4/24 readings
(Me going to my desk to write this blog post ^)
Okay so I loved this. I know that this show is really well regarded and I had some understanding of its "sad-girl online" image but I was really blown away by this.
I love that as Lain becomes more and more engulfed by the Wired, what seems to be a pretty clear interpretation of the internet, her room becomes filled with wires and PCs and screens until we get to episode 12 and it has all overflowed into her entire house. The way that Lain's behavior becomes more uncanny as the series progresses and she becomes disconnected from reality and the people around her--sure, she never had an easy time talking to others, but she evolves into a robotic internet deity that can only proselytize the Wired.
As the distance between Lain and reality grows, and as the separation between reality and the Wired becomes blurred, Lain loses her humanity. I think this form of internet-induced disconnection is actually pretty common in real life. When you have the ability to connect with anyone at any time in any part of the world through the internet, connecting with people offline doesn't seem very logical. That scene where the housewife tells her son that he can just play a game online with his friend when he asks to go meet him in person really stuck out to me. Because yeah, why should he go in person if its so much more convenient to play with his friend online?
We get an answer to this in episode 12 from Alice: it means something to have a body, it means something to physically take up space in the world and have a heartbeat and have feelings. It's a spiritual answer, so it's pretty vague, but I don't think that makes it any less poignant. Existing in the physical world is always going to be more fulfilling than existing purely online, there is just something that physically being with the people you care about that does something for your soul that being online does not. And I think that's the message of the show. The internet is growing, and nothing is going to stop that growth, and its going to become more and more tempting to put all of yourself on the internet and devote all of your time to it, but it corrodes your brain and you lose a part of yourself when you do this.
(If you couldn't tell, I've been heavily reconsidering how much time I spend online recently)
I also enjoyed this anime so much. I love this aesthetic how it portrayed the internet and how all-consuming it can be. The blurry of reality with the wired world was also really interesting. Despite this anime being made in 1998, I thought it depicted this in such an interesting yet almost realistic way. I feel like I've heard of YouTubers who have struggled because they let their online persona consume them. So in that regard, I feel like this anime was ahead of its time.

















