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The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

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Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#41

Post by saalweachter »

honkycat wrote: post #35

Serial Experiments Lain is everything wonderful about anime. It is violent, dark, scary. In summary: ADULT. Anime tells stories in a visual format that for years and years you simply could not get anywhere else. Adult genre fiction was not well represented in American media. Even today, adult American cartoons are almost entirely "sitcom" format. They don't want to ever end, and they do not want to tell a story, they…

The great thing about animation is that once you accept the cartoonish caricatures as real people, you get all of the special effects for free. You don't have that jarring disconnect between the actors and the (bad) special effects, and you don't need to husband your special effects budget carefully, saving it for a few big scenes. You can fill each frame with impossibilities that are just as real as the people filling them.

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#42

Post by GuB-42 »

jpdb wrote: post #11

Lain catches a lot of flak in anime circles for being "edgy" or "deep for the sake of being deep" in that it tries too hard to be something thought provoking, but lacks any real substance. People still assign what they think the show is trying to say, but because the show is so abstract anything sticks. I tend to agree with the above point, but it has been quite some time since I watched it. I wonder if a new persona…

As much as I liked the anime, I tend to put it into the "pseudo-profound bullshit" category. They drop in loads of philosophical concepts, fringe science, wild extrapolation, and a bit of conspiracies and paranormal. There is no way you can't make parallels with the real world.

If may sound harsh but it is not a bad thing. It creates an atmosphere, and it is thought provoking, as evidenced by the article. It is a work of fiction, and fiction is like magic, it is all fake, but we enjoy being tricked into it. And that is a perfectly good trick when well executed.

Maybe Lain overdid it a bit, but I enjoyed the show, and for me, it is the important part.

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#43

Post by anotherman554 »

Fun fact, the creative team who did Lain was working on a show called Despera but it was cancelled when the director died. Apparently it's likely to come out in a few years under a new director as it was near fully funded right before Covid hit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despera

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#44

Post by QuesnayJr »

exhaze wrote: post #26

Saw Lain growing up. Quite fond of it. Pretty weak at predicting the future. You know who was pretty good at it? Isaac Asimov (spoilers ahead). My favorite example: Protagonist visits a highly advanced planet where everyone lives on their own plot of land. People lead lives of leisure, all of their needs are taken care of by highly efficient robots. However, they are terrified of physical contact, especially with the…

I think about this all the time. When I read it way back when I thought it sounded like an absurd extrapolation of the future. And yet here we are.

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#45

Post by vharuck »

ergot_vacation wrote: post #18
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #12

It's interesting how two people can have diametrically opposite readings of the same piece of art. I read the Wired as not less real than the real world, as the influence could flow in both directions, with events in one place causing effects in the other. The ultimate confirmation of that is the final scene, which was actually depicting Lain meeting her grown up school friend some 10 years later, while Lain stayed -…

Never trust a "journalist," or anyone who uses the phrase "very online" to review anime in a meaningful way. I stayed away from Mob Psycho for ages because of nutty articles like this reading meaning and intention into it to a degree that would have made Freud blush. It's all just projection. To some people, everything has to be about preaching ideology, spreading their collection of neat, tidy just-so stories about…

Mob Psycho was, IMO, pretty blatant in its moral lesson. Are you saying it didn't have one, or the reviewers blazed their own trails in defiance of the show's message?

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#46

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

vharuck wrote: post #45
ergot_vacation wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never trust a "journalist," or anyone who uses the phrase "very online" to review anime in a meaningful way. I stayed away from Mob Psycho for ages because of nutty articles like this reading meaning and intention into it to a degree that would have made Freud blush. It's all just projection. To some people, everything has to be about preaching ideology, spreading their collection of neat, tidy just-so stories about…

Mob Psycho was, IMO, pretty blatant in its moral lesson. Are you saying it didn't have one, or the reviewers blazed their own trails in defiance of the show's message?

Are we talking about the anime or the manga? It's been a long while but I don't remember the anime being preachy or blatant, what was the lesson?

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#47

Post by trentnix »

honkycat wrote: post #35

Serial Experiments Lain is everything wonderful about anime. It is violent, dark, scary. In summary: ADULT. Anime tells stories in a visual format that for years and years you simply could not get anywhere else. Adult genre fiction was not well represented in American media. Even today, adult American cartoons are almost entirely "sitcom" format. They don't want to ever end, and they do not want to tell a story, they…

A month or so ago I finally watched the Neon Genesis Evangelion series after hearing about it for more than 20 years. After slogging through a few episodes of predictable awkard-teenagers-pilot-giant-robots-to-save-the-world it finally reveals itself as a stunning exploration into the minds of troubled youth who are, effectively, subjected to a barrage of traumatic crises. It's a deep, rich world with complex characters, all with Herculean responsibilities and human weaknesses.

I'll have to watch Lain now, thanks to your comment.

I enjoy the usual suspects: Akira, Ghost in the Shell (including Standalone Complex), and Cowboy Bebop immensely. I like Robotech, though much of it is nostalgia. But I've found straying from the essentials to be challenging for my very Western tastes.

I tried to watch Stein's Gate and thought it was very clever, but the awkward romance and over-the-top characteristics of the main character were a bit too much. Knights of Sidonia and Attack on Titan got too weird, too quickly. I was too old for Dragonball. There's a lot of Western-focused, Japanese-animated options out there, but they almost universally lack the depth of their anime counterparts.

I'd love some recommendations if you have any, whether they be newer stuff or classics that I've overlooked.

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#48

Post by nonbirithm »

ulzeraj wrote: post #31

I like SE Lain but I don’t hold it as my favorite anime series. I’m more of a Texhnolyze fan and I do like Yoshitoshi Abe’s character design. His designs are present in Lain, Niea Under 7, Haibane Renmei, Despera, Phenomeno, Texhnolyze and others. I really like his artwork and I made a habit of buying one of his artbooks everytime I visit the Akihabara Mandarake building.

In case you or anyone else doesn't already know, ABe also livestreams on his YouTube channel. Recently he's been drawing a new short manga.

https://youtube.com/c/abflygm

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#49

Post by rhn_mk1 »

astrange wrote: post #38
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #12

It's interesting how two people can have diametrically opposite readings of the same piece of art. I read the Wired as not less real than the real world, as the influence could flow in both directions, with events in one place causing effects in the other. The ultimate confirmation of that is the final scene, which was actually depicting Lain meeting her grown up school friend some 10 years later, while Lain stayed -…

> It's interesting how two people can have diametrically opposite readings of the same piece of art. Mostly because Chiaki Konaka is incapable of writing endings. I don't think Lain is that abstract (there's some early parts that look like it but I think are meant to be representative of schizophrenia), but it is hard to follow what the last episode is saying even though they're talking nonstop. With such a heavy scr…

> it is hard to follow what the last episode is saying

I found it hard to follow what most episodes were saying, and I changed my interpretation several times, always feeling that I'm on the verge of understanding, but not quite getting it.

And I actually liked it that way.

Re: The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

#50

Post by Fauntleroy »

hguant wrote: post #6

I thought this was a good article, but I wonder at the author's background. >her hardware expands to turn her bedroom into a dim, electrified jejunum I'd like to think I'm well read, but who the hell pulls "jejunum" out of their duodenum!

Funnily enough, there's a whole segment of people who simply know words like duodenum, jejunum, etc because a large segment of Metal Gear Solid 2 took place inside the "intestines" of a giant submersible vehicle.
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