I was also a latecomer to Lain and I had the same reaction, to the extent where I know it’s not exactly comparable, but it blew my mind that Evangelion got so big while Lain was obviously the better series (in terms of genre defying, etc.). Just didn’t seem fair.
And it’s fitting too, apologies if you already know, but Boa (the band who did the opening song) are just about to release a new album and it’s really good! I actually saw them on tour a few weeks ago and they were amazing, would definitely recommend seeing them if they tour again
(as an aside, the crowd was an interesting mix of 30s/40s and then the Gen Z/alpha people who had heard of them through tiktok, but not sure if any of them had actually watched Lain since no one was cosplaying as her, only as ironically other anime characters that were not Lain)
I’d rank Abe’s anime as 1. Lain, 2. Texhnolyze, 3. Niea_7 tied with Haibane
Its been a while since i posted in this thread. I checked out a few that were suggested. I liked what i had watched but nothing really really grabbed me.
Arduous Planet was great but then i fell off. I was having a hard time finishing anything, mostly because of lack of free time. But the past month i got around to finishing Delicious in Dungeon. First few didnt grab me but i ended up loving it. To my surprise, the fantasy anime really got me. So, naturally i started Frieren and im 10 eps in and its great too! Mostly wanted to try it because id seen so much Frieren fanart and the design is wonderful.
Its a great year or two for fantasy i guess.
I also watched the first two of Dan Da Dan and its really fun. Love the concept and the animation is just a little different in a great way.
I watched My Dress Up Darling on a recommendation and i loved that too. Im a sucker for these very predictable love stories.
I also watched through the Dark Tournament in yu yu hakusho. Im glad i did. It had bren on the watch lost for far too long. Great show.
Look back was really really lovely. It’s in theaters a bit more and would recommend to anyone. I hear it’s doing very well, so hopefully we get sayounara Eri.
Evangelion just looms so large at the horizon of 90s anime that it seems to leave relatively little space in people’s minds for much else except other giants like Pokémon and the like. I know too little about it to say whether that’s because it’s just so good or if it is “overrated”. I only ever watched part of the first season and I liked what I saw but it unfortunately fell victim to the time when my job consumed my life.
Regardless of that I agree that it’s always a loss when something obviously purposeful and interesting like Lain gets left by the wayside, comparatively.
I didn’t know that! I’ll definitely check that out later. The OP was very fitting for the tone of the series. I think it must have been interesting as a Japanese person at the time to have an anime opening be completely in English. It just adds to the whole otherness of the show!
That’s funny! Hopefully some cross-generational sympathy was achieved and the TikTok crowd learned about Lain. I think that would be a win for everybody.
I see that they’ll swing by my neck of the woods in February of next year so if I like the album I’ll have something to look forward to! I wonder if/how many Lain cosplays I would see at a concert here.
I think I read about Niea_7 before! Also here on the forums probably. I’ll look more into Abe’s work. Thanks for all the recommendations and info!
I’m one of the old people who rented episodes of Lain on VHS from the mall back in the day, and it changed me on the same level that Eva and FFVII did. That was a heck of a time to be alive and having Japanese media warping your brain, I tell you what.
That vision of the internet and what it does to people is still the most unnerving one I’ve seen depicted. Lain is an all-timer for sure.
I just saw My Dress Up Darling mentioned and immediatly went and binged the first 4 episodes (it is the third time i’m watching it). One of my all time favorites, and i wonder if they will do a second season, i’ve been reading the manga and there is a lot of material. The current chapters tone down the excessive fanservice a little, and they are going harder into cosplay and cosplay culture. It seems really well researched and it is always fascinating.
Episode 4 btw was the one that made me love this series to pieces, the last scene of that episode is amazing.
I only learned recently, but the lead singer of Boa is half Japanese (makes their song “Fool” make a lot more sense lyrics-wise) - I think they may have toured Japan for their first album and that’s how they became known there. But regardless, she still sounds fantastic live so you’ll definitely love it :)
In a similar vein, it was super fitting to hear Paranoid Android as the closing theme for Ergo Proxy (sad it couldn’t live up to its own potential imo)
I watched all of Demon Slayer. That show sure is a show! I found it enjoyable enough. I also rewatched all of Dragonball Z.I have nothing insightful to say about it. Except! In the Majin Buu saga, Vegeta almost made me cry in a moment of utter sweetness.
I watched all of Yu Yu Hakusho for the first time. That’s the best show ever made, I reckon.
I watched the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen too. I don’t really know if I like it. I think it would have been better had it not become a battle anime, but maybe that’s because I had just watched Yu Yu Hakusho and Dragonball Z.
I still find that I mostly can’t watch anime made in the last fifteen years. Often it’s because I hate the animation. But I’m also enjoying picking up ones here and there. It’s kind of like giving my brain a break to become a little dummy on my couch.
Finally resuming Pluto. Episode 3 is back to looking great, although I don’t like how often only the bottom row of teeth is visible when a character speaks.
Usually I watch in the original language but I’m not really a hardliner on which dub I go for, it depends on a number of things. I like the energy of '90s or '00s English dubs, you can hear the absence of convention in US anime voice acting; today I feel everyone sounds kind of the same, like you can look at a character and guess exactly which of four character voice archetypes are going to come out of their mouth. This is more about technique and style than whoever is actually providing the voices, as ironically the former unpredictability came through from the same group of twenty people in Texas, where today I don’t have any idea who the big name actors are anymore and they aren’t always affiliated with Funimation (or Animaze, which was not in Texas). In any case, in middle and high school I began to recognize a lot of the “big names” in anime and video game VO, and consequently today have a weird positive reaction when I hear them in something new. “Ah, Beau Bilingslea, my old friend.”
That is to say I’m watching Pluto in English because it’s got an ensemble cast. In movies that usually means world-famous talent, but here it’s an ensemble of voices who played their most famous roles ten or twenty years ago in anime and video games. Jamieson Price, Michael Sinterniklaas, Elias Toufexis, Richard Epcar, Nolan North, Keith Silverstein, Patrick Seitz, Cam Clarke, Paul St. Peter. The only adult man character whose voice I don’t like is protagonist Gesicht, and I don’t really know why. Laura Stahl is great as Atom. Youtuber ProZD is the Hannibal Lecter character and I’m sorry to say it’s not working for me
I am noticing how stiff the script is. Not sure if it has to do with the tension between Urasawa/Nagasaki’s realism and the cartoonishness of Mighty Atom, or the absence of the manga form’s omniscient narrator bubbles explaining character roles and location names, or if it’s just not very good, but it’s all so expository. “Ah, director Ochanomizu of the Japanese Science Club, welcome to my hometown of Düsseldorf where my brother was killed twenty years ago.” Not too out of the way for anime but here it’s bothering me…
I’ve been thinking about watching pluto for some time but last night started t p bon instead, and it has some pretty annoying voices, which I guess is a doraemon thing. I really hate the “fat person” voice affectation in anime and I think it’s super regressive so I hope that character isn’t in here much. But there’s also a gravely voiced mascot character so I may just not make it very far period.
Curious whether anyone else has watched this one? Any impressions?
I feel like Urasawa for me just never hits the same outside of manga. Not to say monster doesn’t work - and I have friends who loved Pluto, but I dunno, he’s the master of manga for a reason.
I also remember the manga being less expository, I think assuming you have a passing familiarity with Atom as a franchise.
I don’t like the grandma character in Dan Dadan so far. Annoying trope that an older woman is introduced as a main character and somehow there just happens to be circumstances where she looks like any other hot big boobs anime girl in their 20s.
Finished FLCL rewatch and it really holds up still. Eccentric coming of age story with all timer visuals and music. Basically perfect.
Started watching FLCL Progressive, the second season made 17 years later, and it’s not really doing much for me after two episodes. It’s a bit more stiff and sterile than the original. It does some of the same bits but they feel like imitation.
I’m not even against the concept of making a sequel series to beloved originals many years later, I thought Diebuster was a really good sequel to Gunbuster! Granted that one had better creatives involved with early 00s Gainax actually making it. Progressive has a bunch of credits from people who haven’t made very good shows.
Same thing happened to me when I tried to watch the sequels. Loved the original FLCL but completely bounced off the new seasons. At the very least we get some good pillows tracks.
