One thing that bugged me about Haibane Renmei is that in the second half of the story, we’re lead to believe that Reki lived a colorful existence during her earlier days. The eventual parting of her friends, mentors, and mentees must have added color to it all. Colors that we don’t see in this grey tale of overcoming depression.
What if? Wouldn’t it be cool if a spin-off based on this charming little idea existed?
Without the squids.
The thought of a story between little punk loner Reki, her better-to-do friend Nemu, and a potential romantic interest who runs a gang? That’s like 3 wholesome American teenage drama archetypes rolled up into one. Add the painter-teacher, and apply liberal gang violence and ghetto culture shock and we have …
Perhaps all the more this exercise taught me that sometimes it’s just better to keep it simple. Subtlety is not an American trait.
Today I read about another alternative: this one involving people rowing boats, and it just happens that Rakka rowed boats in the anime. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.
Sort of a real-life update: been hauling around computing hardware these past few days, so lacking updates due to that. Will probably continue to haul hardware in the next few days…
March 13th, 2007 at 8:31 am
You also have bad-girl/little-sister Midori there for the love-triangle trope and a Reki/Midori foil to the Nemu/Reki relationship.
The only problem I see with the idea is that it doesn’t stand on its own: Reki’s underlying feelings of abandonment don’t get resolved until the end of the Rakka story. That is, the Reki story is unresolved in a tale about her Old Factory days.
The slice-of-life alternative Haibane Renmei is, sort-of, a continuation of the episodes preceding Kuu’s Day of Flight: Rakka exploring her curious world.
March 13th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
That is what I presumed as well. In a progressing anime series, it comes together in the classic train wreck format (that Haibane Renmei itself adhere to). It only takes 5-6 episodes to put that cap on the series; the rest of the time you can Neo your Venezia all you want.