Haibane Renmei E2-7 (continued)
The next three episodes of Haibane Renmei are a bit more focused. There's still the scattershot slice-of-life aspect, but episode 6 in particular provides a major plot development that anchors everything around it and gives them something to play off of. Which is well timed; Haaibane Renmei was starting to lose me a little with its lack of focus, and now it's all tied back together and pointed in a clear direction.
It also is having me...not exactly rethink my purgatory hypothesis, but reinterpret what the show is trying to say with it.
To start with the slow-burn orbiter subplots, episode 5 "Library - Beginning of the World" gives us three of them. It turns out that the monastery - "old home" as they call it - isn't the only haibane community center in Glie. There's at least one other. An abandoned factory complex on the far side of Glie's territory is home to another small group of haibane, and these ones look and act more like street toughs than monks. They also, unlike the Old Home group, include both men and women among their number. It remains to be seen if they have their own young feather group as well. Anyway, the old home's team mom Reki apparently has some history with the abandoned factory crew. Or at least, with a specific member of said crew.
Hyoko, like several other members of the Old Factory haibane community, is adept at folding up his wings and lowering his halo to hide them under (baggy) clothes, enabling them to pass as human. On one hand, haibane have enough legal (divine?) restrictions on what they're allowed to do in town that I can understand why he'd want to pass for human. On the other hand, Glie doesn't seem like that large of a town, and most people in it probably know most other people in it, so I'm not sure how well this could work.
Maybe it's more of a token/symbolic protest. Like, the Old Home crew all comply with their mission of atonement and thus have a monk aesthetic and show themselves for what they are, whereas the Abandoned Factory group resent and reject it and thus have a punk aesthetic and sometimes try to pretend they're not haibane. That would fit.
Anyway, Rakka and another haibane named Nemu happen to witness an altercation between Reki and Hyoko that almost gets physical before they intervene and convince the punk-angels to back off. The vibe is definitely that of Hyoko being a possessive ex-boyfriend, and while they walk back to the monastery leaving a fuming and humiliated Reki to have her space Nemu explains to Rakka that, well, that's literally it. For all that she's the team mom nowadays, Reki was something of a problem child when she first hatched as a haibane, and at one point she ran away from Old Home to screw around (both figuratively and, at least in Hyoko's case, literally) with the other problem children. Later on, in episode 7 "Arrival of Winter," Reki herself reluctantly explains a little more of this to Rakka herself. Apparently, Reki and Hyoko actually tried to escape the walls of Glie together, and ended up being hunted down and forcibly returned to their communities by agents of the Haibane Renmei. After that point, they were forbidden from entering each other's neighborhoods, leaving only a few neutral areas around the middle of Glie where they can interact with each other, and their meetings since then have been resentful. Especially after Reki learned her lesson and turned a new leaf, whereas Hyoko did not.
Hyoko might not be dealing with the breakup well, and the way he's stalking and hounding his ex is of course inexcusable, but in terms of general attitude toward their situation I'm pretty sure he's in the right. The haibane are basically living under the thumb of a police state, or (more accurately) being locked up in an open air prison and constantly monitored. Even if they really are all sinners in purgatory, the fact that they don't even remember what they're in for makes it hard not to side with them and condone any escape attempts they make.
The other two subplots both involve Rakka visiting other Haibane at their workplaces and trying out being their coworker. Kana the assistant clockmaker has been working away at trying to get the big clocktower that her boss has his shop under working again, and she finally succeeds...well, sort of. She gets the bell-ringing mechanism working, but not the clock itself. She turns it on, and it rings nonstop until someone turns it off again. Still, it's progress, and also it becomes important for the big plot event in episode 6. Nemu the assistant librarian, meanwhile, is trying to restore an old tattered book as a present for her own employer (said employer being more openly friendly to the haibane than most of the townsfolk are). This library subplot...well, it doesn't establish much outright, but it seems to be hinting at a lot of things.
For one thing, when Nemu - the oldest of the Old Home haibane, who was here slightly before even Reki and remembers the latter's hatching and old wild days - introduces Rakka to her librarian boss, she says that said boss "used to be her mentor." The way she says it, and the meaningful musical cues and camerawork surrounding it, seem to be hinting at something.
Going further on that note, the book that Nemu asks for Rakka's help restoring as a present for said boss just happens to be the *one* book in the entire library that talks about the outside world. It's an illustrated children's book telling a creation myth, but still, it's literally the closest thing they have to an information source on anything beyond the walls.
While working on this with Nemu, Rakka also happens to ask the boss lady why she's curious about the outside world when none of the other townsfolk seem to be. She tells her that she was once obsessed with getting outside of the walls, but in the end gave up on that ambition because the town of Glie just got too comfortable for her.
And here's where I started wondering: are all of the "human" in Glie actually fallen haibane? Ones who completely abandoned the hope or desire of moving on, and shed their wings to stay in Glie forever?
If the haibane are in purgatory, are the townsfolk in a (surprisingly comfortable, if a bit boring) hell?
Well, that question gets complicated by the next few things that happen. Including the main event in episode 6, "End of Summer - Loss."
One of Rakka's fellow Old Home haibane, a very young-looking girl named Kuu, has been talking a lot about the possibility of one day developing enough wing strength to fly over the wall and abandon Glie. This has been going on since episode 2 or 3, when she gave Rakka a bike ride to the bakery for pancakes. Anyway, Kuu has become increasingly withdrawn lately. Not depressed; just quiet, contemplative, and...with an almost ethereal sort of "not there" ness to her. She increasingly skips meals, or takes food in the morning and then eats it by herself out under the sky. As summer becomes fall and fall creeps toward winter, the weather worsens, and Kuu becomes more and more preoccupied by staring at the turbulent, sickly yellow and grey sky. One day, when Rakka finds her staring out through the window, she also sees Kuu's halo starting to lose its glow and become...almost insubstantial.
Kuu talks to Rakka, but her words are all so cryptic. About restlessness. About "her time" being here. About the sky, and about the birds that can fly through it unhindered.
This episode is a masterclass in sound design, by the way. The absolute, oppressive silence - broken only by pouring rain, the creaking of old floorboards under the characters' feet, and the squealing of door and window hinges as they move through the building - builds tension in a way that no musical backdrop ever could. The rainfall is the accelerating drumbeats. The squealing hinges are the stressful violin notes. No melody needed; just the sounds, the images, and the silence say it all.
Then, at some points, when the tension is being temporarily relieved, there IS music. Intense, intrusive, oppressive music. But still a relief compared to the rain, the creaking, and the quiet.
Kuu tells her not to worry about her. She'll be fine. She's just going out. As the sun sets and the sickly sky darkens, Rakka hears a confused litany of squawks and caws from a forested area near the wall where they've been warned not to get too close to. The birds around there are going insane. Looking out over the forest, Rakka sees a brightly glowing *something* rise from the trees and disappear into the hellish sky.
That is the last time that anyone ever sees Kuu again.
It isn't until the next morning that the other Old Home haibane realize she's been gone this whole time. Rakka herself was sure she must have been hallucinating when she saw the beam of light flying off into the sky, but she eventually plucks up the nerve to tell the others, and the two oldests - Reki and Nemu - immediately take her claim at face value and override the others' scepticism. They go out into the apparently dangerous forest to make sure, using the clock tower whose bell mechanism Kana has just repaired to orient them; apparently, the forest causes people who go in to lose their way and become unable to exit unless they have something to orient themselves with, and the persistent bell-ringing will work.
I feel like the forest should have been explained prior to this, but okay.
The old home group go into the woods, the bell ringing behind them and...the townsfolk apparently not complaining about it, that's very understanding of them. In the woods, they find some ancient ruins whose existence they'd hinted at previously. Kuu's halo - now a mundane iron ring once again - has been abandoned and left atop an altar with steps leading up to it. Crows perch all around, watching.
Kuu has left them. Reki tells the younger haibane not to take it personally; when a haibane's "day of flight" comes, they become withdrawn and lose interest in communicating with their former kin. They never say goodbye. They never reach out to inform anyone that they're taking off. They just get scarcer and scarcer until they fly away and don't come back.
When she thinks no one is looking, Reki glares hatefully at the sky and whispers a sentiment that she otherwise does a good job of covering up.
Huhhhhh.
I wonder if that resentment is part of what's preventing her from moving on herself. Either the weight of that sinful thought holding her down, or more directly her just resenting the system too much to ever give herself to it. She did try to literally run away from it once, after all.
For the rest of "End of Summer - Loss" and continuing into episode 7 "Illness - Beginning of Winter," the haibane try to deal with Kuu's departure. And, even though she's almost certainly not *dead* wherever she is, well...the way the story treats her transition kinda speaks for itself.
And really...the implication has always been that all of them are dead to begin with. So, in light of that, what does "dead" even mean, for them? Is there even such a thing as "death" at all? It's just a series of relocations.
But then, on the other side of that coin...
...
The tragedy of death, the loss of loved ones, the learning to live without people who you never wanted to have to be away from...the individual's survival in another realm might be a comfort, but it isn't a cure. They've still been taken away from you. Possibly forever, depending on where the next life brings you and how easy it is to find people again in it. Assuming you even remember them this time.
In other words: in the world of Haibane Renmei, even death cannot save you from the horror and tragedy of death. Wherever you go after death, you can always die again. You can always lose people to death again. And once you figure out what this all is, you get to spend the rest of your current existence wondering if you'll even be allowed to remember those people at all once you move on yourself.
Maybe the purgatorial nature of Glie is exceptional, and the "heaven" that awaits haibane on their days of flight transcends all these concerns. But maybe it isn't. Maybe it doesn't. You don't know where you came from, so how do you know that you ever will know where you came from?
...
Now, I will criticize this pair of episodes for their handling of Rakka's mourning for Kuu. Mostly because insufficient groundwork was laid for it. Basically, Rakka spends the next twenty or so minutes of screentime acting like she's lost her best friend or her lifelong lover or something. Now, Rakka and Kuu did have some good bonding moments, but not moreso than Rakka had with Reki, or Kana, or...honestly most of them. I get that Rakka is emotionally on edge because of the stresses of life as an amnesiac angel-mutant under divine police state surveillance, but it seems like the show is expecting the audience to think that Rakka and Kuu were really close. And, they just weren't. At least, not more than Rakka and most of the other Old Home residents.
It gets the point across, but you have to handwave and read into a lot to make it really work dramatically. A little more time spent building up Rakka and Kuu's relationship in the previous episodes and showing them to have something that Rakka doesn't have with Reki, Kana, or Nemu would have helped a lot with this.
Anyway. In the wake of Kuu's departure, Rakka has a surprise interaction with Reki's ex-boyfriend Hyoko from the Abandoned Factory group. He heard that one of the Old Home lot flew away, and he wants to know if it was Reki. When he learns that it wasn't her, he doesn't even try to hide his relief. And shows zero interest in who it actually was, let alone how her departure might have effected the others including Reki. Rakka has little patience for Hyoko's behavior.
I wonder. Is he still hoping to one day mend things with Reki, or (more likely) that she'll try to mend things with him? Or is it just spite that makes him want to know that she isn't escaping this place either?
...or maybe it's less spite and more shame. If she hasn't given in and let the system have her, then he can go on feeling correct for refusing to cooperate with it too. If she changed her mind, then that would mean that either he's all alone in his resistance, or that he's uniquely defective and unable to find redemption whereas everyone else can. Neither of these are comforting prospects.
None of these possibilities are mutually exclusive, either.
In the wake of Kuu's departure and Rakka's difficulty dealing with that, Rakka starts having another problem. Possibly related, possibly not. Black spots begin appearing on her wing feathers. Small and occasional at first, but getting more frequent and prominent with increasing speed. And, for some reason, instead of asking the other haibane about this like a person would actually do, Rakka decides - based on literally nothing - that she should try to keep this a secret.
This whole storyline makes emotional sense. Rakka reacts to the most obvious symbolism of something pure about her becoming tainted and corrupt in kind. It only makes sense on the most purely symbolic level, though. Later on in episode 7, when the secret comes out despite her attempts at hiding it, Rakka finally DOES ask Reki if this is an infection or other medical problem that haibane can come down with. And at that point, it honestly would have been better if she hadn't asked at all. Because if we're *not* treating the blackened feathers and people's reactions to them as a purely symbolic thing, then why the hell didn't Rakka go to Reki for advice about this the instant she noticed it? What gave her the idea that black spots on one's feathers were something to be ashamed of in the first place?
After going so far as to chop off half her own wing feathers in attempt to hide the spots, Rakka gets found out by Reki, who takes her aside and tells her that her own wings have long had the same issue, and she has a chemical dye for hiding it. And apparently Reki thinks that it's caused by a sinful taint that burdens her from her original existence. A taint that she credits with her inability to have her day of flight, even though she's been here in Glie for so long.
She also says that she's sure the black spots plaguing Rakka now are there "by mistake." She doesn't seem nearly sinful enough to have actually earned them.
:/
Um...I'm guessing going over to the temple and asking the Emissary about this is a capital crime or something?
Honestly, the direction of the conversation from this point on ends up frustrating me. They kind of talk *around* the premise of there being an intelligent agent behind things like the black spots, the days of flight, etc. They talk about that agent having authority, giving commandments, and potentially making mistakes, but they never even raise the subject of trying to appeal to or reason with it. Even Rakka who's still just learning about all this stuff doesn't think to ask.
There is one other difference between Rakka and Reki's situations, at least according to Reki. Reki didn't actually remember her coccoon-dream; she was plagued by nightmares afterward, and indeed still sometimes is nowadays, but she doesn't remember her birth-dream. The "pebble road" she named herself after is actually an element from the nightmares; she walks along that road at night, meets someone, and "something terrible" happens. Implied to be sexual assault, but maybe something else. The paintings she works on in her off time are all attempts to recapture what she HOPES her actual coccoon-dream might have been, but time after time she just keeps channeling the nightmares.
This may or may not actually be connected to the black spots. And neither of them may have anything to do with her previous self's degree of sinfulness. I'm not sure how she thinks she knows any of these things, even if she's convinced herself of them as part of some weird self-flagellation complex.
Rakka doesn't have any of these other issues, but she does have the black spots. So, uh, yeah. I think "Reki is drawing a pattern that doesn't actually exist" is more likely than "Rakka was given one out of several symptom of divine condemnation because someone mixed up the paperwork."
...hmm. It occurs to me that Reki did, at one point, run away at night in the company of a man who we've seen act abusively toward her. Did that color the nature of her nightmares and lead her to misremember them as having started earlier than they did? Or is it more of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Maybe she left one abuser on a pebble road behind her on Earth, only to seek out someone else just like him in Glie? That does tend to happen to untreated victims.
Well. That's the first half or so of the series.
Death is a part of nature, but it never seems natural when it happens to you. It's the final determiner that one's will was never free, and one's body was never autonomous. The moment when the physical, mental, and spiritual existence you thought was "yours" is turned against you.
Wings ripping free of shoulders. Storm-sickly skies pulling at body and mind at once. Unchallengeable edicts from faceless tyrants that your own brain won't allow you to question.
““You sing of the young gods easily
In the days when you are young;
But I go smelling yew and sods,
And I know there are gods behind the gods,
Gods that are best unsung.””
Putting feathers and halos on it doesn't make it the kind of divinity anyone wants to imagine.
Death is natural, but death is also alien. Everything about it repels us, frightens us, and confounds us. We recognize it as the ultimate *wrongness.* A freshly dead body is uncanny for its resemblance to a living one, because it is simultaneously human and the literal negation of humanity.
So. Even if this purgatory-realm is perfectly just and the divinity behind it perfectly benevolent, it's fundamentally hostile to everything we know and understand. It can't not be. The forceful transformation of body and soul, well...you can wilfully ignore how much like a scifi horror premise this sounds like if you want to, but.
Maybe the God of Haibane Renmei's world is good. Maybe the reason this all seems so tragic and horrifying to human sensibilities is because of our sinfulness clouding our judgment. But even if that's true, the show seems to understand that the kind of cosmic goodnes
this order serves is NOT goodness as we can understand it. And really, if we need to have everything about us changed in order to see the rightness of it, then doesn't that just mean that it really is *wrong* for us as we are now?
Even the (potential) sinfulness of these haibane is something that, in their current state, is being *done to* them. They don't know what they did. They don't know what they're atoning for. The events of their past lives effect them in much the same way as wings erupting through the skin of their shoulders.
Maybe the existence of an afterlife really just means you keep dying forever?
The show doesn't seem that dark. I suspect the ending will recontextualize things. But for the time being, it definitely doesn't want you to think that the existence the haibane find themselves in is something that shouldn't disturb and anger you. Even if it's theoretically just in the eyes of a perfect God.
In light of that, I'm not sure what to think of the creation myth that Rakka and Nemu read in the old book they restored. It tells of how, after creating the world, God tried to create life in his own image. His initial attempts were too successful, and he didn't like seeing perfect copies of himself, so he hobbled them by greying their wings and puncturing their halo discs into rings before sucking them back into his mind to reassimilate them. In the meantime, he created humans, who were weaker and less like himself, which he found satisfactory.
When God rested at the end of creation though, the crippled godlings - the haibane - emerged from his dreaming brain before he could finish un-imagining them. They found their own little refuge for themselves, hidden from the world of humanity. When he woke up, God had mercy on the haibane that refused to die, and let them be in their pocket-world of Glie.
Except...that isn't actually how it ended. The final page or two of the book were unrecoverable, so Rakka and Nemu had to make up an ending for the story themselves. And really, it was just Rakka; Nemu had trouble thinking of anything and left it to her.
She also was very sceptical of Rakka's proposal, and only grudgingly went with it.
Maybe the implication here is that each soul is free to interpret the world and their place within it for themselves, and thus create their own truth. But, well. That's kind of at odds with everything else about how this realm treats the haibane.
Even going with Rakka's cheery ending, this story doesn't make God look especially good.
