"Present Day.... Present Time.... HAHAHAHA!"

[Mark Holtz]

Just as a heads up..... Serial Experiment Lain, one of the best anime series IMHO, will be premiering at 1 AM ET/10 PM PT on Tuesday, January 21st and repeating as part of the Anime Unleased block on Friday at 11 PM ET/8 PM PT.

Brief description: The day after a classmate commits suicide, Lain, a teenage schoolmate discovers how the real world and the wired world begin to blue, especially when the dead classmate begins sending e-mail. Soon, things are not as they seem.

Just as warning to the casual viewer: Lain is NOT your normal anime series, but rather a thinking person's series. You will end up watching each episode twice as some things that appear minor in earlier episodes end up playing a major role in later episodes. Nothing is what is appears to be.

TechTV Websie (http://www.techtv.com/animeunleashed/serialexperimentslain/story/0,24330,3411657,00.html)
BOA Website (who sings the opening theme song (http://www.boaweb.co.uk/audio.htm)

Close the world, open the next.

[Ray_Clum]

You just have to let it go. Fear. Doubt. Disbelief.

And free your mind.

[Mark Holtz]

Sigh.... I haven't watched the series closely (I wait until the Friday repeats), but....

They completely eliminated a portion of the opening credits which begins with "Present Day.... Present Day.... HAHAHA", followed by a picture of Lain fading in and out. In addition, they've eliminated the closing credits and stuffed all of the credits into the opening sequence.

[Mark Lamutt]

How many episodes are there of the series? I seem to recall that the real dvd set was 4 discs. I see that there are 8 episodes Friday night in the block. PVR set.

[dtcarson]

It looks like 13--according to animeondvd.com, the first DVD is 100 minutes, vol. 2-4 are 75 minutes, and each ep is ~25 minutes.

I know this is sacrilege, but I didn't get too much out of Lain. The middle episodes, to me, dragged, and by the time I got to the fourth disk, I was tired of the series. I normally like scifi and 'what is reality' kind of shows, but the characters just didn't seem very real to me. The final episode was actually my favorite, I saw more emotion in that one than throughout the whole series.

BUT regardless of my personal opinion on it, I am glad to see Tech TV showing anime other than Pokemon and Digimon.

[Mark Holtz]

13 episodes over a four disk release (4/3/3/3).

As I stated before, this is a thinking man's anime, not an action anime. There are several sites which go into Lain in detail. If you are looking for an action anime, look elsewhere.

dtcarson: There have been shows and movies that people that that I should watch which I didn't like either. It isn't "sacrilege" if your reasons were sound. I respect your opinion and your respectful disagreement. It's the people who flame that I have a pet peeve about.