Shitty Nomura Final Fantashit.
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Winter of Anime 2013 |OT -5| This is stupid, kayos90 sucks!
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Shitty Nomura Final Fantashit.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Is she supposed to be playing Lacrosse?
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
What the hell happened to her face?
looks like the result of a buttfumble.
Yep!
Weird angle shot. She's up in the air about to make a shot at the goal. :lol
Regulus Tera
Romanes Eunt Domus
His FFVII designs were pretty good. Who knows what the hell happened afterwards.
Toei happened.
Hellsing321
Member
Teehee.
I was just going to say. lol
Hahaha. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the actual number.
Take away the ridiculous belt skirt and Lulu's design is great. How does she even move around with a skirt like that? It must weigh a ton.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Well, that Harajuku gothic punk thing is definitely what the characters seemed to be inspired by.
The fact that they all seem to wear two different coloured boots is amazing though. lol
What do you have against mass-produced individuality?
dakkumauji
Member
Naruto SD 44
Bean throwing and rapping, what an unholy combination.
Bean throwing and rapping, what an unholy combination.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Nothing. But in Amnesia, it just looks dumb. lol
Magic, clearly.
I'm not sure how many people here are familiar with the name Yasuhiro Yoshiura but you might be familiar with some things he's worked on, such as Time of Eve or Eve no Jikan in Japanese and the upcoming Patema Inverted. Personally all I had seen of his works were a couple of trailers for Patema or perhaps they were for those specials which may be part of or a lead into the show. Anyway, I decided to look at what else he's worked on and start from there.
Noisy Birth
I think I actually originally got this picture from Branduil so I'll give credit to him for it.
The first piece I could find was this approximately two minute long music video he worked on that aired in 2000 called Noisy Birth. The visuals were okay I guess and are all mostly in black and white and at times and there was the odd interesting looking part but I'm not really sure what, if any, story the visuals were really trying to tell. I also wasn't personally a fan of Shibata Yuki's music here. Over all it's kind of forgettable but at only two minutes or so it's an interesting curiosity piece to see where he started anyway.
Kikumana
The next work I could find was this approximately six minute long piece called Kikumana released in 2001. Kikumana is apparently the name of the girl which this short focuses on. I don't think there is supposed to be an exact story to go along with it but it's strange and surrealistic type imagery is more supposed to help evoke a type of mood or atmosphere within the audience. It does have some pretty interesting visual ideas I thought and it seems like with the girl not much happens in her little world but at the same time a lot happens and she's alone but also not really alone.
Some might find her character design perhaps off putting, the way her eyes look all black for example, but I personally kind of liked it. Speaking of that, the piece is all black and white and grays but there is quite the contrast between the light and the dark here. There's really no dialogue with except for one line where a robot thing says "It's time" or something. Although it's kind of funny that the girl still gets credited with a voice because while she doesn't talk, she does still technically have a voice with her audible musings or gasps and what have you.
It was kind of interesting how it also switches between a first person POV as well. For only being about six minutes long I think it's a piece people should take a look at whenever you get a little bit of free time.
Mizu no Kotoba (Aquatic Language)
The last piece I looked at so far was Mizu no Kotoba or Aquatic Language. It's the longest of the three at about nine minutes and came out in 2002. This piece is in colour and has actual dialogue to it. It's set in a cafe with different groups of people talking to each other in their own little conversations. The one girl by herself reading books reminded me of Kikumana with her design. Unlike that show, the visuals here aren't as interesting but instead it's now more the narrative. Personally I didn't mind the somewhat rougher drawings either and found they had their own charm. The main male character at the counter is also voiced by Yasuhiro Yoshiura himself.
I'm also starting to notice some techniques that he likes to use, such as going into a first person perspective a few times with the main character in this piece again. I actually kind of liked this show. It's not super deep but it's interesting how all the seemingly seperate conversation tie in together in a lot of ways or there are visual hints towards other things which will be revealed later.
(Ending Spoilers)The reveal of the girl working at the cafe really being an android or robot is pretty much told to you before the guy goes into that bubble world as her pupils dial in complete with a quick and subtle but definite mechanical sound. As the guy is walking by you hear the two girls talking about Androids which pretty much gives it away so it wasn't really a big shocker in the end. I guess the fact she didn't really have any legs was more surprising.
While I haven't seen Time of Eve yet, knowing the general theme of it being how humans and androids interact and the idea of communication and knowing both of these works were directed by Yasuhiro Yoshiura, this piece really does seem like a precursor in terms of where some of the ideas come from such as the general theme of the importance of words and people communicating, people talking about androids a little and combined with the visual cues of books and a person reading a book dealing with Isaac Asimov and I Robot for example.
At only nine minutes in length I have to say I liked this one along with Kikumana and recommend others take a look at it. At least to see maybe where some of the ideas and directorial techniques came from for later works such as Time of Eve.
I think this is supposed to be a POV shot from the main males eyes but the characters during this scene just looked really weird to me.
Noisy Birth really isn't necessary to watch, but I'd definitely recommend his other works for people who enjoyed Time of Eve.
Don't forget to check out Pale Cocoon, his 30-minute short. It's easily his best work outside of Time of Eve to me, and has amazing atmosphere and CGI work.
Regulus Tera
Romanes Eunt Domus
[Goldfish Warning!] 12 OR That Was My Ojousama Laugh 12
Jesus Christ how terrifying.
The season of lewd is retroactively making Goldfish Warning! lewd too! AAAAH
Because selling anime is totally prestigious instead OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO!
They're clearly trying, a couple of the background shots even look good. Too bad that doesn't fix their lazy character art and animation.
Hellsing321
Member
But is she is constantly using MP to keep from tripping over her skirt how does she have any left to cast in battle?
Ultimadrago
Member
And the same to you, brother.
Beltga is probably like 3mp to cast, shouldn't be a big burden.
strangedopamine
Member
Gundam AGE Episode 44 or "The 63 Year Old Child"
Two major things happened in this episode:
1. Zeheart
2. Flit
Next Episode:
Two major things happened in this episode:
1. Zeheart
is now leader of the Vegans. It demonstrated this odd swing in opinion in Zeheart. Before he wanted all Vegans to live on Earth, now he's doing what Ezelcant wanted. That makes no sense whatsoever. Wouldn't it have been more likely for Zeheart to turn against him because their ideas were totally different. Who knows.
2. Flit
now seems to understand how stupid it is to just kill an entire race of people for revenge as that's what got Girard Spriggan killed in the last episode. It kinda makes you look like a hypocrite. It took both his son and grandchild to tell him that his ideas are too extreme. Will he change for good? Probably not.
Next Episode:
Zeheart tries to find the cursed database.
What is beltga?
Jex
Member
Considering that these are supposed to be like, animation showcases there's not really much point in having bad character animation!
Belt3. Too many belts for beltra.
Y'know, Toriko is awesome, but this is getting a little embarrassing.
I don't really see how that makes it any less shit.
Dedication Through Light
Member
Ultimadrago
Member
Hopefully it has less bad looking moments than the previous one
Thank you, Shounen King. I was looking for this QUALITY picture a few weeks ago.
dakkumauji
Member
Japan, will you like Toriko yet? ;_;
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Dat art.
Hopefully it has less bad looking moments than the previous one
Dat :wonzo Luffy.
Maybe they'll start liking it when its stopped being forced into their face.
Jex
Member
[Serial Experiments Lain] - 1
Studio and When
Animation Studio: Triangle Staff
Year: 1998
The Creators
Director: Ryūtarō Nakamura
Writer: Chiaki J. Konaka,
Character Design: Yoshitoshi ABe,
You know, I seriously considered placing ABe's name at the top of the list for this series because I imagine that most people who don't really know what this series is about will at the very least be aware of ABe's hugely popular character designs.
Beyond ABe the director, Nakamura, is probably best known (outside of this series) as the director of Kino's Journey.
Chiaki J. Konaka was once a fairly prolific and consistently weird anime writer. Perhaps his tendency to make everything really bizarre, convoluted and confusing (even when he was writing for a kids show) meant that he eventually fell out of favour. This material, at least, is perfect for him.
'Plot' Summary
Perhaps a brief synopsis of this episode would help the readers at home: A girl, Chisa, commits suicide for reasons unknown and sometime after her death her classmates start receiving emails purporting to be from Chisa. Lain, our protagonists finds herself caught up in this bizarre mystery.
That sounds like a pretty straightforward set up for a mystery show. In a normal series our protagonist would spend the episode solving the mystery of how or if a dead girl was somehow still communicating with people. Without spoiling anything, that's not the resolution here.
More over that's the mystery of Chisa's suicide almost takes place to the mystery of what the show is about. Who is Lain? Why does she keep hallucinating? What's the deal with her family? Why is the direction so strange? What's with all the power lines? While the series will eventually get to these questions for now they remain a much a mystery as everything else.
Subjective and Objective
This is probably a good time to highlight the difference between subjective and objective perspectives. Sometimes when you're watching a scene in a movie or film what we're seeing or hearing is being delivered to you from the perspective of an omnipotent being - you can see things as they actually are. Other times we get to see something subjectively, most obviously in a point-of-view shot where we are literally looking through a characters eyes and you're then seeing their interpretation of something.
Most of the time in this episode we appearing to be experiencing things subjectively, as Lain sees and hears them. This is most obvious in the extremely grating audio and hallucinatory visuals that we can see Lain is experiencing because she reacts to them. The end result of this is general confusion on the part of the audience becomes sometimes it's very hard to work out what's actually going on as opposed to what Lain is merely experiencing.
This is extremely unusual because, in general, directors shot things from the perspective of the omnipotent camera which can magically see everything but isn't actually a character in the story. This is done to give the audience the clearest perspective on things.
A really early example of subjective viewpoint being communicated through the visuals occurs right at the start of the show, when there's a shot of the city and a shot of power lines.
The camera focuses away from the city, which suggests socialising and people and refocuses in on the power lines which suggest communicating electronically rather than in person. As Chisa is the character we're about to follow in this scene it seems likely that we're being told that Chisa is less interested in the noisy, social city and more interested in this other world of interaction.
Direction
The first thing you'll probably notice about the series is how unusual the direction is. Most works aim for the classic Hollywood approach of making the camera work and editing as invisible and naturalistic as possible. They're trying to make you forget you're watching an artificially created experience so that you can get sucked into the work. With Serial Experiments Lain the direction is constantly pushing back at you, alerting you to it's constructed nature. It's almost abrasive - it assaults you with a barrage of unpleasant noises and disconcerting visuals. Rather than having your brain shut off and getting sucked into the series you're alert and constantly asking yourself "why are they doing that" which is presumably what the director wanted. The director is trying to make you think about what's happening on screen. Sometimes it's relatively clear what he might be getting while at other times I'm just stumped.
The most obvious piece of symbolism that's being conveyed is that power lines are linked to electronic/online communication. Whenever we are shown a power line we can hear people talking very faintly.
All the red spots in the world appear to be the visual representation of this communication that takes place 'invisibly'.
Sound Direction
It's not just the visuals with convey a sense of otherworldliness to the viewer. A lot of the time this is accomplished purely through audio alone. There are a two really weird things about the sound direction. One: long stretches or silence and two: really exaggerated sounds such as the humming of a powerline becoming louder than a conversation.
Unlike most works this episode has very little music in it. Many minutes can go past without any music being heard and it's not like the silence is filled in by characters talking to each other. It's just a vacuum of silence. As there's such an absence of audio information you really pick up on the sound when it does arrive because there's nothing to distract you from that one thing that the sound director wants you to hear.
The few sounds that you do hear are delivered in an unusual manner. For example, the sound of chalk scrapping against a blackboard will be played painfully loud while all other sounds are drained out. This doesn't just happen on one occasion, it's occurs with some frequency in the span of a single episode. This is obviously very unusual because we're used to hearing a multitude of noises layered upon each other at all times. These instances seem to occur when Lain really focuses on something, to the extent that everything else literally fades away for her.
Lain
So I've come this far without talking about the biggest mystery in the episode, the character of Lain herself. Common sense would dictate that we can learn a great deal about a character via their introduction and the same is true here. Firstly, I'd like to point out that the character of Lain doesn't appear for over five minutes, which is frankly a good chunk of the whole episode. This is extremely unusual, especially considering that she's the titular character.
This is the shot we get immediately before Lain enters the scene:
Here's Lain's entrance. Notice anything? The extremely high contrast of the bright light literally makes Lain's house and the steps coming down from her house completely invisible. As such it almost like Lain has literally been manifested from nothingness. It's a very odd way to introduce a character, and a very detached way to do it too. The long shot means that we feel quite distant from her and, even though we get up closer shortly, it doesn't really do much to bridge the gap between her and the audience.
On top of all that we get absolutely zero internal monologue from Lain herself indication of what's going on insider her head at all. Her next scene does little to clear any of this up.
Lain is riding the train to school and looking out the window. Through this sequence of shots it's made very clear that Lain isn't just casually starting out into space, she's focused intently on the electrical wire outside. What I can't demonstrate to you is the noise that the audience can hear during the start of this scene: it's kind of like a dull murmuring of many conversations going on far away. We assume that it's coming from outside the train compartment. Lain gets bothered by the noise and tells everyone to be quiet:
However the second she says that the audio changes noticeably and we actually hear what's everyone else has been hearing on the train, which isn't the noises that we were healing earlier. The inside of the train carriage is actually fairly quiet. So what were we hearing earlier? It's almost being implied that Lain can 'hear' the conversation that are being carried out via electronic forms of communication, which is why the sound of people murmuring was linked to Lain looking at line outside. Or maybe she was just hearing the conversations in the train carriage - it's hard to say.
The next scene is equally weird. First we see most of the children arriving at school:
Lain is noticeably the last person to arrive (that we can see) and she isn't present in a shot with anyone else. She's isolated from the rest of her school. If that wasn't ominous enough when she stares at a few of the girls ahead of her they almost seem to disappear.
It's almost like Lain can't even recognise them as people. You can that it's Lain who is having these weird visions because the scene cuts back to Lain's puzzled face. This is the first of many visions that Lain has during the course of this episode and I shan't bore you by describing each encounter. Suffice to say that they get escalate in weirdness throughout the episodes.
Tale this scene of Lain trying to pay attention to the chalkboard:
It just gets stranger from here on in:
I don't really know what's going on here but it's obvious that this isn't just random imagery being thrown in for fun, there's clearly some greater meaning to what we're seeing.
In terms of Lain's sociability, she isn't exactly chatty at school, she only reacts to other people in a rather introverted fashion. She doesn't appear to have any friends or any interesting in making friends. Besides fellow pupils the other major characters in Lain's life are her family. However, they aren't really any better than she is.
These two shots of Lain arriving at home are pretty telling:
Lain has come back to discover her home empty but she isn't surprised, this is clearly a normal occurrence. Moreover her home looks bizarrely clean and un-lived in, like Lain's room. Her mother and sister aren't particularly friendly, dinner is largely comprised of silence. Even when Lain casually mentions that she's received mail from a dead girl her mother doesn't blink an eye or care to respond in any manner, the shot even cuts to a long shot:
suggesting the we're as distanced from the character as they are far from each other. There's no warmth of human emotion in this scene, or any of the scenes which have previously occurred.The coldness of her mother and sister might go some way to explaining why Lain is so unsociable.
To top it all off Lain's interaction with her father are no more comforiting. He appears to be far chattier than the rest of the household but the only thing he's interested in discussing is computers, computing and social networking. His face comes alive only when he's looking at something on his computer:
and you don't see him actually lock eyes with his own daughter - he's too busy starting at his array of monitors. As these shots demonstrate he's practically buried behind his computers and they block him from actually looking properly at 'real people':
He didn't bother attending dinner or interacting with any other family members - he only speaks to Lain because she comes to ask him for something.
Compare and contrast the scenes of Lain interacting with people, whether it be people at school or her mother and sister, with Lain communicating via email. She seems more questioning and engaged when communicating in this manner, although she still appears to lack the ability to display any emotion beyond confusion. It's very odd to see a character register so few emotions across her face, even when she starts to receive communication from a dead girl she doesn't seem phased or even that interested. This clearly isn't a budget problem because we see other characters emote perfectly normally. This further compounds what a strange character Lain is.
Themes
This series is perhaps more relevant now than when it aired. Key ideas that this episode discusses, and which will certainly become more prominent later are: social isolation and online communication.
These two ideas are clearly linked - the brief scenes we see of Chisa show other girls laughing at her and she doesn't appear that popular:
Despite that she seems to have believed there is a freedom that comes through online communication and that, by extension, this world is just a shackle on our spirit. Lain is clearly a character isolated from others, from her family and her schoolmates. In this episode she's started to experience the possibilities raised by online communication but she hasn't explored the space too far. It's questionable whether she would even want to because, if the result of communication with people online is that you end up like her father, hooked up to machines and separated from his family - is that the kind of person you want to become?
It's too early to say whether the series is opposed people spending all their time at computers and now with other human beings but most of the examples so far have been fairly negative.
Finally, here's a random though, At the start of the episode we see Chisa jump off a building - and the camera cuts to this extreme close up of her face:
Which really reminds me of the start of the first Patlabor movie:
In both instances characters commit suicide at the start of the story and their deaths get the story going. More over, both characters wills and wishes appear again via computers. This can't be coincidence.
As you can see I've barely scratched the surface but there's just to much to talk about that I have to stop somewhere.
Studio and When
Animation Studio: Triangle Staff
Year: 1998
The Creators
Director: Ryūtarō Nakamura
Writer: Chiaki J. Konaka,
Character Design: Yoshitoshi ABe,
You know, I seriously considered placing ABe's name at the top of the list for this series because I imagine that most people who don't really know what this series is about will at the very least be aware of ABe's hugely popular character designs.
Beyond ABe the director, Nakamura, is probably best known (outside of this series) as the director of Kino's Journey.
Chiaki J. Konaka was once a fairly prolific and consistently weird anime writer. Perhaps his tendency to make everything really bizarre, convoluted and confusing (even when he was writing for a kids show) meant that he eventually fell out of favour. This material, at least, is perfect for him.
'Plot' Summary
Perhaps a brief synopsis of this episode would help the readers at home: A girl, Chisa, commits suicide for reasons unknown and sometime after her death her classmates start receiving emails purporting to be from Chisa. Lain, our protagonists finds herself caught up in this bizarre mystery.
That sounds like a pretty straightforward set up for a mystery show. In a normal series our protagonist would spend the episode solving the mystery of how or if a dead girl was somehow still communicating with people. Without spoiling anything, that's not the resolution here.
More over that's the mystery of Chisa's suicide almost takes place to the mystery of what the show is about. Who is Lain? Why does she keep hallucinating? What's the deal with her family? Why is the direction so strange? What's with all the power lines? While the series will eventually get to these questions for now they remain a much a mystery as everything else.
Subjective and Objective
This is probably a good time to highlight the difference between subjective and objective perspectives. Sometimes when you're watching a scene in a movie or film what we're seeing or hearing is being delivered to you from the perspective of an omnipotent being - you can see things as they actually are. Other times we get to see something subjectively, most obviously in a point-of-view shot where we are literally looking through a characters eyes and you're then seeing their interpretation of something.
Most of the time in this episode we appearing to be experiencing things subjectively, as Lain sees and hears them. This is most obvious in the extremely grating audio and hallucinatory visuals that we can see Lain is experiencing because she reacts to them. The end result of this is general confusion on the part of the audience becomes sometimes it's very hard to work out what's actually going on as opposed to what Lain is merely experiencing.
This is extremely unusual because, in general, directors shot things from the perspective of the omnipotent camera which can magically see everything but isn't actually a character in the story. This is done to give the audience the clearest perspective on things.
A really early example of subjective viewpoint being communicated through the visuals occurs right at the start of the show, when there's a shot of the city and a shot of power lines.
The camera focuses away from the city, which suggests socialising and people and refocuses in on the power lines which suggest communicating electronically rather than in person. As Chisa is the character we're about to follow in this scene it seems likely that we're being told that Chisa is less interested in the noisy, social city and more interested in this other world of interaction.
Direction
The first thing you'll probably notice about the series is how unusual the direction is. Most works aim for the classic Hollywood approach of making the camera work and editing as invisible and naturalistic as possible. They're trying to make you forget you're watching an artificially created experience so that you can get sucked into the work. With Serial Experiments Lain the direction is constantly pushing back at you, alerting you to it's constructed nature. It's almost abrasive - it assaults you with a barrage of unpleasant noises and disconcerting visuals. Rather than having your brain shut off and getting sucked into the series you're alert and constantly asking yourself "why are they doing that" which is presumably what the director wanted. The director is trying to make you think about what's happening on screen. Sometimes it's relatively clear what he might be getting while at other times I'm just stumped.
The most obvious piece of symbolism that's being conveyed is that power lines are linked to electronic/online communication. Whenever we are shown a power line we can hear people talking very faintly.
All the red spots in the world appear to be the visual representation of this communication that takes place 'invisibly'.
Sound Direction
It's not just the visuals with convey a sense of otherworldliness to the viewer. A lot of the time this is accomplished purely through audio alone. There are a two really weird things about the sound direction. One: long stretches or silence and two: really exaggerated sounds such as the humming of a powerline becoming louder than a conversation.
Unlike most works this episode has very little music in it. Many minutes can go past without any music being heard and it's not like the silence is filled in by characters talking to each other. It's just a vacuum of silence. As there's such an absence of audio information you really pick up on the sound when it does arrive because there's nothing to distract you from that one thing that the sound director wants you to hear.
The few sounds that you do hear are delivered in an unusual manner. For example, the sound of chalk scrapping against a blackboard will be played painfully loud while all other sounds are drained out. This doesn't just happen on one occasion, it's occurs with some frequency in the span of a single episode. This is obviously very unusual because we're used to hearing a multitude of noises layered upon each other at all times. These instances seem to occur when Lain really focuses on something, to the extent that everything else literally fades away for her.
Lain
So I've come this far without talking about the biggest mystery in the episode, the character of Lain herself. Common sense would dictate that we can learn a great deal about a character via their introduction and the same is true here. Firstly, I'd like to point out that the character of Lain doesn't appear for over five minutes, which is frankly a good chunk of the whole episode. This is extremely unusual, especially considering that she's the titular character.
This is the shot we get immediately before Lain enters the scene:
Here's Lain's entrance. Notice anything? The extremely high contrast of the bright light literally makes Lain's house and the steps coming down from her house completely invisible. As such it almost like Lain has literally been manifested from nothingness. It's a very odd way to introduce a character, and a very detached way to do it too. The long shot means that we feel quite distant from her and, even though we get up closer shortly, it doesn't really do much to bridge the gap between her and the audience.
On top of all that we get absolutely zero internal monologue from Lain herself indication of what's going on insider her head at all. Her next scene does little to clear any of this up.
Lain is riding the train to school and looking out the window. Through this sequence of shots it's made very clear that Lain isn't just casually starting out into space, she's focused intently on the electrical wire outside. What I can't demonstrate to you is the noise that the audience can hear during the start of this scene: it's kind of like a dull murmuring of many conversations going on far away. We assume that it's coming from outside the train compartment. Lain gets bothered by the noise and tells everyone to be quiet:
However the second she says that the audio changes noticeably and we actually hear what's everyone else has been hearing on the train, which isn't the noises that we were healing earlier. The inside of the train carriage is actually fairly quiet. So what were we hearing earlier? It's almost being implied that Lain can 'hear' the conversation that are being carried out via electronic forms of communication, which is why the sound of people murmuring was linked to Lain looking at line outside. Or maybe she was just hearing the conversations in the train carriage - it's hard to say.
The next scene is equally weird. First we see most of the children arriving at school:
Lain is noticeably the last person to arrive (that we can see) and she isn't present in a shot with anyone else. She's isolated from the rest of her school. If that wasn't ominous enough when she stares at a few of the girls ahead of her they almost seem to disappear.
It's almost like Lain can't even recognise them as people. You can that it's Lain who is having these weird visions because the scene cuts back to Lain's puzzled face. This is the first of many visions that Lain has during the course of this episode and I shan't bore you by describing each encounter. Suffice to say that they get escalate in weirdness throughout the episodes.
Tale this scene of Lain trying to pay attention to the chalkboard:
It just gets stranger from here on in:
I don't really know what's going on here but it's obvious that this isn't just random imagery being thrown in for fun, there's clearly some greater meaning to what we're seeing.
In terms of Lain's sociability, she isn't exactly chatty at school, she only reacts to other people in a rather introverted fashion. She doesn't appear to have any friends or any interesting in making friends. Besides fellow pupils the other major characters in Lain's life are her family. However, they aren't really any better than she is.
These two shots of Lain arriving at home are pretty telling:
Lain has come back to discover her home empty but she isn't surprised, this is clearly a normal occurrence. Moreover her home looks bizarrely clean and un-lived in, like Lain's room. Her mother and sister aren't particularly friendly, dinner is largely comprised of silence. Even when Lain casually mentions that she's received mail from a dead girl her mother doesn't blink an eye or care to respond in any manner, the shot even cuts to a long shot:
suggesting the we're as distanced from the character as they are far from each other. There's no warmth of human emotion in this scene, or any of the scenes which have previously occurred.The coldness of her mother and sister might go some way to explaining why Lain is so unsociable.
To top it all off Lain's interaction with her father are no more comforiting. He appears to be far chattier than the rest of the household but the only thing he's interested in discussing is computers, computing and social networking. His face comes alive only when he's looking at something on his computer:
and you don't see him actually lock eyes with his own daughter - he's too busy starting at his array of monitors. As these shots demonstrate he's practically buried behind his computers and they block him from actually looking properly at 'real people':
He didn't bother attending dinner or interacting with any other family members - he only speaks to Lain because she comes to ask him for something.
Compare and contrast the scenes of Lain interacting with people, whether it be people at school or her mother and sister, with Lain communicating via email. She seems more questioning and engaged when communicating in this manner, although she still appears to lack the ability to display any emotion beyond confusion. It's very odd to see a character register so few emotions across her face, even when she starts to receive communication from a dead girl she doesn't seem phased or even that interested. This clearly isn't a budget problem because we see other characters emote perfectly normally. This further compounds what a strange character Lain is.
Themes
This series is perhaps more relevant now than when it aired. Key ideas that this episode discusses, and which will certainly become more prominent later are: social isolation and online communication.
These two ideas are clearly linked - the brief scenes we see of Chisa show other girls laughing at her and she doesn't appear that popular:
Despite that she seems to have believed there is a freedom that comes through online communication and that, by extension, this world is just a shackle on our spirit. Lain is clearly a character isolated from others, from her family and her schoolmates. In this episode she's started to experience the possibilities raised by online communication but she hasn't explored the space too far. It's questionable whether she would even want to because, if the result of communication with people online is that you end up like her father, hooked up to machines and separated from his family - is that the kind of person you want to become?
It's too early to say whether the series is opposed people spending all their time at computers and now with other human beings but most of the examples so far have been fairly negative.
Finally, here's a random though, At the start of the episode we see Chisa jump off a building - and the camera cuts to this extreme close up of her face:
Which really reminds me of the start of the first Patlabor movie:
In both instances characters commit suicide at the start of the story and their deaths get the story going. More over, both characters wills and wishes appear again via computers. This can't be coincidence.
As you can see I've barely scratched the surface but there's just to much to talk about that I have to stop somewhere.
Crash Station
Member
It's not just Toei, it's Shueisha. They figure they'll be screwed without something super high-tier when One Piece ends, so that's what they're trying to turn Toriko into.
Regulus Tera
Romanes Eunt Domus
[Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water] 16
Great visuals, too. Anno even managed to find a way to include his knack for city vistas into the episode, as
. Also: a dead Eva!
Best part of the episode, though? GAAAAAAAAAAAAAANBASTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
That was pretty heavy, and without any of the angst you would see in Anno's later work. It reminded me of a similar passage in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, but much more elaborate and with enough glimpses at the overall plot to keep the sombre mood in balance with the adventure aspect of the show. I particularly enjoyed
how little was really said regarding Jean's dad death. It made for a much more dramatic punch than if he had just pulled a Nadia and started hating the world.
Great visuals, too. Anno even managed to find a way to include his knack for city vistas into the episode, as
apocalyptic as they may be
Best part of the episode, though? GAAAAAAAAAAAAAANBASTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
You mean Shueisha?
The manga isn't a hit either. Despite decent rankings in the Jump the volumes barely sold above average.
Dedication Through Light
Member
Will Toriko really outlast One Piece? (Im only as current as Toriko's anime).
I don't think it will to be honest.
But hey, who knows, it only has 22 (?) volumes so far.
Depends on how long Shueisha can keep Shimabukuro's tastes in hookers secret.
Crash Station
Member
In terms of scope, it should. (Minor manga not-really spoilers kind of)
The human world is a fraction of the size of the Gourmet World and they haven't even entered it yet.
Doesn't mean it will of course. They might end up just rushing through stuff or ratings might take a hit and it'll end prematurely.
-Minsc-
Member
Hopefully Gintoki will crash the party.
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
I don't think I've ever fully recovered from the fucking Lain did to me ages ago.
And now I feel old.
Wow, amazing. Now I feel like watching it all over again. Or playing BOA's albums on repeat. Or both...
Ice Lightning
Member
FUNimation has released the trailer for Parts 1 and 2 of A Certain Scientific Railgun DVD. Brina Palencia appears to be the voice of Saten. Not sure what to say with the English dub at the moment though.
The most impressive thing about it was how right it was about the internet and how it overtakes real human communication. Way ahead of its time. Lain is such an incredibly relevant show now.
dakkumauji
Member
Line Offline Salaryman 13
That twist.
That twist.
Dedication Through Light
Member
Theres Touma...wait, why only one tiny two second clip :/ Oh well so glad theres no Index. Hope the action is high, have this preordered.
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