Compelling reasons to watch Lain

Hello, new user here. Just heard about this site by word of mouth and now that I'm here, I'll ask. Should I watch Serial experiment Lain or not? Is this difficult to understand? What themes are portrayed? Thanks for reading lainons

You could watch it, or don't. You can spoil yourself by googling SEL and looking at the themes section on wikipedia. Or, like, you could torrent the soykaf.

>>10135 Yeah I think I'll watch it when I'll be able to torrent tomorrow. Stupid thread now that I realize it

>>10134 yes you should watch it over and over until you begin to worship lain as your One True Godess, you begin to see aspects form the show in your day to day life, you realise the philosophy in the show is extremely relevant today and also you go completely insane fromwatching the same low budget anime over and over and over and over again in some missguided atempt to understand yourself. Hey it worked for me

i cant speak for your brain il tell you my experience; lain was one of the most impactful pieces of entertainment (outside of books) my sophmore year of HS. the only other thing I consider on the same level of impact is oyasumi pun pun. For better or for worse lain shaped how I see the world and pun pun shaped how I saw relationships. Its hard to say because they were things that shaped my growth, but I can kind of imagine watching them now (im 21) for the first time. Only listen to this if you arent in highschool, I dont want to influence what you get out of it by presenting some "older" perspective. If I watched lain now it would change how impactful I saw the internet as being on human development on an individual and societal level, versus when I watched it then where I strongly identified with the character lain. For comparison pun pun would be a good example now on what an unhealthy relationship looked like, versus then where I saw it as an ideal romanticized relationship. If you are a bit younger than me I imagine you still read, just know no matter what people told me and what I learned the hard way if I didnt view them in that initial light I never would have learned. And also growth isnt linear, some people would view these things and have the opposite "progression" that I had. That was just my experience and reflection. The main point was just that I definitely would reccomend it back in that time, but would only probably reccomend it looking back. Its hard to say, in some ways lain caused me some hardship funny enough, but I dont know id even recognize it like that if I never watched it. Its impossible to say. Theres just something funny about the fact though that an anime and a manga shaped my life for years after I witnessed them. That alone is something I might get a giggle out of when im dying and maybe makes it worth it no matter what.

Am I the only person who hasn't had an impactful experience watching SEL? I think it's because I tried to see plot in it while there wasn't much of one. Tried to make logical reasoning with nonsense. Even if there are good themes in it, a good chunk of the show is random stuff slapped together and has weird scenes that just exist to confuse you (the alien midget scene comes to mind). I love the shows aesthetic and the atmosphere, but other than that I don't really think it's as super life changing as people say it is here. Since another lainon brought up the series, Oyasumi Punpun is a lot better at showing the theme and having a consistent story. It's surreal, but not surreal to the point where you can't tell whats happening.

>>10141 SEL is mostly aesthetic & atmosphere for me. Any meaning you attach to it is simply your own, which I suppose is attractive to some. I like the atmosphere of Texhnolyze a lot more though.

I just recently watched all of SEL off of YouTube, cuz Funimation has it up there for free in case you get sketched out with torrenting stuff. I'd wholly recommend it even though it wasn't the life changing anime for me that many people consider it to be on this site and others. It's a great anime though and I think if you are interested, you should give it a shot.

>>10141 I think it's because I tried to see plot in it while there wasn't much of one. Tried to make logical reasoning with nonsense. Even if there are good themes in it, a good chunk of the show is random stuff slapped together and has weird scenes that just exist to confuse you (the alien midget scene comes to mind). There is a very deep and profound plot in SEL and nothing there is random or coincidental. It seems random at first glance and doesnt make sense if viewed with conventional knowledge but when looked at from a spiritual viewpoint it makes total sense. It simply requires much understanding and study before you can recognize it.

>>10145 The entire point of art in general is to communicate some sort of idea to a viewer. If it can't communicate it's theme and ideas clearly, it's probably not very good. Even with studying and reading references, which I feel I shouldn't really have to do in the first place to get a bare understanding of the show, it really doesn't make much sense.

>>10146 Ideas build up on other ideas, some forms of art are very obvious, others like SEL require a very different set of ideas to make sense. Nothing makes sense if you dont understand the basics, something like computers may be obvious to people in our century, but anything computer related 100 years ago might have been considered absured and incomprehendable garbage.

Moved to >>>/lain/232.