Warning: another ad-hominem coming up:
lordcloudx wrote:If it wants get you thinking, it definitely needs stronger and more explicit hints like in Kinou's Journey.
In other words: "I didn't understand it, thus it sucks."
Okay, a little interpretation here, spoilers for those who didn't see Haibane Renmei and still want to:
Haibane Renmei is a little unfair to its viewers because you are intentionally kept in the dark about the nature of the Haibane until the final episode. Then you find out that the dreams they have in their cocoons are a reflection of the way they died when they killed themselves. This is revealed when one of the Haibane realizes that her dream in which two eyes approach her from the dark comes from her jumping in front of a train (and seeing the train's headlights as the last things in her life). This makes you suddenly realize that it's the same for ALL the Haibane: The protagonist dreams of falling, so she jumped to her death, another girl dreamt of herself sleeping, because she killed herself with sleeping pills, and so on. All the other motifs of the series suddenly make sense, and you realize that the Haibane probably live in the most tender, most caring Purgatory ever. Their sin (taking their own lives) is considered with so much sympathy that even Purgatory doesn't really punish them. I think that's possibly the most beautiful interpretation of afterlife ever.
I don't think this was too difficult to figure out, it's only that Haibane Renmei doesn't reveal it until the very last episode. And it's good that it doesn't as all the impact would be gone if you knew beforehand what it was about.
BTT: another god-awful anime was M.D. Geist. Ultraviolence with crappy animation and without the
hint of a story just doesn't cut it.
Scriptwriter and producer of Metropolitan Blues
Creator of The Loyal Kinsman
Scriptwriter and director of Daemonophilia
Scriptwriter of
Zenith Chronicles
Scriptwriter and director of
Romance is DeadScriptwriter and producer of Adrift
More about me in my blog"Adrift - Like Ever17, but without the Deus Ex Machina" - HigurashiKira