move forward, but they’re unable to return to what came before either.

But how does one end up in that state? The theme of second childhood is so obvious in the show that I have no qualm with presenting it essentially as fact, but I have to admit that it doesn’t entirely mesh with Haibane Renmei’s other big thematic element, which is those pesky religious overtones. So, let’s get this out of the way quickly: Glie is Limbo and the Haibane are there because of unresolved issues in their former lives. How do I now this is the case? Well:

– In the Inferno Dante describes Limbo as a place of rolling fields surrounded by walls, lit by soft light and possessing a sorrowful atmosphere. Notably, it is the destination of unbaptized children (remember what I said about the Haibane being symbolic children?)

– The Haibane’s cocoon-dreams are actually memories of their death. This is made explicit at the end of the show, when Reki fully remembers her dream of walking along a path of small stones and realizes she was actually walking along railroad tracks, toward an oncoming train. Rakka’s dream of falling is eventually revealed to be a memory of falling down a well, which presumably resulted in her death. The dreams of the other Haibane can be easily interpreted in this light.

– Prior to her Day of Flight, Kuu, Rakka’s friend, describes feeling as if she’s been slowly filled up with something during her time in Glie, drop by drop; when she becomes “full” she feels compelled to go to the ancient ruins on the outskirts of Glie and ascends in a pillar of light. What exactly this is referring to isn’t entirely clear, but it’s notable that she attributes the “drops”- her “progress” toward leaving Glie- to her friendships and the time she spent with the other Haibane. The implication seems to be that she’s in Glie in order to obtain something she didn’t have previously; she was unable to ascend (to heaven?) without it.

– All of the angel motifs are kind of a give-away

But if this is the case, what exactly makes a Haibane sin-bound? What have they done to deserve this fate? Because it’s heavily implied that Reki committed suicide-by-train, it’s often assumed that taking one’s own life makes a Haibane sin-bound (that would certainly fit the catholic imagery), but that doesn’t fit with Rakka’s experiences. She was born with grey wings like the other Haibane, but after Kuu leaves she falls into a deep depression and her wings start to turn black; when she overcomes her despair they become grey again. The implication seems to be that a Haibane’s current actions in Glie can also make them sin-bound, and not just the circumstances of their death.

To be honest, I don’t have a solid answer to this. It’s by far the most widely-debated aspect of the show and it seems to be deliberately ambiguous. However, there is a big clue presented at one point when Rakka talks to the leader of the Haibane Renmei about what it means to be sin-bound. He presents her with a riddle about being caught in an endless “circle” of sin, and states that one will only stop being sin-bound when they break out of it, something he himself wasn’t able to do.

This is actually much closer to Buddhism than Christianity, although not a perfect match with either (far too many people interpreting this show take the religious iconography at face value); rather than absolving their sins to ascend to heaven it seems to imply the Haibane are trying to escape a cyclical existence by casting off that which binds them to their old life- presumably, their sorrows or unhappiness. Worth noting is the fact that the Haibane are reincarnations, as Reki tells Rakka that not even her own parents would recognize her any more if they saw her.

If we look at it in this light, Rakka becoming temporarily sin-bound starts to make more sense. Instead of casting off her ties to Glie she clings to them, refusing to accept the fact that Kuu is gone and move on with her life. The ultimate crux of her character development comes when she decides to help Reki achieve her Day of Flight, even though doing so will mean saying goodbye to her.

I’m not claiming that this is a perfect interpretation of all of Haibane Renmei’s themes. To be honest I’m not sure there is a perfect interpretation; the show itself seems to actively discourage such a thing by keeping story elements ambiguous and borrowing just enough from religious ideas to allow for possible interpretations, but not enough to let the viewer pin down any one theory.

I’ve spent a lot of time interpreting and unpacking Haibane Renmei, but I don’t want to give you the idea that it’s some sort of puzzle box to be solved. On my first viewing I fell in love with it despite not really understanding anything about it, and that’s because it works on a much more emotional level.

“World-building” is a phrase that usually conjures the idea of granular, nitty-gritty details like maps and street names and histories and currency conversion rates and what have you. Haibane Renmei practices a very different kind of world building. The first time I watched this show I was struck by the sense of place present in Glie. I felt as though I had just stepped into a real location with hundreds of years of history behind it, even though none of that history is ever revealed to us in the show. And when I watched it again, years later, it was like revisiting a place I once loved. Even now, I just need to hear the opening strains of Haibane Renmei’s ending theme song to bring me right back to Glie, as if the show has become a half-forgotten memory living in some deep corner of my mind.

The slow, gently pacing of Haibane Renmei certainly won’t be for everyone, and the early digital animation has aged horrendously in places (a recent blu-ray release looked horrendous), but if you’re interested in checking the show out you’ll probably want to go for the “Anime Classics” version that Funimation out out in 2012. The second-hand market may be your best bet.