Serial Experiments Lain (1998) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Coming soon, reflections on Serial Experiments Lain, a 1998 animated series directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura. But I'm going to dose down a few more episodes. All it took was one. And, yeah. I'm absolutely hooked. Visually gorgeous; sonically astounding; mysterious; foreboding; awesome. Can't believe I've missed it for seventeen years. If you've seen it, have at it. If not, well ... right. (What? It was this or Stein's Gate, and all I'd heard about either is that they're too awesome to explain. Don't know about that, yet, but I'm not sure I can get high enough to actually outwit this one.) Update 9 Aug. 2015, 01:05 PDT ― So, like, wow. No, really. I just binged the first six episodes and, yeah. Damn near speechless. It's not quite incomprehensible; I don't think I've ever seen so tightly controlled "all over the place", though. And the metaeffects of Serial Experiments Lain are indeed artistically tantalizing. But I pretty much have no idea what to tell you that isn't a cliché. No, really, I mean, stuff like ahead of its time or next-level, and all that. And no, I haven't gotten high enough to outwit it, yet.
Near to Perfection Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! So .... The first thing about the plot of Serial Experiments Lain is simply that it is nearly impossible to encapsulate. Whereas many serials are told as if episode by episode is event to event, those definitions seem almost absent, though it is more accurate to say they are simply an order of magnitude at least more subtle or less superficial. Structural and screenplay writer Chiaki J. Konaka carries the intermingling elements well; at no point did I outwit the script, and, you know, I don't think I heard that cliché about being just it time to show you the new move I've been working on. And once a narrative breaks out of standard conventions, so many things are possible. The metacomponents are powerful, circular and internalized; that such possibilities remain, in the end, as we find by an empathically tragic anti-resolution, is indeed part of the purpose. An undefined question of Cave and Cogito might well be the actual plot. The cynical viewer will, of course, complain of resolutions irresolute; the sensitive viewer will wonder at catharsis. Visually, sonically, and thematically on pretty much every valence, SEL is a pointed work of art, a storytelling theory analogous to some strange marriage of Gustav Mahler and Rhys Chatham; if the real song is the space between notes, then the real story is in what is reserved, untold, unwitnessed. Zen Buddhism is not so bad a mix with Robyn Hitchcock; the space between us seems apropos. Presently, I am amazed. One might expect that at some point the marketplace would catch on, but in a world where finance precedes art such produce as Konaka and director Ryūtarō Nakamura harvested from Triangle Staff is rare fruit. Interestingly, Yasuyuki Ueda, one of the producers, has apparently described one failure of intent; apparently, American and Japanese audiences were not supposed to view the series in such similar attitudes, though I would note that in the early episodes there is an appearance of commentary on family that rose in American horror and dark fantasy cinema during the 1980s. It could be that the structure creates such resonant sympathy that the expected contrasting elements are viscerally brushed aside; instead of a cultural-empathic juxtaposition, there is a human-sympathetic commonality. The story is also an intersting snapshot; monitors are still CRT, and futurism is very nearly dated. Laced through with a clever conspiracy theory connecting Roswell to the internet to the collective unconscious, it is enough to explain transhumanist network interfacing, called "The Wired", is the result, and everything about this story is intended to blur the lines between mind, brain, and virtual experience. It is, in fact, impossible to rest assured that the end is what it looks like. And for geeks it is worth noting that the series bleeds references to Apple, including the use of PlainTalk; designs derived from the Newton, Macintosh, and iMac; a cameo by Common Lisp; the Think Different slogan, the way the tagline―"Close the world, Open the nExt"―is written; and even the To Be Continued title at the end of the first twelve episodes. Yeah, there's lots of trivia. Wikipedia↱ helped with that list, and I sincerely doubt it's definitive. This is one of the best television series, animated or not, ever. It is very nearly unbelievable. ____________________ Notes: Wikipedia. "Serial Experiments Lain". 5 August 2015. En.Wikipedia.org. 9 August 2015. http://bit.ly/1WbCrBj
