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If you were thinking this was going to be this embarrassing sexual-education type series (like Tsurezure Children which beats this show in every aspect) with a lot of humour and relatable situations then you're dead wrong.
You're in for one dimensional characters, unnecessary, formulaic drama-conflict and worst of all: NO SEX-ED HUMOUR!

I'm not saying this should've been a hentai, that wasn't my expectation but when that charlatan Gigguk recommended this to me as an awkward shoujo about girls interested in sex, I thought it was going to be an awkward shoujo about girls interested in sex.

The characters are absolutely trash.
We have:
- love triangle foreign girl with ... this mysterious and deep personal philosophy /s
- nerdy perverted chikan girl
- fujoshi
- normal girl
and lest we forget
- token lesbian...
... because we have to be inclusive but can't be bothered to do it right.
If I said that this show was worth my time, i'd be lying. I'm a completionist at heart and kept trying to give it that final chance to shine because by some miracle i'd breached the three-episode threshold but at episode 8.5 I have to concede.

Don't watch this trashy show and don't watch shows like it. There's no humour, no comedy and no awkward sexuality. There's only cliches and tropes.

Go watch Tsurezure Children instead, or Nichijou.

In this review i'll try to focus on what exactly made this show special for me.
First i'll address the elephant in the room, Neon Genesis which is it's contemporary, and which enjoys much more attention but doesn't exactly deserve all of it.

I enjoyed it but it tried to convey it's message only half heartedly and tried to be more than it actually was with the human instrumentality being but a device to advance the plot and the religious symbolism having absolutely no reason or purpose which is what I particularly dislike about media, which is when they use symbols with no reference or meaning behind ... them.

A lot of people would call that pretentious, I don't know if that's justified.
(I know that you can't really spoil Serial Experiments Lain since it is less of a plot driven story and more of a character analysis and philosophic narrative, still I will try to omit 'spoilers'.)

Lain is a story about a girl who struggles with existence and connection.
Japan in Lain's world is a place similar to ours where families grow apart, driven by frigidity, where people commit suicide because they cannot cope with loneliness and depression and where the internet takes a very sinister turn. As the episodes go on, Lain learns of her exploits that she doesn't seem to recall - she suffers from an identity crisis.

The story progresses and the world is explored more thoroughly, explaining how things came to pass and what things are like. What is reality? What is the purpose of the Internet within reality? What is identity?

Not your traditional hero's journey, since the entity 'Lain' is fragmented in three personas, but the one we recognise best eventually disregards her circumstance and the causality that seems to lead to nothing but suffering. It is once again love that saves the day, classic.

After seeing this series twice I think I can say I understand most of it sufficiently. You can watch it a thousand times and each and every scene and frame will have a magnitude of meaning behind it, still that does never take away from the raw being of character that is Lain, Arisu and everyone else.

You can get so much out of this series, and everything means something.
Neon Genesis is a show that tried to be but was so poorly-planned that it couldn't fit within it's budget and then turned into patchwork that was supposed to have meaning but really ... was only damage control for Gainax. There's a reason why there's a trilogy of remakes for NGE and why SEL is completed with just a few merchandise out there.

NGE tried to be a message on depression and the anime community being overtaken by otakus, only to become the staple otaku product. SEL is timeless, it's fantastical, it's edifying and electrifying and it's definitely underrated.

Now first i'll say I really enjoyed the anime.
The next thing i'll say is that I consider the manga a step down.

Put your pitchfork and torches down, I have my reasons.
1. Visuals
The manga has great visuals but sometimes the detail is so much that you pretty much can't see or understand what's happening, especially with all the concepts flying in and out.
The humanoid characters are drawn pretty well, the other characters are as if H.R. Giger became a furry. Phallic shapes everywhere with weird mutant fleshy deformities.

I guess that's nice, but it still confuses me and I wouldn't mind something a bit more ... normal, ... I guess?

2. Story
As I said, the concepts are tiresome.
The Bondrewd arch was great, but it was also very linear.
I also noticed that in this supposedly uncivilised world waiting to be explored they spend almost all of their time at some kind of shady bed and breakfast.

I wouldn't mind a little less towns and a little more cool world to explore.
I don't like me being showered with lore either. I don't care about that, I care about the world at hand. Not to mention we still haven't seen traces of Wakuna or Srajo.

I went into this expecting Dante's Inferno meets Girls Last Tour but instead I got Fallout: the manga, traveling from settlement to settlement and having to sit through epochs of fucking lore through conversation.

3. Character
I really like the characters. I could dive deeper into this but I complain better than I praise.
All I have to say is that the characters are diverse and well written. If you like femdom, I really recommend this series. I particularly liked the merchant fellow from the Narehate Village but he's pretty much the only good thing about that entire place.

4. Enjoyment
This manga can be tedious at times because of the incredibly slow pacing. You'd have to wait months to get a glimpse into this new cryptic story that ends in a cliffhanger. I wish I didn't have to rack my brain and quell my haste every time I tried to read this. Don't hold your breath folks, nothing spectacular really happens here.

Even the shock value has diminished.
"XD daddy's rod, aren't I edgy"
":DDD whip sexy naked kids"
"oh shit, it's the anarcho capitalist world DDD:"

I think that sums it up.
Don't enter this with high expectations. This really is quite mediocre, despite what contrarians will say, trying to show how open minded they are by following this new, avant-garde cringefest where the author tries to keep us entertained with the occasional shock.

I've been on the internet for too long for this to work on me.
Liveleak and Bestgore pretty much ruin this manga for anyone.

I am not sure if I can express in words what this anime made me feel and experience.
This anime had all of it. Everything. Except sound, which there were few good tracks of but a kind of mediocre OP and ED. That is where my criticism ends.

Everything else was top notch.
The story is realistic, and goes over character flaws and their mundane lives very well and still manages to slowly introduce this enticing plot about terrorists advocating for the ethics of space colonisation when Earth isn't optimised yet. This anime portrays characters in such a realistic fashion and in such variety it's almost frightening.

The ... science fiction is for once very non-fictional and talks about very real problems and the technique and events are also very realistic which still doesn't take away from the suspense. It's because there's realism that you are wondering what's going to happen next - this anime is not one to introduce "epic power level increase when in a heightened state of euphoria", no, the characters are all susceptible to failure.

I love how this anime didn't try too hard to push for continuity, as in, it didn't prove each and every "dream" of the characters. It tries to show the beauty of life behind all of the hardships and it damn well succeeds at it.

There's no if or um, this anime really kicks you in the stomach at some point. There is no climax, only a great depression followed by the moment characters experience their philosophical epiphany.

There is no forced romance. The chemistry between Tanabe and Hachi is just right. You'd expect they would maybe try something of an affair with mister pilot man, but no. No unnecessary drama. Claire lets Hachi go instead of going on a vengeful crusade to win him back like shittier shows would've done.

I really liked the politics and philosophy of the show and they struck me right where it counts.
What more can I say? I fucking loved it.

I hope there's a season two. No, I demand a season two.
There's Saturn still unexplored and we haven't seen a single frame of Jupiter. Then there's also Hachi and Tanabe's child.

Don't read this comment, GO WATCH IT AND BUY ALL THE MERCH.