#Serial experiments lain sub episode 1 serial
#Serial experiments lain sub episode 1 skin

ItвЂ™s a world at the precipice of solid and fluid, just waiting for the right push to descend into chaos. But the light itself offers no comfort, bathing the land in a bleached, barren white that strips it of distinct, lived-in features. Even LainвЂ™s own shadow is constantly swimming with psychedelic patterns that seem to offer some dark window into her soul. The shadows are all awash with chilling, blood-red spot colors, as if someoneвЂ™s been slaughtered in the spaces where the light refuses to shine. Let the old world fade to dust for all she cares thereвЂ™s a far more entrancing world waiting for her just on the other side of the screen.ДЄnd the more the new world intrudes upon the old, the more chilling that disconnect becomes. She has to get dragged into hanging out with her classmates in the real world, but the allure of cyberspace comes as naturally as breathing. And all Lain can do is allow herself to get seduced alongside him, begging him with wide, cold eyes to set up her new computer as soon as possible so she can take the escape hatch it offers. ItвЂ™s the bitterest of ironies: heвЂ™s so obsessed with digital realityвЂ™s ability to connect people that he becomes unable to connect with his daughter in actual reality. HeвЂ™s so beholden to this idea that he barely even looks at Lain his eyes are all for the headless simulcrania of people he sees cross his computer screens. You can find yourself, recreate yourself, and let the pains of reality be washed away by the possibilities of the new world. Online, you can connect with people easily. The only point of connection she can form is with her computer-obsessed father, who tells her all the great ways computers can help her overcome her shyness. Her loneliness is so palpable throughout these episodes her familyвЂ™s distant from her, her classmates are only vaguely her friends, and the idea of connecting with other people might as well not even register. But for Lain, the promise of an escape from this world may seem like a blessing.

#Serial experiments lain sub episode 1 skin

Like a paper-thin skin that you could easily scratch away, letting loose the blood and viscera underneath.ДЇor some, the concept of losing touch with the world you know might be a nightmare. Seen through LainвЂ™s perspective, the world feels hollow, ominous, bleak, and unreal.

ThatвЂ™s how monumental her disconnect from other people must feel. Even when sheвЂ™s just talking with classmates, the camera swoops between the couple feet they stand apart as if crossing a vast landscape that separates them.

I almost wondered if she didnвЂ™t have a family at all before I was shown otherwise. When we first enter her house, itвЂ™s framed so that our vision is mostly taken up by vast, empty floor space, turning even her home into a site of loneliness and void. Other people are so indistinct they turn to scribbles in her vision, shapeless shades than only vaguely approximate someone she might form a connection with. ThereвЂ™s so much silence and empty space, long stretches without dialogue or even music soaking you in the apathy and isolation Lain feels. And while IвЂ™m far from having all the answers as to what it all precisely means, the ethereal way it grips my subconscious is impossible to ignore. There is so much depth packed into every single frame, every single animation cut, far more details than I could ever catch on a single, initial watch. I just want to sit back, let the dream wash over me, and ride the waves wherever they take me, worrying about the tides only when they threaten to drag me out to sea.Д«ut at the same time, I canвЂ™t keep from trying to puzzle out the wordless language this showвЂ™s employing. I almost donвЂ™t want to try and analyze it at all.

Already my mind is whirling with all the imagery it employs, the feelings its aesthetics evoke, the messages it conveys in the space of every extended, haunting silence. It digs its claws into you on such a cerebral level that just two episodes was almost enough to make my brain burst right out of my skull.

It plunges you under before you have the chance to take a break and leaves you no choice but to let the water close over your head, the faint rays of the moon above casting surreal shadows across your murky eyes. From the opening speech that welcomes you with a cackle toВ вЂњpresent day, present time,вЂќ to the mesmerizing OP that wraps you in a thick blanket of melancholic abstraction, and straight into a cityscape painted with loose, undulating colors that ripple and pool like waves, turning the concrete jungle into a fathomless sea you could dive deep down into until your lungs give out and still never see the bottom.

#Serial experiments lain sub episode 1 serial

The experience of starting the first episode of Serial Experiments Lain is akin to sinking into a dream. And so we begin! In which we sink into a captivating dream, LainвЂ™s loneliness drives her to cyberspace, and the skin of the old world crumbles before the birth of the new.