Haibane Renmei
Jun. 22nd, 2008 04:36 amhad been on my to-watch list for ages and ages, and then we finally got a copy due to the Geneon liquidation sale, so I watched it.
What a beautiful little show. That just... yeah. That's the sort of show I point to when people ask why I watch anime.
I don't usually have much use for Yoshitoshi Abe, the writer/creator of this series; his other work includes Serial Experiments Lain, which would have been awesome if its content had been put in a two hour movie; Niea_7, which I have not seen; and Technolyze, which is Incomprehensible To Us Mere Mortals (as in, after five episodes no one in the household had been able to determine whether there was a protagonist). However Haibane Renmei really does make up for a lot. Maybe I should try Niea_7.
Anyway, actual description and so on: a girl dreams of falling, and finds herself emerging from a cocoon into a town with impenetrable walls. She sprouts wings, but they're gray, and is issued a halo, but it doesn't stay on too well. And there's looking for a job, and taking care of children, and weather, and learning to live with the people around her (some have wings, some don't). I guessed the premise fairly early on (okay, during the first thirty seconds), but I think this is more because of my personal reading habits rather than the show's being easy to guess. And it's so well done, and surrounded by so many funny or sweet or just interesting details, and very good music.
And anyone who thinks they might want a copy ever should probably purchase one immediately, as the company who put it out has gone out of business. I'm glad we have one.
Spoilery rambling, under spoiler code. Please use spoiler code in the comments if you want to discuss the show in detail, as I know several people who want to see it and haven't yet. It seemed fairly obvious to me from everyone's self-introductions that they'd all committed suicide: one sleeping pill overdose, one drowning, two jumps from high places, and... damn, I've forgotten Hikari's but it made sense. But I wasn't expecting Reki's train! Gah! I'd been trying for most of the series to figure out what kind of death involved small stones, or stones at all, and I'd actually thought that maybe somebody had killed her, even though that would rather throw off the cosmology.
Which is an odd kind of semi-Christian one, I think, because the place seems to be populated by otherwise blameless suicides and by children who have died too young to cause harm to anybody, except then what are all the ordinary people doing living there? (Well, probably about what people are doing living anywhere else. I don't think it would be much different...)
It does make me wonder where the Haibane who don't progress go when they die, though. Where anyone else does?
Anyway, this show made me very happy.
What a beautiful little show. That just... yeah. That's the sort of show I point to when people ask why I watch anime.
I don't usually have much use for Yoshitoshi Abe, the writer/creator of this series; his other work includes Serial Experiments Lain, which would have been awesome if its content had been put in a two hour movie; Niea_7, which I have not seen; and Technolyze, which is Incomprehensible To Us Mere Mortals (as in, after five episodes no one in the household had been able to determine whether there was a protagonist). However Haibane Renmei really does make up for a lot. Maybe I should try Niea_7.
Anyway, actual description and so on: a girl dreams of falling, and finds herself emerging from a cocoon into a town with impenetrable walls. She sprouts wings, but they're gray, and is issued a halo, but it doesn't stay on too well. And there's looking for a job, and taking care of children, and weather, and learning to live with the people around her (some have wings, some don't). I guessed the premise fairly early on (okay, during the first thirty seconds), but I think this is more because of my personal reading habits rather than the show's being easy to guess. And it's so well done, and surrounded by so many funny or sweet or just interesting details, and very good music.
And anyone who thinks they might want a copy ever should probably purchase one immediately, as the company who put it out has gone out of business. I'm glad we have one.
Spoilery rambling, under spoiler code. Please use spoiler code in the comments if you want to discuss the show in detail, as I know several people who want to see it and haven't yet. It seemed fairly obvious to me from everyone's self-introductions that they'd all committed suicide: one sleeping pill overdose, one drowning, two jumps from high places, and... damn, I've forgotten Hikari's but it made sense. But I wasn't expecting Reki's train! Gah! I'd been trying for most of the series to figure out what kind of death involved small stones, or stones at all, and I'd actually thought that maybe somebody had killed her, even though that would rather throw off the cosmology.
Which is an odd kind of semi-Christian one, I think, because the place seems to be populated by otherwise blameless suicides and by children who have died too young to cause harm to anybody, except then what are all the ordinary people doing living there? (Well, probably about what people are doing living anywhere else. I don't think it would be much different...)
It does make me wonder where the Haibane who don't progress go when they die, though. Where anyone else does?
Anyway, this show made me very happy.