DON’T TALK TO ME

I’m playing

SERIAL EXPERIMENTS LAIN FOR SONY PLAYSTATION

using

ePSXe

with an ISO file that I

DOWNLOADED FROM EMUPARADISE CIRCA 2006

when they forced you to

VISIT A SKETCHY WEBSITE COVERED IN HENTAI IN A WEIRD POPUP AND “VOTE” FOR EMUPARADISE

while desperately hoping

YOUR PARENTS DON’T WALK UPSTAIRS IN THE NEXT 2 MINUTES

before they’d

LET YOU DOWNLOAD ANYTHING

Something I like a lot about Serial Experiments Lain is the strange recurring theme of seemingly random events with major consequences. The first ~half of the show is full of Chekhov's guns that fire much later, often with clear visual references (including the literal gun)

This interconnectivity caught my attention the very first time I watched the show, but I found more instances of it on the subsequent re-watchings. Tbh at first, I even missed the relevance of the emergency train stop in the first episode.

This makes Serial Experiments Lain, despite its notoriously vague presentation, a surprisingly cohesive experience. I with more anime titles had this sort of cohesiveness

if you aren't iced out by the stares, you can sit with them at lunch...
but the conversation might be a little tough to follow.