Haibane Renmei: The Wall

By Shamus Posted Monday May 15, 2006

Filed under: Anime 9 comments

Otaku has a post on the layout of the town of Glie in Haibane Renmei. It seems some people are suggesting the wall that goes all the way around the city is not a circle. This is hard to imagine. We never see any corners. When Rakka works inside the wall, we see it is a steady curve into the distance. I agree that the wall must be a circle, or else there are corners that we are never shown, despite our many views of the wall. In defense of the non-circle advocates, the views from inside the wall shows a much stonger curve than what the outside view suggests we should. Make of that what you will.


As far as part-time jobs go, cleaning the sides of a massive supernatural wall isn’t that bad. Beats flipping burgers, anyway.

Otaku then suggests that the city must be at the center of the circle. I agree this does make things nice and balanced. Certainly if the wall is as dangerous as it seems you’d want people to live as far from it as possible. I’m confident the city isn’t so off-center that one edge of town would be close to the wall. That just wouldn’t make sense and wouldn’t match what we see in the show.

Although you could make the case that the city is a little off-center. The woods seem to be quite big, and are right next to Old Home. You could make the case that Old Home is the center, with town a little off to one side and the woods on the other. It’s also a very real possibility that the fans are putting more thought into this than the writers did…

 


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9 thoughts on “Haibane Renmei: The Wall

  1. In the second episode we see that the city does in fact go right up to the wall on one side.

  2. Shamus says:

    Wow. I missed that. Those houses must have TERRIBLE resale value.

    And I thought living under the powerlines was bad. Yikes!

    (Although, perhaps the wall is only dangerous to the Haibane. Maybe townies can touch it if they want, I don’t remember.)

  3. I don’t mean that it’s actually exactly next to it, but it gets within a stone’s throw, whereas on the other side of the town proper it’s several miles to the opposite wall.

  4. ah – i misspoke in my post – i meant to say that the town clock is in the center of the town. i certainly dont feel that teh town itself needs to be circular, so the central square can be near the center of Glie and the outskirts of town can approach the Wall.

    The main reason the clock tower needs tobein the center is that as the tallest structure (even taller than the windmills) it needs to be central to prevent people from getting perspective over the wall. Not that theres anything outside the wall, but rather to keep the horizon fully dominated by the wall.

    I imagine that if you could build a tower twice as high as the clock, you would essentially lower the wall’s height on teh horizon but nothing else would appear beyond them. That in itself would be even more curiosity inducing than the present situation!

  5. Your Wife! says:

    Oh my goodness!!! I feel like I am on a StarTrek mailing list ! In episode * of “Enter Favorite Series” this shot from the last scene of the show tells us that such and such an item could not have been used for the other thing episode *+1 of “Other series” implies it might possibly be used for.

    I realize anime usually has more thought to it, although it depends on which series and Haibene certainly hs a lot of thought to it, but of all the things I would consider discussing about Haibene, the location of the wall in relation to the city is pretty far down on my list. :) IF you want to figure it out, I would consider Shamus rerent them and get the birds eye view shots as there are many that I can remember, all of which show one or another aspect of thewall in relation to other buildings in the show.

  6. TheHermit says:

    It’s circular, but not a circle. The wall is actually shaped like a lopsided oval; an egg.

  7. Sidi says:

    I feel a bit weird leaving a comment here, after all this time passed… (I was actually drawn in by the DM of the Rings, very good).

    Haibane Renmei is very heavily inspired by Haruki Murakami’s Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, in which a map of the city / wall reveals it to be like a view of a brain, cut in half by a river. So I guess TheHermit’s oval is the closest.

  8. Varren says:

    Episode 4 (Garbage Day/ Clock Tower/ Birds Flying over the Walls), Kana takes Rakka to the top of the clock tower, where they are able to see the entire town square. Rakka remarks that the walls are high and wonders what is beyond them, where Kana replies that (and I quote) “This town is cone-shaped and this tower is at the bottom of it.”
    And in episode 2 (Town and Wall/ Toga/ Haibane Renmei), when Rakke first visits town, she (along with Kana, Kuu, Nemu and Hikari) notice that the Toga are holding market at the Great Gate Square, where yiu can clearly see a shot of the gate and wall that leads into and out of Glie. So, it is quite reasonable to say, that what has already been posted, is that the town is located beside the walls and that, given the perspectives seen of Old Home being located so far away from town (basically on the other side of the town) and relation to being right near the Western Woods.

    (it helps to be watching the series at the time of posting ^^)

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