Things that come to mind 3 - Haibane Renmei (2002)

“Things that come to mind” is a series of blog entries that I will be writing on stream of consciousness. Each of these entries will be given a duration of 24 hours to write and edit.

Spoilers to Haibane Renmei are included.

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From the Haibane Renmei Anime Artbook. The Haibane of Old Home.

This past week has been awfully rough on me, and I decided to retreat back into just binge-watching any single thing that came to mind which I felt like it would heal me in the moment. My mental health wasn’t as bad as it was, compared to October-December 2021, where I was just at a standstill with so many things and was completely anhedonic. I wasn’t able to eat properly, or feel in touch with my emotions. Feeling like I was battling between life and death in combination with forgetting to take medication that would guarantee that I will be alive in the next 24 hours, I was mainly in a mode of retreat and I’m still trying to come back down to society.

Fast forward through some gruesome details to January 2022. So in a bout of stupidity and indecisiveness, I was debating on whether I should sit down and collect my thoughts to write about Flip Flappers, Cleo from 5 to 7, or Haibane Renmei. This entry will be about Haibane Renmei (Charcoal Feather Federation), an anime based on concepts from Yoshitoshi ABe, of Serial Experiments Lain fame.

Haibane Renmei (anime released in 2002) started off as a doujinshi project from Yoshitoshi ABe, and was, I believe, had a proper release in 2003 as “The Haibane of Old Home”.

This time it’s a book about angels. I started off with nothing more than a simple notion of increasing the variety of girls I draw. As a result they give off the impression of being bungling, rather un-angelic creatures: to go along with that theme, their wings are gray as well. Naturally, they do not possess any strange powers. And no, they can’t fly. They aren’t of any help to others, and they don’t do the world any great services either. What a letdown. But personally I feel that what makes them attractive. What do you think? _{Translation adapted from Dynasty Scans}

The 24-pager is rather succinct and exists no more than as a reference document. In a funny parallel and true to ABe’s opening words, the angels, or, haibane (charcoal feather), are also humanoid versions of this “as-is”-ism in regards to its translated writing style.

Haibane Renmei is an anime that chronicles and explores what a haibane is, and their origins. The anime opens up with the birth of a haibane named Rakka, who dreams of falling through the sky. Although always clumsy and disheveled, Rakka is a fast learner and has an acute curiosity of the world she is born in.

A haibane is ‘born’ in a cocoon. Prior to birth, all haibane dream, and are named after the dream that they have received in the cocoon. Once born, all haibane have command of language, a developed personality, and a knowledge of social customs appropriate to their appearance of human age. Haibane are ordained a halo, and sprout wings from their backs a day or so after their birth.

Haibane Renmei Episode 1.

Haibane are born within and live within the outskirts of a walled city named Glie. Glie also has human residents, and much like haibane, their lives are also limited within the city’s limits. Glie is looked after by the Haibane Renmei, or the Charcoal Feather Federation, who ensures the safety of both human and haibane within the walls. Within the Haibane Renmei, there are authority figures called the Toga, whom are amongst the only ones who can correspond with the outside world.

A map of Glie.

All Souls’ Picture - Paul Klee (1921).¹

Rules are imposed on the residents of Glie, and especially the haibane.

We follow Rakka’s journey in exploring what it means to be a haibane, and their culture and customs. Haibane live within the outskirts of Glie, isolated from the human population, in two residencies: Old Home and the Abandoned Factory. The haibane are limited to owning pre-owned or second-hand goods, and are forbidden from handling currency. However, they are required to work to earn money for everyday purchases, via recorded transactions in a ledger book administered by the Haibane Renmei. Haibane are considered “lucky charms”, and in the presence of one, humans in Glie expect haibane to spread joy and wellbeing.

I rewatch Haibane Renmei every year because it brings me an odd sort of comfort. It has this eerie quality where it adjusts to my mood each time I watch it. In its design, Haibane Renmei is an anime where empathy is the intention. From the start, you (the viewer), much like Rakka, are ushered into a strange but familiar world, complete with your own set of knowledge. However, how you progress from there is a totally different story.

In this viewing of Haibane Renmei, I thought a lot about angels. But especially about Paul Klee’s angels. Around the 1940s, Paul Klee drew and painted a ton of angels, giving them names like “Forgetful”, “It is crying”, “Ugly”, “Incomplete”, and “Poor”.² Much like ABe’s ‘angels’, Klee’s angels operate on their own logic and metaphysics, and are often seen as a reflection of Klee himself. Klee angels are often depicted in solitude, full of complex emotions situated in time. These angels were painted in the last years of Klee’s life, and were full of spiritual questions unique to Klee.

An assortment of Paul Klee’s angels.

_{From left-right order: In mission, 1939; Forgetful angel, 1939; Under great custody, 1939; It weeps, 1939; Doubting angel, 1940; She is sinking back into her grave!, 1926; In the afternoon of angelhood, 1939; Archangel, 1938; Vigilant Angel, 1939; Angel of the Old Testament, 1939; Angel, still female, 1939³}

Although Klee’s most famous angel, Angelus Novus (1920) was painted a good time before his passing, the angel depicted also tackles such philosophical questions. What are its wings? Where is it suspended? The Angelus Novus has its own inadequacies, which I’ll just conveniently copy and paste what the painting’s first owner has to say about it.

Angelus Novus - Paul Klee (1920).

“His wings are grand but inadequate, and he seems trapped between forward and backward motion” — Walter Benjamin

_{My wing is ready to fly/I would rather turn back/For had I stayed mortal time/I would have had little luck. — Gerhard Scholem, “Angelic Greetings” There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed[…]⁴}

The haibane are strongly advised to not travel beyond the borders of Glie, as the walls can physically and mentally harm them. However, there is one instance where an inhabitant of Glie can travel beyond the walls. At random, a haibane’s “day of flight” can occur, where they are to leave the Glie and never come back. These chosen haibane are not allowed to inform anyone of their departure, and it remains unclear as to what lies beyond the borders of Glie.

There are two tellings of how the day of flight commences in the anime. The first instance is with Kuu, a haibane resembling a pre-teen girl in appearance. Kuu’s departure leaves Rakka in a great depression. It is startling and sudden. The day of flight equates to a disappearance that leaves belongings that have not yet been allocated for inheritance, or, an untimely death.

Walking Quickly Under The Rain - Alberto Giacometti (1948).⁵

As a haibane’s wings are defunct, haibane semantically receive the gift of flight through a spiritual transformation. As a being that is born walking (forward), haibane have to undergo a psychological trial that corresponds to their respective cocoon dream to gain the criteria for their “day of flight”. These cocoon dreams of the haibane lie at the center of each trial, and ultimately define their purpose for being in the world. In confronting these dreams, it can be interpreted that these are visions of a haibane’s past. In this sense, haibane are angels that are not suspended in air, they are suspended in time. Glie is a transit station between one stage of life to the next.

Following Kuu, the viewer tags alongside Rakka to witness Reki’s, an older haibane’s journey towards her day of flight. Compared to Kuu’s, Reki’s journey is more linked towards conventional spirituality. It is revealed that in Reki’s birth as a haibane, Reki’s sprouted feathers were not charcoal, but were black in color. In Glie, this small cosmetic variance is considered an imperfection. Haibane who are born with (or develop) black wings are ‘sin-bound’, these haibane are often plagued with negative thoughts, resulting from their cocoon dream. These sin-bound haibanes are constantly reminded of feelings from their lives before they were haibane, and carry stressful burdens as their day of flight does not come as easy compared to other haibane. However, there lies hope for those sin-bound: the audience and both Reki and Rakka learn that the Haibane Renmei exist as pillars of support for all haibane, especially those sin-bound, in order to progress on to their day of flight.

Haibane Renmei Episode 07. Rakka’s sinbound wings.

As the series’ focal point of reference of what a traditional sin-bound haibane is, Reki, meaning small stone, has difficulties in remembering her dream. In attempts of recollection, Reki constantly paints in order to salvage what her cocoon dream is. The fact that she cannot remember her dream is directly tied to the fact that she is sin-bound. In this vein, it is in Reki’s instinct to figure out the meaning of her existence. Why am I plagued with such dreams? How can I find meaning from it? She has been given a question from the start, and in realizing what her cocoon dream is, she can head towards a day of flight.

Haibane Renmei Episode 07. Reki attempts to recall her dreams.

In an attempt to understand what this means, a member of the Toga tells Rakka of a riddle called the Circle of Sin, where “one who recognizes their own sin has no sin”.

“Oh, if I think I have no sin, then do I become a sinner?” “Perhaps that is what it means to be bound by sin. To keep going around in the same circle looking to find where the sin lies… and at some point losing the sight of the way out.” — Haibane Renmei Episode 09.

Haibane Renmei Episode 13. A simple stone that doesn’t feel pain or sorrow.

In this St. Augustine mode of moral quandary, ridding oneself of “sin” in preparation for the day of flight is compulsory for the sin-bound haibane. It is unclear what is meant by the idea of sin, but to my interpretation, there’s components of guilt coupled with fear of the unknown. Both Rakka’s and Reki’s dreams are awfully obtuse (even though that they’re the only two dreams that are actually retold throughout the series), and it is understandable that trying to sift any meaning or clarity from it will cause existentialist thoughts.

Haibane Renmei Episode 13. Reki in her dream.

Haibane Renmei Art Book. Reki’s painting of her dream.

Both Rakka and Reki are caught in this Circle of Sin in different ways. Rakka is called out towards the forest of Glie so she can mourn a crow that she has been previously connected to in a past life. Reki is left chasing for an ideal vision, and is clumsy in trying to find further meaning in the world to her.

_{1 Red Balloon, 1922⁶; 2 Der Luftballon, 1926⁷; 3 Ad Marginem, 1930⁸; 4 Limits of Reason, 1927⁹}

Back to the thought that Haibane Renmei aims for relation and empathy with the viewer: Haibane Renmei’s delivery also serves as a site for projecting something more towards the audience. An object in Reki’s dream bears striking resemblance to a few of Paul Klee’s paintings which depict a red orb in the sky — some of them balloons, and some of unknown spheres. It’s interesting enough that Klee’s works have to do with working with limits, similar to the ordeals that our haibane face. As painting is a static medium, the orbs-as-balloons are left suspended in air, in motion, over two distinct townscapes. Throughout the years as Klee’s career progresses, the orb graduates into something more — something Ad Marginem, or, on the edge. We are unsure of what this sphere is now. It’s on the edge of becoming, and it already has its line of flight. The sphere in Ad Marginem is situated in water, land, and sky. There’s fish, there’s a bird, there’s plants and structures, and there are a few eyes to witness the action. If we turn away from the earth and gaze up, we are brought to the Limits of Reason, where there is a pathway given to the viewer to get to the red sphere in the middle itself. The once unattainable object in our view is up for grasp, and is ours to comprehend. There’s something in me that is linking up the banality of Klee’s angels to the Limit of Reason, but with the visual clues that Klee has given us, it’s a way of Klee letting us know that he has given himself permission to face what is to come next.¹⁰

But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.¹¹

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1. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/484874↩︎

2. “Klee’s Array of Angels”, Gert Schiff, published in Artforum 1987. You can read the article on the net here: https://www.artforum.com/print/198705/klee-s-array-of-angels-34861↩︎

3. “Klee’s Array of Angels”, Gert Schiff, published in Artforum 1987. You can read the article on the net here: https://www.artforum.com/print/198705/klee-s-array-of-angels-34861↩︎

4. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm↩︎

5. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/81710↩︎

6. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/2143↩︎

7. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:’Der_Luftballon’_by_Paul_Klee,_1926.jpg↩︎

8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_of_Reason_(Paul_Klee)↩︎

9. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/paul-klee-ad-marginem-to-the-brim↩︎

10. The critic René Crevel wrote this in 1929 in response to Klee’s Ad Marginem: “I have met the animals of the soul, the birds of intelligence, fish from the heart, and the plants of dreams […] tiny creature with boundless eyes, sea-weed free of any rock hello-to-you and thank-you beings, vegetation, ant things who cannot live in the world we know, by who nevertheless seem more stable and real in you surreal intangibility than our houses, gas burner cafes and banal loves.” It’s also funny that Crevel refers to Klee as a dreamer.↩︎

11. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/484874↩︎

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