Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
BlueKojiro
Serial Experiments Lain is a story that would be infinitely better told as a few dozen-page short story or a feature-length film, NOT a 13-episode TV series.
The only reason I give it a 6 is because of reading a few think pieces about the ending that made me appreciate it a bit more. I like the *idea* of the story, but hell, I have plenty of *ideas* for stories I'd like to write someday so that's not really impressive. The thing that impresses me about storytelling is the ability of a writer to take an idea and *show* it to an audience. This show is, in a word, self-indulgent.
75% of what you see on screen is just for mood and vibe and communicates zero information. There's a movie-length story cut up and shuffled into someone's schizophrenic episode. Maybe that's the point! Too bad, don…
Read at the sourceBigBoyAdvance
Lain is a prime example of a show that tries too hard to be avant-garde and artistically profound, but ends up feeling nonsensical, emotionally manipulative and disturbing to watch with its use of vivid imagery and weird sounds. It strives to be "le different" from mainstream anime, but in doing so, it becomes a frustratingly disjointed and nonsensical mess that's incoherent at times and not enjoyable to watch.
The plot is told in a confusing manner, lacking sufficient explanation. Instead of offering clear storytelling, the anime tries to tell a story by relying on intense, dramatic or artistic scenes that are deliberately vague and open to interpretation, with eerie music playing in the background to create a pretense of importance and significance, and to manipulate the viewer's emotio…
Read at the sourceliteraturenerd
Oh yes...it's time! I have been meaning to go back and re-review this anime for about 5 years now. My original review was very flippant, poorly written, and quite dismissive towards Lain. I gave it a 6 and the whole review was basically "Lol, can you believe this shit?! What a weird anime!"
Firstly, I want to go into a little background explaining my own experience with this anime and how my views have changed over time. I first saw Lain in 2005 and the best way to watch Lain in the United States at that point unless you had the money to buy the DVDs volume by volume was to rent it from Netflix. This was back when Netflix was purely a DVD delivery service. So you watch 4 episodes of Lain, then send your disk back and wait about 2 weeks to watch the next 4 episodes. I was watching Lain via…
Read at the sourceMajorohminus
This anime sucks so much. I was watching based on positive reviews. I was bored after the first 2 episodes but I pressed on. I thought it would get better but it doesn't. It's not even the entertaining kind of bad but it's the boring and annoying kind of bad. The ultimate payoff at the end was even worse than I could have imagined.
The plot is some junk without any rhyme or reason. Just a bunch of crap some 12 year old would find deep. Random Illuminati bullshit strung together with some girl as the MC. God damn it like has all this bullshit put together but none of it matters or makes sense. It's like a mentally challenged person read basic philosophy and technology and then came up with some mary sue self insert of their retarded self into a story like that.
The whole thing is just u…
Read at the sourceAestheticOnion
What really scares us? Death or the oblivion? Of course, the oblivion. It is not dying itself that frightens us the most, but rather knowing that we will lose everything we loved and cared for. All of the memories we've treasured, the choices we've made and the people we've touched; everything will cease from existence. So why do we treasure our past so much? Is that just a collection of memories the nostalgia bounds us to, or is it the part of who we are?
Serial Experiments Lain is not your average show, and definitely not something you run into every day. It is a unique piece of entertainment that completely transcends its genre, and presents itself as a work of art. An avant-garde show, not restraining itself to the boundaries of traditional storytelling and plot building, creating a c…
Read at the sourceKitsunehimeMilhi
I'm just going to state it outright. This show is still one of the top three worst shows I've seen even after deciding to finish it to see if it got better. You could literally skip 80-90% of this shows content and still understand some of the main messages like: your online life can affect your real life, online friends are not equal to an in real life friend, and how new technology changes the world so quickly, etc; Those are just some messages that I took from the show. Basically, the majority of scenes are filler, no matter what other viewers try to say; there was no need for most of them; this show could've got the same messages across in half the episodes.
Also, the characters are so annoying. I don't care if characters are highly developed because that's not a necessary component…
Read at the sourceSNKFanboy
"Pretentious", according to google dictionary is: "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed." honestly that definition very simply describes the anime serial experiments lain.
serial experiments lain's story can honestlty be described as a random collection of 'deep' ideas like human concsiousness and existentialistism and its relation to the web, full of forced 2deep4u moments and random exposition supposed to be 'clues' to figure out the needlessly confusing storyline, wich is only made worse with long periods with no dialog and only the sound of a computer humming, which makes for a very boring and uninteresting watch.
the characters aren't good. lain has no emotion and we never know what she is thinking, and can't relate…
Read at the sourcelawlmartz
Present day... Present time! hahaHAHAHAha
"What isn't remembered never happened. Memory is merely a record...You just need to rewrite that record."
Preface:
The term "existentialism" gets tossed around a lot when talking about psychological narratives. Perhaps it's that existentialism is a theme common to many stories that not only makes them more interesting, but encourages the viewer to ask questions about themselves, and be more introspective. Perhaps it's that existentialism is a concept central to the being of psychological intrigue, and one that also lends itself to storytelling. However, Lain is existentialism in its most pure form.
Story: 9
Serial Experiments Lain is extraordinary, and not in the most ubiquitous sense of the word. It's very much outside of the ordinary, and u…
Read at the sourcektulu007
Serial Experiments Lain is a psychological horror, sci-fi, cyberpunk drama anime written by Konaka Chiaki and developed by Triangle Staff. On one hand, I've seen enough things claim to be psychological with virtually no psychological content that I'm a bit skeptical. However, I've also seen plenty of anime with legitimate psychological horror elements foremost among them being the absolutely stellar Perfect Blue. This will be the only anime produced by Triangle Staff that I've seen so I can't provide an educated hypothesis based on that. I will say that I've seen some other anime that Konaka Chiaki was involved with, though not the head writer for most of them, and he does have a promising track record.
Story:
Our tale opens with a young girl jumping off of a tall building. Naturally,…
Read at the sourceBartyYuushaGeah
For my first anime review on this site, I'll be doing a series that I can confidently say is both one of my favorite works of fiction that anime has to offer that I've ever seen as well as possibly one where I can never ultimately decide how much I genuinely love it or just absolutely appreciate it even if I won't obsess over it.
Now with that out of the way, I guess I'll get into the review.
Serial Experiments Lain is NOT your average anime. At first glance, it might look a little bit like the Matrix movies or Ghost in the Shell (regrettably, both are things I've yet to watch). For more seasoned anime fans, it might even look like the genre of 'cyberpunk' series like Bubblegum Crisis and Appleseed and some aspects of Cowboy Bebop lovingly ripped off from movies such as Blade Runner an…
Read at the sourcePetitFours
Serial Experiments Lain. Such an eerie piece of astonishment. And such a psychological thriller that is so full of philosophical ideas integrated in technology around us. This anime is one of those I have watched that required more time thinking or researching than watching (and making it hard to write this as my first review) - but it was definitely worth it. Apparently the 1998 cyberpunk anime was not made for the majority market, thus if you would prefer more actions than philosophy and thinking all over the series, there is a chance you will find this anime dull and boring.
Story - This is an utterly difficult part to comprehend. The storyline is not even linear. Instead, there are seemingly ambiguous clues and fragments all over the episodes. If you have not paid enough attention, or…
Read at the sourceMaegil
Pretentiousness. This word was discussed to death, and I believe it applies here; but instead of ranting, Ive forced (or rather, violated) myself to re-endure this series just so I can make a proper review.
I'd warn about spoilers ahead, but the series was already rotten from the start, so I won't bother with spoiling it some more.
Story:2
A chronically depressive schoolgirl wonders if her hallucinations are due to having become psychotic, developing multiple personalities disorder or being just paranormal. Other than that, the plot is nigh inexistent, it's just a dragged-out exposition of why she had these visions.[spoiler]Finally, said girl realizes she's a goddess, throws an emo tantrum and resets everything.[/spoiler]
Throughout the series we're exposed to some Area 51-based conspira…
Read at the sourceAnimeViewerJ
Now let me start of by saying THIS IS NOT AN ANIME FOR EVERYONE! *minor spoilers included*
The story of Serial Experiments Lain is an interesting complex one to say the least. It starts of by a student commiting suicide saying she does not need to exist in this world anymore. The following day the students receive an email from the dead student and at first they think it is spam mail but that turns out not to be the case. Pretty much the whole show revolves around The Wired (or their version of a more advanced Internet) and how humans use it as a form of communication.
The main colour pallete for Serial Experiments Lain uses a lot of blacks, purples, reds and yellows. The shadows pretty much consist of most of the colours listed above. For its time, the art style overall was great.
Se…
Read at the sourceKarhu
So, Serial Experiments Lain or like I like to call it; Serious Experiences of Mindfucking.
It's an anime you get when you put 2001: A Space Odyssey, Inception, The Sixth Sense, Threads of Time, Air, TRC, Nisio Isin, Guy Richie and couple hundred other things in a big bucket. The you give that bucket to Chuck Norris who shakes the ingredients and squeezes the bucket to smaller size. But it's not over yet. Chuck gives the bucket-like thing to Andy Dick. Andy comes near your head and starts to push the bucket inside your head through your ear. He isn't doing it in gentle way. Your ear whole is tight and it hurts like hell. After a while you can't handle with the pain and you lose consciousness. You gain it back about 13 episodes later, you don't know where you are but your brains feel silly.…
Read at the sourceDirtyMidnighter
Serial Experiments Lain is a difficult anime to grade on a scale. While the philosophical ideas that the series focuses on- instrumentality, cybernetic integration, loss of identity through prolonged interaction with the digital world- are thoroughly thought provoking and interesting, the execution of these ideas are inconsistent. This is a case of a series being a bit too ambitious for it's own good. The concepts to make the series work are all in place but it lacks a solid foundation to give it that push into the realm of excellence. It is a series that seems to constantly present fascinating ideas only to have their potential squandered by poor storytelling, downright ugly artwork and and a lack of all but a couple interesting characters.
Serial Experiments Lain has gained a distinct fo…
Read at the sourceno_forehead
I've watched this show 2,769 times and still can't make any real sense of it. And I for God's sake like philosophy and science fiction very much.
Its metaphysics are somewhat contradictory, and some things are never explained in any way, and any theory I'm able to form about all this show presents leaves something out.
Its important characters are all shallow and don't show any kind of appropriate/understandable emotional reactions. This is by no means the number one show I'd recommend if you wanted to think about the effects modern technology has on people's lives.
I figure this is after all its ultimate goal: to illustrate how, because of the complexicity and rapid advancement of technology, many questions previously safely put on hold about the world, society, reality, humanity, ide…
Read at the sourceTheLlama
Usually, one can divide good anime into two groups. There's the ones that entertain you through your emotions; scooping you up in the adrenaline-rushing fights, riveting your feelings with heart-breaking drama or simply tingling your adventurous sides. And then there's the ones that makes you sit down and think. Ponder about deeper, philosophical dilemmas and questions such as those of existence, origin, connection. Serial Experiments Lain is among the few to fall into the latter category.
It is a fact that everyone in this world is connected. In our world, we have cell phones, the Internet; there's no limit to how we can connect with our fellow humans. Lain, the protagonist, gets drawn deeper into such a world, The Wired, realizing that this is indeed true, but on a much deeper level. Be…
Read at the sourceseraphjei
Review for Serial Experiments Lain by John Kim
Introduction: I find myself typing this review thinking more about the conceptualization of existence, than the anime itself. Above all, there are two standards I hold true for anime. There are anime that simply entertain for the sake of enjoyment, and there are anime that stretches the boundary of human imagination. Serial Experiments Lain falls in the latter category and for this reason Serial Experiments Lain stands out as a true classic. Serial Experiments Lain pushes the envelope of what the perceived notion of what can be done with television as a medium. The show doesn’t just provide entertainment; it provides insight, and profound views and beliefs about technology and the role it plays in society. With that said it's time to ge…
Read at the sourceDrSleep
Lain is a young teenage school girl of no extraordinary ability -- especially with computers, now all the rage among her friends. She appears to have many friends, and while not unsocial or rude, she doesn't like to hang out with people. Each day begins with Lain coming out of the front door of her sunwashed , minimalist house, and descending a small ramp of white stone stairs, identified as such only by slashes of deep black shadows on the risers.
Director Ryutaro Nakamura's SERIAL EXPERIMENTS LAIN is rightfully considered one of the most revolutionary anime series of its time and well into the forseeable future. His use of color is nearly nonexistent, there is very little dialogue, and what few words areexchanged between Lain and her friends or her father do little to give the viewer a…
Read at the sourceVenneh
Title: Serial Experiments Lain
Anime: Serial Experiments Lain was produced by Triangle Staff, who also did the animation for Magic User's Club and Boogiepop Phantom, and directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, famous for directing Kino's Journey and the upcoming Ghost Hound. It ran on Japanese television from July 6th, 1998 to Setpember 28th, 1998. Pioneer (now Geneon, now soon to be defunct) has licensed it Stateside, and the fourth and final volume was released on January 9th, 2002.
Story: Serial Experiments Lain kicks off with a suicide in its first few minutes. Then it cuts to a week later, when all of her classmates are getting emails from her (which is really weird, as she's supposed to be dead and all). She starts contacting and talking to Lain Iwakura in particular, and weird things start…
Read at the source