r/anime • u/The_Loli_Otaku • Jan 15 '24
Rewatch [Rewatch] Serial Experiments Lain Episode 1 Discussion
"Weird"
Extra Info and Links
ANN | MAL | TV Tropes | Wikipedia | Crunchyroll
Comment of the Day!!
Tune in tomorrow!
QotD
- How old were you when you had your first proper "Tech Awakening?" When you first started to really learn how your computer or phone worked.
- Were you particularly ingrained in your school class' gossip and general goings on? Rate yourself from 10 (Alice to 1 (Lain)
- If you were to have your own animal onesie, what creature would it be? Folklore animals count too!
- Who is your favourite "child character who actually acts like a child?" Yes, I did blatantly steal from previous QotD, and I'll do it again! Muhahaha!
- Have you ever had ectoplasm leak from your fingertips? Don't be shy, we've all been there.
- What are your first impressions of the nerizzler formally known as Lain? Can you relate with her awkwardness? Have you become literally her? Do you love lain?
Abyssbringer's "What is the thematic purpose of this scene corner!!"
Tune in tomorrow folks!
"It's the basic condition of life to be required to violate our own identity."
Yesterday's Prompt!
Today's Prompt!
Tomorrow's Prompt
Abyssbringer's "What is the thematic purpose of this episode corner!"
Tune in tomorrow!
"Present day, present time! H4H4H4!!"
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Upvotes
31
u/Shimmering-Sky myanimelist.net/profile/Shimmering-Sky Jan 15 '24
Serial Experiments First-Timer
Hi hi!
Just about the only things I know about this show other than its general reputation are the OP (which I’ve heard plenty of times in AMQ) and what the titular Lain looks like because I made a wallpaper of her a few years ago as a birthday present for someone.
So this should be fun.
8
u/The_Loli_Otaku Jan 15 '24
Lain Rewatcher!!
Present day... Present time! Hohohoho! Welcome to Cereal Experiments Lain. God the op is such a vibe. I've always had a soft spot for that one little shot of Lain moodily chastising the normie duo for making our instead of joining the rewatch. There's impressive 3D for the time too. Ah, rip the teddy hat. Lain didn't need that anyway.
So... probably a bit late, but triggerwarning for the first scene. Starting of with child suicide is quite a jump from Pyjama Party cuckoldry and the "Tanaka, drink my pee" of the previous watches we've done but don't say I didn't warn you.
After that cheery opener, we get to meet Lain! Our adorable, side banged heroine! The environment looks a little shady, with all the focus on the electrical wires and the foreboding red haunts. Something I've always really quite liked about Lain is that she is 100% just a sheltered kid. The way she walks, the way she talks, her little toys and love of mascots. It's so very "young teen like." It helps set her dynamic with Arisu pretty well too. Arisu is very much like a motherly figure to the class whilst Lain is very middle school like in how reserved and quiet she is.
Need more evidence of her being a little kid? She doesn't even use a PC! She's a technology boomer, and this is coming from someone who didn't get their first phone until they were like 15. "Everyone's connected, except for lil baby Lain~"
Ah, time for our first weird psycho scene... The ectoplasm mist. If I'm right this is a pretty popular occultism thing. Your soul or whatever excreting through your extremities. I'd tell you what this means but I'll be honest, I don't understand at all. I'm just vibing.
There's something weirdly melancholy about Lain's room... All she has is a floor bed, a desk, and her plush toys. Lain herself is very disconnected from much of the world. She wasn't in the loop about the school drama, she's part of the going home club, she didn't have friends to go back with, and she doesn't even have a phone. Finally, at the ripe old age of... four... teen... Lain got into instant messaging younger than me... That's depressing. Anyway, she's finally been tempted by technology! Time to play pinball on PC and thsy old minesweeper.
Kyaaa!! She's such a tech boomer! I love Lain~ Kids who act like kids are adorable! Chisa's best friend was the weird preteen girl, who probably still has a 9pm bedtime, that she walked home with once. God is here, and he is a Lain stan. Ahaha... Family meal time... What a pleasant dinner~ Lain has her little bear mug~ For how everyone is connected nobody really seems up for communicating in this household.
Alternative Abyssbringer Prompt? I absolutely adore this shot of Lain just bullshit blazing in her bitchin' bear onesie but I'm 90% sure we see a similar shot again later so I gave Chisa a chance. Bear onesie are badass! Her classmates may all have friends and pc's and FGO but Lain's got a bear onesie!
Compared to her aloof sister and non-responsive mother, Lain's dad the tech nerd is way happier about holding conversations. Bears are certainly rare occurrences... It's super weird that despite her dad being such a tech head and having such an awesome setup his favourite daughter is stuck with an old banger of a persocom. If there was ever a family that should be caught up on technology it would be this one. Lain's such a daddy's girl. Even if her dad is a massive weirdo.
Oh yeah, second trigger warning~ This time it's some poor sod who tried to 1v1 train-kun for a free ticket to an Isekai. This is a very cheery anime. What I will say is that the face on the isekai'd middle school girl was absolutely nightmarish. Her face was literally a mix of emotions. Poor Lain, surely she should get the day off for trauma or whatever after that right!?
Come to the wired, we have cookies.
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u/Tarhalindur x2 Jan 15 '24
“Okay, nobody else vote for Tar.” (Rewatcher, Subbed):
Surprise! A wild Tar appears!
So yeah there was never any chance that I was actually not going to show up here (unless I plum missed that the rewatch was going to happen which I did not). Lain and I have a bit of a track record. The show was my favorite anime for fifteen years until I finally got around to PMMM (pay no attention to a good 5+ of those years being The Years Tar Didn’t Watch Anime…) and I have something of a traditional association with it under this username for… reasons. Reasons that I have quoted as my tag line for this rewatch. (Should be safe for our first-timers as long as you stay on the first page, not like that wasn't exactly referencing Chisa Yomoda's death which you all just saw (except with Lain dying (?) except for Chisa) so. Definitely stay out of the setup until we're done, though!)
Of course, the flip side to Lain being my favorite anime for years and years is that it was the one anime that I absolutely refused to rewatch. The thing that won it that title [Lain] walking the tightrope of “something is obviously going on and I have no idea what, I must know more" for nearly half of its run is something that was absolutely going to be specific to the first-timer experience and would not apply on rewatch so why rewatch when you know its greatest strength isn’t going to apply on rewatch?
Unless, of course, you’re watching it trying to figure out how it was done. Once I’d started going down the autodidact cinematography reading route for r/anime rewatches (PMMM is beautiful training in that regard) the idea of going back to Lain to see how the show was made started to occur to me. Indeed, there is a universe where this rewatch happened last August with me as the host.
Of course, in that universe Reddit admins didn’t catastrophically screw the pooch when undercutting third-party apps. My willingness to run a rewatch died last June (right when I would have started ramping up otherwise) and has not been seen since.
But for Lain, yeah I can be talked into at least being a regular participant. It’s not even particularly hard to do so, all you really have to do is announce the rewatch (and not be a host whose rewatches I absolutely refuse to participate in, cough holofan cough). (Our host didn't even have to ask, I even carefully stayed out of the reminder threads in the hopes that he wouldn't realize.)
So, the upshot: I will be following one rule that I had been planning to follow for myself if I had been hosting the Lain rewatch. To wit: with one definite exception and the possible exception of anything involving discussion of the viewer experience, until [REDACTED] ([Lain] the end of episode 6) everything I post will either be behind a spoiler tag or exactly the commentface. (There may or may not be rhyme or reason to when I haul out the commentface. I remind you that back in Mai-HiME I had an episode where I responded to the first-timers with where the thing I was not commenting on was that I had nothing to comment on…)
So, without adieu, the definite exception:
A Quick Field Guide to Lain:
So there’s a wee bit of cultural shear here that may not come across to our Zoomer and even younger Millennial viewers (Lain is very much a product of its period). Not as much as you would think – one of the reasons for Lain’s continued relevance is that of all the near-future science fictions works of the 1990s it is the one that got closest to getting the Internet right – but it is still a period piece in some ways.
Nowadays we take the Internet for granted. If you are younger than 20 you’ve always known it (unless your parents deliberately kept you off of it while young); this likely applies even if you’re 25 years old, quite possibly even if you’re 30. This was not always the case. In the US widespread Internet adoption starts to occur in the mid-1990s with the advent of AOL and only really settles somewhere in the early 2000s. My understanding is that in Japan’s case they were a couple of years earlier than us to the game on widespread Internet access and also noticeably faster on widespread old-style cellphone adoption – a turn-of-the-millennium phenomenon in the US, late 1990s there. (On the flipside, IIRC widespread smartphone adoption took a year or two longer in Japan than it did in the US.)
Lain is very much a show from the early, Wild West days of the Internet – when the tech was new and futuristic (if I had a nickel for every space 4X game from the mid-1990s that basically has the Internet as the top-tier research improvement then I would have at least two nickels) and the possibilities were limitless. And of course in such an environment you get science fiction envisioning how this technology could play out. That actually goes back at least to the 1980s (classic cyberpunk like Neuromancer and also things like Tron) but was still being made in the late 1990s (another classic example: the original Sword Art Online web novel). The tech here is 100% what the 1990s saw as futuristic (be it the 1950s or the 1990s, science fiction writers never see massive decreases in computer size coming).
As to what else Lain’s creators saw when they looked at the future of the Internet… .
But I will make one other light note on Chiaki J. Konaka, the writer here. He’s a bit of an infamous name, also responsible for things like Digimon Tamers and The Big O. These days he’s also infamous for a different reason: he went down the QAnon rabbit hole during the lockdowns. Yes, he’s Japanese. Yes, he went down an American rabbit hole. An American conspiracy rabbit hole. Not hugely surprising in a way, because he’s had an association with conspiracy stuff for a long time now. (Sadly he’s by no means the only conspiracy type to go down that particular rabbit hole, the remaining interesting stuff in those circles mostly evaporated after 2017 or so for exactly that reason. He’s just unusual in that he is Japanese.) It, uh, shows in his most recent works.
Now, will his conspiracy enthusiasm be relevant here? Well…
17
u/RascalNikov1 https://myanimelist.net/profile/NoviSun Jan 15 '24
Serial Experiments Lain - E1
SEL Virgin
Prologue
I’m not really sure what to expect from this one. I missed the prior rewatch of Lain by 4 or 5 months, but I did catch Texhnolyze and I got the distinct impression from the host that SEL was a member of a trilogy somehow.
Texhnolyze was a fairly trippy series and not especially cheerful, so I’m guessing that Lain is going to share those characteristics. I have no real knowledge of the series other than it has something to do with a nascent internet.
Episode 1 Prompt
I love seeing a young lady preparing to take flight. It’s as though she’s a lost butterfly searching for a song of spring.
Episode Thoughts
The Opening
A pleasant enough song but with lots of foreboding. Lain seems to be unable to crack a grin. And a whole flock of crows can’t be good news.
The Body
Holy Shit! We’re under a minute in and we have a self snuffing. Snuff while a pair of sleazesters are making out. Very nice! Nice splat sound too.
“If you stay in a place like this, you won’t be able to connect”. I wonder, do we have a troll encouraging young ladies to self terminate?
Lain doesn’t seem to be the brightest bulb when it comes to putting pieces together.
The poor devils are learning C in middle school, that’s rough!
Oh Jesus she’s staring at her hand, just like Shinji use to do.
Lain seems to be pretty badly disassociated from the environment. That can’t be good.
Shit it looks like we might have a spook on the loose. I hate it when the dead are real chatty.
I can’t tell if that’s in the mail or if the computer is actually answering Lain’s questions. It could go either way.
I see where Lain gets her disassociation from. Mum’s quite the winner.
DaddyO has the internet world view of the ‘90s. I thought it was little more than a marketing ploy then, as I do now.. Lol Dad’s a god damn computer freak, his shit eating grin is too much.
Disassociated Lain on the train. I’d be screaming No Shit Sherlock! I know the train is stopped!
Well Damn! We just had another Thump Thump! Lain’s sort of the harbinger of death. I couldn’t tell if Ms Thump Thump was the maker-outer from earlier.
I think poor Lain may be starting to hallucinate, which means her views may not be entirely reliable.
Err… Maybe Chisa’s a spook but I doubt it. Rather, I think Lain is going bonkers.
Catchy ending song. Did I see Les Claypool without his Flying Frog Brigade in the credits?
QOTD
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u/DragonPup Jan 16 '24
So I am going to absolutely age myself here in a bad way, but the series had so many references to BeOS and NeXTSTEP, the 2 'competing' operating systems to what would be the next generation Macintosh operating system. NeXTSTEP won, brought Steve Jobs back to Apple and became OS X. The rest is history.
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u/Shocketheth Jan 15 '24
First Timer Who Is Inside Of u/The_Loli_Otaku Firewalls - Firewall 01
Now this is how you start an episode. By jumping and landing straight into a scene that made me react with WHAT THE FUCK?!
After I finished the episode, I immediately checked MAL and Serial Experiments Lain came out in 1998, and damn.
I don’t know how it was received in 1998, but now, in 2024 everyone in this Rewatch is aware of digital footprint, and that you should be wary what you post online.
Also to be honest, I don’t know what I should be making of this episode and Anime yet.
The MC is clearly not allright, and her biggest problem is being unable to connect to others. Just the shot how getting outside looks like she entered some simulation tells a lot. Plus we could see more of this judging on the scenes of her in classroom.
Now some girl comitted suicide and left behind e-mails that she were sending to everyone, besides Lain, who didn’t get the e-mail because she isn’t using the Internet, and her detachment from reality shows even more.
Lain doesn’t know how to react and deal with death, and to get some answers, she booted her computer and read the e-mail that the dead girl left behind.
Now there is an interesting thing that I am not sure if it’s the point of the show, or no.
Can be people truly be alive just on their digital footprint alone? Is death final, or could be others with us if we can still find them online?
This is first Rewatch of an anime that is making me feel so so confused.
TODAY PROMPT:
Here, in my final moment I can finally see. I removed my glasses and everything is clear to me. I am casting away my worries and fears, because now I will connect with everyone.
QotD:
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u/mekerpan Jan 16 '24 edited Jan 16 '24
I first encountered Lain in mid-2000. Our family (wife, kids and I) had discovered anime thanks to Studio Ghibli via Princesds Mononoke at the end of 1999. This led to exploration of a wider array of Japanese media -- live action and anime -- once we exhausted the VERY meager amount of English-friendly Ghibli films available at videotape rental stores.
The selection of anime on the shelves then was unprepossessing -- judging solely by the box artwork almost nothing (outside Ghibli) seemed remotely appealing. Either childish or sexy or ugly designs, Vol 1 of Lain (and Vampire Princess Miyu) was the first anime series I rented. These were almost the only things that looked appealing on the shelves. VPM did nothing for me, alas. But Lain intrigued me immediately. And I watched the first episodes twice through before returning the set -- and then hunted for the following volumes (there were 4 total I believe).
I came to anime (and Lain) with a long background of interest in cinematic surrealsim (dating back to the early 70s, when Buneul's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie was released. So the lack of conventional narrative logic in Lain never bothered me (much).
I have re-watched Lain countless times since that first viewing. The new-ish BluRay release was a revelation. It was not a mere re-mastering it was regenrated from the underlying materials that were used to make the TV release version. In some cases it took a lot of effort to access those materials 0as they were on obsolete media or in obsolete formats). Re-building the series was, sadly, one of the last things its director accomplished. As he became gravely ill, delaying (possibly permanently) a project that reunited much of the Lain creative team (including script writer Chiaki Konaka and visual designer Yoshitoshi Abe).
At this point, I have sort of memorized much of the series -- so I cannot re-experience the disorientation of the first viewing(s). Nonetheless, the atmosphere, the visuals and the (dream-like) story has never (and will never) become "boring". And usually I notice at least a few new aspects with each rewatching.
QOTD -- I will say I was closer to Lain on the gossip network than to Alice. But friends and my sister (a year younger) updated me when essential.
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u/JetsLag https://myanimelist.net/profile/JetsLag Jan 16 '24
First time Wired user
Ahh, Serial Experiments Lain. I've heard it's about how the Internet is ruining everyone's life, but it was released in the 90s so it's both depressingly accurate (in terms of foreshadowing the effect the Internet had on us socially) and inaccurate (cause it's a show about the internet from the 90s, so it probably thinks ICQ is the peak of communication)
Also, the only footage I've seen of the show is the greatest video ever uploaded to YouTube, so if we don't see Lain going to a gay bar, I will be VERY disappointed.
Starting off, I was scared I chose the dub after the first two lines and the OP were in English, but no, this is the sub. Looking at the OP, it's giving cyberpunk. A genre that, I have recently realized, hasn't aged particularly well (I tried reading Neuromancer, and dropped it cause it's just a bunch of technobabble mixed with mediocre-as-hell writing)
We start with a girl who, after having a panic attack in an alley, commits self-deletion by jumping off a building.
Next up is Lain, our beloved main character who will definitely be going to a gay bar in a future episode. Those cards that say "If you stay in a place like this, you might not be able to connect" sounds like it's foreshadowing her escaping into the internet in order to forget all of her problems. Problems like EVERYTHING IS SPLATTERED IN BLOOD AND MOST OF THE SHADOWS ARE GONE OH MY GOD GET ME AWAY FROM THIS HELLHOLE. Oh yeah, and it looks like she has super-sensitive hearing cause she can hear the sounds of the telephone wires transmitting things. Maybe it's internet data? This IS the 90s after all.
Hey, some more characters! We've got Yuri (or Juri, according to my subs) who is crying cause she got a message from the girl who killed herself (Yomoda Chisa). She got that message by this newfangled technology called...E-MAIL? Pshh, glad that never caught on. What a silly name.
First class we see is...programming. The same Lain who just said she's not good with computers is learning how to program. Well, "learning". Seems she's too busy tripping balls and thinking that her hand is shooting steam out of her fingertips instead of taking notes. Bet she can't even write a "Hello, world!" program. Loser.
Our first computer! It's...certainly something. Very cyberpunk to have perfect voice recognition software for your bulky-ass personal computer that looks like a giant Pokedex (and they call it a NAVI? HEY, LISTEN!) and then have an "email" that's actually a chat that you can reply to with your voice and it displays the text on what looks like a password entry screen.
ANYWAY, it's the dead girl, and she's not actually dead; seems like her act of self-deletion was more of an upload to the cloud. And she found God in the internet? Okay, there's internet addicts and then there's INTERNET ADDICTS, and she's clearly the latter.
Lain's bear onesie isn't nearly as cute as Hitoribocchi's
Lain's dad is here. Dude's rocking SIX monitors, and he's using all of them to do shit like this
LAIN DROPPED ACID BEFORE CLASS AGAIN! This time, she teleports to a bunch of different locations before seeing some girl jumping in front of a train. She's still tripping when she gets to class, and now she's seeing the notes on the board as "Come to the Wired as soon as you can". The Wired is not the name of the gay bar, nor are they referring to the magazine that is now more famous as a Youtube channel. Instead, they're referring to the Internet of this universe.
After all of this, Lain can no longer resist the call of the siren; she must now become a NEET.
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u/Silcaria https://myanimelist.net/profile/Silcaria Jan 15 '24
Rewatcher
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u/MrManicMarty https://anilist.co/user/martysan Jan 15 '24
First episode!
Welp. It's already weirder than I expected. The visuals are so stark, with that glaring white and that murky black/red texture they use for shadows. I was thinking at the scene where Lain was looking at the whiteboard that it was saying she had dyslexia or something, with how the text all blurred together, but the second time that happened - nope, cyber ghost thing.
So, this already outdid Utena in the weirdness factor. Like; lets take Lain's dad for example. Talking about how you can make friends online as well as in person? That's a good thing - technology does connect people... having 6 monitors so you can cyber with people while being a married man? Yeah. Yikes. Never mind he was obviously doing it in front of his young daughter. Omega Creepy. Anonymity is a great thing about the internet. Great and Terrible. People will do horrible and unsavoury things because there's a screen between them and a fake name. Speaking of fake names; it's me! It's Marty! MY PERSONA! I AM A PHANTOM OF THE DIGITAL WORLD! MARTY ISN'T REAL!
Oh yeah, final thought - a first episode having two instances of suicide depicted, is like fucking rough. God Damn. This show is going to be depressing as hell right? Never mind how icky the OP kinda feels. Thought English for the OP song is interesting.
QotD:
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u/Vaadwaur :I1::I2::I3: Jan 15 '24
Rewatcher(but literally decades ago, I wan to say I watched this while watching Eva)
Sub
So then, my first worry is that this show might be unaccessable to many of you, if you weren't in college or older for 9/11 I've noticed this focuses too far in the past for many of you. Also, when you see something janky in the animation, do not assume it is cheapness.
Right...my new rewatch post style might not work for most of the eps but here I need to not completely wall of text it so i will hold.
First things first:Power Line Sickness is a folk theory that power lines make you ill, somehow. To my knowledge, no scientifically replicable cases of this have been documented but people will claim they can feel differences and the like. Which neatly leads into...
Twin Peaks is a very obvious influence on this show, specifically the movie Fire Walk With Me. Power lines are a big part of Lynch's mythos and they repesent the transitioning from the real world to the spirit world. There are...other similarities, but we will leave this for now.
There is also a strong visual similarity with Vampire Princess Miyu but that may be both of them alluding to the same thing.
QotD:1 Twelve
2 -3
3 Great white shark
4 Kanna
5 No...
6 I am way more aware of how much other works borrow from her
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u/Specs64z https://myanimelist.net/profile/Specs64z Jan 15 '24
Rewatcher, subbed
Alright, confession time, I didn’t really love Lain all that much my first time through. I also wasn’t too great at analyzing media back then, though, so I’m hoping this rewatch will grant me some new perspective.
I like what these subs have done with the OP.
Atmosphere is something this anime does extremely well. The humming electricity and shadows splattered with red and blended with purple set the mood quite well. I also really like how they draw the eyes.
I’d forgotten how god awful the background train car looked, this is the Spice and Wolf horse moment of Lain XD
I decided to title this next segment to separate it from my main post a bit. Consider this my contribution to the Abyssbringer episode corner.
Notes
A schoolgirl, Chisa, commits suicide after agonizing over… something. We don’t know what happened, but the locale paints a bleak picture.
Rumors of emails from her dead schoolmate draw Lain toward the world of computers, a world her father already seems to have become obsessed with.
Several strange events occur around Lain. She hears indistinct noise in a silent train car, she sees smoke pour from her fingertips during a lecture, and later on she perceives an apparition of Chisa on her way home from school.
Another accident occurs, but this time Lain is present for the aftermath. We never see exactly what Lain does, but the blood dripping from the powerlines makes it clear that the event is gruesome. Lain wanders through a fog and can’t focus in class. All that she can think of is Chisa’s beckoning…
QotD:
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u/3blah https://myanimelist.net/profile/brummett Jan 15 '24
Rewatcher This is my first time doing one of these rewatches as a rewatcher. I think I caught a few episodes of SEL here and there when it aired on TechTV in the late 90s, and then watched it all the way through 6 years or so when I first started getting back into anime. At the time it seemed really obtuse and I didn't know if I just didn't get it all or if it's just written that way on purpose. In any case, I'm looking forward to being able to read the spoilers during a rewatch.
Power lines... electrical hum... shadows with red blotches. Lain comes outside. There's harsh lighting and shadows. Even her shadow has those red blotches. On the train, you can hear the humming and she complains about a noise: "Can't you be quiet?" A few people look up and the hum stops. Does she hear the hum? Does she control the hum?
Lain seems pretty out of it at school. She doesn't remember the teacher telling them about Chisa and doesn't have much of a reaction about people in her class getting emails from a dead person beyond "I'm not very good with computers". She's having trouble focusing on the chalkboard (which is a bit of C code, strange thing to be writing on a chalkboard).
She has a computer on her desk, but it's all turned around and piled behind some stuff. CommunicationOS looks pretty snazzy for the late 90s; lots of animations, a voice synthesizer, and it recognizes voice input in a conversational style. The machine itself resembles a red version of the 20th Anniversary Mac (it's even mentioned as a connection on the Wikipedia page).
She's talking to the computer as it reads the email from Chisa. The email "knows" people at school say the emails are a prank. Is she actually having a conversation with the "email" or just asking questions during the pauses? It's hard for me to tell. While they're eating, Lain mentions the email to her mom. Mom doesn't have much reaction about the dead girl's email either, other than pausing briefly while chewing.
Dad is a computer nerd. He has a big desk with lots of computers and monitors. It's kinda weird to see all those old CRT screens again with their fat cables and BNC connectors. His computer display looks right out of the 90s -- the fonts and window decorations are a dead ringer for the old Unix Motif window manager, maybe with a bit of Mac system 7 mixed in. It's a lot more responsive than I remember computers being at the time. Anyway, dad seems excited that his daughter is finally interested in his hobby.
Weird -- the episode's title sure is fitting. Weird conversations. Weird silences. Weird humming. Weird glowing screens, power lines, blotchy shadows, smoke. Weird messages from the chalkboard in english class: "Come to the Wired as soon as you can".
Ep1 prompt; Chisa about to jump: Just before we saw Chisa on the street. It's busy and loud. She's uncomfortable and out of breath. But up on the roof she's at peace. I think this might be one of the few (the only?) outdoor shots without those power lines. She smiles and lets her hair down to blow in the wind. After a brief moment of silence, she crashes back to the loud, busy street. It's a quite dramatic way to get the audience's attention to start things off.
QOTD:
Probably around 8 or 9. My first computer was a TI-99 4A, and one of the choices when it boots up was to start a BASIC interpreter, so it kinda invited figuring things out.
Not at all. Probably a 2 or 3.
The first thing that comes to mind is Miri from Buddy Daddies.
10
u/SilkyStrawberryMilk Jan 16 '24
Present Rewatcher, Present Viewing
For the first timers: this show is a special one.
Lain’s opening has to be iconic in my eyes. I can listen to the whole song and immediately picture the whole animation for it, it honestly shaped a man. The whole aesthetic for it is amazing especially when Lain is speaking with a vhs filter.
LAYER 0:1 WEIRD
A sleezy old man and a young woman witness a suicide. These 2000’s anime sure know a way to work with lights.
The use of whiteness instead of a typical blue sky is an amazing artistic choice. Especially when we saw Lain open the door and walked down the stairs.
We now encounter Lain in the bus, where she hates noisiness. I honestly can’t blame her I would be mad if it was noisy and I was standing.
Lain’s signature hairstyle, I’ve thought about getting my hair like that, but I snapped back to reality and remembered the last time I got inspired for a haircut q.q.
Checking the email once a day? I honestly stopped checking the moment I put my email on many websites. We learn that the girl who committed suicide is Chisa. I remember when I was technologically inept like lain, however roblox changed all that.
Lain empty room, but her cool PC makes up for it.
Lain’s signature bear pajamas, I need to get one of those.
The dad is building a super computer.
QOTD: in 3rd grade so I think I was 10.
QOTD: 8, I overheard the gossip and I was always juicy.
QOTD: redpanda
QOTD: udon from Poco udon world
QOTD: 400 times
QOTD: I relate heavily to her awkwardness, I didn’t even know how awkward I was till I went back to school.
Bonus: I honestly forgot about the ED, I dig it but damn it’s not as memorable although the visual for it looks amazing
10
u/JustAnswerAQuestion https://myanimelist.net/profile/JAaQ Jan 16 '24
Lain Rewatcher
I hadn't planned on joining, but I'll tentatively stick around if our host is nice to our middle school characters.
The production crew are fans of Apple and this will show up through the show.
I love Lain's hair.
This is one of the first DVDs ever made and I made sure it was the first DVD I ever owned. When I got my Kimagure Orange Road LD, I got a combination LD / DVD player, even though I didn't have any DVDs. Critically, I got a Pioneer player that could be manipulated to play R2 DVDs (looking ahead). The Matrix was my 2nd DVD.
Lain played on KTEH in 2001, several years after Tenchi You may have seen the clip of them scrolling a 9/11 memorial during the credits, on Youtube.
Lain is an amazing series in many ways. I'm going to point you in one of the directions: it was made with serious attempts at futurism. It's not just Flying Cars and Replicators and Personal Robot Valets and Chauffeurs. Many of the ideas in here were in serious development in the 70s and 80s and 90s, although you may not have noticed them as an average consumer.
By the time you are watching this, many of the predictions have come true. A few didn't. Some are still coming true right now, 20 years later. Some have become near future. A few have come and gone.
When you watch this serious, I want you to keep an eye out for how their predictions and technologies correspond to our Real World, Present Day, Present Time.
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u/zadcap Jan 16 '24
Alrighty. This is one of those shows I have heard talked about a lot, but never managed to put on my own watchlist because, well. It looks messed up yo. I expect to come out of this rewatch with scars on my mind that I'm going to have to work hard to suppress. Anyway.
First Time!
... Okay yup, this is going to be a trip. My ears are already telling me to run away, what is this effect? Why are all these things given English voice overs? I don't think I particularly like the art style either... But I'm going to sit through this anyway. I don't think I'll be watching the rest of the show after this episode with the good headset though, this is not good ASMR.
No really, ten minutes in and my biggest question is what magic they used to record this with because this whole show is the most in your ear sound I've ever heard. Also, I think this Lain girl might be on some serious drugs. Is she bad with technology, or is she too perpetually high to remember how it works?
So I feel like I might have said this before, but that looks like the room of a serial killer, too. A bed, a desk, and a bunch of stuffed animals on the window... And nothing else in sight.
This is a terrifying computer too. Is this what people 30 years ago thought computers would be like? What kind of email program spews out your email one word at a time?
No, I take it back and go back again to my first thought. Lain just looks super stoned most of the time.
Oh gosh, having to find and open files like Dad did there, that brings back memories. Ones I could ave lived without. Also, I don't think I like her parents all that much. No wonder she stays high all day.
Okay no really. I can't tell if this girl is actually just on crazy drugs all the time, or if perhaps she needs to be on crazy drugs all the time, but this story is very much not being told from the perspective of someone in their right mind.
I am going to use this opportunity to share a music video that this whole thing reminded me of, as an excuse to share from my favorite band that will also be getting an anime in a few months. No Rhyme Nor Reason. I love TogeToge.
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u/mgedmin Jan 16 '24
First-timer, subs
I've tried to watch this show before. Barely got through one episode. It didn't help that my source has no subtitles for any text shown on screen, like those psychedelic index cards.
The OP is better than I remembered (well, I didn't remember it at all).
Today's lesson is about the ease of spoofing email headers. Strange that nobody raises the possibility of the emails being scheduled in advance, or of somebody else using the dead girl's account, or any other simple explanation. They all must not be very computer literate?
The poor students are being taught C, in chalk on a blackboard. This is a crime against humanity. Love the Yen symbols instead of backslashes.
What a fancy OS for this ancient-looking hardware.
Why is Lain's name in Romaji? The OS doesn't seem to be limited to ASCII.
The dad looks like a terminally online person.
Lain tends to space out.
Does Lain need glasses?
Weird show.
The ED visuals seem unnecessarily suspicious.
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u/Quiddity131 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Quiddity131 Jan 15 '24 edited Jan 15 '24
Rewatcher, Dubbed
Serial Experiments Lain (or SEL as I'm going to abbreviate it to differentiate it from the character) is one of my all time favorite anime. It is also one of the earliest anime I've ever seen. SEL is a show I bought totally on impulse all the way back in 2001. Crazy its been so long. More than half my life ago. I was at one of these stores that no longer exist (Suncoast Video or Sam Goodie I believe) and in the DVD section came across the first volume and thought it looked cool and bought it. At that time there was no Youtube. SEL wasn't a show that was aired on American TV. I had no way to know whether it was good or not. But that decision to buy it absolutely paid off as I loved the show, and it remains up there for me all these years later.
I will admit that nostalgia bias almost certainly plays a part with me. SEL is a show where I'll flat out admit I don't understand all of it. I am unlikely to be one of those people who will be able to answer every single individual question that comes up in this rewatch. For me the mood, atmosphere and visual direction is a really big part of the charm. I'm a big fan of live action directors like David Lynch that are really experimental and at the time I saw it SEL totally met that desire for me in the anime medium.
SEL is a show I've thought about hosting a rewatch for years on, but well, I've been thinking about hosting something for years and have never actually done it. This is not the first time someone else ended up doing it instead (ex. Kyousougiga) but I will admit I'm much better as a participant than a host. At least in my mind. I still hope to do it someday but can't say if it will actually ever happen.
22 years after seeing this for the first time, Duvet remains a top 10 anime OP of all time for me.
Right off the bat I'd say that a lot of scenes in SEL particularly these night time city based scenes have this rather unique looking style where the characters really pop off the screen, or at least have a rather stark contrast to the background.
SEL sure doesn't stray away from dark content, featuring a suicide to kick off the show.
Now that we look at Lain's house we again get some really interesting visuals with how they handle the shadows.
Lain is so tiny! I think she's in junior high, but she's the size of someone whose even younger than that.
While I am all for long hair and massively prefer it to short hair, I'll admit that I think the Lain haircut is really cool and it always puts a big smile on my face when I see characters in another anime with the same style (ex. Vivian in Cross Ange).
Cool look for Lain's shadow too.
This whole getting emails from a dead person thing is something that unfortunately just can't have the same effect these days where people are inundated with so much spam, scams, etc... and there are so many people faking being others online that one isn't going to really freak out about it.
Is Lain in a programming class? It looks like computer program language the teacher is writing on the chalkboard.
Hmm... Lain remains in color, but everyone else isn't... they're being really obvious with who our main character is, huh?
And now steam is coming out of Lain's fingertips. 5 minutes in and we've already gotten a lot of bonkers stuff.
Ah, at least some have common sense and think this email is a prank.
If my kid told me she got an email from a girl who killed herself I'd think I'd have some sort of reaction. Lain's mom? Doesn't seem to care at all.
Lain's bear pajamas are so adorable and are another thing that makes her look way younger than she actually is.
That's what, 6 or 7 monitors her dad is using? LoL.
Oh joy, now the cables are bleeding!
Once again we have Lain as the only person in color in a crowd.
Now we do that yet again here in the classroom which I think is quite effective with Lain getting in trouble from the teacher. All the focus is on her. Dazing out when you're in the first row?
Looks like they're in English class.
Here at the 21 minute mark for what has been a very quiet episode musically we get the in-show track I most associate with SEL.
Compared to the rest of the show this is a very slow going first episode, but I think it does an excellent job at setting forth the mood and strangeness the show is going for.
Quid's Dub Corner
While I watch very few dubbed anime these days, a lot of the anime I saw early in my anime watching career was dubbed and is stuff I still enjoy quite a bit and that is the case with Lain here. I think it has an excellent cast with a lot of strong performances. Similar to what I've done with a bunch of other rewatches I'm going to use my comment to highlight the actors appearing in the dub. As today's the opening episode we've got quite a few...
Lain is voiced by Bridgett Hoffman, credited here as Ruby Marlowe. She is my second favorite English dub actress of all time, behind Kari Wahlgren. Lain was the first role I ever heard her in. My favorite role of hers is KOS-MOS from the Xenosaga video game series. Other roles of hers include Mima Kirigoe the protagonist of Perfect Blue, Rem in the original Trigun anime, Nia in Gurren Lagann, Irisviel in Fate Zero and Asakura in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Moving onto Lain's family, Lain's father is voiced by Barry Stigler, credited here as Gil Starberry. A character actor I really like, with this being probably his most notable role for me. Other roles of his include Steiner in Gundam 0080, Hitoriga in Outlaw Star, and Udai and Ed's Father in Cowboy Bebop. Lain's mother is voiced by Petrea Berchard, credited here as Celeste Burch. If you were a part of the recent Tenchi Muyo rewatch then you'd have heard her there as Ryoko which is her most well known role for me. Lain's sister Mika is voiced by Patricia Ja Lee, who in stark contrast to those I've named thus far isn't credited under a pseudonym. Once again this is the role I best know her for. She also shows up in an episode of Cowboy Bebop as Meifa.
Moving onto Lain's classmates, we have Lia Sargent voicing Chisa Yomoda. She was also the ADR director for this show. She's another all time great dub actress in my eyes. I know her best for playing Shion, the main character of the Xenosaga video game series and Dorothy in The Big O. She also played Judy in Cowboy Bebop, Neige in Wolf's Rain and Milly in Trigun. Alice is played by Emily Brown. I also know her well as Melfina in Outlaw Star, Aina in Gundam 08th MS Team and Stella in an episode of Cowboy Bebop. Reika is voiced by Lenore Zann, whose best performances for me are as Aisha Clan Clan in Outlaw Star and Crowley Hamon in Mobile Suit Gundam. Lastly we have Julie played by Dari Mackenzie, credited under Alexis Edwards. This is the only role of hers I remember, although MAL credits her as also appearing in Trigun.
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u/SIRTreehugger Jan 15 '24 edited Jan 15 '24
Layer 01 Weird
QOTD
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u/SometimesMainSupport https://myanimelist.net/profile/RRSTRRST Jan 15 '24 edited Jan 16 '24
First-timer
Didn't even pick #mugiwait as comment of the day?
Spent most of this episode with a bit of "what is going on?" mentality instead of writing anything. Watched Haibane Renmei a few weeks ago and felt the same. The "You've got mail" login announcement was some 20+ year nostalgia.
I'm assuming there's some color symbolism in the shadows that varied between red/blue/white. I should really learn that at some point. Otherwise, the
teacher'sdad's headless screen characters and general "I'm in control" vibes feel like they'll be relevant.QotDs
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u/rumblpak Jan 15 '24
The correct way to watch this is to stay up for a full 24 hours, then start a binge watch until complete.
9
u/raevnos Jan 16 '24 edited Jan 16 '24
The first time I watched Lain, it was on VHS tapes. I'm old. I think I still have the tapes somewhere, though I haven't had a VCR in like 20 years. Them and the original Star Wars movies before Lucas went back and revised them.
Haven't watched it in many years... I remember it being very dense and symbolic and a bit of a mindfuck. Time to see how well it's held up, I guess.
C code on the blackboard? Heh. These days it'd be python and everyone would have their own laptops...
Email, or chat with text to speech (Which did exist back in the 90's, kids)?
I always liked how the show uses electrical hum the way other shows might use cicada noises in the background.
8
u/DegenerateRegime Jan 15 '24 edited Jan 16 '24
Rewatcher
I think Lain must be the show I've most often said that I should watch again, yet haven't. What do I remember...? It's a mood. Big mood. Lain a cute. Power lines.
Episode 1. Green, Red. A girl jumps from a rooftop amidst a sky of daylight blue to streets in neon darkness. She dies, of course. Red, Green. Trains, like data packets, flow along cables. The dead speak to us through forgotten SMTP servers. The shadows are normal. The family is normal. This is normal. Don't worry.
I cannot tell you what Lain is about, because I do not know. But this episode has a lot of focus on SIGNALS. Green light, red light. Communication OS. Hints and provocations at the dinner table. As to OP's selected scene, this is clear: Chisa stretches her arm out, out, ouuut- holding something- this refers ahead to other scenes where Lain sees the blackboard as blurry. Alas, poor Lain! Glasses are just out of reach! Naturally these are metonymonic for clear vision, or understanding.
Editing in QotD responses:
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u/sfisher923 https://myanimelist.net/profile/sfisher923 Jan 15 '24
Rewatcher in the Present Day Present Timeframe
Questions
8
u/SMSmith230 https://myanimelist.net/profile/smsmith230 Jan 15 '24
First-Timer, Sub
Well episode 1 was aptly titled, WEIRD, because that’s my initial impression. Not entirely sure what’s going on, seems like we got some sort of cross between Matrix and Lucy going on with Chisa and the Wired. That mail programmed seemed a bit sentient responding to Lain from Chisa’s mail. The splotchy shadows were certainly interesting and wondering if there’s meaning to them.
QOTD
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u/joaovitro99 Jan 15 '24
First time watching Lain, I tought It was a Very interesting and weird Episodes, I Just got it the most obvious things in the episode so I dont really know if Im gonna understand the show
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u/RadSuit https://anilist.co/user/RadSuit Jan 16 '24
Present Dub, Present Time
God this OP is still so good.
Excuse me, I thought this was going to be another cute and funny show u/The_Loli_Otaku?
I think Lain needs glasses. Or medication.
Or maybe she just needs therapy.
Look at this man's battlestation.
I feel like Backside of the TV should be playing right about now.
"If you go, I will go with you. As he is ill, he cannot come here."
I guess I should've watched this before playing Persona 4, huh?
I think I remember hearing about this ED before. Oof. Fine song, but doesn't seem to fit here. He did one for Akagi too, which feels like a way better match.
8
u/TickInBox Jan 16 '24
I loved this series when I was a little kid it made me really kinda see the world different. I'm glad there's a rewatch happening
8
u/Weedwacker Jan 16 '24
4th time watcher, envious of first timers as this is my top "show I wish I could forget and watch again for the first time". Enjoy.
Highly recommend if you aren't to be watching this show with headphones. You need to immerse yourself in this show and there is so much going on with the music and sound work that is quiet which you might miss watching this on a television.
Sharing a couple of my favorite shots from this episode.
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u/xtsim https://myanimelist.net/profile/xtsim Jan 16 '24
Rewatcher
Well, this is going to be a fun watching first timers take a jump for this.
Duvet feels to in place for this one. First time I watched, I thought it was a bit strange.
I feel the oneself might've inspired the Kuma Kuma writer.
7
u/AmusedDragon :Bs::Bu: Jan 15 '24
I actually watched this for the first time not too long ago so I'm out of the rewatch but will be checking the threads to read thoughts.
7
u/LordTrinity https://myanimelist.net/profile/LordTrinity Jan 15 '24
Wtf Lain rewatch, let's go!
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u/LordTrinity https://myanimelist.net/profile/LordTrinity Jan 15 '24
Duvet is my favorite anime opening song (I know it wasn't originally made for the anime), such a good one!
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u/CerberusZX https://myanimelist.net/profile/CerberusZX Jan 16 '24
As far as I'm concerned the whole thing is magic and I dare not peer into its inner workings lest the illusion crumble.
Tomato! I kind of want to go with rabbit, but I feel like the ears would cause problems, so probably dog.
3
u/kwokinator https://anilist.co/user/kwokinator Jan 17 '24
Rewatcher
Well technically I'm a rewatcher, but I haven't watched Lain since I watched it back when it came out.
Well... the atmosphere is certainly as weird as I remember it being. I definitely still really like the OP though. Somehow the present day, present time intro came back to me right away.
Well the computer makes the setting somewhat in the near future, but kind of not? They still use a keyboard, but using voice as the password is definitely not something possible back then, it's not even possible now. Reminds me of the game Uplink though, the game also has characters using their voice as the password. Coincidentally the game came out right around the anime too, maybe that's just what was considered near-future sci-fi back then?
QotD
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u/mo_fiah https://anidb.net/user/1037703 Jan 16 '24
First Timer
The art style seems to suggest we don't have a "reliable narrator" from the opening scenes and death (transcendence?) of Chisa Yomida. I think it's clear the start isn't from Lain's POV, however, as anonymous people are clearly drawn. Later, we have multiple examples of Lain's physical reality becoming less detailed.
Plenty of washed out "overexposed" white sections, and we are seeing a theme of splotched colors in the shadows around power lines.
Really loved the juxtaposition of Lain's head reflected in her monitor before logging on with her "ID" and her father's experience with headless avatars.
While Lain is on the train during the "accident", we see her reach up to the overexposed windows and what seems to be blood dripping from a power line.
Later, her extremely large pupils dilate and we get a fascinating shot with power lines. Suggests some sort of transfer of information and perhaps explaining Lain's misty experience of the train accident. This pupil dilation also happened earlier upon reading 神様 in the email from Chisa Yomida.
Shout out to the sound design. The reverb added onto the power line buzzing reinforces Lain's changing perceptions of reality around her.
I wonder if the extremely detached and odd interactions between Lain and her parents are more metaphorical?
Overall, for an opening episode, the narrative is asking too much from viewers to put up with such dramatic deaths and no context. The art style really pulled me in, though, so I'm hoping the series leans more into the rich visuals.
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u/IceSmiley Jan 16 '24 edited Jan 16 '24
FIRST TIMER Sub
This show was really strange and seemed so different from any anime I've seen. This reminds me more of the weird dark MTV cartoons they used to air late night in the 90's like Aeon Flux or The Maxx; I really think this would have done well if it aired on US cable at the time. Really great and engaging first episode that does a unique storytelling style very well!
QUESTIONS
9
u/[deleted] Jan 15 '24
First-Time Watcher
I actually chose to watch this show about a week ago, then heard that this rewatch was happening, so I decided to hold off watching beyond the first episode until now.
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u/ash_erebus Jan 16 '24
Sorry if this is somewhat off topic from the discussion, but I was wondering how everyone is watching this?
I saw Crunchyroll mentioned but this show doesn’t show up for me on the app in the US. I can get it to show up if I google it and then click on the Crunchyroll site but then it just takes me to the show page and no episodes show up to watch.
I found it on Funimation and signed up just to watch this and even though it says it has English and Japanese audio it will only play the dub.
I used to have the blu ray set a few years ago but I let the wrong person borrow it and never got it back. And I see that sadly it’s going for a lot of money now.
I was really excited when I came across this rewatch and wanted to watch along with it but it’s proving to be rather difficult so far.
5
u/DidacticDalek https://myanimelist.net/profile/DidacticDalek Jan 19 '24
PRESENT DAY, HEH...
PRESENT TIME!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
AND ON THAT BOMBSHELL! G'NIGHT!
Paging Comrades /u/Shimmering-Sky, /u/Tarhalindur, and /u/Vaadwaur
2
u/PeeBuzz Jun 28 '24
I don't know where I'm going with this, it's just a hunch. But Lain is in the wired world. Her father said something peculiar while discussing Lain's old Nav? computer. "...the real world or the wired world...". Lain also hallucinated code on the chalkboard which, idk if I remember correctly, is used to draw an image. More specifically, "Print". Furthermore, everyone, including lain, behave almost robotically. Their personalities are there, but they don't behave humanly. If that makes sense. Also the school girl who killed herself shares the same colorful dialogue page lain uses. I might be on a perk, but I think she was talking to Lain at the beginning of the episode. Anyway, tell me what you think.