Iā€™ve watched the first 6 episodes of this show, imo everything past episode 4 is really vague and hard to understand. Iā€™ve read that I shouldnā€™t expect to understand it on my first watch but if Iā€™m not enjoying it my first time through Iā€™m 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 itā€™s something that youā€™re 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.

  • Jayjader@jlai.luEnglish
    3Ā·
    3 months ago

    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 computerā€™s effects on society with what ā€œactuallyā€ happened as we moved more and more of our lives onto the internet.

    The ā€œactualā€ 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 wasnā€™t as long for me to get through it). If I had had the patience I think I would have preferred rewatching until I ā€œgotā€ it, but thereā€™s so much else out there to experience. Maybe some day Iā€™ll sit down and do a ā€œproperā€ 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, itā€™s 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 theyā€™re what I immediately think of whenever Lain gets brought up.