Let’s all love lain!
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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it’s something that you’re actually supposed to think about while watching it
Says who? IMO the strongest aspect of Lain is the vibe (style, sound, art, the whole world). The overall narrative is jarringly structured, a bit chaotic, with sudden introductions and resolutions of subplots, and especially on the first watch it's futile to try to treat it as some sort of a (solvable) puzzle, or, even worse, a philosophical tractate. Not that it might not be treated that way on a rewatch sometime down the line (though honestly I wouldn't expect that to be possible even then), but the first time around it has to draw you into the world and into Lain's mind. Just relax, make yourself comfortable, and let it be an irrational, intimate experience that it's probably meant to be. (Or, well, don't, if you've already given up.)
I'd recommend you just power through it and absorb what you can. An explanation is given at the end, and things make alittle more sense when that's given. I enjoyed the visuals and just went along for the ride.
Serial Experiments lain is my favourite anime, so I'd definetly recommend watching more... but if it's just not for you it's not going to click. For me, I enjoyed the anime already from the first few minutes and watched the whole thing on the edge of my seat in a single night.
Even when I didn't understand anything on my first watch, I still enjoyed the visuals, audio, unique direction and storytelling, and really liked trying to make sense of it all and thinking about everything I just saw between episodes. Plus I could relate a lot to lain. But it's definetly not for everyone.
I actually really liked lain and thought it was gonna be my new favorite anime until I got to episode 5, my comprehension went downhill from there. I enjoyed the surreal visuals and sound too but without a coherent plot to follow I just couldn't be bothered to keep watching.
...have you watched any david lynch?..it's non-linear and interpretive storytelling where the experience of its pieces-and-parts coming together for the viewer are as much what it's about as any specific narrative; the halfway mark is way too soon for understanding the whole...
...not everyone appreciates that sort of ambiguous media, but some folks thrive on it and by the midway point you can probably tell whether its liminal-singularity thing is your jam...
...if you're expecting a definitive narrative which makes everything click into place as you watch it, you've probably been misled regarding the series and will likely be frustrated by the experience: while a rewatch can open up re-interpretive appreciation, it's not the sort of thing where a revelatory rewatch is essential to appreciating it...
I actually didn't have any leads on what it was going to be like at all. I just decided a few days ago that I wanted to watch lain for some reason and started watching it. It wasn't until the third episode until I switched to a crt because I felt like the picture was too clean on a flat screen tv. The closest thing I've experienced in regards to pieces coming together to form a narrative is outer wilds, but even that manages to get the player emotionally invested in the story better than lain.
But you don’t seem to understand
A shame you seemed an honest man
Seeing that monitor threw me for a loop. I can feel the chunky press of that power button.
It is not that deep, really. It is almost impossible to understand on a first watchthrough because all context for what is happening is only given towards the very end, so it just looks like a mess. On second watch it should be more understandable, but if you did not enjoy it the first time you wouldn't the second time either, and you don't really lose much by not doing it. Just watch a video essay about dissociative disorder in media or something if you want to watch something with meaning.
Both Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments: Lain are created by pretentious at best mangakas. They wrote and draw somethings just because they taught it was cool. But the stupid dumb fucked fans made it look like as if both of these animes had some fucking deeper meaning to them and made them achieve cult statuses. When in reality, it is just relatable to you when you're going through depression or other similar mental health issues. I don't see NGE and Lain anything higher than "psychotic ramblings and drawings of a mad man". That said, you're not dumb for not being able to understand Lain. Not many can understand psychotic ramblings. Off topic- I love your monitor! Which year was it made? You should have got matching keyboard and speakers! The modern keyboard does not match with it.
@nebula42@lemmy.zip
psychotic rambling are awesome and I wish more shows were based of them.
I've dealt with depression before, I guess it's the same way Dostoevsky doesn't feel the same when I'm reading it with a completely lucid lense. I also take pride in understanding things others don't, so that's part of the reason why I don't like that I don't understand it. So far as the monitor goes, my mom gave me her old PC she used to use back in, iirc, the 90's. I do have a matching keyboard for it, but she lost the mouse, I just hooked up the monitor to modern PC cuz I read it was the best way to watch it, along with a low quality recording of the show itself.
It looks similar to the lemon sold to my family in 1995.
Very cool visuals, but I thought it was a good anime to watch stoned, and obviously for me it isn't. I had absolutely no clue what was going on.
Need to sit down and give it another go.
why do i have to pass a cloudflare challenge :s
It is 2025- bots reign supreme while humans are made to prove themselves that they are not a bot.
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 computer's effects on society with what "actually" happened as we moved more and more of our lives onto the internet.
The "actual" 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 wasn't as long for me to get through it). If I had had the patience I think I would have preferred rewatching until I "got" it, but there's so much else out there to experience. Maybe some day I'll sit down and do a "proper" 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, it'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 they're what I immediately think of whenever Lain gets brought up.
The “actual” 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 wasn’t as long for me to get through it).
Can you link it? If you still remember what/where it was...
Finally managed to track it down! https://skapbadoa.com/2018/02/19/explaining-iwakura-lain/
The only good ressource I found apart from that link is the following 15-year-old website: https://www.cjas.org/~leng/lain.htm
This is it, this is the shit I'm talking about:
