Discussion topic for Track 7 of Love Song: Haiiro no Hane (Grey Wings). Please support the official release by purchasing the album from iTunes! You can find a translation of the lyrics on ShiraneHito’s blog.
Please tag references to later songs or outside works with the [spoiler] tag, providing adequate context in parenthesis.
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This song is super interesting to me, but I have no idea what to make of it yet hahah. I’m very confused.
EDIT: Helios and I were playing around with some ideas. That maybe the wall mentioned so many times refers to the border between life and death, and by the end of the story he crosses that wall and ends up in a ‘room without windows’; a coffin.
Still super confused but this does explain a bit.
So this song is Haibane Renmei before it was animated?
Actually the art is by the same guy, and Haibane is 灰羽 aka 灰色の 羽.
(Illuminati confirmed)
I also wonder if this song might be a Haibane Renmei tribute? The gray wings, the imagery of birds, the walls, the yearning, and of course that wonderful Yoshitoshi ABe artwork… Completely baseless speculation, but I always connect the two in my mind.
On a lyrical level though, I wonder if this song is about a sort of Manichaean split between body and soul, with the lovers separated by a wall representing the separation of individual consciousnesses by the constraints of the body. The “boy” is imagined in terms of interiority (inside a windowless room) as if he is the intelligence caged inside the flesh, and the “girl” also identifies with water in a pail, a fluid mass contained by an unstable vessel. The last verse is also interesting as it imagines the two as different halves of the same being (one soul in two individuated bodies?)
(I’m so behind on this book club, woooo ;_
This song is tricky, and I think it’s precariously easy to draw connections to death and suicide. I feel like I’m getting tunnel vision. So to balance the equation, I’ll point to something that could mean these characters aren’t dead, not yet at least. This is the first narration told from a third person perspective. this opens up a new can of worms because very few of the lines actually have a subject. Shirane did add subjects to many of them, but that’s nothing more than an educated guess. This actually makes my next point moot depending on how you see it. You see, because we don’t know the subject, it’s possible to have the girl as an active subject. She wouldn’t be dead if that was the case.
When we were talking about it, Aspi also pointed to the first stanza mentioning how you can’t really save someone who’s dead. Previous songs have given a lot of insight into what the boy struggled after the girl died, but this seems to be more about a period when she was most likely beyond saving but not yet dead. That’s what the first mentioning of the pitiful eyes seems to be about. People around the two knew what was going to happen, but the boy is staying strong and smiling. (If you’re like me and listened to Owari no hoshi first, you’re probably having flashbacks to Last Smile right now.)
Other than that, the most interesting and curious phrases in this song are the wall and the eyes. The wall gets referred to as すれ違う壁[Surechigau Kabe]. Surechigau refers to people walking past or missing each other. The only interpretation I have is that it’s literally a wall that makes them miss each other. Going back to Last Smile, I was kinda thinking about quarantines and how you can have a hatch that only opens from one side at a time. The second phrase, eyes, may seem simple on paper, but it’s super weird in terms of symbolism. First we’re told of the “pitiful eyes” which could be pitiful as in evoking sympathy or projecting it: it depends on who the eyes belong to, and we can’t confirm anything regarding that. In the second half though, they start talking about “the same eyes.” It very much sounds like the boy’s eyes are becoming like those of the girl. Now, eyes in Japanese culture can mean many things. They can be a reflection of your intentions and emotions. They can also be used to refer to an experience. ひどい目にあう means to have a bad experience, but literally it means to meet an awful eye. Therefore, if the boy was to obtain “the same eyes” as the girl, that could mean a million things.
To conclude, there is evidence for this not being about the characters’ deaths. With that mindset, we have the boy who tried to stay strong during hard times and also obtained/inherited something from the girl.
I’m under the impression that the boy is feeling the same as the girl, presented in a particular manner. I think you’re in the right direction. I felt the translation seemed to be a bit off mark here in changing up things around 哀れんだ a bit, which I find to actually be an important connection worthy of being viewed similarly. Like, I read into it as, say A and B are specific viewpoints, naturally-
He’s not making A eyes
She’s making B eyes (reaffirmed)
His eyes will now also be B
I’m seeing a discussion on points of view being presented and he’s taking up hers to perhaps see things more clearly. It’s kind of a strange dance or appearances and perceptions. It’s, of course, extremely complicated and hard to pinpoint, especially when my own interpretation is quite extensive, but it’s just my take.
That or I’m dumb and making assumptions on the Japanese.
Yeah… This one is dumbfounding me. I’m having trouble with coming up with any concrete ideas about what this could mean.
I do wonder if there’s any connection between this song and the previous one, though. The song just before this one used the sea extensively. This song also brings up the prospect of the two venturing out into the sea. It’s only a passing mention, but I really hope there’s some type of connection there.
There are a few pairs that I think are important, but I just can’t see the meaning behind them. For instance, the girl seeing her swaying self as she draws water. Is this her seeing a reflection of herself within the boy? Is this referring to a literal reflection, like how in the picture, the girl is looking worriedly at a window? There’s also the pebbles she hits. The song never says the pebbles fell. It simply says that she hit them. I honestly can’t figure what this might mean.
Finally, there’s the line about how “With their other selves who they can never met,”. Is this referring to the fact the two are influencing each other’s hopes and dreams, a connection to the eyes of the boy’s that become the same as the girl’s? Maybe this connects to the fact the girl’s eyes are pitiful early in the song, only to show compassion later. It also fails to contextualize the boy’s wish to save her…
I should love this song. It has a beautiful piano intro, and a pronounced violin accompaniment for a while, which is a killer combo for me. But the fact that the voice of the song is so removed - the song is about boy and girl - is not working for me here and actually actively bothers me.
I agree with @HeliosAlpha that this song feels more like sometime while the girl was sick but before she actually died. Like the song is about the decline and how he continues to pray even though he has no way to see her (room with no window). “Grey wings” could even be a metaphor for someone on the verge of death, but still here and human.
This song is the first one where I feel like I can easily see the case for it being related to the last in a more direct sense than just thematically. Especially with the hospital theory suggested Bokura no Koi it feels like this could be the story of the tragedy that ended their work on the drawing together.
Hmm… If the girl isn’t dead, then perhaps the boy’s journey is an attempt to try to understand the girl’s plight. Maybe the wall is a metaphor for how the two have been separated by these circumstances, both the literal ones of the girl being sick, and metaphorically of the two losing their bond because of the seperation.
I do think there is a lot of that in this song. I feel the line "今日から同じ目で生きてる/from today he will live with the same eyes/” eludes to that idea pretty strongly.
Okay, I got a new reading on the 2nd and 5th stanza(the pitiful eyes). In the boy’s stanza, the eyes are introduced first while in the girl’s stanza the girl is introduced first. This makes me think the boy is talking about eyes directed at him while the girl is talking about the eyes of her reflection. Now because the boy is looking at a window, it’s possible he is also talking about his reflection or someone on the other side of the window. Assuming the boy is talking about someone else, this is how I read the lines:
Their eyes pity me. Don’t think about it.
The boy looks at the window and smiles
My eyes are pitiful. Don’t think about it.
The girl will have those eyes from now on as well.
The “don’t think about it” really intrigues me because we can use the same phrase but the “it” changes meaning between uses. The boy wants to ignore the saddening eyes of others and seemingly succeeds. The girl wants to ignore what makes herself sad and fails. This contrast still works if the boy is talking about his own reflection. A tricky thing about how the eyes are described is the んだ at the end of してる in the first stanza. I was confused about this until I realized it could be a difference between male and female language which matches our characters.
The talk about selves that can’t be met is another ridiculous part of this song that I don’t know what to do with. It comes up twice in the song, though Shirane chose to change the first one(I don’t necessarily blame him. This shit is hard to represent in English). The two stanzas referring to this are:
重ねてる出会えない自分に
すれ違う壁の向こうに祈った
and
出会えないもうひとりの自分と
今日からも同じ目で生きぬく
少年は窓もない部屋で
今日からもただ祈り続ける
重ねる means to stack things on top of each other or to do something repeatedly. Therefore, that first line becomes something like “To his piled up/repeating self that he cannot meet.” The second one is a lot more simple with just “With his other self that he cannot meet.” The pronouns are interchangeable. I lean towards “he” because of the context.
I can definitely go with the interpretation that both characters are referring to their own reflections. Additionally, it flows well with the illustration, which going from the perspective that the girl is sick, could easily be here gazing somberly at what she’s become during her time in pain.
I’m thinking that the idea of the “selves who can’t meet” has to do with them being unable to understand each other fully. The wall is the barrier that keeps two people from ever truly knowing each other. Trying to climb the wall becomes representative of him making more of an effort to understand as opposed to charging forward on his own - basically they start to have the “same eyes” once they start understanding each other, as opposed to the opening where their eyes don’t register with the other person (気にしない)
So, it’s a bittersweet ending? Although the two can still never physically meet, as the last stanza indicates, they’ve still achieved a greater understanding of each other’s positions through their efforts?
I do think we are supposed to really feel the bitter in the bittersweet, but yes, by the end they were able to better understand each other. At the end he doesn’t even have a window - so he has no way to see outside of himself further - but he does begin to pray.
I’m still very much mulling stuff over, but I feel like I’m starting to come around to the idea of this being the story of one relationship and all the different facets of it told in a non linear manner.
You’re spot on with the reflection bit. Pretty similar to my views.
Based on the translation provided in the topic, because I don’t know Japanese.
Title
“Grey Wings” reminds me of a fallen angel, in that their wings were once white but now they have greyed. Whether it was from corruption or exhaustion, the angel has somehow fallen from grace. Heart becoming “greyed” after the events of “Bokura no Koi,” the singer closes themselves from the world. The grey wings are the hopes the boy and the girl from the song share in coming together, wings to fly over the wall, grey because it is somewhat flawed.
Summary and Interpretation
I interpret the song to be the singer’s internal struggle to overcome something. Whether it’s to overcome rejection or the self-realization from “Bokura no Koi” they are figuratively and literally trying to overcome walls that encompass them. Outside the wall appears to be a girl. In terms of the song, the singer is trying to get to her.
Before I go and make generalizations, I’m going to try to define a few lines in terms of my interpretation.
The line “the girl, drawing water” refers to the girl’s painting from “Bokura no Koi,” and carries all meaning from it
The “wall” refers to the wall from Bokura no Koi that the singer and the girl were painting on, as well as a metaphorical wall.
Alright let’s go
“Someday I will save you” starts the song off strong. It shows the boy’s drive/dedication to the girl, and queues into how they will act throughout the song. The boy repeats it over and over, to reinforce the fact. In this line, we learn two things: the singer is omniscient, watching a boy and a girl, and the boy is driven to save the girl (perhaps obsessively so).
“Those eyes were pitying him” refers to people who are watching the boy, but who do they belong to? (I don’t know at this point)
What does have meaning is the part where “he doesn’t care.” In a later line, he takes interest in the girl’s eyes. This shows how he doesn’t care what others think, and is focused on his goal: the girl on the other side if the wall. He laughs in the face of the impossible challenge, and simply prays that he can meet her. On the other side of the wall, through a window, the girl is making “compassionate eyes.” This alludes to the fact that she also pities him, like “those eyes” do, but because it is her, he doesn’t care. Now, “he’ll live with the same eyes,” where they only see each other. This represents a connection formed between them (also mentioned in a later line).
Now we see from the girl’s perspective. “The stacked grey pebbles” seems to refer to the wall, but in such a way that it doesn’t seem like such a large obstacle. She doesn’t think that there is something big between them, and coming together can’t possibly be that hard. As she sees it, she only needs to wait for the boy to overcome it. She hits the wall in frustration, as if to send a message to hurry.
The next stanza could refer to the girl, or the boy, or both! Both makes the most sense because now that they share the same “eyes,” they share similar thoughts/motivations. The sky “continuing eternally” represents the space above the wall. The wall to sky ratio is small, so there is more space to get over it than it blocks the boy. They both wish for “wings like a bird” to “fly to your side.” The word choice “if only” sounds like something someone would say if they had given up. “If only I had wings” shows that they only have one solution in mind, and because people can’t grow wings(I guess that’s an assumption, kinda), the solution will never work. All they can do is hope that something will change to benefit them, but wishful thinking is not a solution. After wishing for wings, all they do is fantasize over the life they could share. “The two of us to the distant sea” refers to the future they could share together. The next line link their thoughts together further, saying “Ah, we saw such a dream.” That, along with the pattern of “ahs” makes me think that there is a connection to “Ao no Yume” here. The lines from both sections carry similar meaning, with the exception of Ao no Yume being more one sided. Does this mean that the boy and the girl see each other as the singer from Ao no Yume sees the “you” from that song? The song’s do follow a similar structure, someone wants to be with someone, takes action, fails somewhat, then vows to continue to work hard to find them.
Finally, the boy takes action. While he can’t grow wings, he can try to climb the wall. The final stanza shows us what happened to him. He never made it over the wall, and was put in a place where he can’t even see the girl(“room which doesn’t even have any window”). But from this place, he continues to live with the same eyes as her, and prays. He hasn’t given up hope.
The last stanza shows is that there external forces at work. Someone put the boy in a jail cell or something to prevent him from reaching the girl. The part about having no window is excessively cruel. On the figurative side, the boy must have tried to overcome the obstacle that prevented him from getting the girl (which I assume was the problem the singer had with themselves in Bokura no Koi) and failed in the process, achieving some deeper level of self realization, and falling deeper into their own flaws. Yet he still hasn’t given up.
Musical Analysis
What I find most important is where the violin swells. Towards the last line of the seventh stanza, it builds to a point, then the singer says “Ah, we saw such a dream.” It put a lot of significance on this line, and on their dream. It is the first line that mentions both the boy and the girl, and the first outright statement that they share the same dream (being together I guess).
Another interesting note is the maraca shaking sound, if anyone can figure out what it means when it plays.
Final Thoughts
I don’t really have any final thoughts, I just didn’t really enjoy this song. If I can think of any overarching meaning, it would be “never give up,” but that’s kinda obvious so I won’t go too deep into it.
I’m don’t really see how the song is about death, but the coffin interpretation and the Last Smile similarities are pretty cool. I can see how “drawing water” could be an IV (if the translation happens to make sense in that way).
Unfortunately I had a much more simplistic view of this song as I was listening to it. Much like @bionic I feel like it was a song about a boy who needed to overcome something to genuinely connect with the girl. I felt more like this “wall” they referred to were the boy’s own internal issues. Perhaps he had some sort of psychological issue, or perhaps he simply lacked social skills. The girl, however, still wanted to be with him despite these. Thus he had to hide his own internal issues to “pretend” everything was okay. While this sort of thing works, it doesn’t leave them with a genuine connection, which is what I feel the problem of the song was all about.
By the end we see him struggling to finally overcome his issues, but he fails. His condition worsens and he further loses any abilities he had to make connections with the girl, as they continue life. Their other selves; their “inner” selves, which they wish so much to connect with each other, may never meet. Still, the boy continues praying.
Maeda just shared the demo version of Haiiro no Hane.
