Welcome everyone to another week of Haibane Renmei! This is another slow one like the last, yet for some reason I can’t help but like it more. Is it the characters? The subject focus? Read on to find out!
So like I said, this week was another slow episode with the primary difference being the focus character. Where last week focused on Hikari, visiting the temple and her time at the bakery, this week is about Kana. And just like Hikari, Haibane Renmei shows us a day in her life. We visit the clock tower, the shop, do morning chores etc. Yet despite how mundane all of this was for some reason I liked this one a whole lot more! Something about Kana’s day to day was just more… satisfying? Engaging? I suspect it’s because of the message, the “theme” of Kana as a character. Or perhaps it was the concepts which Haibane Renmei introduced this week, building off of the last. Either way though one fact remains true: I really vibed with this episode and I’m once again looking forward to more.
As for the concepts of the episode I like, lets start with an easy one: Why do Haibane work? Kana argues its because they don’t want to be indebted to the town. That it’s their way of paying them back, so to speak. However I wonder if there’s something more to it, a higher purpose. For example, this could all be a grand metaphor for working your way into Heaven. While I don’t believe it has a Biblical analogue, popular culture has this concept of an Angel “Earning their wings”. I could see Haibane Renmei doing something similar by having the Haibane work in the town. And after they have done enough, or grown as individuals, their vestigial wings will grow and grant them flight. Allowing them the the ability to fly over the walls like the birds they seem to envy!
I bring this up because I find it suspicious how… convenient their work is. Not that it exists but that each one seems to have found work they they love. Just look at Kana, a love of engineering and building, or Hikari with baking and bringing joy to people. Its as if they have a “calling” of some kind that they are naturally drawn to and that the Haibane Renmei organization, and town as a whole, exist to facilitate them. It made me think that they must permanently improve, or contribute to, the town in some way to move on. Sort of like Hikari’s donuts or Kana fixing the clock tower. I mean, isn’t it awfully convenient to have an almost complete clock tower at their home? Or for no one to have tried to make pastries like their halos before? Seems so to me.
At the same time, getting back to the wall and the birds and such, Haibane Renmei introduces the idea of freedom. Of something beyond the wall. For the first time it prompts both us, and the characters, to really think about where they are. And it does this through the birds, crows specifically! In both this episode and the last it has talked about them as both scavengers and the only truly free thing in the city, often using them as analogues for the Haibane themselves. This is most clearly seen in Rakka’s relationship with them as in both her dream and her interactions with the crows she views them as friends. Once again reinforcing my idea that they, the Haibane, must one day fly from the city. So yeah, there’s a lot of combined meanings and scenes with these birds. I like them a lot.
Indeed one of, if not my favorite, scene about the birds came in this episode with Kana. It was when they were taking out the trash and Kana has her little speech on domesticating the crows. That if they feed them, they teach them to stay her. That they, the only things that are truly free, don’t need to fly over the wall as everything is provided for them here. Would they even be able to survive outside the wall after this? They would, for all intents and purposes, be caged. To me this perfectly encapsulates the Haibane’s current situation. They have an entire organization, the Haibane Renmei, dedicated to taking care of and providing for them. They, despite having wings, are unable to fly beyond the wall. It almost makes me think that independence from the town, rather than good deeds, is what will allow the Haibane to fly.
The final thing reinforcing this theory came near the end, with the Clockmaster. We could clearly see that despite his rough demeanor, he cares a lot. Pushing her to instill some discipline but always making it clear that he cares. We see this most clearly at the end when he asks Rakka if Kana is “Going away”. “Going away”? What does that mean? Do Haibane eventually leave in some way, are they removed by the Haibane Renmei? Or is it like I suspect, that they fulfil some purpose and are granted the ability to soar over the walls? It almost makes me think that this old man has seen it happen before. That in his many years inside the city he has trained many a Haibane apprentice, only for them to leave for whatever reason. Perhaps this is why only the oldest shops in town let Haibane work there.
So yeah in case it wasn’t obvious, all in all I quite enjoyed this episode. There were a lot of small details, hints and story beats that I really connected with and was able to sink my teeth into. And the nice thing is that I think last episode did a good job of setting many of them up, of introducing us to them as concepts. Of seeding these thoughts in the viewers head before hammering them home this week. So yeah… I’m enjoying Haibane Renmei. So far it’s relaxed with just enough meat that I find myself looking forward to what is to come.
