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In this episode, Daryl doesn’t seem to understand that we already reviewed Serial Experiments Lain 20 years ago! A shame, he seemed an…incredibly dishonest man, but still! How close/far to the mark was this speculation fiction on the Internet from 28 years ago?
Introduction (0:00 – 32:32)
Daryl just celebrated his 46th birthday, and that means it’s Millennial Midlife Crisis gifts as he fawns over his LEGO Game Boy and Transformers G1 Masterpiece Starscream (knockoff). But a new anime season is upon us, which means that it’s time for another trailer watch-along this weekend (for those of you not attending Anime Boston, anyway!) over on our Discord. Back us on Patreon to get chat permissions! We ruminate on some of our favorites from the previous season, which because we’re elderly means the top shows were clearly the continuing adventures of Baki as well as the end (for now) of Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider.
We also touch upon the convoluted situation regarding the Netflix broadcast schedule or apparent lack thereof of the much-anticipated Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, and make mention of the upcoming Science Saru series The Ghost in the Shell, which no matter how cool it looks is unlikely to be prominently featured on Prime Video unless they get with the program already. Incidentally, the show Gerald was trying to remember the name of is Citadel, and it’s merely the SECOND most expensive TV show ever because of the Marvel Studios-esque level of reshoots performed. No expense can be spared in yet another attempt to make the name Priyanka Chopra mean something to Americans other than “the lady who married the one Jonas Brother.”
It’s not as though Hulu fares much better, which is a shame since we talk about Medalist and pontificate on why it remains an obscurity despite the elevated profile of figure skating due to the Winter Olympics (and America winning the gold). There was no fervor over Medalist the way there was for Yuri!!! on Ice a decade ago. Wait, a DECADE ago? Yep, it’s already been ten years.
We wrap things up by noting that the Chainsaw Man manga has concluded, and without going into spoiler territory talk about why it’s an ending which has polarized readers.
Review: Serial Experiments Lain (32:32 – 1:37:05)
Both Gerald and Clarissa–as well as seemingly all of our Discord Patrons–had completely forgotten that we actually reviewed this series roughly 20 years ago back in Show 35. Nevertheless, inspired last episode by the suggestion that we revisit certain titles, Daryl elects to weigh in on one of the most beloved anime titles of the late 1990s/early 2000s. Lain has inspired no shortage of scholarly analysis, and to this day retains recognition on modern fandom platforms such as TikTok and YouTube. There even continue to be (mostly terrible) indie games made, and preorders for the Lain in bear pajamas Nenderoid are open right now at the time of this post’s writing. Has our thoughts on it changed since the days we first saw it, 26 to 28 years ago? Spoilers: no, not really. But we may as well reminisce about the past which happened to also be the present day…present time.
