Haibane Renmei – 13 [Reki’s World/Prayer/Epilogue] – Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone to the finale of Haibane Renmei! We’ve made it through another season of Throwback Thursday and you know what that means: Time to vote for the next one. Like always you can find the poll at the end of this post. In the meantime though lets talk about about depression WOO!

So as far as my immediate impressions of the ending go I have to say that I am… satisfied. It didn’t go exactly as I thought it would, I figured it would be more bittersweet. One where Reki forgives herself but it’s to late for her Day of Flight. Or perhaps Rakka postpones her own so that Reki won’t feel alone here anymore. What we got instead was still good though. I feel that with this Haibane Renmei wrapped up and concluded everything important it introduced. We still don’t know much about the Factory or the Renmei and some questions remain unanswered true. But the crux of Haibane Renmei was always Reki and Rakka, and that feels properly handled. Haibane Renmei even addressed my concern about help being the only way out by instead making it about accepting help. That you needed the desire to change rather than stagnation.

So yeah, it was good. Now what about Reki?

There is a lot to talk about Reki and I’m honestly not sure where to begin. So seeing as we skipped the visual portion I usually do, lets start with that: This episode is the best Haibane Renmei has looked across it’s entire run. Not just from an animation perspective, though the goopy train was legit, but in background and tone as well. Reki’s room looked and felt like the scrawlings of a madman and the wait on the reveal only heightened that. It did a great job of evoking the image of a prison, a nightmare, and reinforcing Reki’s dialogue throughout. It’s crazy that an episode that spent more than half of its time in a single room could create such varied scenes. But the tone always changed based on what part of the wall we were at, whether or not the window was visible, etc. Well done.

As for what these visuals tell us, quite a lot. For one I think this all but proves that the Haibane are people who committed suicide. And following that thread that means that the town of Glie, and the walls surrounding it, are their last chance. They are sent here to learn to love and forgive themselves, to get that understanding and comradery they couldn’t get in life. Whether they go to Heaven or just get reincarnated is largely irrelevant as it’s there stories here that matter. Of course this also adds a darker tint to every character in the series. From Kuu and Hikari to the soon-to-be-born twins in the Epilogue, what brought them here? What broke them in their old lives, what are they going through? It really makes you think about their situations and, in turn, the situations of those around you in real life.

Getting back to Reki, she calls into question almost our entire experience with Haibane Renmei. She tries to convince us that everything she has done has been self-serving. That she only ever treated Rakka and the others as she did to effectively “fake” her way into heaven. It’s an argument of “Good deeds vs good intentions”, this idea that if you don’t actually mean what you are doing then you don’t deserve entry into Heaven. Conversely there is also the argument that good intentions are irrelevant so long as you are doing good deeds. Now I’m not here to argue religion, I leave that to the people who actually care. But I do find it interesting that Haibane Renmei is trying to engage with this in some way. Putting out the question of “What makes a good person”.

How does this tie back to Reki? Simple: I believe her. I believe that she really did act this way to be a “Good Haibane”. Or at least… I believe that was how she started. But you can’t fake that kind of attitude for that long. You can’t keep up that kind of front for 7 years without being affected by it in some way. Without that changing who you are and bleeding into your personality just a little bit. And by allowing this to happen, by walking the path of the “Good” Haibane for so long despite not believing herself deserving of it, in the end that’s what she became. And Rakka’s role in all of this was to get that through to her. There was no grand gesture or “chosen one” cliché. Rakka was simply there for her and rather than save her, enabled Reki to save herself.

Lastly I want to take a moment to talk about the train because that was kinda sick. I was not expecting an actual magical train to come out of nowhere to run Reki over. It was just… so outside the realm of possibility for me that I was amazed. Like… what would happen if she got hit? Would she die? Am I just completely wrong on Haibane joining the Renmei or was this all some kind of metaphor? This question of “What would have happened next” is probably the one thing I wish Haibane Renmei had answered before it ended. Some closure on what exactly was at stake, beyond the obvious “You died”. Am I alone on that? Is there anything you, dear readers, wanted Haibane Renmei to answer that it didn’t? Let me know down below!

And with that it’s a wrap everyone! Thank you for joining me on this season. Down below you can find the poll for what we watch next, that will probably start on November 11th. In the meantime I need to write up the final Haibane Renmei review and that’s going to take some time. Hopefully I can get it out on time for next Thursday but we will see. I want to take my time here and make sure I get it right. See you then!