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File: 1736250382387.gif (494.44 KB, 455x303, 1721607959341166.gif)

 No.2901

Is it me or does the online lain fandom miss the entire point of the show? I'm pretty sure the message isn't that Lain is a cyber goddess or pushing some kind of tech gnosticism or accelerationist pseudo-philosophy.

The general themes seem to be on Japanese family breakdown, lonliness and atomization, and technology causing a hyperreal breakdown of the world. There's also the conspiracy history of the internet being invented by aliens but also theological stuff about the soul and religion too, which I'm guessing is just added on as a way to create artificial depth.

 No.2902

File: 1736340403155.jpg (27.25 KB, 650x464, jumping-lain.jpg)

A lot of them watched the show for mostly the aesthetic. "Wow look at this super kawaii anime girl thats depressed and into tech, she's literally me" and don't look past anything surface level like that. It's alright to watch a show like that ig but there's barely any discussion beyond that there. A lot fandoms are like that now, it is what it is.

 No.2903

File: 1736360580240.png (99.01 KB, 394x441, 1721165114530-0.png)

>>2902
>super kawaii anime girl thats depressed and into tech, she's literally me
Isn't that the show though? Lain is the depressed tech girl internet dweller who's exactly like lonely internet addicts. But SEL is saying this is actually a bad thing while a lot of the fans think its a good thing. Its like they get that Lain as a character is meant to speak to them but take it entirely the wrong way: being a fake depressed asocial basement dweller is good and Lain is our god.

 No.2904

>>2903
What I meant is what you said. They see it as a good thing instead of a critique of that behavior. Which is why i included "That's literally me".

 No.2934

I kinda like the mystical interpretation of Lain though

 No.3021

File: 1737846383058.jpg (74.79 KB, 1280x720, maxresdefault (4).jpg)

>>2901
It's about a lot of things, because everything is interconnected in some invisible way, which again is one of the themes of the show. I think a lot of it is about death. Not just the one big death, but all the kinds of little death. Death of ego, death of innocence, death of the spirit, death of the body, death of the mind, death as a means of escapism, a quiet death of society that no one really even notices. Suicide, social suicide, decentralized unintentional mass suicide, murder without killing.

Or maybe I'm just some wacko.

 No.3116

>>2901
I wish Serial Experiments Lain covered more Internet history.

 No.3134

>>3021
The show seems to be saying that interconnectedness is a bad thing. This isn't a mystical metaphysical interconnectedness, but everyone's interactions being mediated by a single technological system they have no control over. Slowly some people's existence gets forgotten, they become faceless nobodies or people don't notice other important people in their lives are dead or need help or like Lain they are easily manipulated by freaks on the internet. So in that sense its about social death and the death of society. SEL is sort of weird because on the one hand its very anti-tech and pessimistic but on the other its fascinated with tech.

 No.3137

I mean , you're talking about 14-15 year olds who think the "weird pc girl" is just food for their "mysterious aesthetic"

 No.3332

>>3134
A lonely death leaves a shadow like the shadows left by an atomic bomb. The Japanese seem to be quite taken with this paradox. Utter destruction, yet something remains, but it's something utterly without substance, without humanity, without anything that matters. Just a form. Something you can't save. Something you can't understand or interact with.
Anonymity, as much as I love it, is ultimately dehumanizing, and dehumanization is ultimately a form of death. Especially, when your only outlet in the world is social media, like so many people these days, where a glitch in an algorithm can erase them entirely, and leave just some artifacts that say nothing.
>This video has been removed
>This account no longer exists
>404
A shadow on the floor.
I wonder if this was foresight, coincidence, or something else. I think it also has a lot to do with Gnosticism, but I don't know enough about Gnosticism to tell you.

 No.3333

What about laintrannies? How badly do you have to miss the fucking plot to take it as "become a sissy frengot" and praise Nick Land's non-sense bs

 No.3335

>>2901
It's weird seeing a show I bought randomly as a kid and took kinda at face value and didn't think of the symbolism (which funny enough the show works that way) blow up into everything we see now vs back then it was just some AMVs and reviews online also the remaster sucks watch the original version from Pioneer.

 No.3390

File: 1745530845015-1.jpg (531.65 KB, 744x1236, 55.jpg)

File: 1745530845015-2.jpeg (308.52 KB, 744x1236, Noa Lifting.jpeg)

>>2901
>>3333
I honestly find Noa Izumi more interesting as an icon of man's relationship with technology.
She doesn't know anything about engineering or computers, but still manages to get a lot of mileage out of her vehicle by treating it as a friend/pet.
Never underestimate the power of skeumorphism.

 No.3412

>>2901
>The general themes seem to be on Japanese family breakdown, lonliness and atomization, and technology causing a hyperreal breakdown of the world. There's also the conspiracy history of the internet being invented by aliens but also theological stuff about the soul and religion too, which I'm guessing is just added on as a way to create artificial depth.

so it is tech gnosticism and accelerationist philosophy? i mean i dont like lain fans in same i dont like eva fans but ur just wrong

 No.3415

im watching the show for the first time right now and am enjoying it. It really does feel like trannie bait with the le shy girl thats addicted to the computer so far. if the thread is still up i'll give my retarded take when i finish it.

 No.3416

>>3415
go back

 No.3425

>>3412
A japanese boomer struggles to understand the negative changes occuring to japan/japanese society during it's economic crisis and wonders if maybe the internet is to blame (note: japanese boomer doesnt really understand the internet). I never finished watching lain because I understand exactly what was wrong with (japanese) society at the time while fully understanding what the internet is(was). So feel free to correct me if my following assumptions are wrong and that i should finish watching this meme show if theres even deeper themes im missing out on:

The japanese have a tendency to shroud things they dont understand with mysticism, and children being able to communicate with one another instantly was a completely forign concept to the people raised in a time period where you'd only ever talk to your family/neighbors which directly led to strong community bonds. The japanese boomers also got the 'we just lost the war, better hunker down together' bonus multiplier so their childhoods where unironically fairly comfy even when their parents were doing poorly economically. however, as a consequence older japanese people were fairly out of touch with the rest of the world and lived on the copium propaganda bubble pushed by the japanese mass media/government. Thats why they love their child soldier stories piloting robots and space ships. Its just alternate timeline ww2 slop (our boomers fetishized ww2 in the same way, just different since we 'won'). The ironic thing being, after japan was chosen by the globalist to be the world's new factory the japanese cope became reality as their economy soared, which created a feedback loop of nippon #1. So the boomer intrinsically believes to trust the propaganda, to work hard, and that this hard work is rewarded by nature of hard work leads to rewards. This of course, is a fallacy.

so youve lived your life cut off from the rest of the world. you only have family and friends to rely upon. your government tells you to be positve, work hard, and everything will be good. You do it, and it turns out well (for you). But then all of a sudden, your economy has its legs cut out from under it by the international banking class (you do not understand this at all) and everything you know no longer applies to the next generation. But you notice them spending a lot of time on this weird computer stuff. This generation has access to the internet, they can find out the truth if they want to and not just blindly consume copium/propaganda, and it makes them depressed as fuck so they start retreating from society and/or killing themselves. So you blame the internet for making them sad and try to express your feelings about the subject the only way you know how: you make a cartoon featuring a child exporing the subject because thats what most of the media in your life involved.

 No.3426

>>3425
you're not nearly as clever as you think you are

 No.3429

>>3425
That's a lot of fucking words for a guy in the Lain thread who hasn't watched Lain.

 No.3430

>>3412
No. Lain isn't making a metaphysical claim about the nature of reality. Its really more of a sociological point. In the past, we drew a line between reality and the representational world of print media and when computers became a thing we drew a line between irl and cyberspace. But now everyone's connected and always using the internet, stuff happens online and moves into the meatspace so the line bertween irl and cyberspace has become really blurry. The vast amount of unfiltered information makes it hard to know what's true or false so we end up confused and misled. You see this happen to Lain. She gets wrapped up with a hacker group online run by Masami, but it just turns out that Masami is trying to get revenge on his former employer and he seems to be luring teens into suicide for the fun of it. The narrator tells us Masami is dead but how do you know that's true? He sounds like an authority figure, you know those voice overs in documentaries, but it could easily be fake. Maybe Masami is dead and one of his flunkies is using his persona over the wired?

The tone of SEL is very negative. You see a kid playing a computer game not realizing his mom is dead, the power lines and machines are always dark and scary looking, Lain's entire family is dysfunctional. Her father is addicted to his computer, her mother is cold and distant, her sister is living a double life having sex with older men, and Lain starts acting cruel towards Arisu for the thrill of it. There's hamfisted alien imagery that symbolizes how tech is like an invader colonizing our lives and conspiracies about human experiments. The show is mourning the loss of a more traditional Japan so its not accelarationist.

 No.3434

For the Oshii whining in some Lum circles, you'd think he didn't direct some of the best Lum action in the entire show.

 No.3455

>>2901
Like all things, tourists have ruined Lain.

 No.3458

>>3429
>>3426
thank you for your contribution.

 No.3459

>>3430
In a way, the themes are very similar to Videodrome.



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