For the last two installments of Anime Friday, I covered a neat little series called Paranoia Agent. Watching it made me realize that the real narrative power in anime is that, quite simply, cartoons aren't bound by physical limitations, so suspension of disbelief is easy. As I found out with this week's subject, Serial Experiments Lain, this is also anime's primary weakness.
Serial Experiments Lain follows a young girl, the titular Lain, as she comes to uncover the mystery of dead people speaking through an Internet surrogate called The Wired, and indeed the mystery of her own true identity. The show does this through a back-and-forth of minimalism and frenetic intensity. At first, I adored SEL's slow, deliberate pacing. It had a David Lynch quality to it, oppression and dread barely held back by a thin fence of clean sets and spare dialog.
The problem comes when director Ryutaro Nakamura has to contend with Chiaki Konaka's clunky script. Subtle, careful mise-en-scene like when Lain's father lectures her from behind a wall of computers is often followed by completely disconnected bits of raw exposition. This is especially prevalent in the case of the show's sci-fi technology bits. Instead of using the obvious power of animation to demonstrate things like the nano-technology club drug called Accela, the show opts for a closeup of the pill with a non-character voiceover explaining exactly what Accela is, how it works, and even how it makes its users feel. This isn't helped at all by crazed club-goers popping an Accela tab and shouting "I feel... accelerated!"
What's more, even when SEL's visual language is strong, it's nothing that couldn't have been done as well or better in the flesh. When the once-luddite Lain finally gets into computers, she modifies her PC to basically attach itself to her room like a weed or a tumor. In ink, it just looks like another generic anime set. Were it created in real life, it would rival the carefully crafted pieces in Brazil.
Ultimately, I blame the shallowness of Serial Experiments Lain on the era from which it comes. It was originally produced in 1998, placing it among other not-so-illustrious speculations on how the Internet would impact society as movies like Hackers. It's all meaningless flash that looks all the more ridiculous and overblown the better acquainted we become with our world's favorite new technology. SEL is ambitious, in that it attempts to be to the Internet what Videodrome was to cable television. This time around, the narrative isn't nearly as odd and the visuals not nearly as shocking. I'd love to see what David Cronenberg would do with the concept of SEL, but I doubt the man will ever really tackle the Internet in general.
Comprehension: 6/10- SEL is a mystery, so by definition I was in the dark nearly half the time. All the same, the story isn't nearly as clever as it wants to be. Maybe it's just that Internet and computer plots have been done so much in the past decade that they've all run together. Had I watched SEL when it first came out, it's possible I might have found it a lot more stirring.
Enjoyment: 5/10- While the product as a whole left me cold, I appreciated the good parts while they were happening. The whole project has a similar feel to all those music videos for European electronic acts that came out in 1999 and 2000. It's at once slick and DIY.
Improvement of Understanding: 9/10- While I wasn't much of a fan of SEL, I can admit that it keyed me in to one of my major hang-ups with anime as a genre. Namely, that all of the attention goes to the visuals while the script and direction are almost always afterthoughts. An interesting concept and a cool haircut do not a compelling drama make.
Next Week: Powerpuff Girls US vs PPGZ Japan