4/24 Serial Experiments Lain (1,4,7,12)
This was definitely different from what I was expecting, especially with the opening episode showing the suicide of someone in connected to the main character.
Themes of blurring the line between humanity and technology are really common as a whole are decently common and often are some version of what these four episodes showed-this idea that the human body is inferior or weak and one must be enlightened of spared by giving it up in some way.
In regard to the whole blurring of the real world and the Wired it's kind of interesting to think about what reality truly is. Growing up in this tech savvy generation where 8 year olds have a nicer iPhone than I do, parents pacify children with tablets, and people hide behind screen names I think there's definitely a case to be made that people are more truly themselves on line. Be it because they feel freer that way or because they think they can get away with more, real in person interactions have definitely warped even in just the last 5 years or so (thanks COVID) but even then they were already changing before that.
Overall the art style of this anime felt very Sunday morning comic strip to me and beyond the blurring of reality I kinda struggled to understand the deeper themes of what was going on here. I also spent like the first 3 episodes trying to decide if Lain was a girl or a boy but maybe that was an intentional choice by the creators to make her more ambiguous. I'm hoping hearing so other people's opinions in class will give me some more clarity.
The line blurring thing is genuinely really freaky especially when you put the ipad generation thing into mind and it just makes me wonder what this show could've been like if it had the knowledge of today in mind. For me the deeper themes seemed to be an opposite of Paprika where it's a focus on the consciousness rather than subconsciousness and what it means to have a sense of being with it. if that... if that makes sense....














