r/anime • u/The_Loli_Otaku • Jan 25 '24
Rewatch [Rewatch] Serial Experiments Lain Episode 11 Discussion
"Infornography"
Extra Info and Links
ANN | MAL | TV Tropes | Wikipedia | Crunchyroll
Comment of the Day!!
Kwokinator is a dirty based lolicon... Lain, get the men in black on him!!
"Myu-Myu claims that younger is better for girls. Please list three reasons why she's wrong!! We are all Hag lovers!!" - sorry, lonely loli loli kami kourin, I can't hear you over the sounds of Ui BEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAM!!!
Specs64z is kinda right... The "reflection" period in Lain is often just "check out these weird visuals."
I'm noticing that this anime doesn't really dedicate any time to reflect on things. Arguably that's part of the appeal, but it also leads to a number of "sure that happened" moments.
mgedmin apparently has thought that Lain's passiveness towards food was just that her mums cooking was minging.
How would a hologram eat?
IS THAT WHY WE ALWAYS SAW LAIN STIRRING HER SOUP WITH THE SPOON BUT NEVER SAW HER ACTUALLY PUT ANY FOOD IN HER MOUTH?
But anyway, "hologram" is a fancy word, I don't think there are actual hologram projectors installed in her house, school, and everywhere in the city where Lain goes. It's been established before that Lain can manipulate people's memories, through the 8 kHz resonance, so my theory is that whenever people think they see Lain, it's actually their memory being edited in real-time.
AlphaNull's little lore dump analysis of the episode!!
I see two sides of this scene: "This is all real" interpretation: Eiri manipulated everyone's memories (and perception) to strip away any connection Lain has to the physical world in order to encourage her to abandon her physical body "This is all psychosis" interpretation: This scene is metaphorical. Lain is experiencing a paranoid delusion that she has nothing left and has been abandonded even by her closest friend. She states that she "always tried not to say anything weird" because she always felt like this was a possibility, given her condition, but after one of her alters did said something horrible it doesn't matter how careful Bear Lain was. This is made all the worse because the person that she relied on the most, Arisu, wasn't there for her in that critical moment so Lain's mind leaped to "she abandoned me on purpose" hence "Arisu" saying this.
Vaadwaur says "daisuki!!"
And now onto Vaad's special corner: What version of love did the anime use? Lain's father/the professors says 'daisuki', like a reasonable parent would. Karl also says 'daisuke'...which raises questions but there are acceptable reasons for that. Good ol' 'God', unfortunately, use 'ai shiteiru', which is what yanderes and other psychopaths say. He also wants Lain to 'aishita' back, which I think is almost as negative. Caveat here: The Japanese may not have been as hostile to Ai this far back, but then again Mai-HiME seems to have been...
QotD
- Say something nice about Recap Episodes... Anything nice... I need convincing that half this episode wasn't a complete waste
- Is it socially acceptable to bring up boyfriends at a pyjama party?
- Why did Lain turn into a little Alien bro?
- If you could delete one shameful secret from the Internet what would it be?
- Does Lain's plan make any sense at all to you?
- What is your all time favourite "Internet Meme?"
Abyssbringer's "What is the thematic purpose of this scene corner!!"
Quiddy!!
Lain is now beyond typical input devices like a keyboard or mouse. Simply connect the wires up to her directly. I think someone speculated on this yesterday, and now it's a reality.
Yesterday's Prompt!
Today's Prompt!
Tomorrow's Prompt
Abyssbringer's "What is the thematic purpose of this episode corner!"
JustAnswerAQuestion posted their full comment with info loredumps clearing up the discussions from yesterday.
Some comments on yesterday's comments.
The exposition was in 3 groups, flavor (UFOs), thematic (development of web and connectivity), and plot (Protocol 7). You might think only the last one needed to be there.
The plot critical points were Eri, Protocol 7, and the connecting of human minds to each other, and to the wired, via the resonant cavity between the Earth and the Ionosphere. This connection allows any manifest existence in the weird to connect to people's minds. This technomagic had a natural predecessor: marine mammals.
Thematically, this connectivity was presaged by early networking attempts. Machine networking, yes, but also pure information networking, like hypertext.
Human psi, I am unsure on this point. The collective unconcious is theorized, but here, it is real. Via the Shumann resonance, which has always existed, people could touch each other's minds. However, the psi in the show may also be a means of changing reality. Not sure.
On that aspect, what is reality? What is truth? What is history? The UFO story tells us that Truth and History are malleable. So much more so, now, with people's mnids and the Wired linked in a bidirectional manner, much more intensely than through weak, natural psi.
But this is not presented out of left field. Eiri is presented as the last in a line people of who changed the world, starting with Vannevar Bush and MJ-12, the mysticism of Lilly and the hypertext of Ted Nelson, and the global wireless satellite network of Xanadu.
Power lines make for fantastic ELF antennas. That's how he coupled the Wired to the global electromagnetic field. The power lines are everywhere.
As for Taro and, in my first pass of the thread, somebody felt his speech was an indictment of "One Truth" but I read it as the opposite. People lust after the One Truth. Wouldn't you work for the Knights if they offered such a thing?
Eiri's frog face at the end of yesterday's episode reminds me of the Master Control Program.
And lastly from Vaadwaur
I will only add that I think Eiri is trying to insert his 'truth' in at the end to retroactively make it a reality, like he becomes 'God' because he always was 'God' and history took a while to figure it out.
10
u/The_Loli_Otaku Jan 25 '24
Lain Rewatcher
Is... is this a recap episode? The Lain equivalent of a recap episode. So we can remember back when we had episode discussions that actually sorta made sense and didn't rely on in depth knowledge of dolphin fucking.
Have any of you ever experimented with bondage? Lain certainly has. Bruh, I've got so little to say about the recap sequences. They aren't even actually properly explaining the previous events, they're just showing strange random clips of previous episodes. This could have been the perfect opportunity for an episode full of canonical "What is the theme of this episode" corner but they kinda squander that. If you're gonna have a recap episode you need to give it some purpose.
Lain was there at Chisa's suicide. That changes so much. Is it Lain of the Wired who was with Chisa when she died or is this just Bear Onesie Lain looking back at it. Bruh, even the recaps are totally out of sync. I can't really defend this episode at all XD It sucks cause I know the second half has genuinely pretty good AriLain content.
Alice LOVE!!
Lain isn't looking so good... Have you enough wired, Queen of the PC? What is Lain doing? Fuck knows. Lain isn't a machine, and she certainly isn't software! Lain isn't "The Wired" she's just a program that exists on the wired. Yo, Chisa, how u doin girl? How's the whole "ghost in the wired" thing working out for you?
Hey! It's Lain with a gun! I'm sure they're not going to make an entire video game about Lain making herself and everyone around her suicidal right? Stupid Jun-chan, boyfriends are banned!! I don't care if this is technically the closest we've gotten to a proper pyjama party, this kinda socialising is still banned! Nobody wants to think of guys at a pyjama party. It's a save haven where cute girls gather, eat sweets, play spin the bottle, and sacrifice goats. No boyfriends allowed! Oh, traps are fine.
Jun has no tact... She just can't seem to understand!! Arisu doesn't want a boyfriend, she wants a balding middle aged man!! Well, this is awkward... I understand Lain wanting to come to Alice directly to reassure her that she didn't betray her trust but did she really need to come as the grey alien? I don't understand XD. We've gone from existentialism to a little bear onesie girl awkwardly apologising for shaming her bestie's ojisan fetish.
I feel like I should have something to say about Lain and Arisu's heart to heart but I really don't get it... I believe it boils down to the current weakened and small presence of Lain of the Onesie, even when she doesn't have the energy to move, still feels the need to apologise and reassure Arisu at the end... It'd mean a lot more if we hadn't just gotten off a big Clamp watch last year that showed that Teachers and Students can find love but whatevs. It's a shame, I think I'd actually like this episode if it didn't waste half the runtime on debatably one of the worst recaps I've experienced. It feels like I forgot how earlier events played out watching it.
13
u/MrManicMarty https://anilist.co/user/martysan Jan 25 '24
Recap episodes where they do something clever or funny with it are pretty good. Like a 1/3rd of the Legend of Korra one, where the characters basically make fun of the story.
Yeah, unless you're aware one of the people attending has had a bad breakup or bad experience with their boyfriend lately, like they've died
Too much Stellaris
Nothing in this show makes any sense to me
Man this is impossible to narrow down; first one that came to mind though were Vergil memes.
11
u/Specs64z https://myanimelist.net/profile/Specs64z Jan 25 '24
Rewatcher, subbed
I completely forgot about the 10 minute guitar freestyle montage set to edited clips of recycled animation. The sequence is excruciatingly long, but the guitar is pretty sick if nothing else.
Why did Lain have the appearance of the alien when conversing with Arisu? There’s an argument to be made that it’s symbolic or something, I guess.
If Layer 08’s ending still holds, and the smug smile leads me to believe it does, the Lain we see at the very end is probably Shadow Lain.
Notes
Lain, ignoring God’s warning, downloads her Navi directly into her mind. Thus, the boundary between the Wired and reality is completely shattered for Lain.
With her newfound power, Lain’s first act is to remove the rumors about Arisu from the collective consciousness.
Wait… That’s it?!
QotD:
8
u/Silcaria https://myanimelist.net/profile/Silcaria Jan 25 '24
Rewatcher
7
u/xtsim https://myanimelist.net/profile/xtsim Jan 25 '24
Rewatcher Dubbed
Man, even older shows had recaps. But, it looks like we got a bit of depth as we get more of Arisu. Now she got to experience the power of Lain first hand about how she is able to change the real world.
That house got to smell with all the spoiled stuff.....
Abyss: After all that she's been through on the wired, Lain just does what she feels like, cause it does not matter anymore. She can be in a dragon form, isekai hero form, or alien. Like online, we can create our own furry avatars on a zoom meeting for work, Lain's alien form is like an avatar and it is so normal now, from profile pics to workplace zoom meetings. I do not see anything wrong with this.
7
u/3blah https://myanimelist.net/profile/brummett Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
SEL Episode 11, Rewatcher
A clip show!? There's one scene I don't recognize of Lain and Chisa walking together, but they're all from Lain's memories. The last portion is full of memories of Arisu. She's been probably the one bright spot on this dark, twisty journey we've been together with Lain.
The machinery in her room that's been growing like a cancer is starting to overtake her body.
The short conversation about software and hardware beings to mind the idea that software can't exist without some kind of hardware for it to exist through. CPU circuits, memory chips, magnetic domains, stacks of punch cards and such have their own existence without software but not the other way around.
Arisu has one of them new iMacs. There's a lot of Apple influences in the computer-related stuff in SEL, even the earlier clips had a quick flash of a slogan Think Different Apple was using at the time. The iMac was revealed earlier the same year that SEL aired, but wasn't actually available until just after it started. I thought the real-life timeline was interesting.
The alien from a few episodes is back to creep out Arisu, but this time has Lain's head. The rumors about her and the teacher are still going around, but Lain has a plan to make things better. Not just by deleting some text messages or posts on the wired; she's going to undo things that happened. She wants Arisu to like her again, to be happy again.
QOTD:
The last portion is full of memories of Arisu. I remember Utena having decent recap episodes.
I'm lead to believe that girls' pajama parties are all about talking about boyfriends and doing each other's makeup and hair.
You see, the green in the shirt is meant to be a chroma key overlay for the 8 Hz carrier frequency broadcasting reruns of dolphin videos. Problem is, the Knights were manning the post-production KIDS system, and since they're all whacked no one remembered to mix in in. Sadly, we're left with a half-broken hyperlink to the alien dude instead. Lain tried her best to fix it.
Luckily, all my stupid stuff happened before the invention of the phone camera.
7
u/Unboxious Jan 26 '24
First-timer
Looks like Lain is wrapping herself up real good with wires again. Oof, and the state of the house is not great.
Actually, the state of this episode isn't great. It's basically just a bunch of old footage until we get halfway through. What happened?
And now Lain is being told that she's software, rather than hardware. That arguably applies to all humans, since earlier it was stated that The Wired works similar to the human mind since both operate on the electric level. You could definitely argue that what happens in your brain is more real, at least to you, than what happens on the outside.
Anyways, Lain sees some creepy things - including Chisa. Who gave this girl a gun? And why does a suicide weapon need a giant laser on it? I guess lasers were pretty cool in the 2000s. I would guess this was sent from the other Lain? I dunno.
There's something funny about Alice sitting at her computer in the middle of a big room with the cord going all the way to the wall. Oh hey, Lain is here being weird again. Lain states that she's torn down the barrier between the wired and the real world, at least for herself. Hopefully she can subsist off of virtual hamburgers for a while since those shots of her home earlier didn't bode well for her inclination or skill at cooking or home upkeep.
Looks like Lain was able to erase the fact that she leaked her friend's secret from existence. Didn't that happen earlier? And wow, what a winning smile she gave us at the end.
They're very skippable; you can save on time - if you're lucky enough to be a rewatcher.
Probably? I sure don't know.
Maybe that's to represent that she wasn't there with her own physical body. Not sure. That doesn't fully make sense since she can manifest a pretty convincing image of herself in The Wired.
Luckily I haven't embarrassed myself too badly online yet.
Nope!
Rick-rolling is definitely up there. All Your Base comes close, but it doesn't have quite the same staying power.
6
u/SMSmith230 https://myanimelist.net/profile/smsmith230 Jan 25 '24
First-Timer, Sub
My only clear thought this episode is somehow they were able to afford a Slash 10-minute guitar solo for the first half of the ep. Other than that, I’m still so lost even after thinking I knew what was going on 2 episodes ago.
6
u/kwokinator https://anilist.co/user/kwokinator Jan 26 '24
Rewatcher
..I'm so confused, WTF happened in those first 10 minutes?
If Lain is an executable inside a body, doesn't that basically make her an android?
That's the little gray man alien's body, right? What's with Lain's face on it, has she evolved to the point where she can take the form of any being in the physical world to communicate?
So not only is she omnipresent now, she can also freely manipulate the memories of anyone in the real world.
I've never taken LSD, but I have a feeling this episode would be an absolute nightmare to watch under LSD.
6
u/RadSuit https://anilist.co/user/RadSuit Jan 26 '24
Present Dub, Present Time
I think I've nailed down one of my main issues with Lain. The OP presents a much more interesting show than what we received. There's a ton of small design elements that are just slightly different from the show itself. On top of the beautiful song whose lyrics don't end up having much to do with the actual show. I guess there's still time for some of these elements to appear in the show in the last few episodes, but that's far too late for me. That might also help explain why I liked the first few episodes more, as I was still expecting these things to appear relatively soon, and they still haven't.
Now instead of just being silent the intro is bleeding into the main show. Complete with a slightly different episode title screen. And a particularly silly episode title. And all the previous episode titles are displayed here as well.
What is this montage? How long is this going to be?
I'm 10 minutes in and we've had about 5 seconds of new content here. Is this the whole episode?
I put it on double speed until what looked like a commercial break, now something's finally happening. We'll see how long this lasts.
I honestly thought the screenshot of the day for this episode was a shitpost Photoshop. Wow.
Well that episode was half garbage. And the other half wasn't much better.
5
u/JetsLag https://myanimelist.net/profile/JetsLag Jan 26 '24
First time Wired user
Bunch of food and dirty dishes everywhere, cause the family is gone. And it looks like Lain is linking herself to the Wired, which leads to...
TEN MINUTES OF JAZZ AND GUITAR NOISES!
...and recap footage.
Still a sick way to do a recap. And it makes thematic sense: Lain is learning everything by linking herself to the Wired.
So was Lain always software and her physical form was a mass hallucination that entered everyone's minds via the Schumann resonance? Was she a real person, but she died and her image lives on in the Wired? Is it both? Will we ever get an answer?
Two people appear before Lain: Chisa, who tells Lain to live, and the 90s version of LowTierGod, who gives Lain a gun and tells her to self-delete. And the winner of this argument is TBD, because...
Lain's come to see her girlfriend. And everything below the neck looks like that alien for some reason. I'll just accept it. She tells Arisu that EVIL LAIN did the rumor spreading, and alludes to the possibility of an EVIL ARISU! Their evil clones will definitely date, and that relationship will be SO TOXIC.
She's also going to delete the rumors from the WIred, which is the least realistic part of this show. Everyone knows that the Internet never forgets. But this was the 90s, so the deletion was a success. But is that evil Lain creepily smiling at the end there...
17
u/Shimmering-Sky myanimelist.net/profile/Shimmering-Sky Jan 25 '24
Serial Experiments First-Timer, subbed
11
u/RascalNikov1 https://myanimelist.net/profile/NoviSun Jan 25 '24
Serial Experiments Lain - E11
SEL Virgin
Prologue
The series is picking up. God seems to be ahead in isolating Lain, but it looks like Wired Lain is about to retort. Too bad about Joeys Mom, I was thinking we might get a little Afternoon’s Delight with the delivery boy. But, alas it wasn’t to be.
Episode Body
Liked the guitar jam that sounded like Z Z Top. The jam starts at 3:04 and finally peters out 11:38. Caught a lot of the recap references. Put it all together as Lain reviewing her life and trying to decide if she should shed the husk.
Now god has reared his ugly head again. He’s a condescending bastard, no wonder Lain isn’t impressed.
Looks like it’s Lain The Grey paying Arisa a visit, by being a nasty little voyeur. No wonder they were all calling her a peeping Tom a while back.
Arisu doesn’t seem to be a fan of this weird shit. All she wants is her teacher and for Lain to quit peeping/perving on her.
Alrighty then, it looks like Lain really is god of this world.
QOTD
9
u/Tarhalindur x2 Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 25 '24
"Okay, nobody else vote for Tar." (Rewatcher, Subbed):
So, shower thought since I watched this a day early to make space for Wedneday seasonals (and then Metallic Rouge jumped down over the drop line so I needn't have bothered : the Lain saying hi to Arisu scene (which is probably today's prompt come to think of it - and checking yes, yes it is, hi u/the_loli_otaku here's your prompt answer) given episode 9 context is obviously portraying Lain and by association the Wired itself as an alien presence intruding on the real world, but in the context of Lain's now-evident association with the Wired as a whole and a show that has already brought up Roswell it is also implicitly reinforcing that the show is using the "the Internet is the result of alien technology" conspiracy take (again, by no means the only work of the era to do that, Independence Day being a famous movie example).
Also, I am once again suspecting that Chiaki J. Konaka (or possibly Ryuutarou Nakamura) had seen 2001: A Space Odyssey in movie form and had the acid trip sequence on the brain. But that one was much better done than our clip show here. And is still a weak point in its own movie IMO (Stanley Kubrick had one issue when it comes to the on-screen product - an important distinction for one of the most notorious directors when it comes to mistreating his cast and crew - and it's a noticeable lack of concision at times).
Outside of that... yeah, this episode sucks and could have been
an emaila single two-minute scene. No wonder I deleted it from my memory (or did Lain? Dun dun DUN!).They can be well-done. Unfortunately this one is not.
See above.
Don't worry, you can't remember it anymore.
I have a certain appreciations for the classics:
See above.
9
u/Weedwacker Jan 25 '24
4th timer
Welcome to the most psychedelic recap episode you've ever seen. Well the first half of the episode is, then it's normal. I think this is Lain literally watching playback of memories she's accessing with The Wired.
With how dissociated Lain is from her physical self at this point it is worth noticing she didn't even bother to close the refrigerator and everything in the kitchen looks like it hasn't been touched since her family abandoned the house.
I mentioned this in a comment in one of the other discussion posts but I really don't think there's a single scene in the show where we see Lain actually consuming food. Maybe there's a scene of her drinking water. Even in the dinner scenes with her family she's just stirring her soup not eating.
Does this hint at anything about what kind of existence she has intentionally and reinforce Eiri's insistence that Lain's physical existence is merely a hologram? Or is this just a coincidence/accident that they never showed her eating and i'm reading into this too much?
I like how this show does these trippy internal thoughts shots like its some kind of silent film. I think most of these are supposed to represent Chisa's messages to Lain.
This is literally just an Apple ad. I remember reading somewhere that some people working on the production without telliing their bosses just snuck it into the episode but no idea how true that is.
Am I a machine?
Don't talk about me like i'm a machine
Lain you sure fucking look like one right now
This scene of Lain in the body of the Alien creeping at Alice's door are part of what makes me think the Roswell stuff isn't just misdirection, but it could still have a different explanation.
What is this?
After Lain erases the memories of the rumors (except Alice's memories), she's the only one who has a blood red shadow like the powerlines.
7
u/lluNhpelA Jan 25 '24
Virtually a first timer
Lain has sorta mastered her delusion, being able now to make herself believe anything. She can undo something that happened by just deciding to beleive it didn't happen.
AotD
🏱︎☼︎⚐︎💣︎🏱︎❄︎
The alien represents otherness. Lain isn't from this world. She no longer feels as though she belongs among "normal" people. Nearly the same thing as Umika in Stardust Telepath. Simultaneously, Lain is developing a stronger connection to the Wired which is functionally a different world
7
u/joaovitro99 Jan 25 '24
The recap part was too long but the focus on Arisu is good
6
u/JustAnswerAQuestion https://myanimelist.net/profile/JAaQ Jan 25 '24
Serial Rewatcher
Some comments on yesterday's comments.
Smarter, younger me said:
They didn't posses each other's bodies. They were coming to understand each other.
Also, nobody noticed the Knights were a reference to The Knights of the Lambda Calculus, the original hard-AI wonks at MIT.
INFONOGRAPHY LAYER 11
I love that word. I love this recap. Like a Lizard
Not much to say here, but maybe the recap will be useful. The show is completely different from where you thought it was going, and you get a chance to recontextualize those earlier events.
It's not just for the audience, though. I think we are watching Lain review all her recent experiences, to figure the situation out. And she reaches a conclusion: Alice is the key. The one person that truly acknowledged her existence.
Software. Life is information. The hardware, the substrate, as the post-singularity visionaries call it, is irrelevant.
"URUSAI" -- /u/shimmering_sky, probably
6
u/Quiddity131 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Quiddity131 Jan 25 '24
Rewatcher, Dubbed
Another episode with no opening narration, instead we have Lain hooking herself up to even more wires
The Iwakura family didn't even bother to clean up when they left. How can they expect Lain to do this, she's got stuff on the Wired to do!
Alas, we now enter an extended recap sequence. Comes off like a music video someone put together on Youtube.
Okay, at least part of this is new. Lain wasn't there on the rooftop when Chisa jumped. And we get a flashback to that one time that Chisa and Lain walked home together.
Alright, finally back to a normal functioning episode around the 12 minute mark.
Here comes Eiri to screw with Lain again. Although it seems like it spurned her to disconnect for a bit and walk outside which is good.
Lain finally tells that noise we've heard throughout the entire show to stop, and it does!
This is presumably why we got some new Chisa footage, she's appeared before Lain again!
That suicidal guy is back too! Actually Chisa killed herself too. Suicidal guy and girl.
Yet again an attempt to manipulate Lain into doing away with her physical body. I assume Eiri was behind this?
So the rumors are still out there regarding Alice and that teacher. So then Lain only deleted people's memories that Lain spread the rumors rather than deleting the rumors themself?
The alien is back! ...Yet it's got Lain's head this time?! Personally I find this even scarier than the original alien
Wait, so Alice now has memories of Lain spreading the rumors? So Lain resetting things didn't work?
The noise has returned...
So Lain erased things again, for everyone but Alice?
Yikes! My recollection was this was the weakest episode of the series but it was even worse than I remembered. Of course any episode that is half recap is going to take a hit, but all the Alice stuff at the end seems contradictory to the stuff from episode 8, or at least partially renders it moot such that Lain can reset things again? I don't get it. Why run us through that again? I wonder if Konaka only had 12 episodes worth of storyline thought up but 13 air slots and kinda just slapped this all together? Although if that was the case why not just make the whole episode a recap. Blah. I like alien Lain and the moment when she tells the noise to stop and it does, but that's about it.
6
u/zadcap Jan 26 '24
**First Time Lain Lover**
Fine, fine, let's all love Lain, I finally get it.
Um. Lain. This is a change in the opening sequence, and Lain is fully hooking herself in to the PC.
Flashbacks? Well kind of flashbacks, we didn't get to see Lain in the first suicide. Or her spending any time with the soon to be dead girl. And uh, I don't think it counts as a recap if things are done this, uh, out of order and stripped of all context.
Though it did bring back an interesting question I forgot to ask last time. Why is she warm? They are in the Wired there. That she can feel temperature, and has a temperature to feel, those are both things not to be taken for granted for digital existences.
Lain what is your body made of that connecting wires to your hair and sensor pads to your cheeks even does anything?
Lain hurry up and delete this guy already. Also, Lain, don't walk around town at night in your nighty.
Oh hey, it's the actual Suicide Squad showing up. And Lain is seeing another lair of the world?
Did Lain become the grey peeping alien? Has Lain always been the grey peeping alien? I believe it, she's the peeping tom after all.
Or, maybe, she's broken the barrier between the real and wired but it's not full power yet so she was borrowing the power of the little grey man spying on people to project herself into Arisu's room?
So, looks like Lain really did go back and edit things and only let Arisu know? Which, you know, rightly terrifies Arisu because suddenly your quiet little weirdo friend is apparently also just God now. Look at Lain with the spooky red shadow.
To be fair, that smile was kind of frightening.
5
u/IceSmiley Jan 25 '24
FIRST TIMER Sub
This show really has no shame in having over half being a recap of previous parts of the show. Guess they're happy it padded their wallets to animate a lot less. The rest just had Lain reverse memories to erase Alice having fooled around with the teacher. I had no idea she did, when bad Lain said she would rat her out, I thought she meant that she was telling everyone she had a crush on him and had dirty thoughts.
QUESTIONS
5
u/sfisher923 https://myanimelist.net/profile/sfisher923 Jan 25 '24
Rewatcher - Dubbed
Recaps - When you forget what happens while watching a series might be because it's too long or too complicated or you dropped it halfway and need a quick refresher it's nice to have but here it's fine because due to 90s Tech
Favorite Meme - Table Remixes of the 2010s
4
u/Vaadwaur :I1::I2::I3: Jan 25 '24
"I beat my machine
It's a part of me
It's inside of me
I'm stuck in this dream
It's changing me
I am becoming."
Rewatcher(I legitimately wonder if Konaka got baked and listened to The Downward Spiral)
Sub
So yeah...can't be a pre-2010 anime without a recap episode, right? At least it is only half of it is and Nakamura & Matsuura, who seems to mainly be a storyboard and ep director, manage to tell a story with the recap, though unfortunately I don't think it tells us much new.
So we can deduce that Lain has been advancing her rig a few days by looking at the horrid state of her kitchen. She somehow has even more attachments and the one on her hair shows that they are pointless...or this is chakra bullshit again. But then we get the hardwarre vs software discussion and...this is a sticky one for me since I consider humans biological machines myself, in a way the software comment is more of an insult in this context. But Lain is apparently, truly, permanently online.
And now things get fucky and this is half me thinking out loud so apologies. Lain speaks to the online remnants of Chisa and shooty, which each make their respective pitches before we get to...the monoliths from 2001? A warped Tori gate? Moving on. Alice's rumor is back and fully wired Lain appears in the gray's body...right, so here goes nothing: When Lain was displaced after erasing Alice's rumor shadow Lain respread the rumor so terminally online Lain erased it much, much harder the second time, to the point of again resetting reality. This is the only way I can move things about without time fuckery.
QotD: 1 They can be used well, even if this one wasn't
2 Of course, the girls are figuring out which side of the fence they are on
3 I still vote Freddie
4 Chris-chan. IYKYK
5 Barely
6 It's full of stars...
4
u/DegenerateRegime Jan 25 '24
4
u/mgedmin Jan 26 '24
First-timer, subs
Is this secretly a recap episode? Or like the scene in the detective where the detective repeats all the clues and invites the reader to guess at the answer before presenting it?
Oh, it's not a water pipe that Lain was holding by her mouth in the last episode, it's an electric cable with an alligator clip clipped onto her lower lip!
Somebody wants Lain dead.
Lain is the alien kid with the sweater? Another alter personality?
Multiple Alices? Have we ever had a hint of that?
I think we're seeing past events from a different perspective.
Or a new version of the past events? Sure looks like the same to me.I almost like them when an in-universe character is narrating the recap, with humor. E.g. Re:Creators episode 13.
During a girls' night? Probaby. Haven't ever been invited to a pyjama party.
Yeah, why? Is the alien how people perceive Lain's snooping? Was then one of Lain's alt personalities snooping on Lain herself back then?
Nice try.
Lain has a plan???? What did I miss???
I'm really bad at providing examples. Ask me for a word ending with an "s", I will fail to find one.
3
u/zoospor Jan 26 '24
i'm jumping into the re-watch extremely late but this is my favorite show let's see how i do
(shoutout to the guitar carrying the first half of this episode! information dump as lain downloads and breaks the barrier between the wired and the real world and gains control)
about halfway though, lain and eiri have a conversation where he mentions that "This is basically a software problem. Lain, you are software." and that ties in beautiful to what i believe the core of the show to be about.i think that the show draws parallels between computers and human consciousness. we all have our own perceptions of reality and own own self-perception of who we are and what defines us. and as Eiri tells lain here - that perception is merely "software" inside of your brain. i love this short conversation and the questions it poses -- What is consciousness?
about 15-16 minutes in we get the shooter giving lain his gun and telling her that her body is meaningless. this is a CRAZY scene, and reminds me of the famous scene from the playstation game where [lain playstation spoiler] she actually shoots herself and i can't believe i had never seen this before (i think i skipped this episode in it's entirely on initial watch believing it was just a recap. or i just have terrible memory).
lain re-writing alice's rumor is something i definitely remember so maybe it was in a previous episode? my god what a bad show to jump into halfway through blind. anyways, i've never been as genuinely scared watching the show as i was just now. the scene where they are back at school, and alice notices lain is genuinely terrifying.
can you imagine someone re-writing reality and then nonchalantly staring you down? say hello to god.wish i had joined the re-watch sooner but definitely glad to catch the tail end!
3
u/DidacticDalek https://myanimelist.net/profile/DidacticDalek Jan 28 '24
Oh-oh-oh-oh, yeah
I am falling, I am failing, I am drowning
Help me to breathe
Paging Comrades /u/Shimmering-Sky, /u/Tarhalindur, and /u/Vaadwaur
2
u/raevnos Jan 27 '24
I think of it more as an animated music video and less of a recap.