Serial Experiments Lain
What a weird anime. Even though there is some guy's voice introducing each of the episodes as "Present day...Present time..." (in English) the setting does seem to be some time into the future. Patlabor was always set "Ten years in the future", so I would say Lain should be something like five years in the future. Everything is recognizable except the computers seem a little more advanced, and the people seem really alienated from one another. Lain herself seems to be one of the most alienated. She rarely seems to start conversations, and people only occasionally seem to want to talk to her.Lain, and many of her classmates have received an email from a girl from their school. This wouldn't have been such a big deal except this girl killed herself a week earlier.
The emails are generally dismissed as a harsh prank.
Lain seems convinced that the email really is from the dead classmate.
Lain gets a new computer....which seems to eventually grow to take up her whole bedroom.
This is not a fast paced anime. Those of you who like great battles will be disappointed. Those who prefer the quietly eerie might love this anime.
There is not a whole lot in the way of nifty guns and robots and all that standard anime fare, but the computers are really nifty. There seems to be references to the Copeland OS and BeOS for those of you geeks out there. The character designs are simple and appropriate to the mood. The settings are Kubrick like in spareness. Sometimes all the simplicity comes off as looking a little cheap, but more often than not, I thought it was beautiful, even if it does sometimes try too hard at time to be hip.