Category: 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?

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 13 [Reki’s World/Prayer/Epilogue] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to the penultimate episode of Haibane Renmei! Apologies for the wait on this one, I’ve been quite sick these past few days and didn’t get to write this early like I usually do. With my excuses out of the way lets dive into this weeks episode!

Starting off I think this was the first episode where I had a noticeable issue with Haibane Renmei’s visuals. Not across the board of course. The backgrounds are still nice and the colors, while largely washed out, still work to sell that almost ethereal nature of the Wall, halos and town. In fact I’m really only talking about one part in particular: Rakka’s face when she is talking to Midori. The way this shot is cut just… bothers me. Those 3 rapid frames as she reacts to Midori, the way it cuts between them is just… jarring. It took me completely out of the scene and the moment. I actually went back twice to see if I just blinked or something else went wrong. But no. Its just a really jarring scene. Is this a big deal? Not really but I had to complain about something before I gush.

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 12 [Bell Nuts/Passing of the Year Festival/Reconciliation] – Throwback Thursday” →

Hello everyone and welcome to a very late post about Haibane Renmei! I don’t really have an excuse. To be frank I thought this episode was rather dull. Why? Well lets jump in and find out!

So like I said, I found this episode rather dull. It was primarily setup on Rakka’s end, giving her a time limit as well as setting the stakes for what is to come. It also did some work setting the tone but overall I think Haibane Renmei has kept the tone pretty consistent throughout its run so it was a little unnecessary. Overall this episode didn’t really tell us anything new or reframe anything we had already been told. That’s fine I suppose, more of the same with Haibane Renmei is still a decent character piece. And it’s not like every episode has to be some grand reveal, that’s just an unreasonable expectation. But what I can say is that this episode is never going to be my, or anyone’s, favorite out of the season. I just doesn’t have anything to set it apart and give it that “favorite” spark.

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 11 [Parting/Darkness in the Heart/Irreplaceable Thing] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome all to a (late) episode of Haibane Renmei! This week is a bit slower compared to the last few but no less lighter. We got a lot of information dropped on us this week. So how about we jump right into it?

Compared to the last few episodes this week felt like setup rather than payoff. Like Haibane Renmei is gearing up for it’s final act. This isn’t a bad thing! Where the previous episodes gave us a lot of character growth and revelatory moments, Rakka in the well for example, this week is a lot more information focused. Answering a lot of questions I’ve had since the beginning of the series while asking a few more. But these new question’s aren’t really about the world at large, they aren’t meant to introduce new aspects or parts of the setting. Instead it feels like their purpose is to connect the dots. Pointing us towards the gaps in our knowledge, like the Renmei, the Haibane and the Sin-Bound, and promising to fill them in. So while there wasn’t a lot of forward progress this week I can clearly see the path being laid.

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 10 [Kuramori/Haibane of Abandoned Factory/Rakka’s Job] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to another week of Haibane Renmei! This is a rather uplifting episode compared to the last few, a sort of breathe of fresh air. Rakka has an eye opening conversation while Reki takes her place at the bottom of the metaphorical well. What do either of those things mean? Read on and find out!

Before we get into all the narrative mumbo jumbo though I want start with some praise for the music. I haven’t talked about it much until now because I wanted a larger sample size. But at this point I can comfortably say that Kou Ootani has made something special. There’s a specific style to Haibane Renmei’s sound, one that’s almost reverent, riding that line of feeling almost religious. Yet Kou Ootani manages to create music that is both happy and sad, quiet and adventurous, hopeful and resigned, all the while keeping the same Haibane Renmei style. My only complaint with it is that occasionally the sound mixing appears to be off. For instance in this episode there were a few scenes where the music, though good, overpowered the dialogue. I’m unsure how much of this is just BD remastering vs original audio problems but they exist regardless.

Now lets head into the break so we can talk spoilers!

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 9 [Water Well/Rebirth/Riddle] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to another episode of Haibane Renmei! This week’s episode is one of the more unique ones, though the solo title alone probably gives that away. Is this a good thing? Bad? Lets dive in and find out!

First up, what do I mean by unique? What makes this episode different from the rest and how does the title factor in? Doing my best to explain it, I think it has to do with the episodes focus. Previous episodes of Haibane Renmei seemed structured in three acts, acts that corresponded to the three titles. And each of these acts felt like the progressed the episodes story in some way. A clear beginning, middle and end so to speak. Yet this episode, with only one title, feels almost… stagnant. Like it’s one long act. One where the last episode introduced us to Rakka’s depression, this episode carried it through and fully explored it by giving it the time it needed, and next episode will begin to resolve it. Or maybe I’m just letting the singular title get to me and seeing differences where none exist. I liked it regardless.

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 8 [The Bird] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Haibane Renmei! This post accidentally got deleted so I had to rewrite it, so apologies for being slightly late. Last week was good but this one is even better. Rakka is figuring out her emotions, Reki is dropping lore and my emotions are being tugged all around. So without further ado lets dive in!

Right out of the gate I want to say that Haibane Renmei was really good this week. I was invested from beginning to end, hitting all the right spots. This was exactly what I was looking for. I loved how the episode didn’t try to speed-through anything. Rather, it kept the same slow pacing Haibane Renmei has always had but filled it with the material I’m really interested in. The episode focused on the aftermath of Kuu’s disappearance, not in a technical sense like I feared but an emotional sense. Giving us, and by extension the characters, time to process everything that happened and react while still moving everything forward. Using that time to show how they are different from each other and then explain those differences in ways that don’t just feel like info dumps. Which is great because Rakka had a lot going on this week.

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 7 [Scar/Illness/Arrival of Winter] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome all to the halfway point of Haibane Renmei! Or close enough to it at least since it’s thirteen episodes. We have a lot to cover this week and I’m running late so lets dive right into it!

Right off the bat I have to say that this was exactly what I wanted. Last week I said that I was afraid of Haibane Renmei becoming like every other SoL. That we would follow their daily lives but that nothing would meaningfully change and thus no one would grow. And as if in direct response, we got this episode next. This feels like a turning point, the exact kind of thing I asked for last week. An event that causes things to start to unravel. Where characters shift from reactive, like Rakka has learning about the world, to proactive, where she can start to search things out for herself. Now while I doubt that Rakka, and be extension Haibane Renmei, would be that overt about it I do expect things to change. And I’m very excited for that.

In the meantime though lets talk about why I like this episode.

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 6 [End of Summer/Rain/Loss] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Haibane Renmei! This week we are once again following a new character in Nemu. Is it any good? Was it as engaging as the last? Lets jump in and find out!

And what better place to start than the theme of the episode? Haibane Renmei is a very dense show, lots of religious symbolism and the like. Should make for a good jumping off point! The problem though is that Haibane Renmei covered so much that I’m not sure what the theme is. Is it about making mistakes and living with them, eventually learning to see they aren’t actually mistakes like in Nemu’s story? Is it a general creation myth about the town? Or maybe the whole thing is about the many paths life can take, I don’t know! What’s nice though is that Haibane Renmei doesn’t feel like its struggling with its messaging. This doesn’t feel like the shows fault, if that makes sense. Rather it has earned enough trust from me by now that its more likely I’m just not connecting with it.

So lets try to fix that, explore a few of these, and maybe piece it together along the way.

Continue reading “Haibane Renmei – 5 [Library/Abandoned Factory/Beginning of the World] – Throwback Thursday” →