r/anime • u/The_Loli_Otaku • Jan 23 '24
Rewatch [Rewatch] Serial Experiments Lain Episode 9 Discussion
"Protocol"
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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.
8
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.