Renga

Renga is the slash ship between Reki Kyan and Langa Hasegawa from the Sk8theinfinity fandom.

Canon
Langa is introduced as a Canadian transfer student, attending the same class as Reki. While on the street looking for a part-time job, Langa encounters Reki once more, by stopping his skateboard from rolling down the road. Reki offers Langa a chance to ride his board, Langa agrees, only to stumble and fall off immediately. Reki demonstrates how to ride it, leaving Langa intrigued. Langa is later employed as an assistant, working at the same shop as Reki.

He and Reki are to deliver a skateboard to a buyer, located at “S”, an illegal skateboard racing arena located in an abandoned mine shaft. Reki discovers that he brought the wrong skateboard. The buyer, unsatisfied, claims he will not participate in the race without a proper board, he tells Reki to replace him, but, before Reki can agree, Langa decides to skate for him instead, this worries Reki, as Langa can barley stand on a skateboard, let alone ride it. Langa tapes the board to his feet, and the race begins. Langa is revealed to be a snowboarder, he catches up to his rival, Shadow. This surprises Reki, leaving him in awe.

Now that Langa beat Shadow in the race, he is named “The Rookie” by most members of S. Reki is impressed and proud of Langa, calling him amazing and cool. Langa decides that he wants to continue skateboarding. Reki is happy about this, and proudly becomes his coach / teacher. Langa tries to impress Reki by skating down the street, but Reki soon realizes to his horror, that there is a busy road waiting for him at the bottom. Reki concerned for his friend, screams his name but, it was too late, Langa falls into the street, almost getting run over by a truck, luckily he survives and Reki tends to his wounds.

In episode 3, Langa is challenged by Miya to another race at "S". After quite a bit of protest from Reki, Langa accepts. Reki doesn't believe Langa is ready to race Miya, but supports him nevertheless. Reki then realizes a handicap Langa had been having to deal with. The fact that his board didn't turn as Langa was used to, and Reki immediately stumbled upon a solution. He worked tirelessly on the board until Langa was able to try it out, and then, then it was time for the race. After a very close and intense race, and an emotional moment between Miya and Reki afterwards, Adam comes in to inspect the newcomer. After being thoroughly insulted, Reki challenges Adam to a race to protect the honor of his friends.

Episode 4 gets a bit wild. People had constantly attempted to talk Reki out of it, but he wouldn't back down. Now, not only was he defending Miya's honor, he was defending Langa as well, and this came largely into play. During the race, Reki could've almost been killed, and Langa was shown to have expressed extreme concern on the subject, even going as far as to steal someone's motorcycle and race after them. Reki was knocked off and sent flying, where Langa immediately rushes over to him, but Reki is still smiling somehow, even after all of that.

Before Reki, Langa, along with their other friends arrived at the beach, Langa held Reki's arm telling him that he would get hurt even more, in which Reki obeys him while being a bit mad of it. Later on, Reki and Shadow were taking care of Langa after the guy had been burnt with the sun, and when he woke up Shadow decided on intervene between Joe and some girls that were around him, but then Reki tells him that it would be a bit counterproductive. Reki then grabs Langa in an attempt on acting like a scared girl while being attached to him, while saying that [Joe] was scary. Langa was sleep-deprived and when Reki could manage on waking him up, Langa immediately attaches himself back to Reki while saying that he would protect them.

When they were going to head to the thermal waters with the others, Reki suddenly gets lost while skating in an unknown place for him, as he was scared of it since he was afraid of darkness and being alone. Langa then appears behind Reki which made him scare but at the same time feel relieved that he was with someone, Langa apologizes to Reki for leaving him alone and that he was still injured. When both hear a "meow", Reki hides behind Langa and this one almost points Reki's fear, but the other guy shuted him up for then retire the place together.

They then decide on finding the others by skating together, and when they see them on the floor with mud around them, they were afraid of the worse, and when they heard something coming right behind them, both turned around just for seeing a mud creature that was heading to them. They immediately panic and try to escape by skating as far as possible from them, but they had noticed that certain creature knew skating and Langa tend to praise their skills at skate while Reki in fear told him that he didn't had to focus on that. When certain mud creature had reached Reki and made him almost fall, Langa grabs Reki by his back for preventing the fall and Reki thanks Langa about his quick action while both smiled at each other for only a few seconds just for finally putting Reki back on his skating position. When they thought they were safe, in front of them there were lots of the mud creatures and so in fear, both couldn't do anything, and so they got attacked by the creatures leaving them dirty with mud like Miya and Shadow. The next day, Reki, Langa, along with the others finished their vacation and went back all together.

In the recent episode of Sk8 infinity, Langa and his mom were conversating on the situation that happened between him and Reki. During this scene, Langa’s mom says to Langa: “You like that person, right?”, (that person being Reki) and with this question Langa makes quite a surprised face and blushes, to which then he replies: “well… yeah” and looks away embarrassed. Throughout the 8th episode, Langa is desperately searching for Reki after both had fighted the past day, to the point that he thought that Adam was Reki when he patted his shoulder from behind and Tadashi being Reki because of the way he skated (which Langa interpreted it as Reki's movements and that he had already came back).

Fanon
It's a new but understandably popular ship in the Sk8theinfinity fandom. Despite being so new, it has a large fanbase on Twitter and Tumblr, and a decent few fics on AO3. Renga can often be portrayed as soulmates because of their matching hair colors, blue and red, and generally the way they act. It can be shipped along with MatchaBlossom.

Reki is seen as the “caretaker” and “protector” in the relationship, as he frequently shows concern for Langa’s well being, as well as dressing Langa’s wounds, and making sure Langa doesn’t get into trouble, the same could go with Langa as he uses to worries a lot about Reki's well-being specially. Reki is believed to have “saved” Langa from a lonely depressed life, as Langa’s father died and he had to give up snowboarding, one of the things that made him happiest in life. Now that Reki has introduced Langa to skateboarding, he is much happier, and feels like he has purpose in life. Langa, in addition, also shows concern for the other, and is very protective and affectionate towards Reki. Renga is the most popular and most written ship for both characters for a variety of reasons, and its popularity will likely grow as the show progresses.

With the anime being directed by the same director from Banana fish, there are some fans that fear that Reki and Langa would end like Ash and Eiji, or with Adam splitting Langa away from Reki if he didn't win the bet that he had proposed to Adam himself or rather by force. Renga's endgame is often discussed by fans with possibly having a tragic final or a happy one for both Reki and Langa. They tend to compare this ship with Victor and Yuri or Ash and Eiji with the way that Reki and Langa had met. In other hand, people wish that Langa and Reki could end up like Victor and Yuri, but there was a possibility that Renga was likely a queerbait rather than a real thing, and that was other problem that people were fearing about while more episodes were aired.

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