A Serenade for Change — The Origins of Radiant’s Hameline
Near the climax of Radiant’s first season, there comes a specific moment where the story completely shifts gears, culminating in a very different outcome than most would expect. It happens right as Seth is thrust into a second confrontation against a new opponent where he is pushed with such overwhelming force that he struggles to maintain his footing on top of the crumbling tower. If this were a different story, this would be the point where the hero beats the odds and defeats the villain, proving their ideals as morally correct in the broader strokes of the larger narrative — except that doesn’t happen.
Unable to counter the spell at the risk of being crushed alongside the clock tower, our protagonist realizes he is fighting a losing battle. Not because of his opponent’s raw display of power or his own powerlessness to counteract it. Simply put, there is no reason to continue fighting. And in that moment, that brief window of friction, it recontextualizes the entire meaning of the story.
How? Through an old German folk tale stretching all the way back to the Middle Ages and its titular character. In Radiant, that character takes on another form, becoming the catalyst for an awakening. In celebration of the anime’s 5th anniversary today, I’m looking back at the story that started it all, and the original piper with an equally grim origin story.
Radiant Memories is a collection of stories looking back at the Radiant universe and its 10 year anniversary. For more details, see below.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The story of the Pied Piper has been passed down from generation to generation, reinterpreted through various storytellers across several different formats. While I’m confident almost every person reading this has at least some passing familiarity with the story, we’ll start with a brief history and synopsis.
The earliest mention of the Pied Piper comes to us from a stained-glass window in the Church of Hamelin, located in Germany in the town of the same name. According to the legend, in 1284, the town of Hamelin was facing a severe rat infestation. In a time of great famine and pestilence, the overabundance of rats led to a need for towns and villages to find a way to dispose of their rodent problems. The title of “rat-catcher” soon became commonplace as people looked to these professionals to handle pest control and curb the spread of disease. Due to rising demand, rat-catching became a lucrative business for these medieval exterminators — provided of course, you did not catch disease while on the job.
Back to the story, one day, a piper wearing brightly layered colored clothing appeared, offering Hamelin a solution to their problem. Laying out his proposal to the mayor, the piper guaranteed the removal of all rats in their town in exchange for a one-time fee. In many versions of the tale, the amount paid is often made out to be so extravagant that Hamelin was willing to do whatever it needed to drive out the rats, including soliciting the services of a so-called miracle exterminator. In any case, the mayor accepted, and the piper used his flute to lure the rats into the nearby river.
With his job complete, the piper returned to collect his reward, only to receive some troubling news. Now depending on the version of the story, the events that transpire at this point begin to deviate. Some say the lack of “receipts” for the work done was a point of contention as payout for these jobs were often dictated by the volume of rats collected. Other versions simply say they refused to pay the fee, whether it was extortion or accusations of being an inside job. It’s important to note that the business of rat-catching did not always carry a charitable view of the trade, especially when rumors of professionals training their own rats to inflate their numbers for a higher payout started making the rounds.
Regardless of what went on behind closed doors, the disagreement had escalated, the mayor and the town reneged on their agreement, and the piper left in a fit of rage. Betrayed by his employer, the piper swore revenge, vowing to return and unleash his wrath against the town. On the day of his return, the piper traded his signature pied clothing for that of a hunter. While the residents attended church, he lured 130 children away with his flute, where all but three children with different disabilities vanished without a trace. Once again highlighting the authorial differences, some say the piper took the children to the same river where the rats met their doom. Others tell of an undisclosed cave in the mountains, never to return as they were taken to “paradise.” And in less grimmer retellings, the piper simply returned the children, but not before getting his payment — with interest.
The point of the story as is most attributed is “never trust strangers.” A simple, but effective bedtime story which I have no doubt most of you have experience in some form or another. Over the years, the story of the Pied Piper would continue to be circulated with authors tweaking some elements and adding their own spin to the myth. To most, it’s a cautionary tale, a children’s fable to “pay the piper” and hold up your end of the bargain or suffer the consequences. In darker connotations, it can be interpreted as a warning of answering the call of a stranger — accepting an offer that seems too good to be true, again, depending on which version you subscribe to.
There’s more to this tale than meets the eye, which brings me neatly along to Radiant’s take on the fable. As you read further down, keep a close eye on those familiar elements, as well as what’s different. They might just come back up later…
***As usual, this is your friendly reminder that everything from this point on contains SPOILERS for season 1 (volumes 1–4). Also, there is a passing reference to season 2 and a very minor detail post volume 11 near the end of this essay, but these are self-contained details. Reader discretion is advised.***
The Bell Tolls the Sound of Destruction
The story of Hameline begins fifteen years before the start of Radiant when the Inquisition was experimenting with potential solutions to deal with the ongoing Nemesis threat. Unable to directly counter them due to their lethal touch, a few branches began detaining Sorcerers and enlisting them to fight on their behalf, usually against their will, with the goal of creating their own private army of Nemesis Hunters.
Dubbed the “Nemesis Defense Force,” the Inquisitors of Rumble Town selected young candidates believing they could instill obedience, turning them into disposable weapons against the Nemesis. To this end, four Infected children were seized for the program, including Hameline who was forcibly separated from her mother. Due to superstitions surrounding Nemeses, Infected and their similar affinity to magic or Fantasia, however, the locals do not take kindly to their new co-inhabitants.
Like the story of the Pied Piper, Radiant introduces Hameline through the lens of the “outsider,” the foreigner from parts unknown who arrives to solve a problem with their particular set of skills. Although the circumstances are flipped, notably the piper’s gender, lack of experience and sequence of events including being forcibly brought in, at the center of both stories is the culture of fear. In sociological terms, the culture of fear is “the study of how fear is used to motivate and control the public into a desired outcome.” Though both stories center around fear of the outsider, in Radiant, that fear is presented through two conflicting perspectives.
The first is addressing and understanding how to live with it. As the children learn to adjust to their new reality, they are given a small comfort by the introduction of Major Oxumare who attempts to make their circumstances a bit more hospitable through empathy. Fear begets fear, and in a world that cannot accept their existence, Oxumare presents a small reminder of humanity’s potential for understanding. In the story, he passes them the gift of music, along with Hameline’s first flute. Though he is affiliated with the Inquisition, he never forgets that his duties are to the people. By not comparing himself to others based on status, identity, or affiliation, he rejects the culture of fear surrounding the outsider.
“Someday, you’ll each meet someone who wants nothing more than to hear you play.”
The second is the exact opposite or what happens when that fear is allowed to remain unchecked by exacerbating it beyond recognition. When Konrad, a soldier under Oxumare’s command at the time began to take notice of the Major’s kindness towards the outsiders, he begins a chain reaction that will eliminate all of the obstacles in his path towards his eventual rise to power, with the ultimate goal of “cleansing” Rumble Town of its most vulnerable populations — the Nemesis Defense Force, the Infected, and his true objective, the immigrants inhabiting District 12. By playing into the public’s perception of the outsider, he affirms their fears and prejudices, and before long threats become actions.
Starting with the Nemesis Defense Force, he opens their cell door one evening under the guise of offering freedom, having alerted some of the locals beforehand of the impending jailbreak. By the time Oxumare arrives, three of the four children are beaten to death, leaving Hameline as the sole survivor. With their last line of defense reduced to virtually nothing, the town is ill prepared to deal with a crisis when a Nemesis Egg arrives on their doorstep, setting the stage for Konrad to kill Oxumare and incite a bombardment on District 12. After misleading the evacuees to their inevitable deaths and falsifying a report of terrorism with the Inquisition, they open fire, leveling the district until nothing is left.
Seeing the cruelty of humanity firsthand, it’s at this point where Hameline awakens her dormant powers. After escaping Konrad’s grasp, she invertedly draws the attention of the Nemesis — a horde of large rats. Upon realizing these Nemeses are non-hostile, she discovers they react to her music, as if connected by the threads of fate. Before she can process this ability, the island begins to tremor, and the Nemeses quickly rush to protect their new master. As she bears witness to the genocide committed by the Inquisition while a deranged Konrad admires his own handiwork, Hameline takes one final look, accepting the Nemeses as her new family, as well as her newfound power.
This event would later be known as “the Tragedy of Rumble Town.” Apart from a few survivors and witnesses who were present at the time, the truth would eventually be lost to time. But for Hameline, it would be the beginning of her story. Succumbing to the Infected’s culture of fear through the humans who made her life a living hell, she returns to the place that started it all to reciprocate that fear in kind.
Once more reversing the Pied Piper’s story and initial meeting with the mayor, Hameline seeks the town’s highest authority, a newly promoted Captain Konrad, with an offer to assist in his larger political schemes. Unaware of her true identity (or intentions), he gladly offers up a large sum of cash — paid in full by the way — for her to cause as much panic as possible by letting her Nemeses run all over town. As the number of Nemesis sightings goes up and the Inquisition intentionally ignores the requests to investigate, the culture of fear intensifies when people start going missing and the remaining citizens begin suspecting one another. These new developments, along with the arrival of a several parties investigating independently leads Konrad to further stroke the flames by discrediting and demonizing the immigrants as potential Infected or allies of the Nemesis.
On a much broader scale, the culture of fear is commonly associated with a drive to focus on the irrational and emotional as opposed to the underlying root of the issue. To use a few examples, “the increase of school shootings” vs “possession of firearms,” “the war on drugs” vs “combating addiction and incarceration rates,” and in the context of this article, the “fear of the outsider” while completely overlooking the growing number of clues pointing inward. Throughout Radiant, this culture is personified by the following three characteristics:
- Us vs Them: A position whereas two or more sides are pitted against each other under the belief that one’s existence is being threatened by another.
- Fear of the Unknown: A state of mind that prohibits people from interpreting ambiguity in favor of perceived familiarity or safety.
- Resistance to Change: The anxiety or dread of a potential future or the perception of “the doomed future,” leading to irrational decisions to avoid said outcome.
All three are consistent throughout the story, but the key phrase I want to underline here is Resistance to Change. With the entire town about to erupt in flames, ordinarily, it would fall upon a group of ragtag heroes — in this case Seth and his allies — to swoop in and save the day. Though they succeed in overthrowing Konrad in a good old fashioned beatdown, it’s at this point where the story enters its second phase, challenging Seth (and the audience) to look beyond our perception of good and evil and our assumptions of traditional shonen storytelling by completely flipping the perspective.
You and I Are The Same
After double crossing Konrad by destroying his base of operations and exposing his list of crimes to the entire town, Hameline moves towards her final performance of the evening — the complete annihilation of Rumble Town for their complicity in the cover up and subsequent violence. Making his way to the top of the clocktower after his friends fail to stop Hameline, Seth emerges from below to challenge her alone. As they exchange blows, she presses him further on his goals and motivations, questioning why a fellow Sorcerer and Infected would align himself to help the people below — the same ungrateful people who would gladly kill either of them given the chance.
In literary terms, Hameline presents the closest representation to a character foil for the protagonist. The term foil is literally derived from “the practice of backing a gem in order to make it shine even brighter.” Though the story uses the meeting to compare philosophies and backgrounds, in first viewing and reading the material, I made the mistake of not highlighting the symbiotic relationship between these two characters in my subsequent writings. Because while Hameline can be interpreted as Seth’s foil, a character who represents a possible scenario where the protagonist had taken an alternate path, the inverse also holds true.
Because the story’s point of view at this junction is not just Seth’s story — it’s Hameline’s.
Just as Hameline highlights Seth’s altruism and resolve for a better future for everyone, his inexperience and naivete are used to humanize her struggles and longing for something other than pain and destruction. Right before confronting Hameline, the mysterious Piodon presents Seth with a straightforward question: “who are you fighting for?” When pressed again by Hameline, he doesn’t have a good answer beyond wanting to help people, but as he listens to her story and the atrocities committed in Rumble Town and beyond, he doesn’t try to rebuke her directly either. He can’t because, after all, he’s lived it.
This shared experience and build up towards this unavoidable conflict leads Hameline to fundamentally reject Seth and his position, pushing away the notion that they share a common background. Whereas most stories would position the villain into tempting the hero to their cause, in Radiant, the roles are reversed. This forces Seth to confront the reality of what he is fighting for beyond altruism and accept that for all his struggles to do what’s right, for all his strength and power acquired to achieve his goal, it can’t mask his own trauma or force the people below to do better. In the end, they are both fighting for the same goal — the right to exist in this world — and upon that realization, he stops fighting.
If Only Things Could Have Turned Out Differently
With the fight coming to a halt, their fears as the outsider, the one who doesn’t belong, always forced to justify their own existence are further humanized. For all the pain, self-sacrifice and fear of being rejected or abandoned, they struggle to find meaning in this irrational world. Because if they ever lose control, even once, the cycle of fear, violence and death will continue until it all burns. The story knows how powerful this moment is and by refusing to continue the battle, it allows both characters to reach a mutual understanding.
“To express what’s happening in musical terms, the two of them are now performing in harmony.”
Able to confide in one another despite their different paths, all that remains are two gems shining brilliantly off one another, but it can’t last. Reluctantly, Seth disarms and restrains Hameline, ending the conflict. But as she argues with him further, citing the lines of division, her uncertain future and the reason she believes history will repeat itself, she brings things full circle with a form of self-fulling prophecy:
“The only choice left for us is to pick a side and fight. And anyone who says otherwise is just naïve. That or a traitor to their kind.”
This position encapsulates the culture of fear through the three broader characteristics mentioned earlier. This isn’t the first time it has appeared in the series either, but what makes this a turning point is our protagonist is now put in a position where he has the power to make a change. Not by fists or running on optimism, but by giving her the one thing no musician can do without — an audience. To prove his point and convince Hameline that change is possible, Seth does two things. The first is a promise that he won’t turn her into the Inquisition or the town, and the second is an invitation to enact that change. Extending his hand, he asks her to join him on his quest to find the Radiant.
Just as Oxumare represented humanity’s capacity for kindness by dealing with the culture of fear directly, Seth’s invitation dismantles it further. He doesn’t see Hameline as the monster who almost destroyed Rumble Town, the Domitor who communes directly with the Nemesis, or even the girl who is currently giving him a hard time. All he sees is the frightened child who asked for help, a kindred spirit deserving of a second chance, and to tie this all together, the musician that wanted nothing more than to share their art with the world.
Now, I know what you’re thinking right now. “Of course, he’s going to do the right thing and stop her from taking the lives of thousands of people! Yes, he ultimately averts doomsday and manages to garner some sympathy from his literary foil!” In the end, however, I think the reason this moment speaks clearly to me is something simpler. Something that transcends backstories, genres, mediums, ideals or even faith in the collective goodness of humanity despite the overwhelming circumstances in front of them. Ready?
It’s because they are the same… No, it’s because they’re here now that he wants to save her.
Though we never hear her answer — in fact, she adamantly refuses to give him one, calling him a “fool” in a noticeably softer tone — the gesture is enough to plant the idea that things could have turned out differently. More to the point, it introduces a new element to the equation, faith, which is apparent in her final actions. When the Inquisition demands Seth’s surrender upon arrival, Hameline intervenes, making use of her silver tongue and theatrics. With little time to spare before the inevitable counterattack, she pulls Seth in once more, entrusting him with her Nemeses and to live for the future before pushing him away.
As Seth desperately begs his friends to turn back and let him go, Hameline makes her final stand, reflecting on the life she could have had if only she had come across more people like him. Rather than feel regret for the life she has led or her future that will never to come pass, she smiles as she draws her last breath. Though they started off on opposing sides, rejecting Seth and his impossible dream, she makes the ultimate sacrifice, rebuking the culture of fear that had previously consumed her. In the end, her resistance to change was broken by putting her faith in the hands of another — a friend.
A Stranger Among Us
(Here’s the part of the essay where I get to blow your freaking minds.)
Revisiting the town of Hamelin, several historical records and artifacts still visible to this day reference the events of 1284 with much darker implications. Per the oldest surviving manuscript, immortalized on a plaque at the “Pied Piper House”:
“A.D. 1284 — on the 26th of June — the day of St John and St Paul — 130 children — born in Hamelin — were led out of the town by a piper wearing multicolored clothes. After passing the Calvary near the Koppenberg they disappeared forever.”
In 1384, the following entry was added to the town records:
“It is 100 years since our children left.”
As historians began to dig deeper into the town’s history, the exact recorded date became a subject of interest. For a story heavily associated with rat infestations and the bubonic plague, the recorded date of the story has led some to theorize that those elements were folded into the myth sometime after the events of 1284. The Black Death, as its better known, struck Europe between 1347 and 1352, or a little over 60 years after the incident in Hamelin.
So, what really happened to the children? With little surviving documentation, the true timeline of events that likely influenced the story has been largely lost to time. In the time since, experts have theorized everything from natural disasters to an epidemic of the St. Vitus’ Dance or Sydenham Chorea as possible explanations or influences to the Pied Piper story. For a much darker interpretation, some have even speculated that the figure of the piper might have been a proxy for a real child predator/kidnapper, reinterpreted for later generations to “things that go bump in the night.”
But the most prevailing theory comes from an unlikely source — migrations. According to Wibke Reimer, project coordinator at the Hamelin Museum, the German linguist Jürgen Udolph theorized that the eventual migrations to the East and naming used for some of the territories share a striking resemblance to common family names used in Hamelin, with the areas of Uckermark and Prignitz near Berlin sharing this pattern with greater frequency. There’s even an event in history that gives this theory more credence.
After the Battle of Bornhöved in 1227 between Denmark and the Holy Royal Empire, Denmark withdrew from Northern Germany, resulting in a new territory for the victors. With new land came a need for settlers, so the empire started going door-to-door to find “volunteers” to populate it. These recruiters, called locators, wore colorful clothing in pied, were proficient in speech, and as you might have guessed, played instruments to attract potential settlers.
Despite the flashy display, convincing everyday citizens to suddenly pack up and move north to an unknown land that was once a contested military border didn’t provide much reassurance. But the locators couldn’t return empty either as the Empire needed a workforce, and with several towns falling on hard times due to poverty and other economic issues — disease notwithstanding — a few of them came to an agreement. Instead of voluntarily going with the locators up north, they’d offer up a substitute to take their place in exchange for a bit of financial relief.
As podcaster, producer and narrator Aaron Mahnke illustrates in episode 24 of the award-winning series Lore (emphasis mine):
The folklore, you see, tells a colorful story, one that’s as easy for children to swallow as a spoonful of honey, but the truth that the story hides turns out to be far less palatable. An entire town, desperate for a solution to their economic and social challenges, actually sold their children off to recruiters hoping to colonize new lands. It’s a plot reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, in that these people constructed a fantasy around certain events, and then passed that lie on to later generations in order to justify their actions and avoid questions. In the end, an outsider did indeed come to Hamelin that day, but he wasn’t the one who took the children. No, it turns out that the true monsters were already there, living in the house next door, shopping in the market, farming the fields. The most dangerous stranger, it seems, isn’t the outsider — it’s the one that hides among us.
In the world of Radiant, that truth also turns into something less palatable. But in the aftermath, a different story begins to unfold…
The Light That Follows The Darkness (Final Thoughts)
The death of Hameline is turning point for not only the story, but the entire series, one that continues to be felt all the way to the latest arc. What started as a job to help the Zhed family and earn a little money on the side quickly became a thematic crossroads, exploring the full depth of humanity based on our fears of the outsider, only to be faced with an unpleasant reality when all is said and done. In the broader strokes of the series, what I love about this turn is how carefully constructed the buildup is, introducing us to this whimsical fantasy epic to local misadventures, pivoting to themes of societal change before ending on the need for interpersonal reflection and community. Because as much as we want things to change on the outside, the journey is as much about how the story shapes the individual as it is about the roads taken.
The ending of Rumble Town continues this thread in further detail. Even with Konrad’s corruption exposed, the Inquisition’s approval weakening, and Seth and his friends being heralded as heroes back in Artemis, this isn’t the celebratory victory lap one would expect. With Hameline’s story being underreported if not altogether erased by representatives on both sides, the public at large remains blissfully unaware of the full context of what went down. In the most recent arc, these half-truths become a sticking point for all parties as Inquisitors and other organizations begin cross-examining these events with further scrutiny.
Our own protagonist is left in a despondent state, powerless to do anything beyond retelling the true story to those who would listen. For a time, it seems like history will repeat itself, but as Seth’s mentor Alma reenters the narrative, we’re reminded that this is just the beginning. In the arc’s final moments, she hands him the letter the Zhed family left for him and recounts how his friends stepped up on his behalf while he was unconscious. With Hameline’s Nemeses safely tucked away in a sanctuary, he is reminded that anything can change, including the heart of a flutist who gave her life to ensure the unwritten future — a future now entrusted to him to carry on in her stead.
Though Hameline does not appear during the Sorcerer Knight arc, her spirit is present throughout the story. Aside from making a brief cameo in the season 2 opening of the pilot episode, as Seth uncovers the secrets of the Sidh and the dark power dwelling inside him, she once again offers him words of encouragement. Holding onto the memories of the people closest to him, he manages to break free from the darkness with the memory of her final words etched into his heart, fully repelling it before awakening to his new power.
During his abrupt arrival in Bome, Seth meets a new character that further recontextualizes his current objective. Although he can’t talk his way out of confrontation, their shared experiences eventually open a path towards an identical goal, if only temporary. For the ones that carry on Hameline’s legacy, the burden is heavy, but by recognizing that weight, it’s a start for them to let the past go and begin moving forward on their own terms. These visual cues and memories are a reminder that while she can no longer be a part of the main story, she will always be its foundation.
In the original legend of the Pied Piper, the underlying message of the story was to never trust a stranger lest you risk the judgment of the outsider when in fact the danger was from within. In Radiant, the piper returned to the island that created them, only to discover that they were the most human of them all. As the closing credits play for episode 17, changed from the usual season 1 ending for a brand-new insert song, we’re reminded of that humanity even amidst the encroaching darkness.
This is the story of Hameline — this is the world that you changed.
Credits:
This town, where everyone turns a blind eye
It’s rotten to the core
So let’s just destroy them all
That’s our only salvation
But if the future you’re seeing is true
If only I could return once more to the moment I met you
I’d like to take your light-clad hand
Only the children in dark cages know it
This town of chains
So let’s just bring it all to an end
This irrational world
But if the future you speak of is true
If only it were still possible to live with you once more
I’d say take me there, even if my life has burnt out
Resources
2. How The “Culture Of Fear” Might Be Influencing Your Life | The Truism Center
3. What Is A Culture of Fear? | Simplicable
4. foil (n.) | Online Etymology Dictionary
5. The grim truth behind the Pied Piper | BBC
7. History of the Plague | National Library of Medicine
8. The Pied Piper of Hamelin: Terrifying, Mysterious, and Still Relevant | Book Riot
9. The Disturbing True Story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin | Ancient Origins
10. Sydenham Chorea | National Organization for Rare Disorders
11. Lore — Episode 24: A Stranger Among Us | Lore Podcast (YouTube, Transcript)
12. “Your Future” Lyrics taken from the Uncut Home Release.
All screenshots and media captured from my computer and phone using the original source, unless otherwise noted.
Dark Aether is a writer/contributor for TAY and AniTAY. You can check his main writings on Medium, archives at TAY2, or follow him on Twitter @TheGrimAether. Not Dead Yet.
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