I just finished watching the anime show, Serial Experiments Lain, and honestly, it's one of the best sci-fi anime shows I have seen in a long time, I would put it up next to the show, Ghost In The Shell, and that's a first coming from me, for over a decade, my all-time favorite show was Ghost In The Shell, but now Serial Experiments Lain is a close tie.
I'm very picky when it comes to sci-fi genre in general, I love when it's mixed with horror or has a phycological twist to it, basically forcing you to think abstractly, and out of the box or what people would consider normal. The only other anime shows I've seen that were sci-fi, within the past year, were two, one called Erased, and another called, B: The Beginning, they were both good, but not one of my favorites when it would come to sci-fi.
Anyways, back to the show, Serial Experiments Lain, I loved it from the beginning to the very end, towards the middle of the show, I had to stop watching it for a while, because the show was getting VERY dark, and I rarely say that about anime shows, tonight I finally decided to finish watching the rest of the show, and I'm so glad that I did, it covered so many interesting topics, about the concept of God, the structure of reality, the internet blending with the real world, and how the internet can affect the way people view each other, and how the information on the internet can change the world in a small way or a big way. I thought, the way the show ended was beyond perfect, I'm definitely going to rewatch it again in a few months.
The show came out in the 90's, and it shocks me of how, ahead of it's time that show was when it came out, a lot of the topics that it covered in the show, is stuff that is actually going on in today's time, how people perceive each other differently online vs in the real life. It's one of those shows, you have to rewatch a few times, in order to understand it all, that's how complex it is, and it's only 13 episodes.
The main reason I'm so picky when it comes to sci-fi, is well, most sci-fi movies, live action ones, are basic shoot em up movies, with a plot that is set in the future but doesn't force the viewer to think deeply, or critically at all. I watched the movie, LUCY, starry Scarlett Johansson, it was a fun movie to watch, and yes it did have interesting concepts in the movie, but nothing to major. I understand why tho, it was aimed at the general audience, so they had to make a movie that everyone could watch and enjoy. Or when they made a live action movie of Ghost In The Shell, I loved the movie, but I could tell, they dumbed down a lot of the core elements of the plot structure, and the elements of question of what makes you human vs gaining more knowledge, again, Hollywood did that, so everyone could watch it.
So, for me when it comes to anime, books, movies, anything that is geared towards sci-fi, that is why I'm picky, I want it to force me to think deeply, critically, and to actually teach me something new, that I didn't know before. I think that's why I love mystery books, or the anime show Death Note, it forced you to think, and basically predict what would happen next, the show wasn't holding you by the hand, you had to actually THINK, in order to understand what was going on in the show. Now that I'm listening to mystery Podcast stories, I can tell, they do in fact force me to think deeply, think ahead, and guess, and predict of what will happen.
As for Serial Experiments Lain, I'm beyond thankful that I finally got myself to finish watching the show, I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves sci-fi and phycological twist.
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