Iāve watched the first 6 episodes of this show, imo everything past episode 4 is really vague and hard to understand. Iāve read that I shouldnāt expect to understand it on my first watch but if Iām not enjoying it my first time through Iām not gonna torture myself by rewatching something I dont like a bunch of times to understand it. It also makes me feel dumb for not appreciating something deep like this, especially since itās something that youāre actually supposed to think about while watching it. Credit where credit is due, it is definitely one of the most unique anime I have seen.
But you donāt seem to understand
A shame you seemed an honest man
Iād recommend you just power through it and absorb what you can. An explanation is given at the end, and things make alittle more sense when thatās given. I enjoyed the visuals and just went along for the ride.
It is not that deep, really. It is almost impossible to understand on a first watchthrough because all context for what is happening is only given towards the very end, so it just looks like a mess. On second watch it should be more understandable, but if you did not enjoy it the first time you wouldnāt the second time either, and you donāt really lose much by not doing it. Just watch a video essay about dissociative disorder in media or something if you want to watch something with meaning.
Seeing that monitor threw me for a loop. I can feel the chunky press of that power button.
Letās all love lain!
itās something that youāre actually supposed to think about while watching it
Says who? IMO the strongest aspect of Lain is the vibe (style, sound, art, the whole world). The overall narrative is jarringly structured, a bit chaotic, with sudden introductions and resolutions of subplots, and especially on the first watch itās futile to try to treat it as some sort of a (solvable) puzzle, or, even worse, a philosophical tractate. Not that it might not be treated that way on a rewatch sometime down the line (though honestly I wouldnāt expect that to be possible even then), but the first time around it has to draw you into the world and into Lainās mind. Just relax, make yourself comfortable, and let it be an irrational, intimate experience that itās probably meant to be. (Or, well, donāt, if youāve already given up.)
Both Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments: Lain are created by pretentious at best mangakas. They wrote and draw somethings just because they taught it was cool. But the stupid dumb fucked fans made it look like as if both of these animes had some fucking deeper meaning to them and made them achieve cult statuses. When in reality, it is just relatable to you when youāre going through depression or other similar mental health issues. I donāt see NGE and Lain anything higher than āpsychotic ramblings and drawings of a mad manā. That said, youāre not dumb for not being able to understand Lain. Not many can understand psychotic ramblings. Off topic- I love your monitor! Which year was it made? You should have got matching keyboard and speakers! The modern keyboard does not match with it.
psychotic rambling are awesome and I wish more shows were based of them.
Iāve dealt with depression before, I guess itās the same way Dostoevsky doesnāt feel the same when Iām reading it with a completely lucid lense. I also take pride in understanding things others donāt, so thatās part of the reason why I donāt like that I donāt understand it. So far as the monitor goes, my mom gave me her old PC she used to use back in, iirc, the 90ās. I do have a matching keyboard for it, but she lost the mouse, I just hooked up the monitor to modern PC cuz I read it was the best way to watch it, along with a low quality recording of the show itself.
It looks similar to the lemon sold to my family in 1995.
Very cool visuals, but I thought it was a good anime to watch stoned, and obviously for me it isnāt. I had absolutely no clue what was going on.
Need to sit down and give it another go.
Serial Experiments lain is my favourite anime, so Iād definetly recommend watching moreā¦ but if itās just not for you itās not going to click. For me, I enjoyed the anime already from the first few minutes and watched the whole thing on the edge of my seat in a single night.
Even when I didnāt understand anything on my first watch, I still enjoyed the visuals, audio, unique direction and storytelling, and really liked trying to make sense of it all and thinking about everything I just saw between episodes. Plus I could relate a lot to lain. But itās definetly not for everyone.
I actually really liked lain and thought it was gonna be my new favorite anime until I got to episode 5, my comprehension went downhill from there. I enjoyed the surreal visuals and sound too but without a coherent plot to follow I just couldnāt be bothered to keep watching.
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I really enjoyed Lain as a work of speculative fiction, especially watching it in 2019 and being able to compare and contrast the portrayal of computerās effects on society with what āactuallyā happened as we moved more and more of our lives onto the internet.
The āactualā story/plot (message?) only really came together after watching a long YouTube video (actually, I read the transcript / script as a blog post so it wasnāt as long for me to get through it). If I had had the patience I think I would have preferred rewatching until I āgotā it, but thereās so much else out there to experience. Maybe some day Iāll sit down and do a āproperā rewatch.
A good part of the initial enjoyment for me was the vibes and letting the different scenes slowly add up onto each other in the back of my mind.
As others have said in this thread already, itās not necessarily the most coherent nor meaningful story as it is conveyed. Being depressed can unironically help it make sense (though I would never ever recommend getting depressed just to better understand Lain or any story really, your mental wellbeing is more important!).
The shots of telephone lines with audio of power line hums and the weird purple/red splotches are probably some of my favorite bits, and theyāre what I immediately think of whenever Lain gets brought up.
The āactualā story/plot (message?) only really came together after watching a long YouTube video (actually, I read the transcript / script as a blog post so it wasnāt as long for me to get through it).
Can you link it? If you still remember what/where it wasā¦
why do i have to pass a cloudflare challenge :s
It is 2025- bots reign supreme while humans are made to prove themselves that they are not a bot.
ā¦have you watched any david lynch?..itās non-linear and interpretive storytelling where the experience of its pieces-and-parts coming together for the viewer are as much what itās about as any specific narrative; the halfway mark is way too soon for understanding the wholeā¦
ā¦not everyone appreciates that sort of ambiguous media, but some folks thrive on it and by the midway point you can probably tell whether its liminal-singularity thing is your jamā¦
ā¦if youāre expecting a definitive narrative which makes everything click into place as you watch it, youāve probably been misled regarding the series and will likely be frustrated by the experience: while a rewatch can open up re-interpretive appreciation, itās not the sort of thing where a revelatory rewatch is essential to appreciating itā¦
I actually didnāt have any leads on what it was going to be like at all. I just decided a few days ago that I wanted to watch lain for some reason and started watching it. It wasnāt until the third episode until I switched to a crt because I felt like the picture was too clean on a flat screen tv. The closest thing Iāve experienced in regards to pieces coming together to form a narrative is outer wilds, but even that manages to get the player emotionally invested in the story better than lain.
