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 again, while stopping the latter's skateboard from rolling down the road. Reki offers Langa a chance to ride his board, and 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 at, working alongside Reki.

He and Reki are to deliver a skateboard to a buyer, located at “S”, an illegal skateboard racing arena located in an abandoned mineshaft. Reki quickly runs to the site, but discovers that he brought the wrong skateboard. The buyer, unsatisfied, claims he will not participate in the race without a proper board, so he tells Reki to replace him. Before Reki can agree, Langa decides to skate for him instead and this worries Reki, as Langa can barley stand on a skateboard, let alone ride it. Langa surprises the crowd by taping the board to his feet, and then the race begins. Langa is revealed to be a snowboarder, as he catches up to Shadow, extremely quickly. This surprises Reki, leaving him in awe. News of Langa's shocking win spreads across the S community, and 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, and Reki proudly becomes his coach/teacher. As they practice together, 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 end. Reki tries to warn his oblivious friend, shouting his name as Langa accelerates, but it was too late. Langa crashes into the street, without the knowledge of how to brake, and almost getting run over by a truck. Luckily he survives, and Reki continues to help Langa perfect his skating skills with the help of a few adjustments made to his board.

Langa attempts to do an ollie, but fails and trips onto the ground, drawing a few small wounds on his hands. He freaks out for a moment, but Reki assures him that it is just part of skating as the redhead tends to his wounds. They both sit down in the skate park with Langa bruised and battered after a full day of practicing. Reki asks him why he moved to Okinawa, and he learns that Langa's dad had died, and was looking for a job to support his family. Langa takes up his skateboard again while saying that "After getting on the board for the first time in a while. . . I'm having fun!". The blue-haired boy pushes down on the board, and manages a near-perfect ollie as his eyes alight. He trips as he lands, but Reki cheers for him, giving him a smile of approval. Acting as mentor, he shows off Langa's skills to Oka, and not holding back in saying how proud he is of his "trainee".

In Episode 3 Langa is challenged by Miya, an already-experienced skater 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. Succeeding a talk in a warehouse, Reki then realizes Langa was more used to the maneuverability of a snowboard, and immediately stumbled upon a solution (literally). He worked tirelessly on the board, adjusting the wheels until finally finishing before Langa's race. With such short notice, Langa wasn't able to try it out. The board worked just as Reki had intended, and allowed Langa for much better mobility. After a very close and intense race, Langa passes the finish line split seconds before Miya. Reki is the first to run out of the crowd and congratulate his friend, hugging him and telling him he was amazing. With an emotional moment between Miya and Reki, Adam comes in to inspect the newcomer, showing his blatant interest for the Canadian. Though at first starstruck, he's then thoroughly insulted, and the prideful boy challenges Adam to a race to protect the honor of both his friends.

Episode 4 gets a bit wild. People constantly attempted to talk Reki out of his race against "The Matador of Love", but he wouldn't back down. Now, not only was he defending Miya's honor, he was defending Langa as well, as Adam proposed that he would race against the icey-haired boy if Reki lost. The race starts with Reki kicking off, but the man stays behind to spite him. Adam quickly catches up, and awes the crowd with his moves. He could've almost been killed by one of Adam's "impossible" moves, and Langa was shown to have expressed extreme concern on the subject, even going as far as to steal someone's motorcycle to race after them. Reki was knocked off and sent flying into the rocks, where Langa immediately rushes over to him, anxious about his best friend. Reki is still smiling somehow even with bloody injuries, going as far as to apologize for losing and being unable to stop Adam from racing against Langa.

Before Reki, Langa, along with their other friends arrive 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 inmediately 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 inmediately 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.

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 wellbeing, as well as dressing Langa’s wounds, and making sure Langa doesn’t get into trouble. 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 oftenly 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.

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