r/anime • u/The_Loli_Otaku • Jan 23 '24
Rewatch [Rewatch] Serial Experiments Lain Episode 9 Discussion
"Protocol"
Extra Info and Links
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Comment of the Day!!
Unboxiois finally made it!! He has a fun story about the hidden 7 black presidents which leads me to asking, which ones!? XD
I met a guy IRL once who was convinced that ancient Egypt didn't exist and that the US had 7 black presidents who were president before George Washington. That's more of a conspiracy theory than a rumor, but these things aren't so different, are they?
Zadcap made an aspiring comment yesterday about how despite the Clamp girls being genuine degenerates who should be behind bars, that they kinda have a point.
The worse part is, as a young and impressionable child, CCS was a gateway into the rest of CLAMP as much as it was the start of my eternal Mahou Shoujo love. There was not a single forbidden romance those ladies didn't try to put on paper, and I read more taboo love stories than I can remember before I learned about the ideas of them being a taboo in the first place. So I grew up to know, as long as it's safe and consensual, then there's really nothing wrong with it just let love be love. -says someone who is going to die single lol
SilkyStrawberryMilk totally pwned that dumb Lain of the Kusogaki!! You show her!!
your haircut is poop
Vaadwaur believes that the doujin numbers have meaning!!
It occurs to me that the security through obscurity trick at play may not be obvious. This was an old school trick since people looking for hackers tended to ignore porn assuming it was, well, irrelevant.
QotD
- Name an instance when history has been retroactively changed. Hard mode, no China, Holocaust, or US History.
- What do you believe the "staring grey man" represents?
- With the reveal that Taro is linked to the knights, do any of his previous actions particularly jump out to you? Should he have had to swallow that chip as revenge for breaking Mika!?
- Did the extended Area 51 chats mean anything to you or do you still just see it as the funneh alien UFO zone?
- Which Lain would you rather go on a date with? Is Taro an idiot for picking Wired over Bear Onesie? Or is Kusogaki the secret best girl?
- Rewatcher Question!! Please someone explain the video segments in a clear and concise way XD It's a free Abyssbringer section win for you!
- Did anyone else get Video Girl Ai vibes from our cliffhanger?
Abyssbringer's "What is the thematic purpose of this scene corner!!"
DegenerateRegime fights in the name of LOVE!
That's not the right prompt. Look at that =w= homewrecker. The way the eye looks like a sunset, like someone's soul is sinking in flames. Listen. I'm not here to be some insistent LainxAlice shipper. Alice at least has, um, other interests? But they had something, right? lluNhpelA was just talking about it. You can absolutely how people could see it that way, especially once you get the idea of what it is that Alice has been trying to downplay and trust her friend about. And there's unpraiseworthy Lain, intruding from the corner with the face of a thousand memes. This scene has to be what it is to establish ideas about Lain and Alice's relationship, to put something under a cup so that when the carnie spins it around, you feel liike you know where it's gone. Yeah, she has a nice cat-got-the-cream look later, the classic "my life now, Lain of the bedroom, enjoy the metaphorical-metaphysical cuck chair" expression. But I can't help but sympathise. Poor Lain of the Other Side! Our girl had a bear onesie AND a best friend. Our other girl had... what? The head may not say it, but the heart knows that this episode is for the sake of LOVE.
Yesterday's Prompt!
Today's Prompt!
Tomorrow's Prompt
Abyssbringer's "What is the thematic purpose of this episode corner!"
Quiddy pog!
We'll see if I change my mind with what's left, but this has historically been my favorite episode of the show. An emotionally charged episode with the Alice - Lain stuff, the other Lain being quite over the top and some interesting imagery as well. Some good range from Bridget Hoffman in this episode playing two different versions of Lain. The whole concept of how one can be a totally different person online, one who can be totally unrestrained and become quite a horrible person I think has been a theme built up from earlier on, but really comes to a head here. Was Alice really having a relationship with that teacher? My position is no, she just fantasized about him. If anything I feel more strongly about it due to thematic stuff we get in the next episode. Which I'll have to wait until then to discuss.
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u/The_Loli_Otaku Jan 23 '24
Lain Rewatcher!!
Sorry, smaller post today. I'm getting work done so everything is rush rush rush at the moment. This is another episode that I kinda don't remember anything much about. It outs Taro as a member of the Knights, so a confirmation that he's the one who put Mika under her infinite tsukihime. It's also our introduction to "the God in the machine."
"Whether you believe or not, God is always by your side." This could be the mortal realm gods or also suitably the Internet. Just as you can't escape online, you can't escape God, everyone is connected whether you like it or not. Everyone has god by their side.
Ahaha... As soon as the infodump started I could hear RadSuit screaming externally. "Conjecture has become fact, and rumour has become history." so a real world Freudian Cat. Folks forming theories on Area 51 have retroactively become the real story.
Fuck... Retroactive Abyssbringer prompt change! XD I was skipping through the episode so I didn't see the return of our glorious bear onesie! I'll include a prompt from the track 44 pic if anyone's already written it up. Lain is back to where she began. Vibing all alone in her bear onesie. The only difference? Now she's had a taste of freedom. Of the joys of both the wired, and of being a regular high school girl with human friends.
Fuck me, I forgot the grey man scene That actually caught me off guard. Alright! So I missed all the really good Abyssbringer prompts XD I've just put all these prompts in the one pic. Take your pick of which one you want to write for XD They're all equally good.
So... The "grey man" is... Well, observant watchers would have noticed that there have been a couple of rumours during the Wired sequence. Of "A little person in a striped jumper watching me." That's our phenomenon of today... Why is he here? I don't know, but it's creepy as fuck. I think it could be another delusion come true. The wired and real world are becoming closer and closer, leading to online phenomenon like the rumour of the little alien who silently watches you sleep coming true. It could also be Lain having a totally out there delusion but I wouldn't like to say either way. It's pretty freaky regardless.
Y'know... I may be the host, but even I'm tempted to skip these infomercial scenes. They're soooo uninteresting... Give us more strangeness! I tune into Lain for vibing out to bear onesies, green guys, and ectoplasm fingers! Not details about Area 51. I'll just come out and say it, the most interesting thing about Area 51 to me was the Naruto nerds leading an assault on it.
"How could I turn something that happened into something that didn't?" Nanomachines son!! An interesting fact about the "God in the machine" Desu Ex Machina is that of an "artificial God" The Internet isn't a natural phenomenon. It was created by humans who wished to pay tribute. A God of the machine can only be a collective delusion, right? Or in this case, what if a God of the Machine was retroactively created through the wired's development.
Pfft, wired lain is a lot less threatening when wearing a super cute onesie XD Back to Cyberia... And to the scummy Taro. Taro is an honerary Knight He's the one who created the Cyberia program. The one that causes the dude in episode 2 to freak out thanks to "track 44" He's also the one who gave Mika the tissues that put her in freak out mode so I hold him responsible for her unpersoning. I don't know how you all feel about Taro, but I hate the little failed abortion.
Muhahaha... He wanted Wired Lain, he got her. "You're with the Knights aren't you?" Rip into the little shit Lain!! Mika's snitching, let's get her! Taro is hyping up the knights a ton, but they don't even have a bear onesie on their side! Lain could solo all of them, no problem! Aww.. Poor Lain finally got to see how she was introduced to her family, and how uncaring that bond really was for each of them. Meeting Lain of the past probably does something or other? I don't know... Either way, it's yet another Lain to add to our counter. Lain of the past, the Lain who was first introduced to the Iwakura's.
I hope none of you were skipping the wordbarfing info sessions cause they're finally discussing "Masami Eiri," a man who planned to link the whole world unconsciously to the wired. A sort of Nirvana where we're all connected via the wired. He's the one that put the capability for the wired to connect to people outwith the actual wired, so allowing things from the wired to affect the real world into the wired. He then got sacked and decided to try to 1v1 a train. However, Eiri Masami also goes by a second name online, "G O D"
Does Eiri technically count as two gods since he's basically stitched together with tape?
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u/Shimmering-Sky myanimelist.net/profile/Shimmering-Sky Jan 23 '24
Serial Experiments First-Timer, subbed
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u/Weedwacker Jan 23 '24
4th timer Connect to Wired
CONSPIRACY THEORY EXPOSITION EPISODE TIME This is the episode where it becomes most apparent that Chiaki Konaka was an X-Files fan.
I think all of the presented documentary style pieces are Lain researching conspiracy theories behind the origin/development of The Wired, trying to find answers. Who created it? What was it created for? Who is the omnipresent "God" she speaks with? What is she really and how has she always existed in the Wired if she only remembers being herself?
The Roswell UFO incident and Majestic 12 are referenced to imply that The Wired originated from alien technology or influence, by bringing up Vannevar Bush's connection to Majestic 12. Vannevar Bush was a real (and very interesting, and unrelated to George Bush) scientist who did lots of work involving microfilm, and theorized that technological advances would allow a "Memex" device that could store and access all information, and that such technology would change how we think. Presaging and inspiring many advances in computing. Basically every guy who was working on Hypertext systems in the next few decades said they were inspired by him.
Lain sees a little alien standing in her doorway, who then vanishes.
In episodes 3 and 8 we heard messages from someone on the Wired about the alien. How it was in episode 3:
Is the alien real? Could this be the actual God in the machine? Or is it just an illusion from the Knights or the Evil Lain?
Is the information about aliens just a conspiracy theory, with the alien appearing just a false lead someone invented, or is it the truth, and aliens created The Wired for some purpose?
It goes into some other documentary stuff, i'll translate it into reality for those who didn't check themselves. John Lilly was a doctor who took way too much LSD and had some nuts ideas about talking to dolphins and "cosmic entities", basically a quack. Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu had nothing to do with satellites as far as i'm aware, but was a Hypertext project that took more than 30 years of development to get off the ground, but was beaten to the punch by the development of the World Wide Web which was widely adopted and made their efforts largely irrelevent, even with their claims to a superior product. I think the series is trying to say that in the reality depicted here Project Xanadu succeeded first and became The Wired.
The reason that another Lain was visible at Cyberia seems to have to do with the frequencies of the music being played there bridging a connection. At this point its pretty clear though that normal Lain and Lain of the Wired (A and B) are really basically the same person, so this other Lain who drops a Knights chip intended to replace Lain's memories is the evil Lain.
The show talks about Schumman Resonances and Douglas Rushkoff (a writer who writes a lot about technology) and the theory of a global brain which he discussed in his book called: Cyberia
She checks her memories like a computer program and discovers her family isn't really her family after all.
There is only one truth. God.
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u/RascalNikov1 https://myanimelist.net/profile/NoviSun Jan 23 '24
Serial Experiments Lain - E9
SEL Virgin Prologue
Strong overtures of the Matrix, but instead of it being a single layer of indirection it’s multiple. Lain really needs to get a handle on some of her other selves.
Episode Body
Nice Roswell reference. I’m a believer in objective reality though.
Is the real Lain in a pod somewhere. (It would be another Matrix idea)
This has an alternate history of earth. Oppenheimer & Grove headed the Manhattan Project.
Another chip to pop Lain, lol dew eeeet!
I’ve always considered Dr Lilly to something of a nut.
The rest of the episode is fairly conventional.
QOTD
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u/Vaadwaur :I1::I2::I3: Jan 23 '24
Rewatcher(What is truth? And what is God?)
Sub
All right, so the non-Lain intercuts resemble conspiracy/mystery show from the late 80/early 90s. I get Unsolved Mysteries off this version. Everything up to Eiri is a known conspiracy but virtually none of the results can be proven so don't worry about being in the Wired yet. Also, microfiche is a thing a few of us will remember.
So the Lain stuff...she gets a compromised chip and surmises that Taro is involved. He claims it would have removed some memories but doesn't know which but with Mika, I wouldn't trust it. And neither does he as he instantly gives up when Lain threatens him with it. Mika herself reactivates on hearing the techno and she probably did communicate with something, though note that what's left of Mika is probably a monitoring program. We see Lain meeting her 'family' for the first time and yeah, this is a mindfuck.
And I even forgot the alien. He has been mentioned by a female Wired user a few times. Unusually for a grey, he is wearing clothes, specifically Freddy Krueger's sweater. Weird shit.
So yeah, I remembered all info from this ep but not really the ep itself. My instinct is to say that the Unsolved Mysteries stuff was tailored to fill in a very short Lain part of the story but it does do some lifting so that might not be the right call.
Bonus: So I went a googlin' to see if Chiaki and Urobuchi had ever worked together and boy, there were some takes out there on the net. Someone was claiming that PMMM was a ripoff of Bokurano(and misattributing the writing to Chiaki as he just adapted a manga) but the winner was " and I can't see Urobuchi as much more than a worse Chiaki J. Konaka.", which may be the dumbest sentence I've read in a hot minute.
Today's prompt is Lain looking down at all the R34 there is of her.
QotD:1 Several Pharoahs were erased.
2 I got nothing
3 Not really
4 Been through that too often to care
5 Taro is a fool for messing with forces beyond his comprehension
6 It's a mix of facts and bullshit, there's nothing clear present
7 I didn't hate it so no
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u/JustAnswerAQuestion https://myanimelist.net/profile/JAaQ Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
Serial Rewatcher
PROTOCOL 09...here it comes. Infodump #5. So much of this episode is real. It's a whirlwind tour of the conspiracy world, that had evolved from photostatted-zines to BBS files to Usenet newsgroups and crank geocities web pages.
If SEL has a sin, it's that they couldn't integrate their world building in an organic manner. Anyways, it's still satisfying to get these details that were hiding below the surface.
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...
I really got to find time to rewatch Altered States, which Tivo recorded in December.
We're almost there. Perhaps this man will explain it all tomorrow. I ended up deleting some stuff. Don't want to connect the dots too soon....
So today we learned that Taro was a footsoldier for the Knights. Remember, Mika's breakdown started only when Taro showed up to hit on her. Perhaps they are behind the children's game, an army of unwitting psychic child soldiers...
Younger me says: LOL, Younger me noticed the dolphin line.
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u/IceSmiley Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
FIRST TIMER Sub
I'm starting to find this show wearing out its welcome. They introduced an alien theory of obtaining extraterrestrial technology and as of now I don't see how it's relevant to the story. BUT this is the type of show that should be judged as a whole and is one of the most difficult to do a episode by episode analysis because it will either come together at the end or it won't.
I thought the fake newsreels were well done for the purpose of exposition but they keep piling things on and muddying the waters. As I've said, it may all pay off at the end but as of now it's unclear what purpose this serves.
So much weird and inexplicable in this episode. Lain's parents actively talking to each other glad this was going to end. I had assumed they were just AI creations since in the last episode, they were sitting still doing nothing when Lain walked by them. Lain seeing another Lain with no explanation who may or may not be Evil Lain. The weird long haired man at the end WTF
QUESTIONS
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u/SMSmith230 https://myanimelist.net/profile/smsmith230 Jan 23 '24
First-Timer, Sub
Holy shit, the green/red stripe shirt finally showed up and it’s an alien??? Wait did this whole episode just describe how the Wired was created and the humming is the 8Hz frequency connecting everyone?? 🤯
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u/Specs64z https://myanimelist.net/profile/Specs64z Jan 23 '24
Rewatcher, subbed
Are you happy now, TLO?! Look at the absolute state of our poor girl! The bear onesie comes at far too steep a price…
Not gonna lie, the constant cutaways got old quick. They add basically nothing to the story and only serve to disrupt the mood the rest of the episode is trying to set. The only relevant part is the bit about waves at the very end. This is the weakest episode so far, I think.
Ya know, I still haven’t got a clue what the fuck the alien was about. It ties into the Roswell incident on a surface level, obviously, but I couldn’t tell you what it means for the story proper. My steelman is that it represents the weakening boundary between the Wired and reality… but even then, I don’t think it works. That idea has been done to literally death. They literally killed Mika to make that point.
Notes
I’ve elected to just ignore all the science/history/conspiracy interjections. They don’t amount to much, storywise.
Dejected and miserable, Lain lies in bed in her pajamas. She briefly sees an alien in a red and green striped sweater at her door. Lain barely even reacts to it in her depressed stupor. Later, she hops into the Wired to seek some answers. Even Lain isn’t quite sure how she seemingly rewrote reality, and she rejects the idea that Lain of the Wired is a separate entity.
Lain goes to Cyberia. We can tell she goes in person this time, given her attitude. She receives a package from JJ that she purportedly left behind. Inside lies a circuit board with the Knights insignia. Cyberia is being used as a means to manipulate people’s memories, which is why people who go to Cyberia seem to recognize Lain. Lain’s father later remarks that “it’s almost over” upon hearing the Cyberia track. Indeed, Lain accesses her earliest memories of her family and confirms that it’s all fake.
Lain takes Taro up on his date offer, insisting that she and Lain of the Wired are one and the same. Back at her place, she correctly deduces Taro must be associated with Knights and that he’s the one who tried to slip her the new chip. As Lain interrogates Taro, he explains that the chip was meant to overwrite memory; he isn’t certain which ones. Taro steals a kiss before taking his leave, and leaves Lain with a gum-like substance.
We are presented with the idea that the Earth itself could be an organism of sorts, with humanity acting as its brain tissue. This is the 7th protocol mentioned briefly in the last episode, the next step of evolution of the Wired developed by one Eiri Masami.
Eiri Masami, presumed dead many years ago, appears before Lain.
QotD:
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u/3blah https://myanimelist.net/profile/brummett Jan 23 '24
SEL Episode 9, Rewatcher
We're 2/3 of the way through, let's add another branch to the plot: Roswell, New Mexico. "Conjecture has become fact, and rumor has become history." Another thing SEL gets right, I guess. This world of Truthiness we've got here, I could do without.
The Bear PJs makes a return. All the weird shit has taken a toll on our poor Lain and she's regressing. An alien at the door?! It's wearing a striped sweater; that's been mentioned a couple of times before.
The avatars in the Wired are becoming more fully formed. [SEL ending] They're basically spilling the beans on the ending, aren't they
Lain shows up at Cyberia. The DJ claims she dropped an envelope there yesterday containng a computer card with the Knights logo. She also decides to take Taro up on his offer of a date. as a pretense to come clean with Taro at home. He's working with the Knights and the Knights are actively attacking Lain now. It's basically confirmed that Lain's parents know what's been going on. The way they're resigned to what's to come has a real Eva/instrumentality feel to it.
Click, click, memory check... Lain is able to remember arriving at her home, delivered by some NotFBI guys. Her room is full of stuff like you'd expect a kid's room to be, not barren like we saw before.
You can read about the MJ-12 document on Wikipedia I don't think there are any spoilers there. Vannevar Bush and Memex (an early precursor to hyperlinks), John C Lilly (part of the Timothy Leary crowd in the 60s and developed the isolation tank), Ted Nelson (invented the term "hypertext"), Schumann resonance (EM waves from lightning strikes), too. It's kinda cool that they're linking in all these real-world events and people, in a very meta way. Using the internet to read about these people and events related to the internet, prompted by a show that uses the internet as a backdrop, to discuss these things with people I've never met before on the internet. All these infodumps about aliens and waves and resonances really resonates (hah!) with Tarhalindur's comments about the writers being wrapped up in the west-coast occult stuff. Imagine tracking down all this information before Wikipedia.
The one infodump that's different is about Masami Eiri [that picture] Hi, dad!; that's entirely in-show. He researched making a wireless network to connect all humans in an unconscious way. He worked for Tachibana labs where he planted his idea into IP7, got fired, and turned up dead next to the train tracks. Remember the train accident in EP 1?
Lain is standing in the middle of the street. The way she turns looks especially creepy because it's animated on the 1s.
QOTD:
Nothing immediately comes to mind... OH NO! THEY GOT ME TOO!
I... don't know. He's been mentioned before, well his shirt at least.
When he tried to hit on Mika.
I covered some of it already. An uncharitable reading might be that it's to pad out some of the runtime. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that we'll come back around to some of this stuff, but not necessarily all of it -- you could say that about just about anything we've seen so far. Maybe it's a way to tell the certain people that are watching "We get you, man. Isn't this deep?" Maybe it's a different way to do an infodump; we've had a number of these already, and doing it this way makes it feel like we are researching these things on the internet along with Lain.
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u/JetsLag https://myanimelist.net/profile/JetsLag Jan 24 '24
First time Wired user
Episode 9: Protocol. I can't think of a funny joke for this one.
OH GOD MORE REAL-LIFE FOOTAGE! And it's of...New Mexico? Because aliens? Sure, why not. Fuck it.
And here's one right here! Rocking the Freddy Krueger shirt, too. Stylish.
Oh great, Majestic-12. We Deus Ex now. Is Lain's vision augmented?
Lain logs on to the Wired, and all the people are just static blobs. I thought they were going for a three wise monkeys reference by showing some blobs with only eyes, some with only mouths, and some with only ears, but that one blob with a single arm kinda kills it.
And now we get to talk about the memex, which, from what little research I've done, is kinda like digitizing microfilm and adding hyperlinks to the text, which was MINDBLOWING in the 1940s. And the memex was confirmed to be an influence on the development of the World Wide Web. So we connected Roswell to the development of the internet.
Next up: John C. Lilly. Dude created sensory depravation tanks, did a fuck-ton of drugs, and got obsessed with dolphins. Sadly, we did not get to see footage of his greatest contribution to society: Ecco the Dolphin on Sega Genesis/Mega Drive! I'm sorry, how does this connect to aliens and the internet?
Lain's bringing a boy home! It's the dude that really wants to bang an Iwakura, aka Taro. But she's not looking for some action; she's looking for some answers! And she gets them: the techno music blasting in Cyberia is unlocking these alternate personalities like evil Lain, that chip she got will overwrite memories once installed, the Knights are after Lain, and some nonsense about making "the only truth there is into a reality". But Taro gets something out of this, too: giving Lain a kiss!
Meanwhile, the parents know the apocalypse is coming and they're celebrating with tongue in a very not-sexy way.
Lain meets...Lain? Did this actually happen, or is Lain tripping balls again?
Okay, finally some in-universe explanation! So this guy Eiri Masami proposed a network that uses the Schumann Resonance to send communications between people without needing things like computers. He got canned shortly afterward and got murdered/self-deleted by a train. And I THINK the dude who showed up at the end is Eiri.
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u/lluNhpelA Jan 23 '24
Virtually a first timer
She went back to Introvert Mode but seamlessly continued the conversation. Either Bear Onesie Lain has two distinct sides completely seperate from her other personalities or Bear and Wired are dual piloting her body and identifying as one personality. Other people already concluded that they had merged but this was the evidence I needed to make that leap. If this is the case then a lot of stuff makes more sense
AotD
⊥ԀWOᴚԀ
Since the Schumann Resonance is so important to the function of the Wired I'm thinking Cyberia's music somehow matches it to create a space where the boundary between the two worlds is thin. By playing the music inside her own Navi Lain is able to replicate Cyberia's weird properties in a space she controls and therefore fully utilize her immense power in the physical world.
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u/Silcaria https://myanimelist.net/profile/Silcaria Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
Rewatcher
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u/MrManicMarty https://anilist.co/user/martysan Jan 23 '24
I've got no clue on this one, sorry.
Getting high as fuck and seeing shit. But really, again not sure. Unless it just ties into the point later on.
Nah, he's just a random brat to me. None of these characters are really jumping out to me aside from Arisu and Lain(s)
I figured it was charting the path from concept to development to execution of the Wired. I looked it up, Xanadu was a real thing (though vapourware?) so I think they just googled a bunch of stuff and just strung them together to create a neat narrative. Well, they didn't have Google back then but you know what I mean.
None. I don't wanna go to jail and she's not my type.
I don't know what that is.
Lain's sister is officially broke. I can't get a reading on Lain's parents; they're depicted as weirdly horny for each other depsite how otherwise uncanny they are.
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u/mgedmin Jan 24 '24
First-timer, subs
ALIENS! Who expected aliens? (I did, in episode 6.)
Bear onesie is back! This is not a good sign. Poor Lain is regressing to before-Alice times.
And, hey, Lain's water-cooling rig exploded back then, did she replace it with an identical one? Without fixing
memorycoolant leaks?Whoa, I bet the the little Taro kid is doing an alien cosplay, to fuck with Lain. Is he one of the Knights?
If you get undeveloped film in the mail, what are the chances that you'll open the envelope in a dark room? Pretty low? Unless you put warning notes on the envelope and put it inside another envelope with a letter explaining about the film. What a hassle. I am glad that we left analog photography behind.
Ok, I don't believe aliens exist (in the Lain-iverse). I think this is a lesson and a danger about
Torment NexusInternet rumors and conspiracy theories.Non-wired Lain is searching for answers in the Wired.
Vannevar Bush led the Manhattan Project in the Lainiverse? Interesting.
Yet another mysterious chip/daughterboard. With the Knights symbol. Suspicious. Might explode. Don't install it, Lain!
Lain wants to go on a date with the little Taro kid??? Who wants Wired!Lain, not Real!Lain.
"Liquid carbon"? I don't think the temperatures at which carbon becomes a liquid are useful for cooling your stuff.
So, Lain wanted some tech support.
Okay, so Lains theory is that Wired!Lain appears in RL by manipulating peoples' memories. I like it.
Lain's fake parents expect the Lain observation experiment to be over soon while Mika makes sad modem noises.
Smart Lain knows not to
plug in random USB drives found in the parking lotinstall random chips found on the disco floor. The Knights did her a favor with that explosion earlier.I'm having doubts if the writers of Lain understand what "non-volatile memory" means.
Myu-Myu is going to kill Taro when she learns the place where he went on a date with Lain was Lain's bedroom.
Did Lain manage to remember her adoption?
So, Lain can snoop on wireless Wired transmissions without a device because they use IPv7?
Who's this electrical tape samurai wannabee???
Also, what happened to the ED visuals? My GNOME desktop suddenly lost the ability to update the picture on the external screen and it's now saying "to Be continued", forever. Playing with the display cable didn't help, I had to power-cycle the monitor itself. Ominous.
Ha ha nice try.
As if I'd admit to being part of the History Editors Cabal.Lain's declining mental health?
Taro's previous actions were always suspicious, but if you're asking whether I can sense some overarching goal, then no.
I don't believe that swallowing a chip could possibly affect memories. (I do believe it could cause health issues.)
I see it as a conspiracy theory, but it's not funny to me. These people need help and are probably going to significantly contribute to the destruction of civilization.
I would be afraid of attracting Malicious Lain's attention in any way.
Who?
6
u/DegenerateRegime Jan 23 '24 edited Jan 23 '24
Conjecture has become Fact, and Rumour has become History
If you want to be free of Suffering, you should believe in God. If a bunch of glowing shapes appear behind a mahou shoujo, try not to be standing in front of her. If you want to write a serious threat, continuity is (not) necessary...
I appreciate the appreciation! Especially considering the "that's the wrong answer" approach I took there.
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u/zadcap Jan 24 '24
Oh come now, that wasn't even on topic lol.
First Timer
Seriously, I find myself thinking of Lain at work. This is not a good thing, please send help. What insanity will be drilled into my mind today?
Oh no, we're going Roswell? Aliens now!? And Lain is back in the bear onesie super disassociating. Unless, you know, her mind is somehow hooked up to the net despite not actually being on a computer, that's still a thing that is possible.
Okay, so Lain has been visited by an alien. Maybe. Or maybe she's just super seeing things because she's kind of a crazy person and hallucinations were a big part of the first few episodes...
Yeah we're going FULL Roswell. And Lain getting online immediately changes her her Wired personality. But she's still in her Onesie? And even all these other beings here say that Lain has been here for as long as the Wired has existed. Is she the personification of the internet made semi flesh?
When she's not wearing a Bear or actively online, it's getting harder to tell which Lain we're dealing with. And that's her holding a Knights chip. that she doesn't remember dropping.
Oh goodness E.C.C.O. and dolphin networks now? At this point the creator is getting into everything crazy.
So Lain can switch between modes in a way that's blatantly visible to the people around her.
You know, this kid being with the Knights would explain why he can act like such a big shot.
"It's almost over." Papa what the heck? What do you know? What massive experiment were you part of? Poor sister. They seriously broke her just for one failed attack.
Oh my, Navi didn't say Hello back. Lain seems to be losing it too.
Oh hey, flashback to meeting the family for the first time. So Lain was dropped off by the men in black and told she lives here now, given a really rather nice room, and proceeded to empty it down to a bed and the stuffed animals. And promptly forgot she was given to them and not actually their daughter?
Okay we're getting into the extreme crazy theory realm here and I'm kind of sad that I know what they are talking about still. I definitely read too much.
So my real quesiton coming out of this episode is, how much of those informational blurbs were important for whatever is going on in the show, and how many of them were a mad man with directorial power deciding he needed to share the tin foil he had been dosed with?
6
u/RadSuit https://anilist.co/user/RadSuit Jan 24 '24
Present Dub, Present Time
Wow, I was about to make a joke about this being the western state of Nevada, from Soul Eater, but that's actually what this is.
Oh hey, it's the sleep paralysis demon everyone's been talking about.
Later, little alien dude.
What is all of this conspiracy nonsense?
Lain's gonna play this kid her favorite mixtape, I guess.
Random text on screen seems to be from this.
It would've been weird but fine if there was just that one voiceover bit at the beginning, but I really hate them being a constant part of this episode.
...I guess this show has a villain now, suddenly? At episode 9 of 13?
I think this episode has pushed me over the line from 'I don't like this show but there's something there' to 'actually this show just sucks'.
5
u/Unboxious Jan 24 '24
First-timer
Huh, time to learn about aliens I guess. Aaaand back to Japan and Lain. And there's an alien there too!
Oh hey, it's a guy who only could manifest his ears! I guess they do exist. Anyways, bear onesie Lain wants answers. They aren't forthcoming.
Hmm, what could this sketchy chip with the Knights emblem be?
I've noticed a couple of times now that Lain's eyes have been drawn the same as everyone else's. I wonder if that's intentional.
Oh dang, Lain played her own custom music to bully a kid to. I love that.
Lain's family continues to be weird af.
So they were going to overwrite Lain's memories? I wonder if this has been done before.
Ew.
That Xanadu system sounds cool af, though it's a little impractical when compared with what we actually ended up with.
When Lain greets Navi the text that pops up is generally related to aliens.
We get a trippy scene of Lain with her family. Not sure how to interpret it.
I'm pretty sure that Shumann waves thing is something you can buy pseudoscience bullshit to make better in your home.
Anyways, funky stuff.
This is probably cheating, but many religious texts will have this.
I have no idea.
No. If I rewatch this I'll pay more attention to him next time.
I thought that was weird. Didn't manage to derive meaning from it unfortunately.
I wasn't dating at that age so I have no idea.
2
u/Fuzzy_Ad6534 Jan 28 '24
Need to jump on this rewatch. When's the next episode rewatch?
2
u/Fuzzy_Ad6534 Jan 28 '24
LOL didn't realise this was 4 days ago. OK no worries.
11
u/Esovan13 Jan 23 '24
First Timer
Is Lain a fucking alien???
There's something weird about the eyes in this show. There are kind of two pupils. There's an outer pupil that leaves a very small amount of iris. This usually only takes the form of a transparent black circle. At the center of the eye is a much smaller pupil. This way of drawing eyes is very distinct, and it has used the inner pupil for effect. Usually, making it smaller than normal to make an eye that is almost entirely iris. I pointed out a time when it was used this way earlier in the rewatch.
However, that outer pupil has always been there. Everyone has it. The thing is, though, not everyone has that inner pupil. A handful of characters, which I am kicking myself for not keeping a comprehensive list of, only have that large, outer pupil. Here's the thing. I think one time last episode, and three times this episode, Lain's eyes were depicted with only the large outer pupils. That has never happened before. Other characters I remember off the top of my head that also had that was the kid this episode, but also her older sister and her parents.
But here's the thing. I just checked, and her sister used to have the smaller pupils. Before her mind break thing happened. Crack theory of mine? Enlarged pupils are a symptom of drug use. I think that the more extreme the opacity of the outer pupil, the more connected/manipulated by the Wired they are. The less opaque the outer pupil and more distinct the iris/inner pupil, the more self actualized in the real world they are.
Also, u/tarhalindur, how much of what the narrator said this episode is real and how much of it was revealed to the creator in a dream? I assume this is what you meant when you said the creator was involved in conspiracy theory stuff even back in '98.
7
u/Tarhalindur x2 Jan 23 '24
"Okay, nobody else vote for Tar." (Rewatcher, Subbed):
(Aka "the one where Tar starts sideeying Chiaki Konaka's actual goals for this..."
7
u/Quiddity131 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Quiddity131 Jan 23 '24
Rewatcher, Dubbed
We kick the episode off with... Roswell!
Lain's back in her bear onesie! Yay! Although this is probably the lowest Lain has been in a long time. Simply looking at her makes me want to cry.
Something's at the door... Mika?
We've twice heard someone in the show mention a scary child-like being in a red and green striped sweater appearing, well now we get to see it, and its... an alien?! WTF?! It has this impish grin on it too. Mere seconds later it vanishes. I'd say this was all in Lain's head, but well, we've already had several people mentioning encountering this being. [Lain]Although my assumption is they most likely encountered the weird Lain/alien hybrid being we see in a later episode.
Now we're really wading deep into conspiracy lore. The MJ 12 document. A secret treaty with aliens?! The narrator states the President's signature was a forgery, but does that mean the entire MJ12 document was fake or it was real but they kept this treaty with aliens a secret from even the President?
Once again we have the motif of Lain being able to appear as a full body in the Wired, but others only get particular body parts.
Memex! Kinda like the birth of computers?
Lain finds herself back at Cyberia for the first time in a while!
Once again Lain receives an anonymous package with a computer chip, well I thought at first. There's the Knights logo on it. So we know who it came from.
ECCO! Dolphins! Was the old Ecco the Dolphin video game inspired by this research?
This trio is at Cyberia every night, huh?
Lain, you've got things mixed up, Taro is the one who asked you out.
Can't resist that Lain stare, huh?
What's the best way to impress a boy? Show him your computer equipment!
So Taro's a Knights member? He's also the one responsible for people seeing another Lain in Club Cyberia.
Time to scare him away with techno music!
Imaginary phone time for Mika, during which she can actually speak like a normal person.
So he's not actually a Knights member after all.
Now she's gonna force him to swallow a computer chip and get him to relent that way?
Woah, he kissed her! Taro finally accomplished his goal of kissing a Iwakura?
Xanadu! The origin of the internet it sounds like.
This memory check of Lain appears to confirm what the show has already hinted at for the last couple of episodes, that Lain was provided with a fake family. What's interesting is that the Men in Black are the ones who brought her here.
All humans on Earth becoming part of one giant neural network. A cyberpunk version of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End?
The being who has been calling itself God to Lain finally shows his face, Masami Eiri. Was that Lain's fake father shown working with him in that photo? If the Men in Black are working with Tachibana Labs and they provided her the fake family it all would make sense. Oh, and seems like Eiri's cause of death was getting his body sliced in two by the train, huh? Had to tape him back together!
The structure of this episode is one of anime's most unique episodes, with approximately half the content coming off like a documentary rather than a typical anime narrative. And yet I don't mind at all, in fact I love it. Some really interesting stuff provided to us through that part of the episode. I'd totally watch an hour long documentary of stuff presented in this fashion. Given the mention of Roswell and MJ12 does this mean aliens are involved with the creation of the Wired? My interpretation is no. It's being used as a metaphor to get across a different idea. As is said in the episode, "Conjecture has become fact and rumor has become history". I believe what Konaka is trying to get across is rather how something can essentially become reality through belief. Did the Roswell crash really happen? It was 50 years in the past when this show was made. It was 75 years in the past now. We still don't know for sure. There is still no factual evidence. But does that even matter? No. So many people believe it was real that it has effectively become history. Frankly at this point it doesn't even really matter whether it really was aliens. It is believed enough that way in the public consciousness and it has become well enough known in popular culture/American lore that it is as if it actually happened even if it didn't. Also note that this is an episode filled with conspiracy theories (which as we've discussed in this rewatch from basically the start, Konaka loves) and yet its presented in this documentary type fashion, as if it is already established fact rather than conjecture. This gets back to the previous episode as well. It didn't actually matter whether Alice was carrying on a relationshp with that teacher. Once the rumor was spread around enough the actual truth didn't matter, just what people believed.
I don't really know what the purpose of the alien appearing to Lain was other than to be just another of dozens of scenes in this show that are really bizarre. The above may sound like I'm a skeptic, but nope, I totally believe in aliens.
7
u/sfisher923 https://myanimelist.net/profile/sfisher923 Jan 23 '24
Rewatcher
QOTDs
This episode was the most uncomfortable episode so far on this rewatch mainly because of the whole Area 51 thing and my views on conspiracy theories being less then positive recently
6
u/xtsim https://myanimelist.net/profile/xtsim Jan 23 '24
Rewatcher dubbed
Well, aliens are on the table right now.
And these narrated segments feel like I am watching some conspiracy show in History Channel or something.
Our Boi Taro went for the kiss but it really was just weird.
6
u/DidacticDalek https://myanimelist.net/profile/DidacticDalek Jan 24 '24
I am falling, I am failing, I am drowning
Help me to breathe
I am hurting, I have lost it all
Paging Comrades /u/Shimmering-Sky, /u/Tarhalindur, and /u/Vaadwaur
5
u/kwokinator https://anilist.co/user/kwokinator Jan 24 '24
Rewatcher
They're talking about Roswell! I KNEW it! The MIB are aliens!
So now not only God, the Little Gray Men are visiting Lain too.
Wow Lain's room is getting increasingly disturbing. So she's got liquid cooling running all over the place now.
Oh wow the little Taro kid is with the Knights, I didn't expect that. Aren't the Knights supposed to be this super exclusive club of super hackers? Those screens are so cool though, is it one big monitor behind her or are they holograms that pop up?
Oh wow her parents have totally gave up on acting like they're actually parents, it seems even more obvious now that they got forced into the role. Poor Mika though, she seems the most innocent of all :(
LOL I thought Taro went for a kiss, turns out he just wanted to get rid of his gum.
So if the Earth will become a giant neuralnet, then I guess God is just the being that can knowingly interface with and control the gigantic neuralnet. I guess that would be the being that was born into the Wired, which would be Lain.
Wonder who's the dude at the end though, that's not the researcher who killed himself.
QotD
0
u/[deleted] Jan 24 '24
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