Haibane Renmei

A girl falls from the sky. A crow swoops by to caw at her and tug the hem of her dress, as though trying to pull her back into the clouds. She shakes her head, but thanks the bird as it flies away. The winds shake her, and an expanse of town and countryside appears below. With a shriek, she’s torn from the view. So begins Haibane Renmei.

The girl awakens inside a large plantlike cocoon that fills a storeroom of an old and semi-dilapidated dormitory, just outside of the town she glimpsed before. Her chrysalis is soon found by the building’s residents, children and young women with halos above their heads and small, seemingly useless gray wings on their backs. Named for these ashen feathers, they are the Haibane, and the cocoon contains the newest of their family.

Despite the comforting aura of the aged building, aptly named Old Home, and warm introductions to her fellow Haibane, the girl is worried upon emerging. She lacks any memory of who she is or where she came from, remembering only her vision of falling. The other Haibane explain that this is normal, and that her dream suggests her new name: Rakka, for “fall.” In time, Rakka overcomes her trepidations and gets to know the rest of the Haibane, including pushy tomboy Kana, sedate librarian Nemu, perpetually pleasant sneak Hikari, and carefree runt Kuu.

Yet it’s a thoughtful, chain-smoking, raven-haired Haibane named Reki who grows closest to Rakka, helps her deal with the painful emergence of her wings (in a scene both gruesome and beautiful), and introduces her to her new life. Under the orders of masked monks known as the Haibane Renmei (or the “Charcoal Feather Federation”), the ash-winged Haibane are allowed only second-hand clothes, limited in the jobs they can take, and forbidden to possess any money. Most importantly of all, both the Haibane and the normal residents of the nearby town of Glie are barred from going beyond a massive wall that surrounds the town, Old Home, and the nearby hills. The only ones who cross this imposing boundary are a group of silent traders and, Rakka notes with interest, the birds.

Though Yoshitoshi ABe contributed character concepts and more to the marvelously postmodern Serial Experiments Lain and the laid-back comedy NieA_7, Haibane Renmei is the first series to be his from the start, as he not only created the doujinshi (an underground comic, in other words) upon which it was based, but also scripted all of the episodes and storyboarded most of them. For a presumed novice, ABe has done surprisingly well. He and director Tomokazu Tokoro choose a languid pace slightly reminiscent of Niea, yet Haibane Renmei proves more complicated, using clever lighting and brushed-aside comments to hint at darker elements beneath the pleasantness of Rakka’s day-to-day life. On its surface, though Haibane Renmei’s world is gorgeous. The backdrops of Old Home and the town of Glie are placid and comforting, with the nostalgic allure of some quaint corner of Europe, perhaps the same vicinity that Miyazaki visited in Kiki’s Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky.

It’s a scenario that ABe borrowed wholeheartedly from Haruki Murakami’s novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which spent half its time following an amnesiac narrator’s attempts to escape a laid-back pastoral purgatory. Haibane is more hopeful in its outlook, but it’s just as intriguing. The series slowly builds ominous tones in the world around Rakka and Reki, subtly revealing the harsh truth of the Haibane. And unlike other shows that focus on personal trauma, the story never strays too far. It’s cute without being saccharine. It’s subdued without leaving one lost in nuances. It’s simple without scraping banality. And when it reaches an emotional peak, it’s powerful without reeking of angst.

Haibane Renmei owes some of its pull to Ko Otani’s superb psuedo-classical soundtrack, and an ending theme, performed by Heart of Air, that fits perfectly. The voice acting is also impressive, and surprisingly equal in quality between the Japanese and English casts. Carrie Savage (Peppo in Gankutsuou) plays Rakka with a frailty and resolve equal to Ryo Hirohashi’s performance, Erika Weinstein handles Reki’s moods much like Junko Noda does, and only the most peripheral dub roles have awkward tones. While New Generation Pictures’ dub work didn’t impress me at first, this one seems their best yet.

Some might not warm to Haibane Renmei’s slow-burning storyline, since it offers little in the way of epic melodrama, rapid-fire violence, or giant robots. Yet that’s part of the charm, I think. By making a show with little regard for commercial appeal, ABe and Tokoro have created something of uncommon value. Haibane Renmei is often as vague as the mysteries it bears, but it’s no less a wonderful tale.

Alien Nine

Alien Nine’s cover is a lie. It presents smiling, nearly noseless girls skating through a gently-colored courtyard, leading one to mistake the four-part OVA within for something harmless and forgettable. Don’t be fooled. Alien Nine is much the opposite, a hybrid of the cute and the grotesque that rarely resembles an unchallenging schoolgirl melodrama. Anime often yields Trojan Horses, yet this one is downright malicious about it.

Aptly enough, Alien Nine’s near-future story begins with a cruel twist of elementary-school democracy, as meek sixth-grader Yuri Otani is elected an “alien fighter” by the rest of her class, not because she’s an ideal choice or eager for the task, but because no one else wanted the job. The poor girl is terrified, especially when she’s required to wear on her head an alien “borg,” which resembles a winged, toothy, and sentient tadpole. The other alien-hunting students don't encourage her; sunny overachiever Kasumi Tomine is too busy enjoying her duties to care about others, and the less enthusiastic Kumi Kawamura joined the club to avoid being bothered by classmates like Yuri.

Kasumi Tomine

Yuri Otani

Kumi Kawamura

As the girls rollerblade around the school grounds in search of aliens, it becomes clear that Yuri isn’t cut out for the task. The creatures infesting the hallways and playgrounds range from scuttling spider-crabs to headless bull-like monsters, yet Yuri invariably shrinks from any challenge, relying on Kumi or Kasumi to save her. Little help comes from the adults of Alien Nine, as teacher Megumi Hisakawa is uttery careless toward her students, Yuri’s mother is distant and her father unseen, and the school principal seems preoccupied with some greater threat that’s never quite specified. Only Yuri’s closest friend, Miyu, offers any support, and she’s unable to help Yuri confront her inadequacies.

Those inadequacies are brought up time and time again, conveyed through director Jiro Fujimoto’s smoothly animated clash of not-quite-lighthearted school events and darker moments. The confrontations with aliens have a sharp intensity, and other scenes, such as a shot of a naked Yuri cringing as her borg licks the sweat from her back, are harrowing in more subdued ways. This focus seems savagely realistic at first, but it gets a bit old as the series continues, as Yuri’s inevitable breakdowns have few repercussions. Why would someone so frail be allowed to continue as an alien fighter when she’s clearly endangering the lives of her teammates? And why does she have to cry like this?

And why is she drinking her own tears?

If this seems kitschy or disgusting, Alien Nine is not for you. If, on the other hand, you can look upon poor helpless Yuri and still find a shred of sympathy for her, there’s something of value within this series. I’m in the latter camp; I swiftly grew tired of Yuri’s whining, but I still rooted for her, even when she was sobbing with relief as Kumi and Kasumi came to her birthday party. Yes, she cries when she's happy. Alien Nine hates you.

Merciless as the tale is, it sticks with the basic instabilities of the three girls. The post-Evangelion era has led some to regard anything that’s psychologically brutal as deep, yet Alien Nine wastes too much time introducing the insecurities of its cast, seldom breaking past the innate fears of adolescence. The series, to my chagrin, covers only part of the storyline seen in Hitoshi Tomizawa’s unfinished manga series, and thus doesn’t allow the characters to grow as they should. In many respects, Alien Nine could be a truncated treatment of Evangelion’s themes, considering its level of cathartic trauma and its use of a main character unstable enough to make Shinji Ikari look like Patlabor’s unflappable Captain Goto. Yet with Sadayuki Murai handling the series structure, things are closer to the Murai-scripted Boogiepop Phantom. Alien Nine gives a similar look at young students struggling with anomie in the face of some larger, vaguer threat, while the borders of its reality are just as hazily defined.

This uncertainty lasts to the end of Alien Nine, where, instead of a solid conclusion, we’re left with the aftermath of a shocking attack and a glimpse of Yuri bawling her eyes out yet again. Still, it’s a fitting end to a series that irritates as often as it intrigues.

The soundtrack matches both the ugly and cute sides of Alien Nine, with a haunting ending theme and a bright, enthusiastic opener that sometimes sounds like the Monkees' "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You." As for the dub, it's a nice surprise. Central Park Media’s voice-work has often lagged behind the output of Bang! Zoom, the ADV studios, and others, yet Alien Nine fares well. Kelly Ray's take on Yuri has a fittingly fragile tone, and if she’s annoying, it’s only because of the character. (The same applies to her Japanese counterpart, Juri Ibata.) The only voices that truly bugged me were Kasumi’s, as Zoe Fries and Noriko Shitaya are too cutesy even for a go-getter schoolgirl, and Kasumi's habit of randomly squeaking “Nyah!” reminded me of nothing so much as annoying anime fangirls who make vaguely catlike noises because its just so kawaaaaaiiiiiii. One more oddity lies at the start of the series, where Yuri's vote-reading teacher has a woman's voice in the Japanese version, but a man's in the dub. A mistake, or commentary on Alien Nine's somewhat androgynous character designs?

Despite the excesses of Alien Nine, I'd really like to see more of it. The series repulsed me at times with its maudlin outbursts, aggravated me with its frequent lack of realistic consequences, and yet still kept me caring about Kumi, Kasumi, Yuri, and the plot twists that abused them. True to the vagaries of adolescence, Alien Nine is cruel and manipulative, but with a surprising story and an honest take on childhood's end, it’s well worth the trouble.