Renga

Renga is the slash ship between Reki Kyan and Langa Hasegawa from the SK8 the Infinity 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. Langa immediately rushed over to him but Reki was still smiling somehow, even after such a great accident.

In episode 6, before Reki, Langa and their friends arrived at the beach, Langa held Reki's arm telling him that he would get hurt even more because Reki was about to attempt a stunt. Reki was a bit annoyed, but obeyed him nevertheless. Later on, Reki and Shadow were taking care of Langa after he got sun burnt, and when he woke up Shadow decided to intervene Joe and some girls who he was flirting with, but then decides against it when Reki tells him that it would be counterproductive. Reki then grabs Langa in an attempt on acting like a scared girl while side hugging him, saying that JOE was scary. Langa was sleep-deprived and when Reki manageD on waking him up, Langa immediately hugs Reki back, saying that he would protect him.

When they were going to head to the hot springs with their friends, Reki suddenly gets lost while skating in an unknown place. He was scared of it since he was afraid of darkness and being alone. Langa then appears behind Reki which scared him but at the same time gave him relief that he was wasn't alone anymore. Langa apologized to Reki for leaving him alone when he was still injured. When both of them hear a "meow", Reki hides behind Langa. Langa almost pointed out Reki's fear, but Reki immediately shut him up. Then they left the place together.

They then decide on finding the others by skating together but they saw them lying on the ground, covered in mud. They were afraid of what happened to their friends. When they heard something coming behind them, both turned around just for seeing a mud creature that was heading towards them. They immediately panicked and tried to escape by skating as far as possible from the mud creature, but they had noticed that the creature knew how to skate. Langa praised the creature's skating skills. Reki told him not to focus on that, frightened. The mud creature reached Reki and made him almost fall from his skateboard. Langa grabbed Reki by his waist for preventing him from falling and Reki thanked Langa for saving him. They both smiled at each other for a few seconds and Reki regained his balance on his skateboard. When they finally thought that they were safe, a lot of mud creatures came in front of them and covered them with mud like how they did with Miya and Shaow. The next day, Reki, Langa and their friends finished their vacation and went back together.

In episode 8 of Sk8 the Infinity, Langa and his mom were conversing on the situation that happened between him and Reki. During this scene, Langa’s mom asked Langa,“You like that person, right?”, ('that person' being Reki) and with this question Langa makes a surprised face and blushes, to which he replied, “Well… yeah” and looked away embarrassed. Afterwards, his mother, Nanako, who misunderstood the situation and thought Reki was a girl who Langa liked, told him to confess his emotions. To this Langa blushed and claimed that it would be too embarrassing to do it. Throughout the 8th episode, Langa was desperately searching for Reki after both had fought 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 as Reki's movements and that he had already came back).

In episode 9, Reki is seen defending Langa from some guys who believed that JOE would win the race, saying that he had beautiful and high air. During the race, Langa was feeling empty, because he wasn't feeling any emotion while he skated, and because of that, he slowed down. Reki started to get worried, and said that Langa was amazing and that he didn't want him to give up. When Langa passed by, Reki screamed his name out loud, which led to Langa looking at him, and starting to feel his heart beating faster and with more excitement. Langa started to feel more motivated only when he noticed that Reki was cheering for him, and he was happy that Reki was back. At the end of the race, he won against JOE, but he broke his skateboard. JOE told him to buy a new skateboard or send that one to repair, to which Langa replied with "It has to be this one". JOE then says that it's because that was the skateboard that Reki made for him, and advised him that he should look for Reki to repair his skateboard, and said that since it was the both of them, it would be okay. Meanwhile, Reki couldn't feel happy because of Langa's victory, and mentioned that he didn't want to just cheer on Langa, but to skate side by side with him. Throughout the rest of the episode, Langa started to look for Reki, and even asked some people if they had seen a red-haired guy, but couldn't find him anywhere.

Moments

 * At the beginning of the opening, Reki is seen teaching Langa dancing on his skateboard, while he follows his dancing steps.
 * They are seen skating together leading the team being followed by Cherry, Shadow, Joe, and Miya.
 * Later, Reki and Langa can be seen this time separated in different pictures. However, Langa disappears from his frame and Reki notices it but after he checks (turning his head to where Langa used to be), he appears running while at the background is seen several Langa's recordings which these change a moment later with Adam smiling at the screen and when he appeared, Reki falls while lifting his hand in sign of trying to reach someone, possibly Langa himself. The scene could be either interpreted as Reki losing Langa if he left him with Adam after losing the bet he had proposed to Adam before.
 * In the ending, it's shown two tree palms with Reki and Langa's hair colors.
 * At the same ending, after both had failed at practicing skating, Reki lends a hand to Langa in exhaustation of tripping everytime on skateboarding and Langa reaches it while he's seen injured and tired too because on his attempts on skating too.

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 taking as proof episode 8. 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. Reki and Langa can be portrayed in artworks as the adopted children from Cherry and Joe, which Miya could be included too.

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 taking 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 for some people there was a possibility that Renga or the show itself was likely queerbaiting rather than a real thing, and that was other problem that the fans were fearing about while more episodes were aired.

After the 8th episode was aired out to the public, much people were relieved that it wasn't a tragic one (because of how episode 7 ended) and instead, they were very excited about a certain scene in which Langa's mom asked him if he liked [Reki] (it was only set as person, but never asked directly by Kyan's name) and at the sudden question Langa only looked away while blushing in embarrassment as he affirmed that he indeed liked them. It's ambiguous about Langa's feelings towards Reki, this caused a controversial discussion between fans that were implying that his feelings were either platonic or romantic, though the most accepted fact was that Langa's feelings were romantic.

Many people imply that the ending song,「『 INFINITY 』by Yuuri, is actually how Reki feels by being with Langa. Some parts of the song are "I want to laugh next to you", "Let's go together, i'll go with you", "If you have a feelings, let's keep the feelings", etc. The same thing would go with the opening "Paradise", which is about Langa's feelings towards Reki, making it a possible mutual crush.

Fandom
FANFICTION

TUMBLR

PIXIV

TWITTER

Songs

 * Infinity | Yuuri (Sk8's ending song).

Trivia

 * In Twitter, a person posted that there's was an official sk8 drama CD called “CindeReki” (basically "Cinderella"), in which between the characters Langa is chosen as the prince and Reki as Cinderella.