Author Archives: Bobduh

Hataraku Maou-sama! – Episode 8

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Maou-sama!

I dunno, Maou-sama. You have a great deal of potential here. You’re a sharply written comedy with an endearing cast of characters, some subdued but poignant themes regarding capitalism and class awareness, and a lovely, expressive visual aesthetic. But these last two episodes, Maou-sama. I’m gonna be frank here: your performance has not been stellar. And I know, we’re amigos, and I appreciate all the times we’ve had. Please understand that I tell you this as a friend. But frankly… your themes have been abandoned, your character writing has been stagnant, and your humor… even your humor has been somewhat lacking. I’m sorry.

But I believe in you, Maou-sama! I know you can rise above these follies, and I tell you these things out of love. So please, do not take this as an attack. All my criticism is expressed with the warmest possible regard for your strengths – hell, I wouldn’t be saying any of this if you hadn’t impressed me time and time again.

But it’s time to step it up, Maou-sama.

So let’s get to work.

Episode 8

0:47 – Well there’s another Chiho face[1]   for the archives

2:48 – Man, every face she makes in another one for the archives…

3:57 – “Where’s the fried chicken?” I like it when comedies are confident enough to not highlight every joke, and I like how the shot of all their chopsticks grabbing the fried chicken kind of becomes a joke itself in retrospect

4:24 – Another face. You can get so much personality out of animation alone… it’s nice to see a studio outside of KyoAni or Trigger realizing this

8:30 – Niiice. It’s great to see them not dragging the Chiho/Maou misunderstandings out any longer, or trying to get any false drama out of it. And this is a pretty damn mature stance from Chiho, as well. Good stuff

9:22 – And now we get Maou’s honest feelings on the situation? Awesome. I hope this and OreGairu start a trend of characters actually talking about stuff, and not dragging out nonsense romance

9:48 – It’s also awesome to see a male MC having people fall in love with him because he’s, you know, mature and thoughtful and confident, not just because he’s the MC

10:45 – And again, instead of mining this Emi/Suzuno misunderstanding for diminishing comedy returns, they use it only for that one deadpan scene last episode and then a set-em-up/knock-em-down double-take here, keeping the plot moving while getting the best value out of the misunderstanding. I freaking love smart comedy writing – it’s got so much craft specific to it, and it’s great to see it done well

12:17 – Man, I love this show’s style of humor – just extending this ridiculous conversation, and continuously framing the shots so we keep focusing on the fact that they’re in this dingy subway terminal, so it becomes more absurd by the moment

13:47 – And then it bounces to a bunch of far more direct physical and visual comedy gags. Wow, this episode is so much better than the last one

14:48 – …and then they do a bizarre sort of un-joke with those annoying little cream capsules. I know it’s a very different style of show, but I find it funny that a gag Lucky Star would probably extend over like seven minutes is here used during exposition without even being acknowledged by the characters

16:35 – I was kinda hoping Emi would actually have to address how ridiculous her current stance towards Maou is here, but I guess that’s kind of the driving tension of the show at this point, so we don’t get to resolve all the things

17:43 – This fucking show[2]  

20:56 – I think it’d take a long time for scenes of Suzuno yelling at machines to get old

And Done

Awesome! Great episode. The plot’s finally in full gear again, we resolved a few of our lingering dramatic threads, the comedy was constant and really diverse, and I think this was the first episode where Suzuno really sold herself as a great addition to the cast. They’ve set up a great house of cards for next week as well, and I can’t wait to see however this turf war ends.

Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru – Episode 8

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Shit, I’m late! No homework this week. Let’s get to it.

Episode 8

1:07 – Oh boy, a full minute of silly trap jokes. Considering the usual stupid-joke-to-brilliant-insight ratio, the rest of this episode must be nuts

2:24 – Man, even this OP makes me stupid-happy at this point

2:49 – It is kind of funny that Trap and Yui have matching outfits

4:39 – waaaat

5:23 – Like with the stupid maid cafe, they sort of retroactively redeem the swimsuit stuff by contrasting it against his reaction to Yuki, who’s actually still wearing a shirt. They’re amping up the relationship between these two every episode now

6:18 – And then they do some more boob jokes. Dammit

8:46 – Hikki’s attitude: actually no different than the elementary schooler, but backed up by a whole lot of math and amateur psychology

11:18 – Hayama clear best costume

11:36 – “I have an idea.” “Looks like it isn’t a very good idea.” These two are getting way more playful in their banter. I’d think even Yui would notice it at this point

13:56 – This is a very complicated plan. I like how totally into it the popular crowd is getting, though

15:30 – Wow, I’m glad even Hayama realizes Hikki is just rationalizing here. Is that in line with his character? He’s more savvy than I thought

17:42 – “One small misstep and this could’ve turned into a huge problem.” No shit. That was a pretty demented plan, Hikki

18:48 – Brain’s Base getting their Shaft head tilt on

19:55 – Hayama is just a pretty great character. An actually well-adjusted teenager is weirdly enough one of the rarest character types to get such a full articulation (well, it’s not that weird, it’s probably because there’s less room for drama and character development with someone who’s already sure of who they are)

And Done

Hm, setting up some drama at the end there. It seems kinda weird to link Yui and Hikki’s past connection to Yuki in such a strained way, but I’m eager to get into more of Yuki’s family situation, so that’s something to look forward to.

As for the episode overall – eh, not my favorite. I was never hugely invested in the elementary schooler plotline outside of how it reflected on Hikki and Yuki’s own perspectives, and I’m a little disappointed this episode didn’t run with Yuki’s projection about the situation from the last one (saying the girl reminded her of Yui, when she’s clearly just a miniature Yuki), or her fight, for that matter. This episode did have some good Hayama moments, as well as a continuation of the changing relationship between Hikki and Yuki. Their banter only gets more adorable.

The resolution of the storyline was also pretty solid, and I particularly like how marginal their “fixing” of the situation really was – it’d be very out of character for anything in this show to really be that easy. This episode did have the highest concentration of scenes and jokes I could have done without (trap stuff, fanservice stuff, boob jokes), but I guess I’m just gonna have to learn to live with that.

Mainly I’m just mad I have to wait another week to finally get into Yuki’s issues. How this show tests me…

Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge – Episode 8

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It’s kind of weird to adopt the stance that something is too dumb to be offensive. I mean, I live in America – I amcontinuously surrounded by ideas, organizations, and people whose stupidity in no way lessens their offensiveness. But Crime Edge, I mean… yeah, sure, it’s kind of implying that preference for kinky sex can be conflated with actual addiction, and sure it’s got all sorts of questionable (in any other writeup I’d write ‘problematic,’ but the second I use that word in the context of Crime Edge I become the punchline) notions about sex and violence, but, I mean, it’s Crime Edge. It’s like a puppy who chewed up your sneakers (have I used that metaphor? I’ve probably used that metaphor), or Uncle Nestor who sets his hair on fire at Thanksgiving cause he’s got the dementia. So yeaaah, maybe it’s, well, “misguided” in its sex politics, and yeaaah maybe the author’s conflating his own love of kinky shit with a god-given right, but, I mean, c’mon. Look at that face. Look at that stupid, stupid  face.

Episode 8

0:06 – Oh jeez, thank god they’re recapping the fifteen seconds of actual plot development that occurred last week. It’s tough to keep all this stuff straight in my head

2:45 – “Cut 08: Party Chopper.” I was going to make a joke to the effect of asking if all the episode titles had been stupid puns, but then I realized that wasn’t even a pun, that was just the word “party” with something related to scissors attached to it. Hrm.

2:51 – Okay, gotta pause, I won’t be able to pay attention until I’ve figured out a stupid pun they could’ve used instead. Hm… Cut-rate Party? No, still doesn’t really make much sense. Gossip Party? On the nose, but not cringe-worthy enough. Barber… barbed… witty… repartee…

Losing focus here. I’ll call this one a draw.

3:22 – “Could it be her?” Oh jeez, could our protagonists be having second thoughts about attending the partywhere every fucking person wants to kill them?

4:44 – That is actually my favorite moment by big sis so far. Kiri and Iwai totally captivated by the play, but big sis in the background all just shoving a fork in the appetizers. Don’t give a fuck

5:36 – “Black hair… Queen…” I don’t get it. Can someone explain this play to me? I’m not so good with symbolism

5:38 – “It’s about me.” OHHH…

6:38 – “Is the Queen real?” “I believe it.” “I dunno…” Iwai: “IT SEEMS LIKE NOT EVERYONE HERE KNOWS EVERYTHING.” It looks like the theme of this episode’s gonna be “explain everything again as soon as soon as the show finishes explaining it”

8:22 – “You two are to assist with the entertainment. Please, put on these constumes.” “Kiri, is this what people do at these parties??” Think fast bro, “Oh yeah, pff, obviously!”

10:17 – Sharktooth grin appears in the shadows.

Man, that was actually classy as fuck. It’s kind of hard to play that as a joke when they’re making such great use of his winning smile

11:20 – Hah! “She’s really strong willed. Totally not my type.” Wow, actually admitting the way these kinks work. That got an honest laugh out of me

11:54 – Hahaha, you fell for my fiendish trap! And to think, all I had to do was invite you to a party hosted by an organization founded to kill you, knowing you’d accept, and also that you’d willingly be ushered backstage and into some demeaning costumes I for some reason included in my scheme

14:11 – Big Sis sees sharktooth in a priest’s robe, Iwai in a giant cage, and Kiri choking on a spectral noose. “What the heck are they doing?!” Man, she is really redeeming herself this episode. It’s nice to see someone as barely invested in this melodrama as I am

15:05 – Big Sis’s face. “Really? A dead body? That’s tonight’s entertainment? Man, I could be at home right now, I still haven’t even finished the new season of Arrested Development…”

17:40 – I’d say that there’s no way for a fight between a dude wielding a pair of scissors and a dude who strangles you by furiously fanning through a book to possess dramatic tension, but… well, they’re kinda proposing a strong argument to the contrary

19:29 – Okay, so as heartwarming as all these flashbacks and new bursts of resolve are, how is any of this even working? “I came this far… to protect Iwai!” This is literally true, right? Since he started getting his sexy, sexy deviant urges off on the Hair Queen, there has not been a single narrative indication that he lusts for scissory blood. Why is the rulebook actually working on him this time?

This is actually kind of annoying, because having a slow-building narrative thread where his Authorial urges were spiraling out of control, to the extent where even with Iwai to Instead it up he was finding himself enjoying the fights, would be a really solid addition to the story. Unfortunately for this scene, that thread does not actually exist

21:14 – Number three! Is that a record for “most times ostensibly choked to death in a single fight”?

21:15 – BIG SIS THAT FACE YES. Seriously, is there any other way to interpret that than an “Ugh, what else is on?” face?

And Done

WELL. If this show hadn’t blown its dramatic tension load ALREADY, this episode certainly did the trick! Maybe it’s just been too long since I’ve watched a truly shitty shonen, but I think three choke-outs in one episode is pretty far beyond my limit for believing a character’s in any kind of mortal danger. That’s okay though, because Iwai spent three quarters of the episode wearing silly ram horns while mugging theatrically and crying. Clearly a net win!

Harems, Deconstructions, and Good Storytelling

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Management: As per usual, questions rewritten to better map to responses.

Question:

Why do all harem anime contain casts of unbelievable characters and avoid all long-lasting drama or relationship changes like the plague? Do we need a deconstruction of this genre to make it worth anything?

Someone Else’s Answer:

We had a deconstruction. It was called School Days.

Question:

From what I’ve heard, School Days doesn’t make the harem genre make sense in the way Madoka and Evangelion do – those shows make their genre elements make sense in the context of a specific world. Couldn’t there be a harem where the characters actually make sense as people in the same way?

Bobduh:

Evangelion and Madoka work not because they’re deconstructions, but because they’re good stories that happen to have the aesthetic trappings of certain genres. The fundamental nature of harems is to be unrealistic power fantasies, making good storytelling pretty close to impossible – if you make a harem with well-written, realistic characters and relationships, it generally ceases to be a harem and becomes a romance instead

Question:

But most anime romances seem to just be love triangles, where in the end the main character abandons the actually complementary romantic choice to stick with the weird/sickly/frail girl. I haven’t seen a single romance where the main character actively pursues both girls. What makes the “fundamental nature” of this genre less storytelling-friendly than magical girls or mecha? And how about The World God Only Knows, doesn’t that kind of work in this territory already?

Bobduh:

There are a few elements to discuss here, so I’ll take them one at a time.

First, you’re making some pretty broad assumptions about romance there. They’re not all about love triangles, and the nature of the characters involved is a lot more diverse than the setup you’ve outlined.

A romance anime where the MC actively courts both females

School Days probably is what you’re looking for – it’s pretty hard to have a protagonist remain sympathetic while willfully courting multiple women. School Days plays this straight; most harems play it for laughs, because in a realistic situation it comes off the way it actually is – dickish and narcissistic. The World God Only Knows only maintains sympathy for its protagonist and works on a narrative level by combining comedy, amnesia, and the fact that his harem-acquiring is based on an unrealistic, fantastical plot contrivance that forces him to act this way. It’s also self-aware and constantly draws attention to the tropey nature of anime characters, further distancing itself from reality. This is necessary; the closer this situation veers to reality, the closer it veers towards the MC being an asshole.

Fundamental nature of genres

The way I see this is that for magical girl shows it’s “girl transforms into frilly version of self with powers to fight evil.” With mechas, it’s “boy pilots giant robot.” Both these core concepts are silly, but they don’t inherently fight against good storytelling or characterization. Meanwhile, harems are fundamentally “boy/girl is surrounded by lovers who fight for their affection.” There are a lot more hoops you have to jump through to make a premise like that valid for a meaningful story – it’s not impossible, but it’s more of an inherently problematic premise than either of the other two, and seems very difficult to justify in a way that respects all of its characters and works towards a coherent and worthwhile point. I think School Days actually does this, but it does it by saying “all these characters are insecure and dependent, the MC is emotionally dead, and this genre is a rancid pit” – it doesn’t create a distinct story using the trappings, it just attacks its own genre.

Deconstructions

I honestly just don’t find deconstructions that interesting in the abstract. I don’t need a deconstruction to tell me that boys riding giant mechs is a silly idea – like I said originally, Evangelion and Madoka work because they are less interested in tearing down their genre than they are in telling great stories and saying meaningful things using some of the tools of those genres. To me, this is less deconstructing the genre than redeeming it – finding something meaningful to say with traditionally meaningless tools. I find School Days a lot less impressive than those works because (along with it having a much lower standard of aesthetic craft and storytelling) it never goes any further than tearing down its genre – but like I said, the harem genre is a very hard one to tell a great or meaningful story within, so perhaps that’s just the best a show can do with those raw materials.

Kotoura-san – Episode 12 and Final Assessment

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So! Last episode of the most inconsistent show of the season. Although at this point, I guess it has developed a kind of consistency, in that I’ve always been somewhat disappointed with how things are resolved, but like the characters and writing enough to be hopeful for the next thing. They completely, abruptly, kind of ridiculously concluded the mystery plot last episode, so I guess we’ve got a whole episode to deal with Mommy Dearest. I think I know how this one ends. Let’s see it off!

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Attack on Titan and Violence as a Storytelling Device

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Management: As always, I rephrase original questions if it’s necessary to make my responses make sense out of the context of a conversation. None of these questions are meant to represent one specific person, they’re just stand-ins for the conversations that provoked my responses.

Question:

Do you believe the necessity of censorship in what can be shown on television is hurting Attack on Titan? It seems like the camera has cut away from extreme violence pretty regularly so far.

Bobduh:

I don’t think it’s really being censored; frankly, I can’t imagine they could really go much further than they currently are and not have it devolve into self-parody through its extreme nature.

I generally feel that less is more when it comes to this brutal stuff, since I’d hope the point is generally to convey the effect this violence is having on the characters involved, and not just to portray brutal stuff for the hell of it. The scene where Eren saw Misaka’s parents is a good example of this – the door opens, then there’s a quick series of cuts: blood on the windows, blood on the door, a distant, obscured shot of the room, and then a reaction shot. All the information is conveyed in a way that draws the viewer directly into Eren’s overwhelmed perspective, and tying violence to characters you’re supposed to empathize with always makes it land as more personal and visceral than just showing the viewer some gore.

In fact, I think popcorn slasher films use this truth for the opposite effect – they keep the characters impersonal and generic, and the violence hyper-visible and ridiculous, to ensure the viewer is normally at a safe, removed distance from the proceedings. Whereas truly effective horror films imply a great deal more than they reveal (getting the viewer’s imagination to do the work), and tie the viewer very closely to characters who’ve been well established, making the viewer much more personally involved and thus much more vulnerable. And there are a ton of effective spins on this mechanism – for instance, Battle Royale combines stylized violence with melodrama to create a little distance and make the viewer’s experience more akin to an adventure film than a horror film, as well as ensure the film’s underlying ideas aren’t overwhelmed by character focus.

The use of violence in media has to fall in line with that media’s goals if it doesn’t want to result in viewer disconnect, and I think that if Titan’s goal is to make you empathize with the characters, it needs to always be in control of that, imply at least as much as it shows, and save the ultraviolence for only when it’ll be truly effective. I actually think it’s gotten a lot better about this, but I think it had much less control early on, and it’s always a balancing act.

Suisei no Gargantia – Episode 7

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Alright, Gargantia. It’s time to step it up. A little bird told me that OreGairu, Aku no Hana, and Titan all had their best episodes yet this week – do you feel the pressure? DO YOU FEEL THE HEAT? I hope so, because I believe in you, champ. Now get out there and make me proud. And while you’re at it, tell your characters to put some goddamn clothes on.

Episode 7

1:19 – Chamber, drenched in gore, intestines trailing from his arms. CUE OP! There’s the Urobuchi we know and love!

Kidding, by the way. I find much more optimism about human nature in any of his shows than I do in the average cynically targeted anime production.

3:41 – “But the big squid monsters are sacred!” Welp, it looks like even utopia is still plagued by superstitious bullshit. Win some, lose some.

4:43 – So, if they are actually fundamentally similar creatures, it’s looking like the lesson here is “if you space assholes just left them the fuck alone, you wouldn’t have to live in a militant slave culture in the first place.” I hope it’s not that simple

4:58 – Nice. I like how worried Ledo is that he might be responsible for putting the Gargantians in danger. He’s always cared about helping people (disobeying orders in the very first episode), but his emotions are much more readable and strongly felt at this point

5:33 – Oh dear, fleet commander getting a checkup. That’s a serious death flag right there

6:10 – “Helping the people of this fleet is the proof that I’m alive.” Leave it to the commander to answer the show’s main thematic question in a single sentence

7:41 – “Ledo will fuck up those squids, and we’ll grab the treasure!” Oh thank god “whalesquids are mystical spirit animals” isn’t just a ubiquitous Gargantian belief. Obviously stuff like that is more significant or believable to some individuals than others, regardless of their general cultural background

11:10 – Awesome. I love seeing Ledo get pissed and just go off on the Gargantians for their naïve perspective. This show puts Ledo in the position of student so often that it’s really refreshing to see him take a stand on the one thing that has basically defined his life

11:32 – “You don’t have to do that, Ledo. You’re your own person.” And he’s fucking worried about you idiots, and so he’s deciding as his own person to protect you. Again, it’s great to see these lofty ideas crash into the hard walls of reality

By the way, I’m kind of assuming these whalesquids actually will turn out to be totally peaceful unless provoked, but that’s basically genre assumptions on my part – I think Ledo’s perspective here makes complete sense

13:44 – SEIZON SENRYAKU! 

Sorry. This episode’s full of good characterization, but here’s another bit I like – Ledo’s refusal to at least consider their point of view must be significantly based on his psychological need to have his original life be meaningful and correct

And Done

Man, choking death rattle directly into perky windsurfing ED. That’s some After Story shit right there

Pretty solid episode, and surprisingly character-focused for an episode featuring an army of mutant whalesquids. I really liked the writing for Ledo in this episode, and pretty much everyone else came across as representing a believable set of interests and beliefs as well – it was also particularly nice seeing Ledo basically go to town on the Gargantian’s hippy-dippy attitude towards conflict. I’ve been kinda worried at various points that this show would be too simplistically didactic, and this episode gives me reason to hope that won’t be the case. My assumption that we were running out of time for idyllic slice-of-life episodes also seemed to be confirmed, though I still doubt that we’re gonna see anything too crazy happen – maybe Ledo will go to town on one whalesquid nest, and that’ll put his separatist fleet in danger, or something. I also like that the largest character conflict that’s existed for a while now, between Bellows and Pinion, has now ballooned into an actually meaningful central conflict – making your foundation-building as invisible as that is a difficult skill, and yet another sign of Urobuchi’s control of craft in storytelling (for example, Maou-sama!, for all its many strengths, has a great deal of trouble with seamless foundation-building).

So yeah, it was a little bit of a transitional episode, but it had a lot of great stuff going on, and I like the direction the story’s going. Not as flashy as some of the other episodes this week, but still just quietly excellent all around

Aku no Hana – Episode 7

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Every fucking week Aku no Hana’s just sitting there, waving sinisterly from the middle of my Sunday afternoon. I’mtired, Aku no Hana. It’s been a long freaking week – do I really need to visit your nightmare world of embarrassment and despair again? I mean, yes, I do love you in the abstract, and you are certainly a very good show, but…

Well, alright. At least I’ll have some Gargantian happiness therapy later today. Act like a champion. No regrets.

Episode 7

1:45 – Kasuga always seems to surprise me by showing some real spine. He gets ridiculously worked up internally, but when push comes to shove he’ll yell at Nakamura, confess to Saeki, or ask her what’s wrong and what he can do to help. I think he would actually grow up and get over himself pretty quickly in the absence of Nakamura’s psychological attacks

2:58 – Aw yeah, OP #3. Let’s have it

5:42 – Man, Saeki’s displaying some crazy-ass emotional honesty for a middle schooler

Also, please, Kasuga 

6:30 – Man, he’s really writing the book on making shit worse for yourself

8:10 – “Gotten rid of another wall in your heart?” Gah, she’s so pathetic. She gets me with this mix of understanding and revulsion, in that her own narcissistic reasons for doing all this stuff are obvious, but her own damage doesn’t make the damage she’s causing any more justifiable. And then of course the show constantly trolls with her silly grins and stalking routines. Aku no Hana, you are an asshole

9:50 – Yep, ya broke him. Laugh it up

12:35 – Oh jeez these characters are so hideous  herp derp

17:14 – Nice to see Nakamura’s indifference broken when Kasuga refuses to play along. Also, that flashback to Kasuga’s haughty Baudelaire speech – it’s looking like they really are going to bond over the worst indulgences in each of their personalities, despite having nothing else in common. Enablers, yay!

And Done

Dear god you guys. That last sequence was so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so good. My lord. The direction, the beauty of the cascading, slow-motion class materials, the song, the pacing, the buildup to that one moment of Kasuga snapping, then Nakamura pushing him even further, then… I’m not sure I remembered to breathe during that. Incredible stuff – I already really liked this show, but that scene alone knocked it substantially upwards in my estimation. Man. I don’t know how they’ll ever be able to top that.

Serial Experiments Lain – Final Assessment

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That was a very solid show! The ideas were quite interesting and seemed fairly consistent, the mood shifted pretty organically from meditative psych thriller to sci-fi drama, the visual and sound design was excellent, Lain was a solid central character, and it ended very well. Some specific things that really stuck out to me were the excellent contradictory ideas it introduced later on, some really well-directed thriller elements (the sister episode in particular was a highlight), the excellent use of a very broad visual vocabulary (the colors, the repeated camera shots, etc), and the so-smart-it-seems-obvious connection of defining the self with online personas.

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Serial Experiments Lain – Episodes 12/13

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Episode 12

2:33 – So now Lain herself is speaking in that “come join us” prologue bit, and it seems she might be a little drunk on world-hacking power

3:36 – Oh man, this is so tragic. In order to save her one legitimate connection, she’s come around to the viewpoint that the real world is just more information to be altered and rewritten at your convenience. So good!

I was enjoying this show before, but this is actually some classic, awesomely illustrated material here. I guess I just really prefer human stories, and as this show has gone on, it has shifted from being more fully concerned with its mysteries and ideas to really illustrating the relatable human desires at the core of Lain’s actions

3:53 – “People only have substance within the memory of others.” Jeez, that sounds a whole lot like “Gods can only exist if they are worshiped,” doesn’t it?

6:44 – So a “person” is actually just the accumulation of information that happens to be housed inside an organic machine, huh? Good news, Lain, you’re human after all!

8:39 – Masami Eiri isn’t dead… whether he had a body or not never mattered. Hm… who do we know that doesn’t have a body, but seems to be both alive and have a strong interest in Lain?

10:40 – Oshit, so it WAS a third party all along, just using the G-Men. The Knights were just competition for control of Lain that needed to be removed… so Eiri could take control, right? Hm…

16:57 – Just realized Lain’s ensemble is a crown of wires

18:37 – Man, why’s this guy gotta be such a dick

20:06 – Okay, here’s the confirmation. He inserted the code; he’s Eiri.

And Done

Wow, that was some extremely crafty work by Lain. Did she just use his obvious ridiculous ego to trick him into manifesting in a physical form, so she could bury him in a place where his consciousness wouldn’t be scattered through the Wired? But how can she avoid having him re-integrate? Well, they haven’t really explained how people integrate in the first place, so maybe that’s coming

Episode 13

2:33 – “Who is the me that is speaking?” Transposing classic philosophical questions on the definition of self against the complicating factor of internet personas and the questionable “eternal life” pure information (and by proxy the creators or holders of that information) is granted therein is a great idea, and this show definitely succeeds in making the connection between those two explorations so complete as to be seamless. I do wonder if they plan on actually taking a stand, though, or if they’re just interested in raising questions

4:18 – A nice image. All the trappings of her Wired identity compressed in a corner as Eiri’s gravestone – Lain clinging to the one person who matters.

4:50 – ALL RESET. Goddamnit Lain you are terrible at fixing things

7:20 – I like this jaunty pop song undercutting the tragedy of Lain erasing herself from history for the sake of a friend who never really understood her anyway

10:23 – Hah, that’s great. Like with the Knights, the reality of Eiri is just some disgruntled, muttering salaryman.

11:22 – “What isn’t remembered never happened. Memory is merely a record. You just need to reqrite that record.” Somehow I don’t think the show actually believes that. Could it possibly be because every prior attempt to change the record has resulted in unforeseen tragedy? Hmmm

12:03 – Bringing up the intro static Lain and downtown lights halfway through. This is so awesome. I love how this show worked so hard to establish various “chapter marks” and visual ticks with specific significance, and so it can now use the assumptions the viewer has vested in those markers to play with the narrative – it’s built its own vocabulary to abuse. That trick is so smart, and has so many potential applications, that I feel like I should write… it… down…

13:27 – “Dead people’s information isn’t leaking out of the Wired anymore.” Well, it’s always nice to receive direct confirmation of a prediction from ten episodes ago…

16:15 – “It’d be so much easier to be God. Much easier than being a person.” Don’t listen to her, Shinji!

17:25 – Alright, just gotta make sure this is clear in my head. Lain really did exist as information, and however knowledge of her spread, her own influence and ability to perceive spread. So for her, existence really was based on “memories of her,” or information of her in the Wired (which was why she was so much more powerful there), or etc – and now that she’s willfully removed all data on herself, her perception has shrunk to nothing. Right?

19:32 – Oh hey, isn’t that her OP outfit/bridge? Hmmm

It’s also nice to see a show where the visual design is distinctive enough that characters are recognizable even if they’re much older (like Arisu here) or completely shifted in wardrobe, hair, and temperament (like Eiri)

21:10 – So what’s the message here – that legacy doesn’t have to be a catalog of memories of you, and your life can matter even if the people you help don’t know it was you?

And Done

Whew! I liked that escape route of an ending. It cleared up a lot of narrative loose ends (though outside of “a program designed to integrate the two worlds,” Lain’s original identity was never outright stated), and actually followed through on the show’s ideas to arrive at a specific perspective and opinion on identity and the Wired. I’m not really sure where the show ultimately fell on how Lain’s identity is constructed – she clearly rejected the idea that you only exist in the reflection of others, but I can’t articulate exactly what she replaced it with – obviously that scene with Arisu indicates she still has the power to manifest physically, and she seems pretty much as powerful as ever, but… hm…

Okay, so between that and the scene with her “father,” I’m guessing it was the love they both expressed for a Lain that did once exist in their memory that helped her maintain ego (or just gave her the confidence to believe she should still exist) in the aftermath of the hard reset. Which is a nice bit of contradiction as well, since whenever a character expressed their love for her in the series, it was pretty much by way of apology – “I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything for you, but I want you to know that I loved you.” And yet, in the end, those expressions of affection seem to be what made “life” worth continuing or perceiving for her. And that scene with her “father” would in that case be an expression of her mental realization that she reciprocates that love, and that feeling means she exists (kinda paralleling the scene where she listens to Arisu’s heartbeat, which was what broke her away from Eiri’s philosophy in the first place). If this interpretation is correct, I think all the pieces fit.