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How to make a pretentious anime:
- Introduce a protagonist devoid of personality, rendered as a blank slate with minimal backstory, hollow existence and no purpose in life. Subject them to betrayal, physical mutilation, and an endless barrage of suffering. Make him emotionally numb and only humanize him when he's fueled by rage and desire for vengeance.
- Insert an outsider character whose actions instigate a catastrophic, bloody conflict between the city's three rival gang factions, but leave his motivations intentionally and frustratingly vague and unexplained to add an air of contrived mystery to their character.
- Never fully explain the story to the audience to create a ... pretense of intellectual depth through obfuscation and ambiguity. Don't be afraid to use this tactic whenever you notice that your story has fundamental shortcomings and lacks substantive content.
- Paint the cityscape in a bleak, lifeless and desolate palette. Portray the city's denizens as lifeless husks suffering from existential dread brought by living in a dystopian, desolated wasteland of a rapidly decaying city.
- Populate the denizens' everyday life with brutal and graphic scenes of violence and crime. Introduce constant conflict between the city's gangs happening in broad daylight to reinforce the oppressive dystopian atmosphere of the city. Show its inhabitants constantly living on edge, resigned to their grim fate.
- Employ as many unconventional avant-garde animation techniques and a disturbing, unsettling soundtrack in a transparent attempt to elevate the show's lacking narrative through artistic production values. Try to elicit an emotional response from your audience through contrived and insincere audiovisual manipulations that act as superficial substitutes for genuine storytelling and character development.
- Employ as much symbolism and abstract imagery as possible, even at the expense of coherent storytelling. Hammer the viewer with an incessant barrage of symbolic scenes to instigate a profound feeling of forced intellectualism. Make the audience feel like the show is deep and profound simply by making it absurdly incoherent and devoid of intended meaning.
- Make the characters deliver ponderously vague monologues on the nature of existence and the human condition. But don't actually offer any unique or insightful perspectives. Instead, regurgitate surface-level cliched existential thoughts that add little substance to the narrative and serve only to artificially inflate the anime's pretense of depth.

Yep. Here we go. That's Texhnolyze for you.
My final rating: 2/10

Lain is a prime example of a show that tries too hard to be avant-garde and artistically profound, but ends up feeling nonsensical, emotionally manipulative and disturbing to watch with its use of vivid imagery and weird sounds. It strives to be "le different" from mainstream anime, but in doing so, it becomes a frustratingly disjointed and nonsensical mess that's incoherent at times and not enjoyable to watch.

The plot is told in a confusing manner, lacking sufficient explanation. Instead of offering clear storytelling, the anime tries to tell a story by relying on intense, dramatic or artistic scenes that are deliberately vague and open to ... interpretation, with eerie music playing in the background to create a pretense of importance and significance, and to manipulate the viewer's emotions.

This type of storytelling is typical for pretentious writers who try to create "deep" stories by focusing on artistic flair and ambiguity over substance. Furthermore, the characters' pasts, motives and actions are left intentionally ambiguous or unexplained in order to appeal to watchers who love to inject their own delusions and headcanon into the story. This anime is a pointless drivel. In its pursuit of avant-garde status, it sacrifices coherence and entertainment value, and may leave the viewers frustrated and detached from its convoluted narrative.

At the end of the day, Lain is a cautionary example of how prioritizing style over substance leads to a disappointing viewing experience.

Just another pretentious and nonsensical detective show that has nothing good going for it.
Positives:
- The MC is a cute femboy trap with a nice ass, and his classmate is "secretly" in love with him.
- There was one (only one) scene that had an emotional impact and made me feel sympathetic for the killer.

Negatives:
- The stories are too simplistic, devoid of mystery, they lack the necessary depth and impact, and aren't explored sufficiently. The final story is the worst offender here, as it fails to achieve a satisfying closure to the overarching plot.
- The MC might be a cute boy, but he doesn't feel like a ... human being. He always speaks in a robotic cheerful tone no matter what happens.
- It's hard to take anything that happens in this show seriously because of the sudden and drastic tone shifts. In one episode we have a grim and tragic story, which is immediately followed by a cheerful and silly comedy episode. This anime doesn't know what it wants to be.
- The MC doesn't play an important role in most of the cases, making him almost feel like a redundant main character.
- The biggest shortcoming of this anime - illogical and nonsensical writing. I can't cover it all because it would spoil the story, but here's a few examples:
1) An experienced killer falls for an obvious and idiotic trap?
2) Suspects who immediately confess to a crime after being accused (with little evidence) of being the killers?
3) A guy knows where the killer lives, but instead of contacting the police, he leaves it to MC (a 14yo boy) to apprehend the killer? He also knows that MC is a detective for some unexplained reason?
4) A guy has a seemingly magical ability to change his face, body structure, voice and clothes to perfectly imitate anyone? And despite having this amazing disguise ability, he feels the need to wear a suspicious-looking mask in public? And to make it even more stupid - the police are actively looking for a guy wearing that mask, but it doesn't deter him from wearing the mask in public anyway?
5) A wanted criminal casually arrives before the detectives, and they treat him like a guest instead of calling the police? And they let him go free at the end of the episode?
6) The final story is pretentiously pseudo-scientific (read up about the scientist who's in the title of this anime, and you can guess what this story is all about) and it ends on a cliffhanger. It even commits the "you predicted my next move, but I predicted your predicting, but actually the power of love wins in the end" sin.

It all feels like the show was written for a teenage audience that's too stupid to notice any of the pretentious writing. Sorry, I'm not stupid enough to enjoy those type of dogshit shows.
Final rating: 3/10