Cheap Serial Experiments - Lain: Knights (Layers 5-7) (DVD) Price

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Customer Reviews of Serial Experiments - Lain: Knights (Layers 5-7)

This series is a complete brain screw I LOVE IT!!!!
This is the kind of intelligent, incredible, totally thought provoking series you will never see on American TV. I had to watch all the episodes twice to take it all in, and I need to watch it a few more times. I admit I like the subs better than the dubs (that's the beauty of DVD, you get both). The dubbing is good, and being an "anime purist" since the 80's, that is high praise. I don't remember feeling this way about an Anime since I saw Video Girl Ai the first time, another excellent series I had to watch over and over to take it all in. They both have an instant grip that gets you involved with the characters. I can't wait for the next volume (Lain:Deus already pre-ordered here!!)

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Ponderous, limited and confusing anime ...
This series, about a girl on the 'wired' (internet of sorts) finding intrigue and danger, is far from intriguing or dangerous. The animation is minimal and choice of shots inadequate to maximize storytelling without animation. Perhaps one of the greatest problems is the limited story carries on for far too many episodes. The coloring is too bright too often which makes the different animation levels pop out against each other in an awkward way. All the drawings are crisp and well constructed, and the designs are decently pleasing. For this price, I wouldn't recommend 'Lain'...perhaps if twice as many episodes were per DVD it would be a favorable purchase. The DVD edition is acceptable, but, as with some translated versions using no english speaking natives, there are some embarrasing grammar errors on the packaging.

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"Everything is a prophecy"
If you approach this series expecting the ordinary, or even a somewhat imaginative approach to the theme of where the line between real and virtual are you are in for a shock. There is little about this story that is comfortable, and much that is deeply disquieting. Ryutaro Nakamura is intent in placing the viewer in Lain's experiences, intentionally creating the same perceptual and intellectual confusion.

The question probed in this DVD continued to be who or what is the real Lain. These episodes fracture the appearance of waif-like innocence that Lain wore in the first DVD. Not completely, though. Only enough so that it is clear that a much brasher and more forward young woman exists in the same mind. Even this simplifies her personality boundaries, as her sister is also consumed by the changes within Lain.

Sharing the 'wired' with her are desperate geeks trying to gain admission to the 'Knights,' a closed hacker society that is driven by secret, and perhaps deadly purposes. And in the 'real' world men in dark suits follow her and question her very existence. While her Navi grows into a water-cooled monster that swallows her entire room. Time and again, we have to wonder whose perceptions are we following, as our vision fragments and then heals in kaleidoscopic patterns. Into this strangeness step parents, strangers and friends who seem to only stop by to pronounce philosophically and then vanish back into the surfaces.

The artwork continues to be remarkable. This isn't so much an animated series as it is a designed film. By which I mean that rather than a flow of action, we are presented with images and symbols that glue themselves like wallpaper on the inside of our minds, returning repeatedly to haunt us. This is creative, experimental work, which draws the viewer forward despite forebodings of a final bleak vision that will never leave. This is a demonstration of anime's real potential as an art form, rather than simple entertainment.