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Well the thread title should be obvious. Let's just look at their tweet first. Hype and pretentious issue aside, anyone looking forward to this? Personally I'm interested with that, though not as hyped as any other people though. Anyway, this is one of VN that had some history in regard of VN Translation scene, and it was already discussed to the death in this forum and VNDB as well (Maybe Reddit too). As for release year, not sure if it's real but let's just wait and see for now.

That's because in moege, h-scenes are actually used for relationship development, often very lazily. Amid all the moans and squelches, you'll hear a sudden barrage of "I love you"s and then the protagonist has an emotional epiphany over a few lines, before the moans and squelches start up again. This may happen for both characters, often in the first h-scene of the route. They also may develop the dynamic of who's in control of the relationship here and that kind of thing. It's lazy because they often forgo relationship development outside the h-scenes. They use the sex as a crutch so they don't have to build up a romantic and/or emotional mood outside of sex and probably the confession scene or whatever. The problem is that when you remove h-scenes from games that use them as a crutch, they end up predictably falling apart. The routes have that empty feeling to them because the relationships feel underdeveloped. That's completely valid to criticise when it happens, too. This leads to people saying that sex scenes in general are necessary for proper relationship development, but on the contrary, I feel like stories that don't use sex as a crutch often have stronger relationship development overall. Himawari is a good, recent example of this, in my opinion. The all-ages version doesn't have the h-scenes, obviously, but it barely matters because the way the characters and relationships develop still feels fairly natural. They also left in anything important in the lead-up and aftermath of the sex scenes. Because indeed, it's often the stuff that leads to sex and happens as a result of sex that's far more important to relationships than the sex itself. Himawari was written with that in mind, is much better for it, and loses nothing when you remove the actual sex. Going back to the original question posed, I do prefer to read the uncensored original version whenever possible. But I'm not gonna hand-wring over it if I can't. It's often just not that big of a deal.

Confession: I can't believe I left so close to 1000 posts. Confession 2: I feel like nobody outside of the Skype groups remembers me. xDDD Confession 3: I've missed this place. Like, a lot. q-q

To be honest, I might be looking forward to Island more than SubaHibi. SubaHibi is one of those VNs that's been hyped too much. I've taken enough philosophy classes to know that "philosophical" means different things to most people than it does to me, and I mostly find the thing other people usually mean when they call something "philosophical" to be annoying, so given how often that label is affixed to SubaHibi, I'm leery of it. I'll play it, and I honestly expect I'll enjoy it, but I'm trying to intentionally tank my hopes for it so I can be pleasantly surprised.

Ooh, that is a serious predicament. It sounds like this girl is someone you care very deeply about, and I think that's very admirable given her circumstances. And no matter what decision you end up making, I think you deserve some respect for the kind of support you've given her. And for what it's worth, I think you are making a difference, even if it's not noticeable. No matter what decision you make, you will have regrets, so try not to allow guilt to be the driving force behind it. Do what you want to do. I wish you the best.

The troll is strong with this one, yes. Post strong trolls, you will. But for maximum effect, you can't just give a bad review to a good - I mean, popular game. You want to make sure to insult people who like popular things. Never mind that something is popular because lots of people like it, liking a popular game automatically means that you have no taste. If you really wanna troll, you can't just rate Steins;Gate a 6. You also have to post a condescending review like this: [sarcasm]Steins;Gate huh more like Steins;Grate amirite folks? Haha, all you folks out there with good taste know what I'm talking about. I'm just shocked at how many sheeple there are out there that like this lowest-common-denominator crap [/sarcasm]

In support of the pro-ratings side to the debate, I actually do think ratings aren't a complete waste of time. It's true that in the grand scheme of things, a number isn't always the best reflection of a VN's real quality as it widely depends on human judgment, which is fundamentally flawed. But at the same time, it can be an ideal system for those that haven't really established a hard set of standards for a certain entertainment medium, which could give them the leeway to discover great works based on the accumulation of scores that give VNs a high rank on a database. Chances are, if the vast majority of people like the work, a newcomer would likely enjoy it as well, and this may possibly open the door for reading more works in the future. The key thing to focus on is the relative ease of the rating system and what it can mean for others. As your tastes develop, you might find ratings to be less relevant to your interests, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. You might eventually find yourself branching away completely from mainstream opinions, or maybe just loosely, after seeing what some works have to offer, how often they rely on particular tropes, and eventually learning what makes a work truly stand out in terms of uniqueness and presentation. But that depends entirely on how much time you spend on a medium, and I personally believe you'd be hard pressed to find someone new to the scene that wouldn't like a VN with a high rating. Not saying it applies to everyone, but that it probably will apply to most. I can't say for sure since I haven't done hard research on the matter. It's mostly speculation. Edit: That said, I think scores should be entirely based on enjoyability above all else. That's probably the only thing that'll likely matter to those who use the rating system to choose VNs to read.

Numeric scores are an obvious indicator of reviewers either being lazy frauds which can't be bothered to think outside of their own, comfortable shoe box or opportunists which know that review scores clickbait the average internet browsing doofus into creating traffic for their badly written and barely researched articles. (here you can find plenty examples of both). In order to reach enlightenment, scrap all your scores and tell everyone who uses them (especially for business purposes) to fuck off. There are better ways of getting your thoughts of joy or discomfort across than with an arbitrary number.

^ Basically what Mitch said. In addition, remember this -- the lower you rate popular VNs the more elite you appear, boosting that dank weeb street cred. Easy on those 10's boy

i think the reason they want you to rate a few vns 10/10 is because the rating system isnt there just for you but for other users. of course taste is subjective but people do look at those scores before and sometimes thats the factor that decides if they want to play that vn.

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. I'll try to drop some more info about the story ASAP. Also I'm thinking about doing another trailer focusing on the characters. Hmmm, it would be 2 hours lenght if it was a book. Being a VN, it will have art to look at, point and click sections and choices, so that lenght should go up to 3-4 hours for the average player. But yes, it is short, is my first VN and I didn't want to start with a project I couldn't finish. It took me a while to finish the script actually. As for the kickstarter, is basically the same. I rather start from the bottom and succeed than try to fly too high and get burned. Additionally, I'll adjust the price to the length, and I'll take my time to make those 3-4 hours of gameplay the highest quality I can.

Greatest love story ever told. A true love-craft.

Rating systems are useless at delivering any sort of detailed information to the viewer. All it gives is a rather vague impression of whether a person liked or disliked it. The important information is the reasoning (text) behind the rating, often given in the form of a review. Because of this, a super-precise rating system isn't needed and you should just fling out any number that feels right.

Synopsis Cila, a veteran cop with a sour outlook and anger issues expects nothing more from life besides the smell of ozone, blinding neon lights and the ever-present manhole steam. At least, until a shady friend replaces her broken-down housedroid as a favor.Advanced, more efficient and remarkably perceptive, unit M.A.R.A. begins to penetrate Cila's toughened exterior and possibly even heal her new owner's old wounds – if Cila can decipher the recurring nightmare the process brings. Soon Cila and Mara forge a unique if sometimes uneasy bond.Unbeknownst to Cila, just as her life begins to find its new normal, the technological giant Velta Labs gets wind of Mara's existence and takes a mysterious interest in the android. A war unlike any before it is brewing on the horizon, its players are silently being selected and one android's fate may spell the difference between peace, war, the blossoming of a new religion, or a technological singularity beyond comprehension. >>STEAM DEMO<< >>ITCH.IO DEMO<< The game is now on Steam Greenlight: GREENLIGHT Writing: Completed Translation (English): Completed Sprites: Being worked on Music: Being worked on GUI: Completed BGs+BGs: Being worked on 1.What do you think about the story/setting so far? 2.What is your favorite character at the moment? 3. The game will not contain lewd scenes. Is that a problem for you? 4.Any comments or questions?

Thanks, will fix. But how can I have a 6 lines of signature?

I don't know if this is a formating issue or because of the update, but @Vorathiel's list is showing like this (pic below) to me, on Temporal Spectrum.

Welp. Finished FFX a few hours ago. It was amazing overall, and besides that 6-hour long grinding slump, a memorable journey all the way through. Amazing, wonderful, beautiful game. Also finished watching a Drankengard LP (skipped battle scenes). Hated it until the end. Then that ending happened and I laughed about it for the next two hours. Fucking amazing.

prolly the hardest thing i've ever experienced in my short life eh . thank you for the support :') thank you too , i really appreciate what you've said .... probably the more usefull thing that anyone said to me about this situation and yeah , first love , first friend i made while entering in high school ... she's the more important person in the world for me at the moment , and even if it's not really a positive point , i think i'm actually addicted to her . i really hope that everything will go smoothly :')

You know as long as I repress all of my concerns and personal grievances of Phantom Trigger being set in the "Grisiaia Universe" I actually can see this series working pretty well. I imagine the first couple of volumes will be pretty dull and the bog standard "military training" arc in which the characters will learn how to function as a cohesive unit, like the first season of RWBY and Muv Luv Unlimited. Things should pick up afterwards when the team is sent on actual missions, which hopefully will be worldwide. We could get some very MuvLuvesque social commentary on the role of developed nations in unstable countries and I'm sure some very interesting character building moments for our cast considering they are from various nationalities. Each volume could focus on a different part of the world with a different terrorist/rebel/criminal organization serving as an antagonist.

Yeah, support Key/Visual Arts. I already own Clannad, Side stories and Tomoyo after. Way to go for a complete Keyfag like me And we still have Summer Pockets in store!

oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit welcome back Awh. That has to be really difficult. I feel for you.

Gosh, I hope I don't get arrested by the anti-hype police for saying this, but I'm actually kinda hyped right now. Please don't hurt me!

Some news, a demo was just released if anyone is interested in trying it out: https://falseelegy.itch.io/false-elegy https://vndb.org/v20743 I played some of it, it's got great art and great music, story-wise to give you an idea it's kinda like the Tokyo Babel of OELVNs.

Finally finished Himawari, took me 2 month of my life.... Chapter 1 5/10 Chapter 2 8/10 Aqua Route 6/10 ___/Aries Route 4/10 Asuka Route 7/10 Komorebi 8/10 Kagerou 8/10 Overall: 7/10

Fucking Finally! I thought they just forgot about Subahibi or something since they haven't announced anything in ages. I'm currently working through this VN when I have time, and despite a few flaws, I overall like it. I really want to recommend it to some friends of mine, but until it gets a translation I can't. I am most hyped since the Western VN community could always use more denpa!

As a dream place to be? Perhaps. As a place on Earth like any other? Not really, not anymore. Besides, I'm already too old for that kind of dreamin'

If I'd ever rate anything on a 10 mark scale, I'd start from 5 as the average and either increase or decrease the score depending on factors. Obviously, I don't rate anything anymore, because it's hard to be completely objective, especially about the things you like - your love for particular things coulds your mind, no matter what. There's also a bunch of different factors involved - whether a person is willing to drop his suspension of disbelief (thus raising the score), or whether things in a particular work trigger them (and as such, lower the score considerably). Certain aspects might raise the score for particular people. Some works are really good and deserve praise, others don't. Some games are easily reachable to a far wider audience, while others cater to particular niches. Certain games might have good bits, even if they don't leave much of an impression as a whole. Some stories start off good and then kill all the tension and excitement along the way to end in the worst kind of way possible. There is literally no way any score system could provide a wholesome and objective ranking. Nowadays, I simply summarize and try to point out the most obvious flaws, whilst trying to dwelve into things, that make the essence of a particular visual novel; I don't over-glorify, nor shit on games. I simply provide information as to why I think a particular game might be considered above or below average and if it's truly worth mentioning - why particular games excell within their medium, to the point of being worthy considered masterpieces; that or at least highly recomended vn's. That aside, people became way too subjective nowadays. It's one of the reasons why every game is 10/10 and an instant masterpiece. I used to give higher scores in the past myself. Nowadays, I'd rate most of those games far lower, even if I still liked them a lot. The truth is, majority of decent vn's doesn't really deserve a score above 6, if we'd try to keep close to the original guidelines created by some major archives, like vndb for example. The good thing is, the more you play, the less skewed your opinions become and the more valuable they might get for another person. Still, I'd treat everything others say with a grain of salt - the best kind of opinion will be always that of your own.

55k word-count, so isn't that like a 2 hours length? But still, it looks really good, have you thought about having a Kickstarter for this? If it is successful, it might help to expend the scope and length of the game by a few more hours at least.

Angel didn't even make it on the list? Oh well, more of her for me to enjoy all by myself

The science in this thread is 9/10. I'm proud of you guys

I would apply the exact system as in my earlier post. Why were they removed? If there is a justifiable reason, then I don't hold it against the company and will purchase their title. ...What I just said was a lie. So long as the complete product felt wholesome and cohesive, I'd probably still buy it. My stance on censorship isn't too strong. Of course, there isn't really much of a way to know whether it feels complete or not, hence me applying the system earlier described. ---- As for your analysis on my views on sex, I found it to be the opposite. As my family was always rather open and transparent about sex (and one branch is particularly perverted), I've always been been something of a prude. These days I'm used to H-Scenes in VNs, but find myself uninterested in a vast majority of them, simply opting to skip them instead of reading all that fluff. One interesting fact: I generally prefer that they exist, even if I don't read them, as they're one of the most tangible forms to show love. For some reason, I have more difficulty recalling the romantic elements of all ages titles, making me feel they lacked them at all. Which is wrong. When I do play them they are there, clear as day. ---- I find your view on H-Scenes to be the most common one, actually. Which is why it kind of surprised me to see that just about everyone that isn't interested in H-Scenes popped out of the woodwork just to comment here.

I said that those who dislike H-scenes are most likely doing so because the culture they grew up in probably taught them to be less comfortable about sex. I said this because based on my limited understanding of the world, the information i gathered led me to conclude that. When I said this, I wasn't emotionally charged, and was not thinking of any of you in a condescending fashion. I simply attempted to infer how and why you guys hold the opinions you do, and based on that, made the most logical assumption I could. I may very well be wrong. I am not in any of your heads, and have no idea if I am right. I am completely fine with any of you holding a different stance on H-scenes, and if you feel my guess on why so many people don't like H-scenes is wrong, at least in relation to you, feel free to tell me. I honestly have no idea if I'm right or not. I can only guess. the reason why I wrote all that (yes, all of it), was because I wanted to solve this dilemma of mine by getting you to understand how I think of these scenes. Most H-scenes are badly written. I am not blind to that. Bizarrely, they actually do bring me closer to the characters, and I do end up enjoying the VN more. this is not because I am lonely, have no life, or simply think with my penis too much. I just think differently than most people. I guess I should change my question a little. If several random scenes were taken out of a game, them being your average character building *spending time with characters* schlick, would you pay for the game? i don't mean would I buy it, but would you, personally, and why.

Just rate them how do you want. If someone has a problem with your votes then it's their problem not yours.

Margit got 1st?! Excuse me while I go yell things that I can't remember if they are against the rules here or not. I'm that happy.

There's like 14 shitters above best grill

A few days ago, i started Majikoi. The reason was probably the rumors about it being a quite good comedy. And i have to admit that it met all my expectations, because some of the moments gave me some of the biggest laughs i've ever had. I've done Wanko's route, now i'm reading Miyako. Also, i noticed that there are many Majikoi games, but there are characters that i haven't even met yet. Do they even appear there, or they are just something new in the fandiscs? Also, if someone can tell me in what order should i play them, because i am planning to read all of the translated ones

To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that in all of this, you don't have more to say about Kurugaya's route. I found it one of the most intriguing ones. I suspect you're going to get even more annoyed by Mio's route, actually, but I definitely recommend you to stick with the game anyway, because Refrain is where Little Busters! really picks up, and you're almost there.

I bought Tomoyo After.It was pretty cheap also i wanted to support KEY.

I really want to read this. This is the first time that I have actually been excited by a western VN in years (the last one was Dysfunctional Systems by Dischan). I really like unique art styles. Most VNs stick to the generic anime look, but seeing this art work gets me really excited. I also like the choice to stay away from erotic content. There are a lot of VNs out there that have interesting stories, but throw in erotic content when there is little to any reason to included those scenes. Not including erotic content is a decision I full approve of. As for the story, with the little information you provided it definitely sounds interesting. I like the concept, but I can't say much more than that. Regarding characters, I really like Yoko's design and from the description she seems like an interesting character. All in all, I can't wait for the English translation.

Everybody knows that Miyako is the best girl.

I think the important television people and sponsors would get really mad if they did that as opposed to just mad. Recap episode it is.

@littleshogun @Limerence_ thanks

I lot of you are of the opinion that the censorship more or less doesn't matter because it doesn't impact the story at all. What especially stood out to me was the response "Basically, it's just porn" (Kurisu-Chan, 2). This is where my opinion differs from many of yours, and why I am so torn when the answers for others is so clear. To most people, the hentai scenes in these games is simply there for titillation, and adds no emotional impact to the story. The same thing could be accomplished through the use of a pornographic OVA on HentaiHaven. My opinion is very different from that, so before I say what I am thinking and why I believe that to be the case, I want you to understand that I am not insane. If any of you have ever played Steins;Gate, you'll get to a scene in the very beginning where Okabe buys his childhood friend a toy. From the way they interact, you immediately understand how close they are to each other. They are able to relay this feeling to you while maintaining the natural flow of the conversation so that it never feels forced. If they took this scene out of the visual novel, most people wouldn't be very happy. It is a small scene, less than 2 minutes, but has a huge impact when establishing the relationship the two characters have. Apply this to hentai scenes. I have never played a visual novel (that is not a nukige) where the hentai scenes had little to no impact on the emotional tone of the story. You can go to my VNDB page to see the visual novels I have played. Keep in mind, I am very comfortable talking about sex. I was able to go to my parents and blatantly ask them about sex, and how it worked, when I was a child. In the west, sex is a very uncomfortable topic. People feel very awkward talking about it, and it is treated as something that, although everyone thinks about it, nobody should admit to thinking about it. It is considered dirty and thought to be incapable of adding to the value of art. So far I have established that, for me, hentai scenes in fact do have a significant impact beyond mere titillation. I have only begun to explain why that is the case for me, and must do so, as my opinion is so outlandish to some that I do seem insane. I have watched hentai OVA's, porn, and played a few nukiges before. And I tend to get bored and don't usually finish (which is why I browse image sited for that sort of thing instead). Sex in real life, however, is unlike porn in the fact that is is heavily emotionally charged. We have sex with people we love, and it tends to come after the relationship buds and grows to a significant extent. What I am amazed by is how there are so few stories that capture sex this way. Porn cannot capture sex in this fashion, as relationships and meaningful sex takes time to grow. Visual novels, however, are the perfect fit for this. They tend to tell long-form stories, giving time to bring the reader and protagonist closer to the characters. Because these are not TV shows, they are not aired on TV and are able to be explicit about sex. This enables Visual Novels to show two people at one of their closest moments with each other. Visual novels are able to describe what characters feel during these close times, and can get infinitely more intimate because of this. Subtlety is important, but it is not the only way, not often the best way, to tell this type of scene. And this is why I think H-scenes are so awkward to many people, and why they seem so badly written. I argue that much of the reason these scenes feel so awkward to read is because people simply feel uncomfortable about sex. Admittedly, a lot of the time these scenes are simply placed into the story, and don't hold up to the narrative flow of the rest of the VN. But this doesn't mean that they can't have great emotional impact even when they are awkward. Sex in real life is awkward (the manga Futari Ecchi is a perfect fictional example of this). The sex scenes are censored in the west because they are thought to not add value to the story. This is a cultural thing, and reflects the way we think about sex. Many people feel as if the sex in the story brings no emotional impact to them, and I argue that this is because sex is inherently very intimate. In order to be affected by a sex scene, one needs to be very comfortable with the idea of sex and thinking about it intimately, as they are about to see to characters engage in it in a very intimate manner. If one is distracted by their own discomfort, they won't be affected by the intimacy the characters are feeling, and the emotional value of that scene will be lost upon that person. I do believe this is why so many people think of the sex scenes as simply porographic, when I do believe they are many times more, even when awkwardly written. Taking all of the above into context, if sex scenes do have a dense emotional impact relative to the story, would it still be worth buying them? Reading Nandemonai's post, this seems to be very much the way I view censorship. Thank you for posting.

The game isn't really a raising sim. Those are highly repetitive games featuring a few events that are repeated over and over, in order to raise stats. Littlewitch Romanesque eliminates the repetitive events in favor of a nice minigame, but more importantly, it is crammed full of story events. Learning a new spell or completing a quest always has a unique event associated with it. There are a lot of other unique events that pop up as the game goes on. The main problem with raising sims is that outside of the core gameplay loop (picking a schedule and seeing the same few events over and over) there often aren't many unique events. I definitely recommend the all-ages version of Littlewitch Romanesque, if you've got a problem with the artstyle. (They're not technically underage at the time you sleep with them, but that really doesn't help very much.) As for the OP, basically this is the way I think of it. When you buy a game, you are sending a message: do this some more. I am not a very big proponent of censorship; I remember what things were like in the bad old days of Nintendo heavily bowdlerizing any and everything. Of Playstation 1 RPGs being heavily altered to remove references to drinking and so on. They sucked, and I'm not on board with them coming back. I don't mind small alterations to games, but I do mind major changes. Generally removing h-scenes qualifies as a major change, but it doesn't have to. For example, Chou Dengeki Stryker is basically better off without the h-scenes. The problem is that it's hard to tell whether I'll mind the censorship before I buy the game, so I tend to lean away from buying censored things. The big exception to this is anything censored for legal reasons. If the people releasing the game are worried about going to jail unless they change something, well, I still don't like it, but I understand. Ultimately, there are no right or wrong answers here. Some people try to make it a moral issue; I suppose it is, when you get down to it, but the problem is it's squarely within a grey zone. The line can be drawn more or less anywhere you want to draw it. Personally, I bought Aselia from Jast USA, and I don't regret it. I wasn't happy the adult version wasn't brought over, but I understand, and I'm okay with what we got. But I'd never consider buying If My Heart had Wings, or Wild Romance. Other people don't have a problem with censorship at all. They aren't wrong, they just don't have the same priorities. Still others are vehemently opposed to any censorship whatsoever, to the point they think charging more for adult versions is wrong. I think this is kind of silly, personally, but I could never prove it. My advice for the OP is to decide on your own principles, whatever they are, and then research titles to make sure you don't buy any that are on the wrong side of them. How much does censorship bother you? No one else can answer that for you.

What I'm suprised about is that you wrote a 95-pages document full of H-scenes and detailed descriptions about them.....

makes sense...

G’day everyone,I thought I’d see how hard it is to deconstruct the first episode of Lain. Serial Experiments Lain is often seen as one of the weirdest, and most confusing anime but I think it’s blown way out of proportion. One of its strengths is that you don’t understand everything on the first watching, one of its weaknesses is that you don’t understand everything on the first watching, but I don’t remember it being too confusing. So to put that to the test I’m going to rewatch the first episode for the first time in a decade, and quickly write down my thoughts while viewing it. This will be a quick analysis, there’ll be things that are missing like the importance of certain artistic effects, but it should show that getting a general idea of what’s going on isn’t too hard. Obviously spoiler alert. EPISODE 1: Key points in the first episode: - First scene and we see a young girl distressed in an alley. She’s panting, hand on heart, either running or fearful. A group of passers-by stop to point and laugh, uncaringly. Is that not the way of the world? This uncaring disconnect between people? This lack of empathy? Amid the normal everyday actions of Tokyo’s (I assume) nightlife, that same young girl now appears on a rooftop. She strips herself of her glasses, her hair unties, a metaphor showing herself becoming free. She has a smile on her face and she throws herself off the building. That she wasn’t scared or distressed means she wasn’t running away from something, rather she was at peace and happy which means she’s running toward something. What was she running toward? No clue at this stage. Anyway, the silence of her suicide scene and her beautiful smile juxtapose harshly with her loud and violent death. Words appear on the screen - ‘I don’t need to stay in a place like this’. - Next scene Lain appears on a bright morning in school get up. She’s walking down the stairs and is on her way to school. The imagery here is interesting, there’s an electrical hum that permeates strongly and a focus on the power lines. The hum is a metaphor for the wired or ‘internet’ which is everywhere, connecting people and hovering eternally in the background of everyday life. There and yet not there. The powerlines are the same and they also connect everything, but they don’t hover in the background. However, the shadows splotched with what I assume is blood at times are annoying. It was a late decision to insert the metaphor into the anime connecting shadows with the wired, that the wired is everywhere just underneath the surface. A shadow world. I believe they stuffed up here. This was already done with the humming, it was already done with the powerlines, this is just a rather inelegant way of hammering the audience with a concept and I just think it’s ugly and gaudy. It makes things easier for the creators to get some stuff across, but I think it’s unnecessarily whimsical. Anyway what’s done is done, so most every piece of shadow is splotched with stuff. - Lain is on a train travelling to school. Everyone on board is doing their own thing as people in society tend to do. In silence. We are becoming increasingly disconnected with each other, so we have people reading, sleeping, gazing romantically out of windows, but nobody interacting and sharing their lives. However Lain comments on how noisy it is, asking why things can’t quiet down. It confuses the train’s inhabitants because it’s quiet in the real world, but I’m sure that electric hum indicates a greater interactivity and connectivity somewhere else. Also interesting that Lain can hear it. Lain doesn’t notice the commotion she causes those near her. - She arrives at school with herself gazing at her splotchy shadow, then looking up and seeing reality melt away. Obviously not a metaphor at all of something, which isn’t at all related to the metaphor on the train. - In class one of Lain’s classmates is distressed. It appears the young lass who just committed suicide (Yomoda Chisa) has been sending emails to everybody, but how can that be when she’s dead? ‘You shouldn’t be getting mail from a dead girl’ says one of the girls. What truly sage advice. Interesting theme of digital existence is raised here, though. I wonder how they will deal with it. It should be noted here that this show was created in the 90s, well before these themes became mainstream. Words appear on the screen - ‘What’s it like when you die?’ ‘It really hurts :)’ – only if you chuck yourself off a building, crash through some neon signs, and have a vending machine topple onto you after you hit the pavement. In programming class, reality once again begins to melt away from Lain. Sounds fade away, things begin to blur, white smoke from fingers. Lain’s beginning to see things. - Lain is walking again, presumably home from school. In her bedroom she loads up her computer to discover she has mail from Yomoda Chisa. Not just any mail but a very personalised email from Yomoda Chisa resembling a conversation. ‘I walked home with you once, do you remember Lain? I have given up my body, but through this email I want you to know I’m still alive. Rumour has it that this is a prank, but it isn’t. Do you understand? No matter, everyone will understand soon.’ Absent here is the MWAHAHA evil laugh every member of a nefarious organisation uses when plotting something. Pity. When asked why she killed herself, Yomoda responds ‘God is here’. - Lain is at dinner with a very cold, unfeeling family. They are thoroughly disconnected from one another. There's no sharing of lives and feelings here. The sister leaves without finishing dinner to do her own thing. When Lain tells her mother about the email from the dead lady, her mother doesn’t respond. From her facial expression she doesn’t care. - She goes to find her father, who is a huge computer nerd and is so lost in the tech word he also doesn’t take an interest in his family’s life. She asks for a new computer so she can see a friend and he’s obviously happy to oblige saying she’s being left in the dust. ‘People connect with each other, that’s how society’s function’ the father says as he interacts with faceless avatars on the computer/wired (metaphor alert.) Remarkably these futuristic computers look like they’re running Windows 3.1 or something xD - Next scene. Lain’s on a train riding to school when the train suddenly halts due to an accident. And when I say ‘suddenly halts’ I mean it looks as though Lain is violently thrown into the door. She shakes it off like a champ, though. Lain looks out the window and things become white, the electrical hum gets louder, and splotchy shadows tinged with blood drip from the power lines. That’s a pretty strong metaphor about what just occurred, blood melting into the wired, also it shows that reality is melting away taking Lain along for the ride (or is it the other way round?) - Scenes flutter quickly one after another, whether by chance or is Lain searching for something? The middle of a busy crossing, stairs leading out of a subway, an empty school courtyard, an empty room, then white smoke, train tracks and ... the silhouette of a girl? The girl hops the barricade and runs in front of a train, a fanatical look on her face as the train collides with her. Is she laughing? Was this the cause of the accident Lain was just involved in? Why is Lain viewing this? - Lain jerks back to reality in her school classroom drenched with sweat. The teacher admonishes her and walks away. The words on the chalkboard start blurring and reality once again melts away from Lain. New words appear on the blackboard asking Lain to visit the Wired ASAP. - As Lain walks home she’s walking in the splotchy shadow. It surrounds her. Possibly important, because at this moment Yomoda Chisa strolls past. ‘Where are you’ Lain asks. Yomoda smiles, then her normal sad expression returns. Yomoda disappears. So yeah, the anime is confusing but I think it’s blown way out of proportion. If you pay attention and possibly do a bit of research, you should be fine. You might not get everything, but you’ll understand the gist of it. Though I doubt anybody is interested in the brief analysis of an almost 20 year old anime's first episode.