Haibane-Renmei (2002)
is a 13-episode anime based on Yoshitoshi ABe's comic series "The Haibanes of Old Home." A collection of seemingly-teenage girls have died, unknown to each other, waiting in a kind of way-station, a protected city called Glie, somewhere between earth and heaven. Our main protagonist Rakka ("falling") is at first terrified of the light and the pale clarity -- a beauty that is something constant and star-like. Clouds fly fast overhead; and sharp and isolated come drops of rain. As it rises, the sun has a lovely strong winey warmth, golden over Glie, filled with the soft wind when the spirits of the dead fail, to make us feel their hurt. Space, and the frail vibration of space; the glad lonely wringing of the heart.
She turns. The past fades from consciousness. There are wisps of gleaming light ~ out on the streets, free from all the hemmed-in life ~ the horror of human tension, the insanity of machine persistence. And the long-drawn-out agony of life among tense, resistant people. All gone. And Glie has old stone so sound, so beautiful: rustless, as flesh is rustless, and happy-seeming as aluminum can never be. Rakka finds the Haibane lit up with love, and grief, and a ravage of sorrow -- angels for whom life is real only through feeling, who shine in all the glory of their love for each other: "I wanted to be with you much longer."
Episode 1 - "Dreams of Falling from the Sky"
