Is serial experiments lain the greatest commentary on the Internet

the scene in episode 13 when you see every character without lain in their lives and the song that plays was very good

>>8656217
>modern phenomena
>modern

Commentary or critique?
I think Walter Benjamin tried to establish a difference between both of them. Maybe critique is the proper term.

>>8656248
OP here, I think I actually mean analysis, though I guess critique would be somewhat under that umbrella.

>>8656232
>modem phenomena

>>8656217
Yes. Anime will remain the most appropriate medium for cyberpunk. Western cyberpunk was overwhelmingly born out of unfounded paranoia of Reagan and Thatcher unleashing a corporate dystopia, and faded to parody when they brought an era of prosperity instead. Japanese cyberpunk draws more on the actual feeling of disconnectedness one feels in Japanese culture on and offline. Americans wouldn't have made cyberpunk as brightly colored as Dennou Coil, and now they can't - it wouldn't be recognized without the permanent rain.

Expect another era of vapid American cyberpunk in the Trump era, too, just as paranoid and even less well-founded.

>>8656290
What is the political agenda behind Japanese cyber pink? Is it still edgy dumb communism?

>>8656296
Normal Japanese people don't talk or think about politics, so it's very possible it's just a background with no deeper meaning whatsoever.

>>8656296
The Oriental view of politics - and I'm not trying to generalize the Far East, this concept descends from the Chinese emperors and is alive in Japan at least - is not the Western paradigm of revolution and progress. It's eternal recurrence. There will always be The Heavens, The Earth, your lord, and your ancestors. In times past the emperor may have been a Qing, Tang, or Communist Party, may have ruled from a cloister or been a figurehead for a shogun, but the concept of "all men are kings" is completely foreign. Liberal democracy is not seen so much as a right to be respected but as an efficient way of doing things.

What I'm saying is the politics of Japanese cyberpunk are personal. They are about the effects of technology on individuals, not nations. The internet took the West to bright colors, blue and white, and when it's black it's sleek and cool, Facebook and Apple. The internet took Japan to 2ch and suicide forests.

>>8658140
>Oriental view of politics
>It's eternal recurrence
>The Heavens, The Earth, your lord, and your ancestors

no one under 45 there believes that shit anymore, the distribution of attitudes towards governance is something akin to those of the Soviet Union, Japan is almost painfully apolitical as turnout drops every election in a country that is aging, everywhere else is corrupt as shit and the youth know it

>>8658228
>no one under 45 there believes that shit anymore
Hardly anyone there ever did. They don't disbelieve it. They don't care. Painfully apolitical, like you said.

>>8656217
this show is so overrated

>>8656217

The defining literature that constitutes any kind of useful commentary on the post-modern world and the internet has nothing to do with "Chinese" kids TV.

Entry level items are Continental philosophy, Burroughs and PKD. Notice how there weren't any cartoons or The Matrix in there?

Step up your game.