It's certainly a mark of a good show when the atmosphere alone is enough to build the world and tell the story, with the camera simply capturing everything as it happens to be. To me one of the most profound types of atmosphere is that of emptiness, of absolute quiet and stillness, whether it be unsettling or completely at ease. There are few shows that have commanded this calming atmosphere like Haibane Renmei, but perhaps this is to be expected from the same team that produced both the uncomfortably silent Serial Experiments Lain and the perfectly stagnant Texhnolyze. In fact all my criticisms of Haibane Renmei stem from the moments where it tried to be too alive, too dynamic and moving. We begin with a portrait of a village surrounded by walls we will never see beyond, and within it a quiet school atop a solitary hill. A subtle soundtrack and glowing orange palate, combined with an utter lack of movement, tell us that this setting has been frozen in time for a long time, and never in the show does it truly begin to move.
In the school lives a small group of girls with halos and charcoal-grey wings named Haibane, who apart from working in the town during the daytime live a solitary existence together. There are so many rooms in the school that they only notice a giant cocoon spontaneously appearing in one of them due to a routine cleaning check. The cocoon hatches a young girl, who is given her own halo, forged in a circular mold, as well as growing out her wings in an unsettlingly beautiful display of blood and feathers erupting from her back. In the cocoon she dreamt of falling from the sky, and thus is given the name “Rakka”, meaning “falling”. She slowly recovers from her birth and follows the other girls to their jobs to find a way to work for the town, a requirement of all Haibane as dictated by tradition. The human townsfolk treat her well, barely acknowledging the fact that she is so clearly different from them.
Aside from the natural image of purgatory that springs to mind with angel-like people being born without memories into a stagnant world cut off from the outside, Haibane Renmei tells much but answers almost nothing. The Haibane will never discover what previous life they may have led, why they were chosen to become Haibane, and what their new life means. They are regulated by a strict set of customs, such as having to work in the town without pay and never being allowed to touch the walls surrounding the town. One day they will go to the woods in the west and go over the walls to never be seen again, but no one knows when until the day comes, and they go without saying a word. There are parables of sin and forgiveness, of reliance, and manifestations for their inner turmoil and dreams. Everything is attributed to tradition or the natural way of Haibane, and though they all question these irregularities at times, they ultimately never rise past posing these questions rhetorically before they settle back into their daily lives, living comfortable and fulfilling lives within the paradigm they exist in.
After one of the Haibane departs in the middle of the night, Rakka finds herself in a depression over the “loss” of her friend, and unfortunately the show shifts to more melodramatic overtones to force the importance of her feelings on us, ironically causing the show to drag by finally giving a central conflict. She meets other Haibane who are ultimately tangential to the characters we follow, and she goes through a slightly contrived process of finding her way back to inner peace, albeit complicating the show’s notion of redemption and sin. She commits the tangible sin of touching the walls and begins to fall cold and nonfunctional, but her wings also turn black as a symbol of having committed some other fundamental sin, possibly related to the raven that appeared in her cocoon dream. Ravens are the one creature that fly freely between the town and the world outside the walls, but frankly this image of freedom seems a bit stale as a symbol, and thus the majority of Rakka’s personal growth ultimately falls rather flat. Additionally this story makes up at least half the show, which can make the time leading up to the ending feel like a slog.
What redeems this is the final episodes that revolve around the elder Haibane Reki, who originally finds Rakka in the cocoon and guides her through her new life. “Reki” means “small stone”, as her dream involved walking along a path of small stones, but she can’t remember more than the stones on the path, and for that she suffers a greater punishment than Rakka or any of the other Haibane who consciously commit a tangible sin. We see her as a kindhearted and caring teacher who is excited to see Rakka grow and find her way in the world, but she refuses to accept the kindness or help of others, despite being more lost than the newcomers she so selflessly guides.
She also paints, and many of the images we see are striking watercolors of people and places within the world. Near the end she takes a can of black paint into a dark room and locks the door, and much later we finally see the room she has painted. It is terrifyingly black and grim, filled with desolate imagery rendered with her erratic brushstrokes being very noticeable, and so the image of her inner struggle comes to life and unseats the tranquil image we have built of the world and of Reki the whole show. Ending on her story cements the show’s focus on a human narrative, expressing unease within the utopia inside the walls.
Contributing to this image are the art and the music, both simple and minimalist, but while the art is inviting and soothing, the music is subtle, poignant, and occasionally slightly uneasy. The visual design and slow pace are reminiscent of Aria, but with a duller palate focusing on the orange of sunset and light greys of the wing rather than the while and aqua colors of Aria I would consider Haibane Renmei the more relaxing and comforting of the two. Undercutting this image is the music, which generally assists in this image but also employs both copious silence and an occasional minor chord to push this simple image to the extreme, and occasionally it reaches a discomforting level of stagnation, as if this paradise protected from the outside by walls is also a prison with the walls keeping them in. These moments are immediately counterbalanced by moments of simple joy and relaxation, and so the dominant image the show presents is certainly soothing, but whenever I think back to that small town in the walls, the nostalgia of a quiet world comes with a doubt at the back of my mind.
Apparently the goal of Haibane Renmei was to create a comforting world and tell a good story of the characters who live there, without meaning to force a particular religious or spiritual message through its imagery. I would believe it. This world could certainly be purgatory, but it would do nothing to affect how the Haibane live their lives. The moments that stand out are ones of simple human life, like using the halo mold to make donut-shaped cakes or fixing a clock tower out of sheer curiosity. Emotions get pretty heavy-handed as character exposition comes to the center, but even so they are handled more realistically and tactfully than most works, using evocative imagery and silence to make even the more common character exposition tropes of solitude and redemption feel alive. This would imply that the world is cleverly constructed to make the characters’ stories work, but watching Haibane Renmei for the second time I am convinced the characters exist to pull us deeper into the world. Even further, I would claim that the world exists as a vehicle for the masterpiece that is the atmosphere, for if the characters pose a role model to follow and the world is a place for us to escape to in our minds, then the atmosphere is the emotions that draw us into that world, make us follow those characters, and it is what stays with us when we inevitably return to the quiet normal lives of our own.