You've Got a Stew Going! by Ryan Veeder
You don't have to be a hero
Some games put you in the role of a shining knight, rescuing princesses and kingdoms, defeating evil forces and powerful monsters. And in some games you're just a dirty, smelling rat. The latter is the case in You've got a Stew going by Ryan Veeder.
On your quest for ingredients to put in the namesake stew, you explore a small set of tunnels and openings to the surface. There are a few NPCs that can be interacted with, but conversation isn't too important or interesting. I was trying my best to woo Fran, the female rat, but to no avail. There are some funny custom responses, but also some meta-references I could have done without. Puzzles are solvable though I would have wished for a less mono-dimensional way of solving some of them (e.g. the one with the girl). Even after trying quite a few things I couldn't get the optional sixth point.
I like happy little games like this one, motivating the player by being humourous and giving him a concrete goal and solveable, logical puzzles.
In the case of You've got a Stew going, the game is very playable though on the short side and amongst aforementioned details lacking some more items to use, so I give it a pretty good
5/10
Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Monday, 2 November 2015
One Piece manga RANT - Chapter 1 (part 1)
More like none piece of mind - and by that I mean non cents (PUN well kinda)
Part 1 of what hopefully will be an ongoing series and the original idea I wanted to create this blog for in the first place (though with Naruto part 2 instead - well eventually I'll get to that as well). Picking apart the shonen shit that is supposed to be a pirate adventury kind of thing though it's obviously some superhuman freakshow brawling instead. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the bottom of the barrel... ONE PIECE! (I'd rather have wine than Luffy in it, too.)
By the way, I wrote this some couple years back, so it's my oldest content other than the interactive fiction reviews (maybe?) featured here (with some revisions though. I'm worse with revisions than the Game Dude. Hell maybe even worse than George Lucas!). Also, I doubt that much of the horrible dialogue is caused by the translation. This is just horrendously unreadable if you like (your) manga to be a serious art form.
One Piece
Chapter 1
You know you're reading shitty manga when the first panel already doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Once upon a time (or rather not too long ago, I guess), the famous pirate Gold Roger had "conquered every single treasure that existed". Do I even need to say why this does not compute? Yes, since that is exactly the point of my reviews...
-) every single treasure would mean all of the gold, silver, paintings, art objects etc. in the entire world - so how did he transport it? Where did he store it? Let alone how did Gold Roger gather it in the first place?
-) gathering up a full amount of something that does not have intrinsic value pretty much renders it worthless. What would he buy with his unlimited resources if he already has "all the shinies"?!
-) Nami finds treasure soon enough into the manga, so obviously the "entire treasure of the world" isn't even TRUE. Seriously, why start your manga with something THIS stupid...
So with GR's execution the world "enters" the pirate age... clearly nobody has noticed GR stealing everything that isn't nailed down before then. The death of the biggest pirate of all time STARTS the pirate age. Yeah, that totally makes sense. If you're stupid.
Damn, all these problems and we're still on the first page. And the next one doesn't really improve things. The art is quite pretty and detailed though, no complaints about that.
Enter our protagonist, the oddly named "Monkey" D. Luffy. Nobody ever calls him Monkey though, so who the hell cares. At this point we have our first sign of shonen stupidity. Luffy, whose mouth alone is apparently bigger than his torso, cuts his FACE with a dagger. Good thing you didn't slip there or the eye would have been gone as well. Anyway this act of pure idiocy apparently proves he's a badass or something and continued to be allowed to hang out with his pirate pals. All side characters, especially crew members are always drawn to be bizarre freaks, by the way. The fat fuck who is always seen eating cartoonish meat on the bone is clearly the biggest offender here.
Anyway, Shanks, the good-hearted pirate who apparently never robs, rapes and kills people, is Luffy's big idol. We learn that Luffy can't swim - keep that in mind. Luffy is "tricked" into drinking juice to prove he's still a kid - obviously true pirates never drink juice. It's not like there would be such a thing as scurvy after all, damn those vitamins! Generic Nami-lookalike #1 is shown to be feeding kid Luffy, who has the best teeth in the world, being able to rip bites off steaks (maybe he is too dumb to be able to use fork and knife?) though it still would be nice to get to know why he doesn't have a family. Maybe Shanks will turn out to be his father...? That kind of predictable bullshit sure enough happened in Naruto, so maybe here too.
The next plot point is the apparent rivalry between "bandits" and pirates, which makes no sense whatsoever. It's the PIRATE AGE and the bandit leader has never seen pirates, yeah right. The pirates had been using this village as a base "for almost a year", and all the One Piece world consists of small islands - and bandits don't have ships, or they would BE pirates themselves. Do the math how it makes NO sense for the bandits to never have met the pirates. Also the bandit leader goes around breaking doors, smashing bottles on peoples' heads, littering and saying things like "We're bandits", not expecting anyone to get pissed off and removing such a threat to your village from his or her village. (I've met assholes only slightly less fucked in the head than this guy in real life, by the way - in school. And by that I mean BOTH teachers and students.) One piece people all live in small, constantly threatened villages (kinda like in Fist of the North Star) so this kind of behaviour is pretty stupid. Shanks takes the bandit leader's insults like a pacifistic bitch, pissing off little 8-year-old Luffy as a result. What kind of pirates would laugh off such a situation, especially considering how they act mere pages later.
Continued in http://supersanereviews.blogspot.co.at/2017/02/one-piece-manga-rant-chapter-1-part-2.html
Part 1 of what hopefully will be an ongoing series and the original idea I wanted to create this blog for in the first place (though with Naruto part 2 instead - well eventually I'll get to that as well). Picking apart the shonen shit that is supposed to be a pirate adventury kind of thing though it's obviously some superhuman freakshow brawling instead. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the bottom of the barrel... ONE PIECE! (I'd rather have wine than Luffy in it, too.)
By the way, I wrote this some couple years back, so it's my oldest content other than the interactive fiction reviews (maybe?) featured here (with some revisions though. I'm worse with revisions than the Game Dude. Hell maybe even worse than George Lucas!). Also, I doubt that much of the horrible dialogue is caused by the translation. This is just horrendously unreadable if you like (your) manga to be a serious art form.
One Piece
Chapter 1
You know you're reading shitty manga when the first panel already doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Once upon a time (or rather not too long ago, I guess), the famous pirate Gold Roger had "conquered every single treasure that existed". Do I even need to say why this does not compute? Yes, since that is exactly the point of my reviews...
-) every single treasure would mean all of the gold, silver, paintings, art objects etc. in the entire world - so how did he transport it? Where did he store it? Let alone how did Gold Roger gather it in the first place?
-) gathering up a full amount of something that does not have intrinsic value pretty much renders it worthless. What would he buy with his unlimited resources if he already has "all the shinies"?!
-) Nami finds treasure soon enough into the manga, so obviously the "entire treasure of the world" isn't even TRUE. Seriously, why start your manga with something THIS stupid...
So with GR's execution the world "enters" the pirate age... clearly nobody has noticed GR stealing everything that isn't nailed down before then. The death of the biggest pirate of all time STARTS the pirate age. Yeah, that totally makes sense. If you're stupid.
Damn, all these problems and we're still on the first page. And the next one doesn't really improve things. The art is quite pretty and detailed though, no complaints about that.
Enter our protagonist, the oddly named "Monkey" D. Luffy. Nobody ever calls him Monkey though, so who the hell cares. At this point we have our first sign of shonen stupidity. Luffy, whose mouth alone is apparently bigger than his torso, cuts his FACE with a dagger. Good thing you didn't slip there or the eye would have been gone as well. Anyway this act of pure idiocy apparently proves he's a badass or something and continued to be allowed to hang out with his pirate pals. All side characters, especially crew members are always drawn to be bizarre freaks, by the way. The fat fuck who is always seen eating cartoonish meat on the bone is clearly the biggest offender here.
Anyway, Shanks, the good-hearted pirate who apparently never robs, rapes and kills people, is Luffy's big idol. We learn that Luffy can't swim - keep that in mind. Luffy is "tricked" into drinking juice to prove he's still a kid - obviously true pirates never drink juice. It's not like there would be such a thing as scurvy after all, damn those vitamins! Generic Nami-lookalike #1 is shown to be feeding kid Luffy, who has the best teeth in the world, being able to rip bites off steaks (maybe he is too dumb to be able to use fork and knife?) though it still would be nice to get to know why he doesn't have a family. Maybe Shanks will turn out to be his father...? That kind of predictable bullshit sure enough happened in Naruto, so maybe here too.
The next plot point is the apparent rivalry between "bandits" and pirates, which makes no sense whatsoever. It's the PIRATE AGE and the bandit leader has never seen pirates, yeah right. The pirates had been using this village as a base "for almost a year", and all the One Piece world consists of small islands - and bandits don't have ships, or they would BE pirates themselves. Do the math how it makes NO sense for the bandits to never have met the pirates. Also the bandit leader goes around breaking doors, smashing bottles on peoples' heads, littering and saying things like "We're bandits", not expecting anyone to get pissed off and removing such a threat to your village from his or her village. (I've met assholes only slightly less fucked in the head than this guy in real life, by the way - in school. And by that I mean BOTH teachers and students.) One piece people all live in small, constantly threatened villages (kinda like in Fist of the North Star) so this kind of behaviour is pretty stupid. Shanks takes the bandit leader's insults like a pacifistic bitch, pissing off little 8-year-old Luffy as a result. What kind of pirates would laugh off such a situation, especially considering how they act mere pages later.
Continued in http://supersanereviews.blogspot.co.at/2017/02/one-piece-manga-rant-chapter-1-part-2.html
Saturday, 10 October 2015
Why I dropped #1 - Shingeki no Kyojin (aka "Attack on Titan") manga
Shingeki no Kyojin by Hajime Isayama
The CHARACTER design
So here is an update on my AOT review after reading a part of the manga that exceeds the material covered in the anime´s Season 1.
First of all, I liked the manga a bit better (which, of course, is the case with most manga to anime conversions I have experienced). The diversions from manga to anime are really minimal. The horrible chapter dealing with the basic training is shifted to a later point in the story (and should have not been published in the first place - it is atrocious as I described in my anime review). By the way, I realized there actually IS a leader presiding over all three branches of the military (though why we do not see more of him is anyone´s guess).
The big monkey on the back is of course the clusterfuck of a drawing style. Proportions are almost laughably bad. In the very first chapter the wall is described as being only 50 meters high, when compared with the height of a human it looks to be more like 150-200 meters! This is quite important of course, since a 200m Titan would be neigh unstoppable with humankind´s limited weaponry! The copy-and-paste buildings are of course another beam in the eye of the beholder´s brother. On the other hand, elements like the titans and humans (I can actually tell the most important characters apart on a glance!) are flawlessly designed, if not anything special.
But, since art style in manga and anime - just like graphics in video games - are really neglegible in importance to me, the reason why I dropped Shingeki no Kyojin eventually was the author´s betrayal of the original premise of the story.
To elaborate, AOT started out as the conflict of humanity and
EDIT: This post remained unfinished for some time. By now I have forgotten what I wanted to write, so here's the crucial point because of which I made the decision to stop: useless side-characters were getting long-winded backstories, and in a story where characters are so uniform and ultra-bland in the first place that just wasn't bearable as it didn't add the slightest thing to the main plot. So I gladly gave up on finishing this manga.
The CHARACTER design
So here is an update on my AOT review after reading a part of the manga that exceeds the material covered in the anime´s Season 1.
First of all, I liked the manga a bit better (which, of course, is the case with most manga to anime conversions I have experienced). The diversions from manga to anime are really minimal. The horrible chapter dealing with the basic training is shifted to a later point in the story (and should have not been published in the first place - it is atrocious as I described in my anime review). By the way, I realized there actually IS a leader presiding over all three branches of the military (though why we do not see more of him is anyone´s guess).
The big monkey on the back is of course the clusterfuck of a drawing style. Proportions are almost laughably bad. In the very first chapter the wall is described as being only 50 meters high, when compared with the height of a human it looks to be more like 150-200 meters! This is quite important of course, since a 200m Titan would be neigh unstoppable with humankind´s limited weaponry! The copy-and-paste buildings are of course another beam in the eye of the beholder´s brother. On the other hand, elements like the titans and humans (I can actually tell the most important characters apart on a glance!) are flawlessly designed, if not anything special.
But, since art style in manga and anime - just like graphics in video games - are really neglegible in importance to me, the reason why I dropped Shingeki no Kyojin eventually was the author´s betrayal of the original premise of the story.
To elaborate, AOT started out as the conflict of humanity and
EDIT: This post remained unfinished for some time. By now I have forgotten what I wanted to write, so here's the crucial point because of which I made the decision to stop: useless side-characters were getting long-winded backstories, and in a story where characters are so uniform and ultra-bland in the first place that just wasn't bearable as it didn't add the slightest thing to the main plot. So I gladly gave up on finishing this manga.
Sunday, 20 September 2015
Interactive fiction review #8 - The Streets of London
The Streets of London by Allen Webb and Grant Privett (1982)
Sorry I don't follow your banter? Sorry I can't beat the authors up!
The Streets of London, originally released on the Commodore 64, seems to be a great grand uncle of the 2002 disasterpiece Underground Compound, because it is equally unplayable and disgustingly bad.
In this "game" your protagonist, named Marvin K Molestrangler, is on a quest to find the Holy Grail of all things! The Streets of London's Wikipedia article (!) claims that the game's humour was based on Monty Python, which is more than an insult to the legendary comedy troupe. I could spot only one or two references during the time I wasted on this garbage, the main one of course being the Holy Grail.
Nothing in this game makes the slightest sense. The map is confusing, rooms completely undetailed. The player is moved around randomly. You are given no indication of what to do. The parser... don't even ask. Interactive fiction sure has come a long way, but this parser is atrocious even for 1982. Your enemies in this game (there is a real-time fighting minigame that is impenetrable and probably completely broken) consist of "nasty old ladies" and "antepodians" (misspelt). The game's complete lack of any coherence and reason was maybe be intended to be amusing, but in reality it only manages to annoy and induce anger.
The Streets of London is a remnant of the dark age of interactive fiction, and even in this category failed to produce any legacy other than being one of the frustratingly worst disgraces to videogaming ever produced. Truly, it baffles my mind what the authors ever intended to accomplish with this... but then again you would have to share their insanity to be able to enjoy The Streets of London...
1/10
Sorry I don't follow your banter? Sorry I can't beat the authors up!
The Streets of London, originally released on the Commodore 64, seems to be a great grand uncle of the 2002 disasterpiece Underground Compound, because it is equally unplayable and disgustingly bad.
In this "game" your protagonist, named Marvin K Molestrangler, is on a quest to find the Holy Grail of all things! The Streets of London's Wikipedia article (!) claims that the game's humour was based on Monty Python, which is more than an insult to the legendary comedy troupe. I could spot only one or two references during the time I wasted on this garbage, the main one of course being the Holy Grail.
Nothing in this game makes the slightest sense. The map is confusing, rooms completely undetailed. The player is moved around randomly. You are given no indication of what to do. The parser... don't even ask. Interactive fiction sure has come a long way, but this parser is atrocious even for 1982. Your enemies in this game (there is a real-time fighting minigame that is impenetrable and probably completely broken) consist of "nasty old ladies" and "antepodians" (misspelt). The game's complete lack of any coherence and reason was maybe be intended to be amusing, but in reality it only manages to annoy and induce anger.
The Streets of London is a remnant of the dark age of interactive fiction, and even in this category failed to produce any legacy other than being one of the frustratingly worst disgraces to videogaming ever produced. Truly, it baffles my mind what the authors ever intended to accomplish with this... but then again you would have to share their insanity to be able to enjoy The Streets of London...
1/10
Sunday, 6 September 2015
Interactive Fiction review #7 - CERCLA
CERCLA by J. P. Robinson (1993)
I swear people make these horrible games on purpose!
CERCLA by Jeffrey P. Robinson is yet another example for a game that never should have been made.
Your valiant search for... documents or something (the introduction is REALLY boring) leads you through a maximum of 169 (!) rooms which are "luckily" mostly empty. What begins in an office environment soon turns into something suffering from "unnecessary-inclusion-of-fantasy syndrome"(tm). As soon as I encountered the first dwarf the game was pretty much over for me.
But of course the problems of this game start right away on the first screen. Rather than letting the player carry items in his inventory you have to use a container, which serves no purpose whatsoever other than making things more tedious for the player.
You can barely examine or do anything in this game. "I don't understand x as a verb. You can't see y here. I don't. You can't. Mehmy mehmy meh." It's so much fun playing a colossally huge game with barely anything to look at or do! I swear some people put bad gameplay in their games on purpose just to piss the unsuspecting player off!
The writing in this game is not quite as piss-poor as some other atrocities I've encountered, but there are some very weird things happening.
The men's and women's bathroom descriptions, for example, produce the exact same text (including some very specific things that make this completely illogical) other than replacing the words "men" and "women", respectively. On two different floors!!!
Poems (not the author's!) are included randomly. Items are usually "glued down" or can't be taken for other ridiculous reasons. There are weird political undertones. There is no differentiation between entering a room for the first and sequential times, so things happen again and again when you press look or leave and re-enter a room. Even a creature you can kill is resurrected this way! The seriousness of the memos and documents you find and read (all of them boring and uninteresting) is painfully juxtaposed with the silliness of encountering fantasy creatures. In one location you encounter, of all things, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean, what did you expect, the Addams Family?!
Documents specifically adressing the player just lie around in the game world. In one instance you find the directions you can go to not in the room description, but in a note you find on the ground!!!
This game is a total mess and probably the result of the usage of some weird drugs. In fact, only that would explain the existence of this abomination perfectly.
1/10
I swear people make these horrible games on purpose!
CERCLA by Jeffrey P. Robinson is yet another example for a game that never should have been made.
Your valiant search for... documents or something (the introduction is REALLY boring) leads you through a maximum of 169 (!) rooms which are "luckily" mostly empty. What begins in an office environment soon turns into something suffering from "unnecessary-inclusion-of-fantasy syndrome"(tm). As soon as I encountered the first dwarf the game was pretty much over for me.
But of course the problems of this game start right away on the first screen. Rather than letting the player carry items in his inventory you have to use a container, which serves no purpose whatsoever other than making things more tedious for the player.
You can barely examine or do anything in this game. "I don't understand x as a verb. You can't see y here. I don't. You can't. Mehmy mehmy meh." It's so much fun playing a colossally huge game with barely anything to look at or do! I swear some people put bad gameplay in their games on purpose just to piss the unsuspecting player off!
The writing in this game is not quite as piss-poor as some other atrocities I've encountered, but there are some very weird things happening.
The men's and women's bathroom descriptions, for example, produce the exact same text (including some very specific things that make this completely illogical) other than replacing the words "men" and "women", respectively. On two different floors!!!
Poems (not the author's!) are included randomly. Items are usually "glued down" or can't be taken for other ridiculous reasons. There are weird political undertones. There is no differentiation between entering a room for the first and sequential times, so things happen again and again when you press look or leave and re-enter a room. Even a creature you can kill is resurrected this way! The seriousness of the memos and documents you find and read (all of them boring and uninteresting) is painfully juxtaposed with the silliness of encountering fantasy creatures. In one location you encounter, of all things, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I mean, what did you expect, the Addams Family?!
Documents specifically adressing the player just lie around in the game world. In one instance you find the directions you can go to not in the room description, but in a note you find on the ground!!!
This game is a total mess and probably the result of the usage of some weird drugs. In fact, only that would explain the existence of this abomination perfectly.
1/10
Wednesday, 2 September 2015
Interactive fiction review #6 - The Onion of Destiny
The Onion of Destiny by Jason Dyer
Very short and plain speed-IF
The Onion of Destiny is a four-turn-minimum game set on the top of the Eiffel Tower. The sole puzzle is quickly figured out and the game over in a matter of minutes. You can also <spoiler>just wait for a number of turns to get the alternative ending.<end of spoiler>
There is really nothing noteworthy or special about this game, there is no humour or twist that would make it stand out even a little.
The only thing of interest I've noticed was a sentence missing a word ("The fistfight is far too complicated to possible"), but that's it. :-)
2/10
Very short and plain speed-IF
The Onion of Destiny is a four-turn-minimum game set on the top of the Eiffel Tower. The sole puzzle is quickly figured out and the game over in a matter of minutes. You can also <spoiler>just wait for a number of turns to get the alternative ending.<end of spoiler>
There is really nothing noteworthy or special about this game, there is no humour or twist that would make it stand out even a little.
The only thing of interest I've noticed was a sentence missing a word ("The fistfight is far too complicated to possible"), but that's it. :-)
2/10
Tuesday, 18 August 2015
Anime review #2 - Serial Experiment Lain
Serial Experiment Lain - directed by Ryutaro Nakamura (1998)
The thing that drains you of your life force, one episode at a time
SEL is an experimental anime that disappoints across the board.
The plot is minimalistic to the bone. An adolescent girl gets hooked on the internet (which is called the "Wired"), visits a club with her friends, finds out her parents are actually actors or something, discovers she is only the material reflection of her "ghost in the machine" actual self (in other words a program), meets the "God" of the Wired (who turns out to be a forgettable loser) and ultimately rescinds her material existence to remain a silent, virtual watcher.
Now if you think something like - Wow, this is somewhat similar to the Matrix, this could be awesome! - No. This is nothing like Matrix. Not even like the sequels, and it hurts to use those as a positive example.
Describing SEL in only one word is easy, and the word is BORING. There are really no words for how watching the trickle of extremely repetitive events (well, traces of events), none of which ever form a coherent plot, bores the living shit out of the viewer! Watching Lain is best described by an analogy describing the results of eating spoiled (or really, any) fast food: Shit flushes through you, leaving no traces behind. What I can actually remember of the occurrences in Lain (like e.g. a girl committing suicide in the first episode) is not even worth mentioning because the mindless drone level of the series shuts out any event from being interesting, meaningful, or consequential! Watching this as an anime is utterly pointless. While viewing Lain I briefly thought about the idea of somebody creating an audiovisual collage from the footage, but that thought passed quickly. To boil down Lain to an essence, nothing happens and what happens... amounts to nothing.
One thing that usually never distract me is the unusually bad voice acting (we are talking about the original Japanese here of course, I don't watch dubs as a matter of principle). Lain, especially the fake one (I'm as confused as you are here...), has a really ugly, unsympathetic and toneless voice. Also, the obligatory stupid trio of little kids ("cool" wannabe protagonist boy, bratty girl infatuated to aforementioned and snot-nosed loser sidekick - so Naruto didn't even invent that... huh) has voice actors even the lousiest fandubbers (now that's a tautology) wouldn't hire.
What remains from Serial Experiment Lain are the bear pyjama (if that had been featured in a BETTER anime, it naturally would have assumed cult status) and Lain's stupid hair tie thingy. By the way, Lain has the ugliest eyes I've ever seen by far. Geinus (sic) idea, by the way, making her eyes the same colour as her hair. *puke*
Some episodes had visual noise comparable to the battle scenes in Puella Magica Madoka in it - I really hate that shit.
Oh yeah, and contrary to what the screenwriter stated, the Evangelion ripoff shots really pile up. But what's new in Animeland... what's new.
With all it shortcomings and lack of any good material or ideas whatsoever, SEL luckily still can't conquer the title of worst anime of all time... that honour remains with the dreadful vortex of suck called... no. Let the horror be unnamed for now...
...or not. Naruto Shippuden. The horror.
The thing that drains you of your life force, one episode at a time
SEL is an experimental anime that disappoints across the board.
 |
| Even this picture sucks, because it mentions Lain. |
The plot is minimalistic to the bone. An adolescent girl gets hooked on the internet (which is called the "Wired"), visits a club with her friends, finds out her parents are actually actors or something, discovers she is only the material reflection of her "ghost in the machine" actual self (in other words a program), meets the "God" of the Wired (who turns out to be a forgettable loser) and ultimately rescinds her material existence to remain a silent, virtual watcher.
Now if you think something like - Wow, this is somewhat similar to the Matrix, this could be awesome! - No. This is nothing like Matrix. Not even like the sequels, and it hurts to use those as a positive example.
Describing SEL in only one word is easy, and the word is BORING. There are really no words for how watching the trickle of extremely repetitive events (well, traces of events), none of which ever form a coherent plot, bores the living shit out of the viewer! Watching Lain is best described by an analogy describing the results of eating spoiled (or really, any) fast food: Shit flushes through you, leaving no traces behind. What I can actually remember of the occurrences in Lain (like e.g. a girl committing suicide in the first episode) is not even worth mentioning because the mindless drone level of the series shuts out any event from being interesting, meaningful, or consequential! Watching this as an anime is utterly pointless. While viewing Lain I briefly thought about the idea of somebody creating an audiovisual collage from the footage, but that thought passed quickly. To boil down Lain to an essence, nothing happens and what happens... amounts to nothing.
One thing that usually never distract me is the unusually bad voice acting (we are talking about the original Japanese here of course, I don't watch dubs as a matter of principle). Lain, especially the fake one (I'm as confused as you are here...), has a really ugly, unsympathetic and toneless voice. Also, the obligatory stupid trio of little kids ("cool" wannabe protagonist boy, bratty girl infatuated to aforementioned and snot-nosed loser sidekick - so Naruto didn't even invent that... huh) has voice actors even the lousiest fandubbers (now that's a tautology) wouldn't hire.
What remains from Serial Experiment Lain are the bear pyjama (if that had been featured in a BETTER anime, it naturally would have assumed cult status) and Lain's stupid hair tie thingy. By the way, Lain has the ugliest eyes I've ever seen by far. Geinus (sic) idea, by the way, making her eyes the same colour as her hair. *puke*
 |
| That quote about the abyss staring back at you never was more appropriate. |
Some episodes had visual noise comparable to the battle scenes in Puella Magica Madoka in it - I really hate that shit.
Oh yeah, and contrary to what the screenwriter stated, the Evangelion ripoff shots really pile up. But what's new in Animeland... what's new.
With all it shortcomings and lack of any good material or ideas whatsoever, SEL luckily still can't conquer the title of worst anime of all time... that honour remains with the dreadful vortex of suck called... no. Let the horror be unnamed for now...
...or not. Naruto Shippuden. The horror.
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