Its good that you can watch them without extensive waits! This series works well as a steady, long movie with a couple intermissions. Ill be looking forward to what you have to say about the other volumes ^^

Absolutely true. This show has an “economy” that is equal to that found in the classics of Japanese cinema (such as the films of Ozu, Mizoguchi and Naruse). Interestingly, Abe had no links to anime prior to “Lain” — but was a recent fine arts graduate. His primary influences seem to have been cinematic and literary — though he has also cited the work of a few manga artists (Kenji Tsuruta, Akihiro Yamada, Range Murata, Yukinobu Hoshino) as inspirations.

If one likes “Haibane Renmei”, one might find Hirokazu Kore’eda’s “Wandafaru raifu” (After Life) interesting — as it too involves a way station between life and after life (and Abe has acknowledged his admiration for Kore’eda’s films). A prior film by the same director, “Maborosi”, also has a main character who foreshadows certain aspects of Rakka’s character and behavior (saying more would be spoiler-ish).

BTW, if you insist on paying attention to packaging, DVD, and other such immaterial details, then I should note how by a series of coincidences, it was the first series for me which contained mini pencil boards. It turned out that these boards are immensely useful for doing Japanese homework. Because of that, I started to pay attention to these boards, and so I am thinking about getting U.S. release of Kamichu just for the boards. And another thing, my DVD viewer (VLC – videolan.org) shows everything quite sharp, at least compared to all other anime which were transferred from tape. I have screenshots at http://www.flickr.com/photos/zaitcev/tags/haibane/ . The transfer is not 100% ideal, for example the black bars are present. Also, the animation quality varies quite a bit. It’s definitely a medium- to low-budget production. In the first volume, the spot where Kana fights crows was especially bad, I thought.

Now I feel bad talking about the mundane in context of Haibane Renmei.

As Michael says, be patient because you will be rewarded.

The story arc of Haibane Renmei is quite sophisticated — more so than most 2 hour movies. Be patient — and you will be rewarded.

In the event you ultimately become a devotee of the series, I’d recommend the following bulletin board:

Sekai no hajimari — http://cff.ssw.net/

and its associated bulletin board:

Old Home Bulletin Board — http://cff.ssw.net/forum/index.php

BTW — Yoshitoshi Abe contributed only character designs for “Lain”. He contributed both the story and the visual design of “Niea_7″, he provided story, script and visual design for “Haibane Renmei”, and visual design for “Texhnolyze” (the script for which was provided by Lains’ script writer).

A word that truly describes this anime.