Arcane Reviews: Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain

Hello ladies, peoples, and animals it is I, the Arcane Reviewer, here to bring you a brand new anime review. Oh boy I've got a special treat for you guys. Considered an anime classic I bring you, Serial Experiments Lain. An anime that I feel has won a special place in my heart. But enough of all that I think I should tell you just what Lain's all about.

Story:

Lain takes place in a cyber punk future in which mankind has the Wired. What the Wired is basically is the internet but on steroids. The Wired is such a huge part of everyone's life that it pretty much is a whole world in of it's own which is crazy at times. In this cyber punk world we see a high school girl ends up jumping off a building and no one knows why. Later we're introduced to Lain, a very socially awkward who is so disconnected from society that she doesn't even know how to work her computer. She learns from her fellow classmates about the young girl's suicide and finds out that everyone's been getting emails from said dead girl. Finding this very odd, Lain jumps on her computer for pretty much the first time ever she actually gets in contact with the dead girl. She soon figures out that the reason for her suicide was because she's found a God in the Wired. This all leads Lain into a spiral of deep madness and cyber punk goodness. Lain's story is really a gem of a story, really because it doesn't follow the conventional means of story telling. Lain takes the the linear way to tell a story and plays with it to the point of a story that feels like you're missing something but you don't know what. Like while a story goes into a straight line with all pieces falling into place nicely, Lain goes into the line but decides to rip large pieces of that line out and leaves you wondering where the pieces are. It's a show that you need to pay attention to because you'll be lost if you don't. It's a really interesting story that if you give it time you'll be sucked into the story but you will be very lost until you put the pieces in yourself.

Animation:

The animation here is pretty freaking good. Mind you I have the remastered version that FUNimation re-released on blu-ray so of course it's gonna look good. But that being said the animation style is very gritty and unpolished but this look works for the mood that the show gives across. The show having a very dark and very unclear mood that the show gives across so in response the style goes hand in hand with the mood. It was a very nice thing to see but I will say that it's pretty ugly at times. While I understood why it looked like this I do feel that some people will be turned off by the it because the show was in made in the 90's. So no matter how much you clean up animation it will always looked aged and Lain's animations has aged. While it hasn't aged badly I still feel as though people that are too used to the animation of today they might not like this animation.

Music:

Now this is gonna be a little tricky of a topic to talk about here. The reason being that Lain has very little music that it's almost pointless for me to talk about. Now the show does have music that really isn't anything to talk about in full length. Now the music that is presented in the show does match the feeling and the mood of the scene and the overall mood of the show I have nothing to say that isn't note worthy. So music is not Lain's biggest strength but I don't think that's a bad thing.

Characters:

This is also a tricky thing to talk about as well. The characters are very hard to talk about here but not because of little scene time or even because they're bad but because they don't have one particular character trait or even one character type. The show will introduced a character and that character might changed their personality by the second episode. Lain is the only real clear cut character as well as her friend Alice and at the same time these two go through so much crap and mindfuckery that by the end of the show they're completely different characters. I do fell that the characters are great because they're just as lost as you are while watching but they do have a better understanding of what happening but not by much. So I feel that the characters are great but they are a bit out there and might not be easy to grasp at first.

Nitpicks:

This is going to be a tough one for me. I really like this show but to be completely honest the biggest nitpick here is that the show is too weird and misleading for it's own good. The show is not and I mean is not for casual viewers, you be lost and you will want to turn off the T.V. Also the voice acting is just okay, In thought is represented the very lost feeling of the show I do think that people will just see it as the voice actors just sucking at their jobs. The show is a bit of a mess of a show and it will turn poeple off which hurts the show a lot.

Overall:

To end my review I will say this, I love this show but not everyone will. If you're a person who loves anime that has deep philosophical and is very open ended with the way it portrays it's story telling and the way we see society. The show tells a very interesting story that brings up a lot of meaningful questions that I feel still hold up today, which is why I love it so much. But for everyone else I have to say you should pass on this one. It's a show that demands you're attentions or else it will leave you in the dust.

Arcane Reviewer gives Serial Experiments Lain a 7.5 out of 10.