Last time i was in Shibuya, when i bought myself the Twilight book, i caught sight of the Yozakura Quartet DVD’s on a shelf. Since i’d already seen it, i just checked others around it. One had “lain” written on it in an interesting typeface.
Then yesterday i was in some strange mood, and i started watching the series on YouTube. I could compare it to .hack, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Haibane Renmei. Just as with these three anime, Lain is deeply philosophical, and a lot of questions are common. The existence of the world, God, one’s self, the nature of the conscious, of communication and of relationships, the idea of total subjectivity, the extreme power of the network, a lot of psychology and a very twisted graphical presentation. I liked it, as much as one can like any drama series, in the western sense of the word (not to be mistaken with the asian soap operas). It’s not easy to follow, not easy to understand, so leaves you thinking “what the heck’s going on in there?” for a pretty long time. It has a lot of references to real science, the collective unconscious of Jung, for example. To be honest, i was on the series’ wiki after each episode, checking out all the half-word references and kind. I haven’t really seen anything of this kind, this thrilling cyberpunk drama: it’s a lot more serious than .hack, it’s not as depressed and mystic as Evangelion, though i couldn’t really grasp how it differs from Haibane Renmei, it does. A really good series to see the world fall apart.