/lit/ - Literature

Lain is easy af to understand if you pay attention to the dialogue. The trippy visuals are there to DISTRACT you. Lain should be watched twice, once for the visual experience and a second time to understand what it actually is about.

>>13297340
OP didn't say it was too difficult to understand that anime

>>13297340
what is it about tho ?

The plot itself is Lain's weak point. Psychogeography is where it shines. Ultimately it fails as a narrative precisely because it tries to lead it towards a logical conclusion... of sorts.

>>13297326
i think this whole board is just one twitter account posting everything, prove me wrong

>>13299215
you got me

>>13299220
lol, carry on it's good

Help me understand this anime, what's the deal ?

>>13299144
Humans serializing themselves by integrating their consciences with the Internet. It just so happens that God is a little girl before it was cool

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>>13299330
PRESENT DAY... PRESENT TIME...

I've been binging the big artsy anime for a while now, stuff by Hideki, Kunihiko, Chiaki, Satoshi, et cetera. with this in mind:
Serial Experiments Lain is meaningless. Chiaki started out thinking "hey guys I'm going to make an art show, but I don't know what it's going to be about, so let's fuck around for a few episodes while I come up with something." watching the show, it seems like he really didn't know how the show was going to end or what he wanted it to mean until episode 6 or 7
this disconnect between the reference-heavy, overly abstract first half and the second half which actually had something close to a plot. it's almost not even the same show past the halfway point. it's like Evangelion with how the last few episodes are so much more different, except that Hideki actually knew how it was going to end from the beginning of writing the show and Chiaki had no "we were out of money and I was mentally ill" excuse
the most obvious sign of disconnect between each part of the show is a lack of a theme. there's nothing there. Utena is far more abstract but with that you can at least conclude "hierarchies are bad and growing up means leaving them behind". Paranoia Agent's clusterfuck plot still ends up boiling down to "don't disconnect yourself from reality or else society will collapse". what does Lain have? "don't use the internet to much, it's not real"? "use the internet as much as you can, there's no difference between it and reality nowadays"? "society can't handle the internet"? "society will ascend because of the internet"? "God is literally an AI"? I honestly can't find any theme that connects all the interpretations that's more specific than "the internet does weird stuff". it's textbook weirdness-for-weirdness'-sake
so yeah, I guess it's an anime about phenomenology, since that's also a bunch of masturbation

>>13299632
>a work of fiction needs to have a grand unifying theme to be good
That's a big OOF from me

>>13299654
that's actually the most impressive part of the show, to be honest. if you're not thinking about purpose or art at all, then you'll naturally create one anyway. every story is didactic and has a theme by default
Chiaki went out of his way to be abstract in all of the worst ways possible and created an anime with literally no unifying theme. it's theme isn't some postmodern "you can't get themes from everything" thing, it literally just doesn't have one. it's impressive that he was able to do that, in the same way that it's impressive to create something with literally no value or conceivable audience
>a work of fiction can be both good and literally meaningless at the same time
yikes

>>13299674
IT'S ABOUT THE INTERNET YOU DOLT THIS SHOULDN'T BE HARD YOU LITERALLY FELL FOR THE TRAP I MENTIONED HERE>>13297340

>>13299712
>it's about the internet
you didn't read my post, I literally talked about that exact claim. how is that specific enough to be a theme? seems more like a motif to me. like, let's take some really simplistic book as an example, say, Harry Potter. you could say "it's about magic", or you could say "love conquers hate". the first is a description, the second is an actual theme

i'd rather watch Serial Braps Sniffed

>>13299726
Lain was about the technological Singularity achieved through the Internet.
Since you mentioned it, can you tell me the main theme of Evangelion?

>>13299742
>Lain was about the technological Singularity achieved through the Internet.
that's literally what Eva was you dipshit

>>13299749
>owned by both Lain and Evangelion
Even bigger OOF. Ok this is fun, what was Texhnolyxe about?

>>13299759
>implying I watched Texhnolyze
get back to me in a few weeks, it's number five on my to watch list

>>13299773
Good for you man. You have to realize however that a work of fiction doesn't need to have a central theme or moral to work. If anything, covering multiple topics skillfully is far more rewarding than just going "war is bad"/friendship is important/hard work is important/etc" and repeating that from beginning to end

>>13299152
She saves a friend. The complexities of the universe flow into humanity and the most valuable thing about human interaction is friendship.

>>13299870
>covering multiple topics skillfully
no problem with that. look at Utena; I already called that a good example of art anime, and it moves through several focuses throughout. the difference in my eye is that every focus is clearly connected to the central theme. in Lain, I have a hard time connecting all the disparate interpretations in a way that leaves any sizable overlap, even keeping in mind that some of them may just be sub-interpretations
>repeating them from beginning to end
it's completely possible to evolve the message throughout the work and use it in different ways, that way it's diverse but also interconnected

>>13299927
you can still see the nipples and head of the penis, thought I have to say that this is one of the finest monster girl hentai I've stumbled across. Lovely oni

>>13299731
fpbp

>>13299773
I've tried to watch it twice and Ive just blanked out. Not sure what the hub Bub is all about

>>13300033
same guy made Lain and Tehxnolyxe. It's a bit slow at the beginning

I didn't notice it when I positioned the image, I'm sorry. I will say it again.

Human friendship is the process that decays humanity, the best possible interaction between two individuals.

Lain and Chise, although they did not know each other at the same level as Lain and Alice, there was empathy and a search for well-being for Chise on the part of Lain Iwakura.

Lain returned her to the physical world in exchange for her own existence so that she could continue to develop as a person in the best possible way.

This sacrifice for another best expresses the end of the series and the human conflict against the most brutal materialism, represented by the character of post human Masami Eiri

>>13297326
*dismantles your half-baked phenomenology*
see you at the end of the sky kid...

>>13299975
Do you even know what that stands for

>>13300670
I'd rather watch

Brap Experiments Sniffed

>>13300532
Such a wonderful VN!

>>13297326
Well many animes could be considered phenomenological because of their subjective quality in the viewer, just watch the first 35 minutes of this visual novel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpO-jLP0jY0&list=PLIHdFbv4PPol_48xE3eNSclUINBkn5RSe&index=18
It's not a weird experience as in the case of lain, but it has its distinctive quality caused by the various different variables that constitute the experience, on one hand there's the ritualistic behaviors of Kotomi but done with such devotion and intention that invoke a quasi-religious experience especially in the context of the spacious room and the well-crafted richness of Tomoya's subjectivity. Every now and again, it's dotted by precision of language with say the tangy flavour that does bring to mind something acidic and orange-reddish fruit-like, by not just the semantics but also the phonetics. The music of shining in the sky has a feeling of glorious that makes you overflow with happiness so that it moves you to tears from a seemingly inconsequential experience, and this especially so in the backdrop of the context of one's experience, say, for instance my experience, I can relate all of it in some ways to lots of things that are important to me.
While this analysis is not a phenomenological reduction, one can observe that there are distinct elements to the experience that make it incredibly fascinating and worthy of further analysis and abstraction. And it is in this way, in my opinion, that one can be motivated to do a phenomenological analysis of things in general: a desire to hold onto these experiences so to seize them through abstraction.