To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Serial Experiments Lain. The philosophy is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of cyberpunk culture most of the references will go over a typical viewer's head. There's also Lain's existential outlook, which is deftly woven into her characterisation - the show's themes draw heavily from Douglas Rushkoff literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these references, to realize that they're not just weird- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Serial Experiments Lain truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in Lain's father saying "madeleines would be good with the tea", which itself is a cryptic reference to Proust's French masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Yasuyuki Ueda's genius unfolds itself on their computer screens. What fools... how I pity them. And yes by the way, I DO have a Serial Experiments Lain tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that their distro is on the same level as my own (preferably Gentoo) beforehand.
