16 ms·

The terrifyingly prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 years later (2018)

186 points by isomorph 5y ago

dane-pgp 5y ago
"Fulfil the prophecy!"
mtzaldo 5y ago
close the world, open the next
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  It's perhaps worth noting here that the tagline is actually stylised as: "Close the world, open the nExt."[0] with the capitalisation presumably being a reference to the company NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs.[1] [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0500092/taglines https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0500092/taglines [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    Seems likely, with how many other Apple-adjacent references are in the series (including Copland among another things). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system)
    - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
      Here's a list of all the references that people found at the time (ish) https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm
intergalplan 5y ago
I think about the dad on the computer every time my kids see me while I'm using one.
- creamynebula 5y ago
  Scary!
  - intergalplan 5y ago
    More like extremely guilt-inducing and embarrassing, but yeah, scary works.
hguant 5y ago
I thought this was a good article, but I wonder at the author's background. >her hardware expands to turn her bedroom into a dim, electrified jejunum I'd like to think I'm well read, but who the hell pulls "jejunum" out of their duodenum!
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  I assumed it was a reference to the protagonist's lack of maturity, as in jejune[2], but I admit I had to look up what the word actually meant. [2] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/jejune https://www.thefreedictionary.com/jejune
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Fauntleroy 5y ago
  Funnily enough, there's a whole segment of people who simply know words like duodenum, jejunum, etc because a large segment of Metal Gear Solid 2 took place inside the "intestines" of a giant submersible vehicle.
Der_Einzige 5y ago
Serial experiments lain is my favorite anime of all time. I'm shocked at hoe obscure it continues to be, even in hacker circles. I figured that coding in lisp is all she needed for the show to become a cult classic - but here we are...
- intergalplan 5y ago
  https://lainzine.org https://lainzine.org (a Neocities site)
  - cl0ne 5y ago
    There's also https://lainchan.org https://lainchan.org (imageboard)
    - 14_lain_88 5y ago
      Please delete this.
      - anthk 5y ago
        Follow your leader and delete yourself.
        14_lain_88 5y ago
        Please elaborate on your statement. That is, who is my leader and why did she delete herself? update: I am flagged. Someone informed me this is due to the numbers in my name. I was 14 years old when I first watched Lain and I was born in 1988. This number apparently has an association that is less than positive. Dear mods: feel free to change it to something else, I simply wanted to inform this user that I did not want them to link our website. Thank you and have a nice day. Remember: It is rude to issue statements of self harm and that those afflicted with mental health problems may be in even the most unexpected of areas. Please be mindful of your words.
        dang 5y ago
meowface 5y ago
There's a certain brooding, existential atmosphere and mystique to anime like Serial Experiments Lain, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Steins;Gate that really make them stand out and stick with you. Even if the show turned out to not be prescient at all, it would still be one of the top classics. Combined with the fact that it was, it's really something special.
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  The weird thing is that Evangelion and Lain (and other stuff like them) came out in the early 2000s, and really fit that era. Steins;Gate came out in 2011, but feels like an early 2000s anime, in both visual style, writing, mood etc. I suppose that's somewhat fitting given the content of the show though.
  - LiquidSky 5y ago
    >The weird thing is that Evangelion and Lain (and other stuff like them) came out in the early 2000s, Evangelion came out in 1995, Lain came out in 1998.
  - throwaway17_17 5y ago
    Just a nitpick, but Neon Genesis Evangelion came out in 1995 and Lain in 1998. They do tend to be representative of their period, i.e. 90’s tv anime productions. The early 2000’s where characterized primarily by the Big 3 Shonen Jump titles (Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece).
    - astrange 5y ago
      > The early 2000’s where characterized primarily by the Big 3 Shonen Jump titles (Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece). This category only exists in the minds of Westerners who were pirating shonen manga at the time. It's not the most popular anime in Japan at any point. It's also funny Bleach made this list since it was frankly terribly written and not as popular as the other two. The author had no control over his story and would try to get out of plot holes by introducing another 20 characters every so often (he liked designing them but not writing them). And for some reason his main strength was fashion but then he moved the plot to a world where everyone wears the same plain black and white robes.
jpdb 5y ago
Lain catches a lot of flak in anime circles for being "edgy" or "deep for the sake of being deep" in that it tries too hard to be something thought provoking, but lacks any real substance. People still assign what they think the show is trying to say, but because the show is so abstract anything sticks. I tend to agree with the above point, but it has been quite some time since I watched it. I wonder if a new personal perspective and rapidly changing tech landscape would change how I feel about it today.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Even if you if you think the show is lacking substance, however you define that, there's more to a show than just the story. The character designs (and art direction in general), music, sci-fi setting, Apple references, etc. are all other reasons for its critical success & popularity (or maybe cult following is the right term, I don't know). That the soundtracks and artbooks are still so sought after is a testament to that.
  - cl0ne 5y ago
    The atmosphere created by the sound design and music is a big reason I liked it.
    - astrange 5y ago
      The studio made a show called Boogiepop Phantom afterwards (based on some urban fantasy light novels) that reuses a lot of art assets, including the sounds. It is unfortunately not nearly as good and the animation quality is seriously low.
- medicineman 5y ago
  >"deep for the sake of being deep" It is babies first philosophy: the anime. Nothing wrong with liking it, the problem comes when people think it is deeper than it actually is. It is quaint when viewed through current affairs, and much like the article, absolute thesaurus bait pretending to be something more.
- 5y ago
rhn_mk1 5y ago
It's interesting how two people can have diametrically opposite readings of the same piece of art. I read the Wired as not less real than the real world, as the influence could flow in both directions, with events in one place causing effects in the other. The ultimate confirmation of that is the final scene, which was actually depicting Lain meeting her grown up school friend some 10 years later, while Lain stayed - timelessly - a child. I once read a story which dealt with the lack of purpose in a world dominated by technology, where humans had nothing left to do, nowhere obvious to progress. The story presented an escape into tradition and slavery along with the progression into virtual reality, where new worlds could be built, shaped by the will of the participants as opposed to the hard rules of physics, therefore granting a whole set of new universes in which to search for meaning. While we don't have fully fledged universes yet, we have gotten to various lengths along that road thanks to the Internet. Why should we say that experiences of the people who value their Internet goals more than the real world are invalid?
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  Never trust a "journalist," or anyone who uses the phrase "very online" to review anime in a meaningful way. I stayed away from Mob Psycho for ages because of nutty articles like this reading meaning and intention into it to a degree that would have made Freud blush. It's all just projection. To some people, everything has to be about preaching ideology, spreading their collection of neat, tidy just-so stories about how the world works. They can't just let the work speak for itself. Glad to see this though, because it reminds me I should get around to finally trying Lain. Oh, and I highly recommend Mob Psycho as well.
  - uncletaco 5y ago
    You stayed away from Mob Psycho because “journalists” liked it and drew meaning from it? What a sad life that must be. What I find interesting about anime reviews, as opposed to video game ones IMO, is more often than not the review is about what the writer got out of it as opposed to trying to set expectations for the audience on what they will get out of it. I guess in a lot of ways that’s because anime reviews often happen after the fact or are spurred on by genuine excitement. It seems very rare that someone publishing the review is doing so because the media was dropped in their lap and they were told to review the first three episodes for the release. I like that, and it works pretty well for video essays.
BruceEel 5y ago
After all these years, I can still close my eyes and hear the static buzz of the power lines... Almost time to get a new navi.
- cbanek 5y ago
  That buzz just makes me want to curl up into a bear suit.
exhaze 5y ago
Saw Lain growing up. Quite fond of it. Pretty weak at predicting the future. You know who was pretty good at it? Isaac Asimov (spoilers ahead). My favorite example: Protagonist visits a highly advanced planet where everyone lives on their own plot of land. People lead lives of leisure, all of their needs are taken care of by highly efficient robots. However, they are terrified of physical contact, especially with the protagonist, due to a risk of infection with off-planet viruses. Here’s where it gets kinda scary: - all interactions are done via advanced telepresence. It’s been perfectly replicated to mimic physical interaction. People only meet in person, apprehensively, for reproductive purposes - one of the main supporting characters is an extreme extrovert who subliminally craves physical human contact. Due to society’s rules, the only thing she’s able to do is take lots of socially distanced telepresence walks with a friend. This book was written in 1957.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  What’s the title of the book?
  - intergalplan 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun Third (edit: second) "Robot" novel (human detective pairs up with a robot partner and solves crime mysteries). The world's written that way to provide a polar-opposite setting from earlier settings for that series (an incredibly tightly-packed and bustling city). In both cases, the natives of the worlds have adapted to their situation to the point of pathology—people from Earth (the city-world) tend toward agoraphobia, for instance. The whole setting is part of a sci-fi trend of settings that suppose Earth will become crushingly overcrowded with humans, leaving space as the only escape from that. EDIT: other poster is correct—I got the book wrong the first time (I had it as The Robots of Dawn, from the same series)
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    It's The Naked Sun. The people aren't averse to in-person contact due to disease (though that is their concern with people from Earth specifically). Nearly every one of the colony worlds (including the one in that book) have, in the books, essentially eradicated disease due to their opportunity to properly quarantine and treat it (versus the massive population still on Earth, you can't as easily wipe out a disease when you still have millions and billions of people living in megacities in close contact with each other). The particular world has a low population and people are spread out, so it's become the social custom to practice physical distancing to an extreme degree (think about the difference between personal space in different countries, then exaggerate it to an extreme).
CodeArtisan 5y ago
fan websites: https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=views&tag=lain https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=views&tag=lain
corysama 5y ago
Lain does seem quaint when viewed today. But, it was thrilling at the time. A frequent theme was hearing background conversations of random users traveling through the wires. The idea of a couple having a fight and breaking up over “The Internet” was still weird. When the series was made, people were just starting to mainstream the practice of having serious personal interaction online and no one knew where it would lead. Previously you had in-person conversations, letters and phone calls. But, then the whole world quickly ramped up dealing with love, hate, sex and all the depths of humanity through the network. It was a exciting and worrying transition. For me, Lain was there to reflect on a lot of that angst.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  I would recommend watching also Dennou Coil - it seems to me like similarly prescient description of how advanced Augmented Reality might look like - where you are in a physical world but can't be sure anymore that what you see is physically here or was added (or altered!) by the undistinguishable AR overlay.
- meowface 5y ago
  >Lain does seem quaint when viewed today. I don't agree, personally. The visuals seem a bit dated, due to it being released 23 years ago, but I watched it for the first time a few years ago and found it very thrilling and memorable.
ulzeraj 5y ago
I like SE Lain but I don’t hold it as my favorite anime series. I’m more of a Texhnolyze fan and I do like Yoshitoshi Abe’s character design. His designs are present in Lain, Niea Under 7, Haibane Renmei, Despera, Phenomeno, Texhnolyze and others. I really like his artwork and I made a habit of buying one of his artbooks everytime I visit the Akihabara Mandarake building.
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  In case you or anyone else doesn't already know, ABe also livestreams on his YouTube channel. Recently he's been drawing a new short manga. https://youtube.com/c/abflygm https://youtube.com/c/abflygm
honkycat 5y ago
Serial Experiments Lain is everything wonderful about anime. It is violent, dark, scary. In summary: ADULT. Anime tells stories in a visual format that for years and years you simply could not get anywhere else. Adult genre fiction was not well represented in American media. Even today, adult American cartoons are almost entirely "sitcom" format. They don't want to ever end, and they do not want to tell a story, they want to make more episodes. Today, people are spoiled with their options for genre fiction. Cowboy Bebop blew my mind as a kid. Berserk was also one of my favorites. I did not think anything could be cooler than Vampire Hunter D. This was before Game of Thrones or The Expanse or any number of other amazing science-fiction or fantasy media we have today. Coming from a small town, it felt like a secret that nobody else knew about and I loved immersing myself in this grim, beautiful, foreign worlds[0]. A lot of anime has a lot of gross "fan service" that objectifies their female protagonists, and that is something I was never a fan of. It was something you tolerated because there wasn't anywhere else to go. Lain is a great example of all of this. Where else are you going to get a gorgeously rendered cyberpunk-horror series? 0: Probably at a younger age than I should have been allowed to. Though honestly I don't see myself censoring everything from my kids. Part of the draw was the adult nature and feeling like I was getting away with something.
- saalweachter 5y ago
  The great thing about animation is that once you accept the cartoonish caricatures as real people, you get all of the special effects for free. You don't have that jarring disconnect between the actors and the (bad) special effects, and you don't need to husband your special effects budget carefully, saving it for a few big scenes. You can fill each frame with impossibilities that are just as real as the people filling them.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    This is also why the Star Wars animated series (3D) are such a joy to watch: Clone Wars and Rebels have hands down some of the best space battles ever made in the Star Wars universe. It also lends itself to an odd bit of realism: because its cheaper to animate characters without faces, people actually tend to wear helmets in situations they obviously should.
anotherman554 5y ago
Fun fact, the creative team who did Lain was working on a show called Despera but it was cancelled when the director died. Apparently it's likely to come out in a few years under a new director as it was near fully funded right before Covid hit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despera
lbeltrame 5y ago
Aside Chiaki Konaka from Lain, I would recommend some of the works of Sadayuki Murai (who, coincidentally, co-worked with Konaka in Bubblegum Crisis 2040): - Moryo no Hako (not sure what's the English name, but it's a nice horror/detective story from a novel) - Millennium Actress (an IMO nice way to show the evolution of the Japanese cinema) - Perfect Blue (mostly Satoshi Kon's work, but Murai worked in the screenplay) There's also Boogiepop Phantom, but you lose a bit of the plot if you haven't read the original novels.
- bozzcl 5y ago
  To add a bit more, Perfect Blue is credited as being a huge inspiration for Black Swan.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amatecha 5y ago
I wouldn't call it prescient. It came out in 1998? At that time, I was already living like Lain, cooped up in my room spending my entire evening/night online, building computers and tinkering with stuff. Lots of people were already like that. In fact, it just accurately represented a person like that, who's an outlier in their obsessive interest in the net and online communities. I felt huge relation to Lain when I watched it at that time. It was "current" for me. I imagine many others felt this way as well, though probably not the article author :)
- tootie 5y ago
  The Net came out in 1995.
nyanpasu64 5y ago
> lawless, anonymizing communities i am safe from physical harm online, i can block people online. i am not safe from physical harm in person, i cannot block people in person, they insult me when i try to assert boundaries, knowing that they can mistreat me with impunity since I'm financially dependent on them. and i don't know anyone i relate to who lives nearby to talk to, and i can't meet even if i knew them.
scruple 5y ago
How are people watching all of these different animes? I don't see many of the titles listed in comments here available for streaming online or through any of the torrent sites in aware of. I recently subscribed to VRV so that I could easily watch Attack on Titan and a few others but it's missing Lain and a lot of the other titles mentioned in here.
- henriquemaia 5y ago
  https://4anime.to/ https://4anime.to/ https://animepahe.com/ https://animepahe.com/ There are more like those. Telegram anime chat channels are also a good source to anything anime.

186 points by isomorph 5y ago

dane-pgp 5y ago

"Fulfil the prophecy!"

mtzaldo 5y ago

close the world, open the next

dane-pgp 5y ago
It's perhaps worth noting here that the tagline is actually stylised as: "Close the world, open the nExt."[0] with the capitalisation presumably being a reference to the company NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs.[1] [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0500092/taglines https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0500092/taglines [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  Seems likely, with how many other Apple-adjacent references are in the series (including Copland among another things). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland_(operating_system)
  - Kim_Bruning 5y ago
    Here's a list of all the references that people found at the time (ish) https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm https://www.cjas.org/~leng/apple-lain.htm

intergalplan 5y ago

I think about the dad on the computer every time my kids see me while I'm using one.

creamynebula 5y ago
Scary!
- intergalplan 5y ago
  More like extremely guilt-inducing and embarrassing, but yeah, scary works.

hguant 5y ago

I thought this was a good article, but I wonder at the author's background. >her hardware expands to turn her bedroom into a dim, electrified jejunum I'd like to think I'm well read, but who the hell pulls "jejunum" out of their duodenum!

dane-pgp 5y ago
I assumed it was a reference to the protagonist's lack of maturity, as in jejune[2], but I admit I had to look up what the word actually meant. [2] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/jejune https://www.thefreedictionary.com/jejune
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Fauntleroy 5y ago
Funnily enough, there's a whole segment of people who simply know words like duodenum, jejunum, etc because a large segment of Metal Gear Solid 2 took place inside the "intestines" of a giant submersible vehicle.

Der_Einzige 5y ago

Serial experiments lain is my favorite anime of all time. I'm shocked at hoe obscure it continues to be, even in hacker circles. I figured that coding in lisp is all she needed for the show to become a cult classic - but here we are...

intergalplan 5y ago
https://lainzine.org https://lainzine.org (a Neocities site)
- cl0ne 5y ago
  There's also https://lainchan.org https://lainchan.org (imageboard)
  - 14_lain_88 5y ago
    Please delete this.
    - anthk 5y ago
      Follow your leader and delete yourself.
      - 14_lain_88 5y ago
        Please elaborate on your statement. That is, who is my leader and why did she delete herself? update: I am flagged. Someone informed me this is due to the numbers in my name. I was 14 years old when I first watched Lain and I was born in 1988. This number apparently has an association that is less than positive. Dear mods: feel free to change it to something else, I simply wanted to inform this user that I did not want them to link our website. Thank you and have a nice day. Remember: It is rude to issue statements of self harm and that those afflicted with mental health problems may be in even the most unexpected of areas. Please be mindful of your words.
      - dang 5y ago

meowface 5y ago

There's a certain brooding, existential atmosphere and mystique to anime like Serial Experiments Lain, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Steins;Gate that really make them stand out and stick with you. Even if the show turned out to not be prescient at all, it would still be one of the top classics. Combined with the fact that it was, it's really something special.

ergot_vacation 5y ago
The weird thing is that Evangelion and Lain (and other stuff like them) came out in the early 2000s, and really fit that era. Steins;Gate came out in 2011, but feels like an early 2000s anime, in both visual style, writing, mood etc. I suppose that's somewhat fitting given the content of the show though.
- LiquidSky 5y ago
  >The weird thing is that Evangelion and Lain (and other stuff like them) came out in the early 2000s, Evangelion came out in 1995, Lain came out in 1998.
- throwaway17_17 5y ago
  Just a nitpick, but Neon Genesis Evangelion came out in 1995 and Lain in 1998. They do tend to be representative of their period, i.e. 90’s tv anime productions. The early 2000’s where characterized primarily by the Big 3 Shonen Jump titles (Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece).
  - astrange 5y ago
    > The early 2000’s where characterized primarily by the Big 3 Shonen Jump titles (Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece). This category only exists in the minds of Westerners who were pirating shonen manga at the time. It's not the most popular anime in Japan at any point. It's also funny Bleach made this list since it was frankly terribly written and not as popular as the other two. The author had no control over his story and would try to get out of plot holes by introducing another 20 characters every so often (he liked designing them but not writing them). And for some reason his main strength was fashion but then he moved the plot to a world where everyone wears the same plain black and white robes.

jpdb 5y ago

Lain catches a lot of flak in anime circles for being "edgy" or "deep for the sake of being deep" in that it tries too hard to be something thought provoking, but lacks any real substance. People still assign what they think the show is trying to say, but because the show is so abstract anything sticks. I tend to agree with the above point, but it has been quite some time since I watched it. I wonder if a new personal perspective and rapidly changing tech landscape would change how I feel about it today.

dfxm12 5y ago
Even if you if you think the show is lacking substance, however you define that, there's more to a show than just the story. The character designs (and art direction in general), music, sci-fi setting, Apple references, etc. are all other reasons for its critical success & popularity (or maybe cult following is the right term, I don't know). That the soundtracks and artbooks are still so sought after is a testament to that.
- cl0ne 5y ago
  The atmosphere created by the sound design and music is a big reason I liked it.
  - astrange 5y ago
    The studio made a show called Boogiepop Phantom afterwards (based on some urban fantasy light novels) that reuses a lot of art assets, including the sounds. It is unfortunately not nearly as good and the animation quality is seriously low.
medicineman 5y ago
>"deep for the sake of being deep" It is babies first philosophy: the anime. Nothing wrong with liking it, the problem comes when people think it is deeper than it actually is. It is quaint when viewed through current affairs, and much like the article, absolute thesaurus bait pretending to be something more.
5y ago

rhn_mk1 5y ago

It's interesting how two people can have diametrically opposite readings of the same piece of art. I read the Wired as not less real than the real world, as the influence could flow in both directions, with events in one place causing effects in the other. The ultimate confirmation of that is the final scene, which was actually depicting Lain meeting her grown up school friend some 10 years later, while Lain stayed - timelessly - a child. I once read a story which dealt with the lack of purpose in a world dominated by technology, where humans had nothing left to do, nowhere obvious to progress. The story presented an escape into tradition and slavery along with the progression into virtual reality, where new worlds could be built, shaped by the will of the participants as opposed to the hard rules of physics, therefore granting a whole set of new universes in which to search for meaning. While we don't have fully fledged universes yet, we have gotten to various lengths along that road thanks to the Internet. Why should we say that experiences of the people who value their Internet goals more than the real world are invalid?

ergot_vacation 5y ago
Never trust a "journalist," or anyone who uses the phrase "very online" to review anime in a meaningful way. I stayed away from Mob Psycho for ages because of nutty articles like this reading meaning and intention into it to a degree that would have made Freud blush. It's all just projection. To some people, everything has to be about preaching ideology, spreading their collection of neat, tidy just-so stories about how the world works. They can't just let the work speak for itself. Glad to see this though, because it reminds me I should get around to finally trying Lain. Oh, and I highly recommend Mob Psycho as well.
- uncletaco 5y ago
  You stayed away from Mob Psycho because “journalists” liked it and drew meaning from it? What a sad life that must be. What I find interesting about anime reviews, as opposed to video game ones IMO, is more often than not the review is about what the writer got out of it as opposed to trying to set expectations for the audience on what they will get out of it. I guess in a lot of ways that’s because anime reviews often happen after the fact or are spurred on by genuine excitement. It seems very rare that someone publishing the review is doing so because the media was dropped in their lap and they were told to review the first three episodes for the release. I like that, and it works pretty well for video essays.

BruceEel 5y ago

After all these years, I can still close my eyes and hear the static buzz of the power lines... Almost time to get a new navi.

cbanek 5y ago
That buzz just makes me want to curl up into a bear suit.

exhaze 5y ago

Saw Lain growing up. Quite fond of it. Pretty weak at predicting the future. You know who was pretty good at it? Isaac Asimov (spoilers ahead). My favorite example: Protagonist visits a highly advanced planet where everyone lives on their own plot of land. People lead lives of leisure, all of their needs are taken care of by highly efficient robots. However, they are terrified of physical contact, especially with the protagonist, due to a risk of infection with off-planet viruses. Here’s where it gets kinda scary: - all interactions are done via advanced telepresence. It’s been perfectly replicated to mimic physical interaction. People only meet in person, apprehensively, for reproductive purposes - one of the main supporting characters is an extreme extrovert who subliminally craves physical human contact. Due to society’s rules, the only thing she’s able to do is take lots of socially distanced telepresence walks with a friend. This book was written in 1957.

Ma8ee 5y ago
What’s the title of the book?
- intergalplan 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun Third (edit: second) "Robot" novel (human detective pairs up with a robot partner and solves crime mysteries). The world's written that way to provide a polar-opposite setting from earlier settings for that series (an incredibly tightly-packed and bustling city). In both cases, the natives of the worlds have adapted to their situation to the point of pathology—people from Earth (the city-world) tend toward agoraphobia, for instance. The whole setting is part of a sci-fi trend of settings that suppose Earth will become crushingly overcrowded with humans, leaving space as the only escape from that. EDIT: other poster is correct—I got the book wrong the first time (I had it as The Robots of Dawn, from the same series)
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  It's The Naked Sun. The people aren't averse to in-person contact due to disease (though that is their concern with people from Earth specifically). Nearly every one of the colony worlds (including the one in that book) have, in the books, essentially eradicated disease due to their opportunity to properly quarantine and treat it (versus the massive population still on Earth, you can't as easily wipe out a disease when you still have millions and billions of people living in megacities in close contact with each other). The particular world has a low population and people are spread out, so it's become the social custom to practice physical distancing to an extreme degree (think about the difference between personal space in different countries, then exaggerate it to an extreme).

CodeArtisan 5y ago

fan websites: https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=views&tag=lain https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=views&tag=lain

corysama 5y ago

Lain does seem quaint when viewed today. But, it was thrilling at the time. A frequent theme was hearing background conversations of random users traveling through the wires. The idea of a couple having a fight and breaking up over “The Internet” was still weird. When the series was made, people were just starting to mainstream the practice of having serious personal interaction online and no one knew where it would lead. Previously you had in-person conversations, letters and phone calls. But, then the whole world quickly ramped up dealing with love, hate, sex and all the depths of humanity through the network. It was a exciting and worrying transition. For me, Lain was there to reflect on a lot of that angst.

m4rtink 5y ago
I would recommend watching also Dennou Coil - it seems to me like similarly prescient description of how advanced Augmented Reality might look like - where you are in a physical world but can't be sure anymore that what you see is physically here or was added (or altered!) by the undistinguishable AR overlay.
meowface 5y ago
>Lain does seem quaint when viewed today. I don't agree, personally. The visuals seem a bit dated, due to it being released 23 years ago, but I watched it for the first time a few years ago and found it very thrilling and memorable.

ulzeraj 5y ago

I like SE Lain but I don’t hold it as my favorite anime series. I’m more of a Texhnolyze fan and I do like Yoshitoshi Abe’s character design. His designs are present in Lain, Niea Under 7, Haibane Renmei, Despera, Phenomeno, Texhnolyze and others. I really like his artwork and I made a habit of buying one of his artbooks everytime I visit the Akihabara Mandarake building.

nonbirithm 5y ago
In case you or anyone else doesn't already know, ABe also livestreams on his YouTube channel. Recently he's been drawing a new short manga. https://youtube.com/c/abflygm https://youtube.com/c/abflygm

honkycat 5y ago

Serial Experiments Lain is everything wonderful about anime. It is violent, dark, scary. In summary: ADULT. Anime tells stories in a visual format that for years and years you simply could not get anywhere else. Adult genre fiction was not well represented in American media. Even today, adult American cartoons are almost entirely "sitcom" format. They don't want to ever end, and they do not want to tell a story, they want to make more episodes. Today, people are spoiled with their options for genre fiction. Cowboy Bebop blew my mind as a kid. Berserk was also one of my favorites. I did not think anything could be cooler than Vampire Hunter D. This was before Game of Thrones or The Expanse or any number of other amazing science-fiction or fantasy media we have today. Coming from a small town, it felt like a secret that nobody else knew about and I loved immersing myself in this grim, beautiful, foreign worlds[0]. A lot of anime has a lot of gross "fan service" that objectifies their female protagonists, and that is something I was never a fan of. It was something you tolerated because there wasn't anywhere else to go. Lain is a great example of all of this. Where else are you going to get a gorgeously rendered cyberpunk-horror series? 0: Probably at a younger age than I should have been allowed to. Though honestly I don't see myself censoring everything from my kids. Part of the draw was the adult nature and feeling like I was getting away with something.

saalweachter 5y ago
The great thing about animation is that once you accept the cartoonish caricatures as real people, you get all of the special effects for free. You don't have that jarring disconnect between the actors and the (bad) special effects, and you don't need to husband your special effects budget carefully, saving it for a few big scenes. You can fill each frame with impossibilities that are just as real as the people filling them.
- XorNot 5y ago
  This is also why the Star Wars animated series (3D) are such a joy to watch: Clone Wars and Rebels have hands down some of the best space battles ever made in the Star Wars universe. It also lends itself to an odd bit of realism: because its cheaper to animate characters without faces, people actually tend to wear helmets in situations they obviously should.

anotherman554 5y ago

Fun fact, the creative team who did Lain was working on a show called Despera but it was cancelled when the director died. Apparently it's likely to come out in a few years under a new director as it was near fully funded right before Covid hit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despera

lbeltrame 5y ago

Aside Chiaki Konaka from Lain, I would recommend some of the works of Sadayuki Murai (who, coincidentally, co-worked with Konaka in Bubblegum Crisis 2040): - Moryo no Hako (not sure what's the English name, but it's a nice horror/detective story from a novel) - Millennium Actress (an IMO nice way to show the evolution of the Japanese cinema) - Perfect Blue (mostly Satoshi Kon's work, but Murai worked in the screenplay) There's also Boogiepop Phantom, but you lose a bit of the plot if you haven't read the original novels.

bozzcl 5y ago
To add a bit more, Perfect Blue is credited as being a huge inspiration for Black Swan.

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amatecha 5y ago

I wouldn't call it prescient. It came out in 1998? At that time, I was already living like Lain, cooped up in my room spending my entire evening/night online, building computers and tinkering with stuff. Lots of people were already like that. In fact, it just accurately represented a person like that, who's an outlier in their obsessive interest in the net and online communities. I felt huge relation to Lain when I watched it at that time. It was "current" for me. I imagine many others felt this way as well, though probably not the article author :)

tootie 5y ago
The Net came out in 1995.

nyanpasu64 5y ago

> lawless, anonymizing communities i am safe from physical harm online, i can block people online. i am not safe from physical harm in person, i cannot block people in person, they insult me when i try to assert boundaries, knowing that they can mistreat me with impunity since I'm financially dependent on them. and i don't know anyone i relate to who lives nearby to talk to, and i can't meet even if i knew them.

scruple 5y ago

How are people watching all of these different animes? I don't see many of the titles listed in comments here available for streaming online or through any of the torrent sites in aware of. I recently subscribed to VRV so that I could easily watch Attack on Titan and a few others but it's missing Lain and a lot of the other titles mentioned in here.

henriquemaia 5y ago
https://4anime.to/ https://4anime.to/ https://animepahe.com/ https://animepahe.com/ There are more like those. Telegram anime chat channels are also a good source to anything anime.