Cheap Serial Experiments - Lain: Deus (Layers 8-10) (DVD) Price

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Customer Reviews of Serial Experiments - Lain: Deus (Layers 8-10)

Cereal, Expletives - Laim ...
Mush, @#$!, Lame : any television viewer sick of pretentious overhyped storylines will say these three things after viewing this DVD. Lain continues to be ponderous, confusing, under animated, faux cyber punk, adolescent, neophilisophical mush. Waiting 12 episodes to get to a lazy finishing punch line is rather dry. The lead character is another hollow pubescent asian female who is as fascinating as stale bread. The situations are tediously slow, and due to the turtle's pace the 'MYSTERY' (wwwooooooo...) garners disinterest and apathy from the average viewer. People who will find this series interesting must have very calm lives in order to find this gentle disaffected series influential, or entertaining. The lack of visuals is a rude cheat on the average anime fan. Staring at listless young girls with pin hole pupils becomes aggressively annoying by the last episode of the DVD. The tired, over used self searching by the main character to find his/herself in the world and define their position in life never makes for stimulating entertainment. Over indulgent adolescent philosophy shortly becomes immaterial when the viewers disbelief isn't suspended due to sloppy pacing and plotting. I recommend this DVD only to the tamest, artsiest, pretentious anime fanboys. Trust me ....

"...no one can catch me"
By this point in the series, the viewer knows that this is not an adventure story about a waif-like girl who falls though a hole into the Internet. The crisis that builds over the three episodes is Lain's loss of her sense of reality. This starts as disruptions in her friendships, continues into her family and the fragmentation of her personality. Confronted, she goes on to challenge a God that cannot be. In counterpoint to the human story, we are presented a history of the Internet that makes X-files seem totally reasonable,

Beyond any doubt, Lain is about the destructive breakdown of barriers. Lain's family falls away from her, the suppressed part of her personality acquires a life of its own, her friends mistrust her... nothing is preserved. The deeper question is what are symptoms and what are causes, and, at the end of ten episodes, we are left with an uneasy feeling that the process is not over.

If I am surprised by the end of the series, it will not be for lack of thinking and guessing. And that is the true art of 'production 2nd' and director Ryutara Nakamura. Lain always invites the viewer to look a little deeper, connecting the visual and textual dots to create our own monsters in the same way that The Wired is an intensive abstract for real life. Trust nothing, we are told. The truth is nowhere.

Once again, credit has to be given to the artistic staff that takes the plot and gives it its stunning visual and aural presentation. Emulating what life is like in The Wired believable is no trivial task, and this is so well done that it sets a new standard. Reflecting it with a reality that is even stranger is far more difficult.