Lain

Rewatched Lain this week. Third time. Maybe fourth.

1998. Nothing since has understood the internet better. The loneliness of being perpetually connected.. The way you stop knowing which version of yourself is the real one. Figured out before any of this existed and nobody listened because it was a weird anime about a quiet girl and her computer.

There's an image of her alone in her room surrounded by humming machines and cooling fans and wires everywhere. I try not to think too hard about why it stuck.

Don't watch new anime. Maybe aged out. Maybe everything I needed was in the few that mattered.

A boy who gets in the robot because it's the only way to feel needed. A man who keeps walking forward because stopping means dying. A girl who dissolves into the network because the real world had nothing left for her.

Not fun stories. I keep coming back to them.

Eleanor