Review of Haibane Renmei

This show is very interesting if you have the patience and attention span to go through it from beginning to end. warning, if you like Akira (Special Edition) (yuck) Ninja Scroll (yuck) or any of those super action sex filled movies and shows that have someone dieing every two minutes, you might as well skip this show as no one dies, no one gets their arms cut off, and there are no explosions during the entire 13 episode series, which is just fine with me but may turn the more superficial anime fans off. the story is mostly about a young Haibane (pronounced Hi-ba-nA) named Rakkawho is a new born Haibane who is trying to figure out her place in the world she lives in. the Haibane are an angelic race with seeming less useless wings and halos that hover over their heads making look like biblical angles, but other than appearances, these creatures have almost nothing in common with the angelic being of the bible; instead they act and look just like normal human beings just with a different set of rules and pasts. Nobody really knows what they are, or where they came from, but each has an uneasy feeling that they don't belong, that they came from somewhere else before becoming Haibane. This sense of unease is what drives Rakka for most of the beginning of the series. She tries very hard to figure out who she was, where she came from, and why she is now a Haibane. Sadly, the answers never come to her, but we are given some rather depressing hints on what she was before.

So what is this series about really? What is the plot? Well, that's a little hard to explain. Its not so much what this story is about, it's who it is about. The plot is almost none existent in the first half of the series, and even when it gets more involved it's not really that interesting. No, the plot is not what makes this story good in any way, it's the characters. Each character is very likable and sympathetic. There is no "bad guy" in this series, and there are no "heroes" either. Each character here is a person, with a unique personality and view on life. Each has their own quirks, fears, likes and dislikes. Each is as real as a fictional character can be, and I applauded the writers of this show for achieving this. The depression Rakka goes through half way though the series when she looses her friend is very real, as well as Reki's fear and loneness at the end. They are so real that when they went though pain of any kind, no matter how much or how little, I felt my heart break for them. I felt pain when Rakka's wings burst though her back, I felt sad when a character left, I felt lonely when one of the characters was alone, afraid when they were afraid. So in short, this story isn't really about anything in particular, it's about people. The begining of the series is mostly just a set up, but trust me, once Rakka's wings start turning black, it gets very dramatic.

The animation reminded me a lot of Full Mettle Alcamist and Serial Experiments Lain - Boxed Set (Signature Series). I've never seen a lot of Alcamist, but the backgrounds are very similar, and there is a striking resemblance between Lain from Serial Experiments Lain, and Rakka from this series. Both look young, alone, innocent. The character designs are a notch above average. They aren't eye candy but they do go above a lot of amines I've seen before, and no two characters look alike which makes remember their names a lot easier. The backgrounds are really the eye candy here. It's simply beautiful. I've always love scenery shots of green meadows, or large forests, or a windmill rotating in a gentle breeze. This show is chuck full of such shots. Once again, if you're looking for large cities and fancy sci fi machines, look elsewhere, this show isn't for you. You'd probably just end up being board.

However, it isn't' perfect. There are some things that really got on my nerves. The first thing is that there aren't any male leads. There aren't any dudes in this series. The biggest male role in this whole series doesn't show up until half way though the series and play a lack luster role at that. He shows up on screen at most ten times in thirteen episodes, and even then most of the time he's there for a whopping 1 to 3 minutes. As much as I love female anime characters, there needs to be a guy playing a main role in there somewhere just to get a little bit of a different perspective. They try to make up for this by making two of the girls tomboys, but I'm sorry, tomboys, although cool, do not count as guys. One of these tomboys, Kuu, only dresses like a boy but acts like any other girl. The other, Kana, I actually mistook for a boy at first because she acted so much like a boy her age would, but sadly she turned out to be a girl after all. All I'm asking for is to have a male lead here, instead of just a bunch of girls. Is that so bad? this series could have very easily tuned into just another chick flick, but managed to stray away from that by refusing to be a romance (thank god for that).

The dub may not be the best dub in the world, certainly not up to par with Lain or Kino's Journey - The Idle Adventurer (Vol. 1), but it is passable for the most part. There were times when Rakka's super (and I do mean super) soft voice just annoyed the hell out of me, but most of the time I didn't really notice. The other characters voices were good, especially Kana's, who stole the show with her constant attack on the crows that scavenged though their trash. As for the dialog, the middle part of the series had some really cheesy moments, but only a few, but they were pretty bad. Other than that, it was mostly real and believable.

This show isn't about action and it isn't sci fi. It's a character drama. Its really hard to compare it to other anime when the only other hard character drama's I've seen are Now and Then, Here and There (Complete Collector's Boxed Set) and Grave of the Fireflies (Collector's Edition), and this series has none of the horridness situations, nor the anti war themes of those two anime's. If I had to compare it to something, I'd say it has more in common with Miyazaki's Spirited Away than anything else but it's really different at the same time.

So, if you are looking for a drama with characters you can love and sympathize with and don't mind a slower pace and lack of action, by all means, pick this baby up and enjoy. but, and I've given you people fare warning, if you are an action junky who needs someone killed or something blowing up every ten minutes just to keep you watching, SKIP THIS SERIES!! I guarantee you, you will not like it. To truly enjoy this series, you have to be able to pay attention to the characters and their emotions because when it comes right down to this, this series is all about them, not you.

Replay value; high.