It’s time to put this gross love-child of jam bands and pot-head philosphy majors to bed, to bed I say!  Beneath the cut, live-updated, lies the twitter-blog for the final two episodes of Haibane Renmei.  You should feel pretty special, I have to write a response to The Demolished Man for class tomorrow, but I’m doing this instead (eh, it’s all going to be panoptic eyes and ruminations on philosopher-kings, I’ll be fine).

EDIT: live-updating has ended.  It is now complete, or as close to that state as I’m likely to get it.

Episode twelve:

Terrible OP continues terrible.

Oh, did anyone notice the Maria Holic OP and ED albums released?  I haven’t gotten to chck them out yet, because of this albatross around my neck.

We are angels.  Everyone quakes when we walk down the street, yo.

Were those cuts strictly necessary?

Sometimes this show feels like a very serious child that happens to have ADD.

Mm, true names.

This part where they’re passing out the rattles is genuinely sweet.

this color-coding thing would work better if we knew what they meant already.  The fireworks, for example, are just blank until Midori explains them.

Uh, okay?  Ending, hello?  The episode does need to end, not just pan up.  I cite Kyon.

Break:

Uh… I dunno?  I should probably say something here, but I have no idea what.

Episode thirteen:

Sleepover woo!

@Pontifus:  Yeah, the music is good in the OP; what I dislike is the animation.  It tries too hard to do too many things, to be epic symbolic, and to show off the wacky hijinks.  It doesn’t do either too well.  I’d be interested in the vocal version as well, now.

Oh my god she made fire!  She’s a witch, a witch!

Human…  no, wait.  HAIBANE INSTRUMENTALITY IS A GO!

So is that Phantom Ganon in that painting?

Convenient wind, enter stage left.

Rakka, to do this properly you’ll need to learn how to move puppets with your mind.  Also, be obsessed with food.

End:

Well, that’s it.  A train came out of a wall, but the power of socially-acceptable-and-not-at-all-wrong-love saved the day, like it always does.

My final impression of the show, coming off the last few episodes, is relatively good — however, everything I’ve said about it stands.  A series of any kind can’t just dawdle around and rely on the end.  Almost none of the drama that ends the series affects the beginning — in effect, the end had to retcon the beginning to function.

There’s an idea called “frontloading” that one often hears in creative writing courses.  It’s putting a lot of information in a story up front, usually in an instinctive attempt to keep the reader from getting lost or to show off the interesting bits.  Usually frontloading is considered an error, as it’s too much information too fast.  There is a reverse problem, the name of which I can’t recall, that involves not putting enough information in.  I know from experience what that can cause, I do it myself — in an attempt not to drown my readers, I sometimes end up not providing enough information about my setting.  Haibane Renmei suffers from this same problem.  There’s just not enough in the beginning to do anything for me.  If I hadn’t agreed to watch all of it, I would never have gotten past the first, maybe second episode, and I would have been dropping it happily, even in the face of assertions that I was missing something good at the end.  There’s always something else good around.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll get the latest Marimite into some kind of post, as per my schedule.  For now, blame Pontifus for this: