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Buried Treasure - Serial Experiments Lain

"Lain" is one of the most overrated pieces of pretentious anime ever created. (waits for people to get pissed) Okay, now that you're done fuming, seriously, tell me what it's about. Because to me, it was confusing for the sake of being confusing. I've watched a lot of stuff with mystical mumbo-jumbo that required you to pay attention to detail, but they always had a payoff in the end, some moment of satori where you realized what it was all about. "Lain" didn't. It just continued to throw out confusing speculative science fiction without ever giving a final resolution.

...Not to mention how bland the animation style was, even by '98 standards.

Not to say that Lain wasn't entertaining and that I didn't "enjoy it enough" but it philosophizing or whatever does really feel like garbage - like confusing passages just for the sake of being confusing passages and not digging at any real truth.

I watched this show three times, and each time I try figuring this series out in all its complexities and confusing elements. But after the last time, I honestly feel like the creators of the show made most of it confusing just for the sake of making it confusing.

Carl Horn wrote:

Maybe the true buried treasure that Lain represented was the brief post-Evangelion sense that TV anime was going to seize hold of its possibilities. In 1997-98 you had Revolutionary Girl Utena, Lain, and Cowboy Bebop—all three of them quite different from each other, but each fresh, dynamic (whether in mind or body), and worthwhile—none of them felt like, "What are we going to put in the slot this season?" or "The otaku are going to eat this crap up."

For all my endless naysaying about Evangelion and its having resulted in what I perceive to be an overall negative effect on anime as a whole, even back in 1998 the consensus among myself and my friends was "they never would have been able to put a show like Lain or Utena on TV if it weren't for Evangelion."

Chiaki Konaka.

I'm sorry, but that dude just cannot write an ending. My memories of the ending to Lain are vague at best and basically involve spoiler[Lain hitting the Reset button on the world, thus making everything in the series start over again. I never watched a single episode of Mighty Max, but that was dumb when they did it there too!]

Producer Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement made in an Animerica interview.[15][52][26] The controversial statement said Lain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after World War II".[23] He later explained in numerous interviews that he created Lain with a set of values he took as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. When he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed.[52]

Anybody else know any details about SEL's anti-Americanism?

Q: there's a quote in the program, "this work itself is sort of a cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we adopted after ww2." my question is what does he consider an American sense of values, since what he considers an American sense of values might not necessarily be what we do.

M(U): what was it from? the quote?

Q: from the program. from animerica

U: aaah, from the program!

(laughter)

M(U): ok, so basically, when I was growing up, American culture had a huge impact on the way I am now, and while I find American culture to be very interesting, there are some things that are very complex and hard for me to understand, and the way Japan and America is now, we're on good terms, but there are still some things, there's a communication barrier, that we can't talk about certain things or we're not ready to, that we just kind of skirt around the subject of certain taboo issues, if you will, culturally, and it's not because we're avoiding them, it's just that we're not aware of them because of the communication barrier. I wish we would go further into that.

M(U): For many countries in Asia, the second world war left a lot of scars, and I assume this will kind of put a cloud over this room, and I assume most of you are Americans, but as for Japan, this generation has pretty much forgotten about it because the new generation always wants to step forward. they don't really look back, and while my grandfather and grandmother both died in the atomic bombing, to me actually, it doesn't leave anything in me. I don't harbor any, hatred is a strong word, but you know, any feelings of regret and so forth, so basically I just want to keep on moving forward.

M(U): ok, so basically, when I was growing up, American culture had a huge impact on the way I am now, and while I find American culture to be very interesting, there are some things that are very complex and hard for me to understand, and the way Japan and America is now, we're on good terms, but there are still some things, there's a communication barrier, that we can't talk about certain things or we're not ready to, that we just kind of skirt around the subject of certain taboo issues, if you will, culturally, and it's not because we're avoiding them, it's just that we're not aware of them because of the communication barrier. I wish we would go further into that.

Just based on that interview, I'd have to say it might be a bit of stretch to say it's some kind of anti-American view.

PS: Somehow I'm hoping for 12 Kingdoms to get reviewed here. I feel that it is mostly forgotten or actually never was really popular ...

maaya wrote:

PS: Somehow I'm hoping for 12 Kingdoms to get reviewed here. I feel that it is mostly forgotten or actually never was really popular ...

Agree. Somehow, 12 kingdoms seems more forgotten. Among all my aime fan friends, sadly only one has ever watched the whole series and love it, though it's a true masterpiece.

Of course America dropped the atomic bomb on a sleepy, peaceful Japan. A Japan that certainly hadn't been fighting one of histories most brutal, atrocity-laced race wars against it's Asian neighbors for a decade. No sir.