アニ・ノート

Otou reports on the greatest anime series ever.

One of the unexpected turns (if not quite a twist) is like Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’s most masterful one: it turns out the series isn’t actually about who you think it’s about. Well… it is and it isn’t.

No need to be so cagey about it: the Hero+Narrator structure of Haibane was discussed freely by bloggers ([1,2]). It’s not a new approach to storytelling: A.S.Pushkin employed it in The Captain’s Daughter back in 1836, for example. ABe just applied it masterfuly. I don’t know if he pioneered it in anime.

Someone asked John if Haibane Renmei — as we know, the greatest anime series ever produced — is likely to be re-licensed in America. For a simple “no“, his answer went on at an unnecessary length and on tangents. Some of it was even a bit… strange.

Abe ostensibly took a hiatus from anime following Haibane Renmei and a lot of his recognition, especially among American fans, expired over time. In fact, all four anime series that Yoshitoshi Abe has been involved with have been out of print on American DVD for at least the past two years, and in practical terms, much longer. In effect, a lot of today’s American anime fans aren’t especially familiar with either Haibane Renmei nor the work of Yoshitoshi Abe.

The expiration effect is there, but is the lack of DVDs important? Or at least, as important as it used to be? Remember, we hear whining about piracy destroying DVDs all the time. Rips and fansubs are out there for anyone who cares. And in fact, people do watch them (Choux is going it right now).

The other funny thing is, licensing is not only about DVDs and TV broadcast anymore. Crunchyroll now shows Eirin and Glass Mask for crying out loud. Would would prevent, say, Hulu to show Haibane Renmei? Only money. And you know, Hulu already shows Honey and Clover.

I reckon there’s more to the topic than John considered in his answer.

Instead of a Christmas tree, Russians erect a New Year one. Presents are under it all the same. Just in time for the gift season, an R5 company Reanimedia.ru published a box set of Haibane Renmei. Looks like a quality release, I’m thinking to get it, if I can understand the bizarre Internet payment methods they use. For the curious, there’s an unboxing post at valkorn.LJ with pictures. Check out the booklet in particular.

I’m envious because she can express her thoughts with a picture.

BTW, she started watching it back in October (via). Hurray for persistence.

Another “geriatric animeblogger” of Meenuvia hatched today with a review of Haibane Renmei. He says “[...] the plot amazingly well constructed, it also has some of the best character development I’ve ever seen in any work of fiction. // Furthermore, it has a brilliant tension arc” — meaning the way the story builds to its conclusion. It was said that HR is not a good thing to watch when discovering anime, because from now on nothing will measure up to it. Here is a test case (insert the Palpatine’s quote about watching with great interest).

Today, USPS made me to pick up a box with the R5 release of Haibane Renmei by Reanimedia.

The box was far too big for a DVD set, because it contained a poster.

To the box set and the poster, Reanimedia added a stack of mini-calendars for anime they released. The girl with a mop is DieBuster 2. Yes, I’m still confused.

The real treasure is the fabulous booklet. Althogh it largely repeats the contents of booklets in the Pioneer release, Reanimedia had to make the format bigger and create a new layout from scratch, because Russian is a verbose language.

BTW, I’m not bothered by the two first DVDs sharing a spindle. There were not any scratches.

The aforementioned poster goes up immediately to improve my humble abode.

Now, for the contents. The infamous DVD menu is… pretty nice.

The rest is… very strange. I like the voices (except Nemu — phoned in by Yekaterina Toborovets). Reki (Veronika Raytsiz) and Rakka (Marina Yur’eva) are just about perfect. And it is quite tickling to hear their ideomatic expressions. For example, Reki opens with “вот это да… ничего себе…” for the “こりゃ、たいへんだ” of the original. Priceless.

Finally, it took me about 5 minutes to see something weird: a subtitle that says “младокрылам”, which, as far as I know, is not a valid conjugation of anything. It should probably be “младокрыльям” or “младокрылым”. But hey… I can watch it raw anyway.

Or I would, except that the v.1 DVD produces rather severe vibrations in my player. It’s out of balance. And I failed to find any home remedies for it. Reanimedia is actually quite good with replacements, and from postings on their forum I gather that the first print had its share of issues, but I don’t want to go there. I mostly bought the box for the goodies anyway, and DVD vibrations can easily be worked around with a visit to Boxtorrents (Bakabt).

UPDATE: The vibrations appear to be caused by the software making the drive to spin too fast. I just checked the last volume, it’s better balanced, but the motor sounds from the drive are just as bad.

UPDATE 2: Discs provide a hint about the licensing regime: they carry a logo of Geneon-Universal (with a globe and “Universal”).

DiGi threw off a remark:

I’ve not recently watched anything specific in the way of anime where the main character has found themselves somewhat usurped in terms of position, though I’m sure such things exist.

Do they? Haibane Renmei contains a masterful misdirection in this regard and I very much enjoy telling neophytes that Reki is actually the main character. Some of them continue to disagree until the last episode, and then have an epiphany. But that’s different, because it’s fully premeditated by ABe. So, what about the usurption?

In some cases, fans have just enough material to form such view. I met several people that maintained that the whole DBZ is about Vegeta (Fajita), and everyone else — even Gohan and Goku — served as props in his story. That’s probably as far as creators ever allow it to go.

UPDATE: Steven adds a few examples, but I am not familiar with them.