I feel like there is a person out there who watched all three of those shows on that date who’s definitely deeply changed by that specific sequence and doesn’t realize it.
@@bansheebwoi5056 anyone alive back then was changed in some way by that week. i'm not being sappy about the victim, i'm talking about absurdity, superposition of layers of reality, etc; it started there. the madness;
This is probably the first and only time that RUclips has recommended me a video that had under 1k views that could pass for a video with 100 times or more the views it currently has.
5:21 Wait, they aired Evangelion to fill space after 9/11? It is literally about cities being evacuated because monsters were coming to destroy everything. The 2nd episode has Shinji beat up by a guy whose sister was buried under rubble because of the robot fight. Holy shit lol
I feel like watching the entire series of LAIN on bootlegged vhs recordings would be awesome and add so much to the stilted, unnerving vibe of the show
I watched it in the early 2000s as ~130MB/episode 400x320 DivX files. Everything by then was small DivX files, (S)VCD, or eventually DVD (usually PAL). I don't remember anyone bothering with VHS bootlegs by then.
I watched it last week on a bootleg copy i got off ebay and it was a pretty weird experience watching it all in the middle of the night with the lights off
What I think is interesting as a child of the '90s/'00s is all the time I spent switching on and off VCRs during ad breaks to edit commercials out. But if anyone ever finds an old VHS tape in the present day, they aren't going to care about that random episode of Buffy from 2002, but they are going to be fascinated by the time capsule of 2002 commercials. It's easy to just watch Serial Experiments Lain now ... but these recorded broadcasts really take you back to that time period.
I agree !!! My family was fanatic about excluding commercials when we recorded something , and even muted them during actual watching. But one time I found a vhs tape labeled x files on top of a garbage can in 2010 and I was delighted to see the time capsule of commercials from 1995. I was able to determine exactly the year by trailers for David Finchers Seven. Lots of Honey Nut Cheerios commercials as well 🐝 💕
I really wish I had my old VHS recordings. I had some early 2000s Cartoon Network and Disney Channel stuff that would have been really cool to convert.
I am honestly amazed and appreciative of how respectful KTEH was towards anime at that time. They clearly didn’t think of these anime as “kids shows,” they saw them for what they were and even complimented them as such live on the air. Thanks for sharing this cool piece of history!
Thought that was super cool too! Seeing a well dressed older guy like Tom have genuine compliments for Lain on a network not specifically targeted at kids is awesome.
@@Rad-Dude63andathird I know this is cynical, but that was just a section asking for donations - I'd curious to know his actual thoughts were there no financial insenitive for him to speak positively about the show.
@@max3446 he clearly had at least some level of respect for it because he mentioned that they were trying to track down licensing rights for the show for years, and according to the schedule spreadsheet somebody posted on reddit it seems like it was one of the shows they played the most frequently
@@max3446it's PBS. You have to fund the air slot yourself as well as the costs for buying the rights to air the shows, as it's public access television lol.
3:40 Pretty cool to see an old guy talk about anime, in 2001. Not only is he not dismissive of the idea of airing anime on PBS, he seems to be an anime fan himself.
@@smartsmartie7142 I know right? There are really well thought out, thought provoking anime out there but the most popular ones obviously won't be those because most people (obviously) don't want to have an existential crisis while watching an animation lol. I would reccomend Golden Kamui as well, I think you'd like it if you enjoyed the others ✌️
@@mikehawk8984 I watched Sonny Boy, Paprika and Perfect Blue, those are some of the weirder ones that take you months of reflection before you understand what happened. But I liked them all.
People his age at that time were literally the folks that brought anime and manga to the west. They had been fighting since the 70s, meaning they were in their 20s at that time. By 2000 those people were in their 50s-60s. It's because of them that we have any of the things we have today. We all want to pretend or think that anime is a young person thing like they are responsible for bringing that over. Anime took decades to become mainstream in the west. Old weebs had a totally uphill battle to get that stuff over here. Young people disrespecting like those guys had nothing to do with it.
I think that looking at it in retrospect, the early 2000s was an era that is similar to a liminal space. It was a time before people were recording stuff all the time, but after TVs blew up and became mainstream so quickly that everyone had to adapt to the way it affected their lives. Especially looking at it from a technological perspective, it really feels like a time that will never be relived again; that's what makes this clip so captivating to me. All of the rare circumstances that had compiled to create this moment, and for it to create a tangible theme of change, is incredible. Great vid.
WOW, bravo. I have been trying to describe it for 15+ years what the 2000's felt like (don't worry I'm not 15 lol). It definitely felt like coming out of a darker (albeit not depressing/scary darker) time like the 90's into just... the space of the 2000's.
I remember seeing the same clip last year too! I had never heard of Serial Experiments Lain beforehand, and that clip actually got me to watch the show. However, I never knew the importance of KTEH. RIP Karen Roberts, thank you for airing 90s anime onto public television and thank you Tom Fanella for presenting them to us.
It was pleasant surprise to me watching how passionate Tom here in regard of distributing anime, especially considering how I perceive US public for the times treated them like another children entertainment (mostly thanks to 4Kids...), he's clearly respected it as a medium.
Tom seemed like such a cool chill guy and you could tell he had a passion for entertainment and television. i think he'd be super happy to see how anime and other foreign shows are so accessible now in the USA
Lane is one of those anime/scifi stories that feels strangely prophetic as time goes on, coupling it with the events of 9/11 makes it even more eerie! Thanks for the video! I can't believe you were able to present such a vastly intriguing story in under 15 mins!
@@M_CFVit’s called social commentary. Japan’s internet society was light years ahead of America’s, which is why it feels like a prediction rather than commentary. Same goes for metal gear solid 2
I remember the day it happened, the whole school made everyone leave their classrooms in a single file line and we all stood in the playground to do the pledge of allegiance. My 2nd grade teacher was holding back tears during it. All day, most of the TV channels were replaying the same clips of the towers collapsing over and over. Even the typical 3pm cartoon block on Fox Kids and Kid's WB was canceled in light of the event.
I was 8 yo. I remember the teacher bringing in a tv so she could watch the news, stalling teaching. All the kids knew that the adults were tense, but we were too young to really know why. I also remember the days following the media openly pushing for open and brutal war, but not specifying any specific country. ___ It’s honesty really sad because, the US before 911 wasn’t perfect, but everyone seemed happy. Like they had a place and were enjoying new tech. Post 911, all I remember is people being extremely hateful and fearful.
speaking of lost media, I was 10 when I saw 9/11 happen live on TV and I actually started recording it on VHS because I thought it would be considered too graphic and disturbing to ever show again but was a piece of history that needed to be preserved, wonder if that tape's still out there
It's really disturbing but it's truly only a visual effect on the psyche. When you think about it, after 2001 we lived through so much tragedies, especially in the last 2 years. Some even bigger than 9/11. The world was never truly peaceful.
That one specific PBS affiliate that was located in Southern California. It's not like this was aired nationally. It was quite confined and the director of the studio has free reign to choose it's schedule. They just receive funding from the government. Besides that, they have very little to do with with the scheduling and airing.
@@marishiten5944It was in Northern California, just in the southern part of the Bay Area. San Jose also had the first anime convention in the country to reach 1000 attendees. With the prices for lisencing being cheap and the right enviornment, it was one of those things that seemed like it just worked.
I grew up watching it, and KTEH was legendary during its time. Anime in America was pretty hard to come by around then, and they showed the best during that era. It was insane how good it was.
I was watching Sailor Moon when it was interrupted by the events of 9/11. I live in Europe, but similar to this, Sailor Moon was broadcast on a small regional channel. They didn’t have a 24hrs breaking news style studio, so they switched to a homely looking studio where two people calmly explained what was happening. It was crazy and I switched to a proper news channel after that. I never saw the end of that Sailor Moon episode and I remember it was not just the season finale, but show finale with Sailor Moon vs Sailor Galaxia. That whole era was so strange, esp. living through it as a kid and all the media broadcast at the time. The channel I switched to had a correspondent live on the ground. Both towers were still up, but there was chaos and noise from police and fire trucks etc. As he is reporting suddenly there’s a huge rumble and the 4th wall is broken if you will. Journalist and crew just start running live on air as debris starts falling and a restaurant or some kind of shop door is open with people calling them to come quickly. They all dash into the restaurant, close the door and the outside goes pitch black, the first tower had just collapsed. Sorry for such a long comment, but I remember this having a huge impact on me at the time watching all the way from Europe, this was completely unexpected, nobody thought it possible. I’ve always wondered where this footage is now, probably lost in an archive somewhere. If you are interested in this topic and haven’t already, you might want to look into Enya’s song Only Time which became a huge hit as a kind of unofficial anthem of 9/11. Such a strange time, really.
i just turned 27, am going through a rough time - the ending quote you made in this video resonated with me and was award-worthy thank you for the awesome video 🙏
I appreciate your reflection on this odd moment from history, how it is mundane yet still historical, and sends a chill down the spine of those of us who share the memories of being in collective shock at the time. I remember watching Evangelion, Dirty Pair Flash, Serial Experiments Lain, and Ruin Explorers on KTEH during this time period; I even recorded some of them on VHS, as well.
Another, well known anine video essayist on RUclips, hazel covered SEL in depth a while ago. The fact that there was a PBS station of all things bringing the first of its kind airing of shows, and Lain being broadcast on 9/11 is so surreal and I think she'd appreciate this video along with maybe a follow up to this particular topic
Maybe it's just because I know KTEH when it was really itself, that makes me question why it's so weird a PBS station would air such things. That was part of the point of PBS. At least to me from my experience.
@@coyoteartist Many PBS stations focused on bringing over BBC content (Dr. Who, Mont Python's Flying Circus, etc), but this is the first time I heard of one bringing over Anime. I shouldn't be as surprised, but I would have killed to have another channel playing Anime (besides Toonami) growing up.
@@ChrisHilgenberg I recall back in my college days -- tail end of the '90s -- the Sci-Fi Channel, before it became SyFy, would air 2 hours of anime every weekend. It's through this block that I was able to see shows like Project A-Ko for the first time. I can't remember too many other specific movies or shows, but I think they showed Urusei Yatsura one week, and maybe even a heavily edited version of Wicked City or Ninja Scroll? I feel like they also showed Birdy the Mighty at once point. It was all the kinds of anime you'd find on VHS tapes at Suncoast Video back then, basically, with minor content edits for TV. So it wasn't only PBS channels back then, but it was indeed very rare. Before that, the only anime I saw on TV were the shows that got adapted for syndication by Saban or other distributors, like Samurai Pizza Cats, Teknoman (the American rebranding of Tekkaman Blade), Ronin Warriors (Yoroiden Samurai Troopers), Sailor Moon, etc.
many people don’t understand just how widespread this tragedy truly was. And it is undoubtedly true, everyone in the world knew after that day, things would never be the same. Another fun fact to tie into this video, the designer of the towers was a famous Japanese architect.
Wasn't alive for it, but it really changed my mom's opinions on everything. She was in the building right next to the towers, and was engulfed by all the smoke before making out alive. Honestly, it's really interesting to hear yall's stories and I think I realize more and more how this really affected everyone.
@@mussy9387 i dont call it an american tragedy, I call it a human tragedy. im a firefighter but i wasnt one yet when these building came down, but its a very sensitive topic because of all my borthers and sisters who died from this.
I think people get the idea how big of a deal it was. And on top of that, most countries in Europe and Asia (Japan specifically) have experienced entire cities being decimated by bombing runs, so they're aware of how bad it is. The only reason it was a big deal to Americans is because they've been so insulted from attacks on their own soil due to them being isolated geographically. It hasn't happened since the 1800's. In actuality, 3000 lives is nothing compared to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo fire bombings, bombings of Berlin all spearheaded by the Americans in the 1940's. How do you think those people felt? A couple buildings didn't get hit, entire cities were turned into smoking rubble.
@@marishiten5944 Dresden, Germany too, which wasn't even of any strategic military value. You could see this attitude, including back then, many Americans eagerness to "avenge" this attack by Saudi nationals by attacking Iraq(!!!!) Europeans had a bitter taste of retaliations and are a lot more sober about the use of military.
I grew up watching this channel/broadcast! I remember they also played the original Urusei Yatsura series. It's really cool to see someone talking about this obscurity because lots of people have not believed me when I tell them a PBS station played anime, often the subtitled version even.
So glad that someone who watched KTEH at the time found this video! It’s pretty incredible how ahead of their time they were, especially playing many of the shows subbed instead of dubbed. Tom Fanella seemed disappointed they could only acquire the dub for Lain.
It's so weird to hear someone talk about 2001 as a time long gone, but yeah it kinda is now. I tend to forget that there's people that weren't there watching that particular event live on TV simply because they were too young or hadn't even been born yet. As someone who isn't from the US, who has never been to the US, and who was eleven years old at the time of the attacks it was a very surreal and disconnected experience to see those towers collapsing on TV, I knew it was actual people dying but I was too young and too far away to understand any of the emotional weight of the situation, what for some was a tragic and traumatic moment for me was just a very weird day when every single channel was showing and talking about the same event.
Same, Im a 1991 guy from eu, it sure was surreal for me, I remember seeing it all in tv and then reading some newspaper articles about it. To me it was weird esoteric news, but in usa it traumatized whole generation of people.
@@neutronshiva2498 I was also 1991 but in the US. I remember the teacher wheeling in a crt, and showing us all the news until our parents came to pick us up. All the adults seemed a little freaked out, but I was like "That's crazy, anyway I'm gonna play Banjo Tooie." lmao. Some of the other kids seemed a little off the next day at school though. Who knows how the world would be if that hadn't happened.
Thanks for the content. I love lain and was 13 in NY during 9/11, cut school that day, got home and turned on the TV saw the towers on fire and looked out the window to confirm, left the house with my friends and stopped into a grocery store, and some woman hugged me while crying because she said her nephew worked in one of the towers. We then went to blockbuster and rented "Exit wounds" with Steven Segall and DMX... Edit: I realized i first saw lain when we moved downtown across the highway from the World Trade Center, it was a very fancy building with relatively cheap rent because everyone was afraid to live there, either in fear of another attack, or the smog of asbestos and other contaminates that still kind of lingered in the area.
I born in 93, south korea. And 9/11 was a huge news for us too. I still remember mom holding remote control and whole family watching the news of tower collapsing, in shock. I found out Lain very late, 2011. Since then it’s one of my favorite anime. I can relate the experience of Lain deeply, have my own understanding to the show. So when this clip show up in my feed, with as you said recent odd popularity, it really felt, idk, weird. It was like the first time I found this anime again. Thanks for the great video. It’s really well made.
How the actual hell does this have only 20 views. And why do you have only 600 subs? What the hell is going on this content is awesome why doesn't it get more recognition?
@@GDTasteYouHave Reaction videos are why content like this has 20 views. Because people are too lazy to be creative so they steal other's content under the guise of "reacting"
Lain has gotta be near the top of my favorite animes. It's aged so much better than western takes on early internet or cyberpunk culture. It just has such a hypnotic dreamlike vibe. It's like a Jeff Noon novel come to life
I realize i still love Anime cause somewhere im still looking to find something like Lain but it is so gone. I think im now more attached to the concept of Anime then what it is actually today.
I think it's quite wonderful that a PBS station was interested in bringing foreign TV shows to an American audience. There is just something charming to me seeing some older folks taking an interest in Japanese animation and showing it on a network they worked at.
It's just surreal and strange how these two are not similar in their own way but somehow they still relate from one another. Amazing video man, glad RUclips finally recommended something great.
9/11 was such a weird day. I was in High School, 9th grade. All we had were rumors in the halls and one teacher with a black and white tiny camping TV with an antenna that barely got a picture. There was this eerie silence and heavy feeling in the air. A lot of people were worried we'd be next, as if this was some nation wide attack. Some kids were crying because they knew people in New York. This was before Cell Phones were really a thing and the internet was basically non existent, so there was no outside communications or live information. I remember coming home and all the channels were playing either clips of the actual planes hitting the buildings or just were just blank. Some channels were playing normal things but had a scrolling text like the Lain clip. It was such a bizarre time that would only ever be rivaled by the VERY early stages of the lockdown during the Pandemic in 2020.
Today has been the most coincidential day for me. Today is also 9/11/2024. I just finished watching Serial Experiments Lain only just hours ago and went on to process what I just saw. Afterwards I went thru RUclips to watch any analysis or breakdowns of Lain to see what other people may have thought in comparison to what I got out of experiencing the show.... only to stumble upon this video. I had to do a double take before I started the video as I always thought Lain was a '98 anime and expected this to either cover a hoax or a possible reairing in Japan that addresses possible American residents? Looks like I was half right. Although I never expected Lain to have aired in the US during the early 2000's, especially in San Jose's PBS station. I'm from Socal so I'm a bit envious that Norcal got an anime block way back, though I would've been too young to watch Lain or the other shows. Thanks for the informative upload! I'll be sure to share this video around and look forward to future videos after witnessing this crazy fateful experience.
i REALLY appreciate people just doing something they feel is right or they intrinsically want to do something. having a TV station work for airing Anime and being a "unicorn" while doing so, makes me appreciate their work more. Work hard even if its niche.
7:45 You get a sub from me for being one of the only people on RUclips to use the proper term "VCR" instead of the strangely prevalent misnomer "VHS Player" Also great video all around. Keep up the good work.
Serial Experiments Lain was my first anime that got me attached to anime. I saw it and went, "I've never seen such amazing story telling before." It premiered to me on TechTV's Anime Fridays.
Honestly, a lot of Lain's musing on the internet and whatnot can feel dated at first glance because of the the older imagining of technology (i.e: she needs a beeeg beefy computer to access the internets well, etc...) but the way it raises and interrogates its central question, that of identity in a world where the digital world is increasingly overlapping with "real life" and the boundaries between them getting blurrier is amazingly prescient. The more we move in this direction, the more relevant this question becomes
Lain and its themes are getting more and more realistic with internet escapism becoming more and more prevalent. And in the late years they've been throwing AI into the mix too. It's getting scary.
One of the few times I am thankful a recommended video came to my feed. Very glad you made this as I was not the only one that thought about how bizarre and surreal it was to see an anime like Lain respond to an imense tragedy in the face of ever changing times with the fears of the early internet and uncertainty. It felt almost symbolic of the times and people had no idea.
Just started the video and I can already tell this channel is gonna be in my sub list. This anime is how I discovered Duvet and by extension Bôa due to the single recently becoming viral again. The band is in talks of getting back together again from about a month ago. Can't wait to see what comes of it because I'd fly across the world to see them play if I had to
Also, this goes to show that if you were a kid growing up on the west coast (California), you got all the great local programming. My sister and I's first mainstream exposure to Anime was through toonami in the mid/late 90s, but this PBS station had been airing subtitled Anime in the states before then. That's the wild part I think of this entire thing (also goes to show how far shows like Eva has come when it demands 9 figures to be on a streaming platform, but early 00s it was obtainable by a PBS station)
Man this was a 10/10 video, it was SO interesting and well documented, not to mention well edited. You obviously have the talent for this, keep it going man. INSTANT sub.
I'm glad you made a video about this. This gripped my attention and imagination as well and you took the words right out of my mouth in your intro. it's beautiful yet haunting. Unintentional yet reflects the "no mans land" transition between the pre-9/11 and post 9/11 world. I have heavy nostalgia for the early 2000s pre-2010s. and it's always this type of stuff. Even the towers themselves on the old footage their recorded on look like a vaporwave video because they're always frozen in time. So the people will always look 80s and 90s and 2000 and all the analog pre y2k looks that go with it.
The early 2000s felt like such a wild time. Probably because it was my teenage years. That odd feeling of such an event happening, just as everything changing about my body and my thoughts will always make me feel like 9/11 changed my life directly. While in a political sense everyone's lives were changed by it. I just wonder if the raw nerve of puberty was amplified or dulled by growing up in the shadow of terror and war on the news. Strangely I find myself stoned out of my mind most nights longing to wander the halls of my highschool once more and talk to so many of my friends who I have either lost over the years or fallen out of touch with. I recorded Cowboy Bebop from Adult Swim at the time. I remember being frustrated when I later watched the tape and the shuttle episode wasn't on it. Then I remember that they pulled it from airing the night of 9/11. There was also all those weird coins being sold on TV with Bush and the Towers on them. Bet you those things ain't worth shit now. I should stop typing. I am stoned.
idk about you, but id absolutely pay good money for one of those bush coins. im weirdly obsessed w 9/11 and its impact on the collective american psyche though, so that is like right up my alley lol
You sound like someone in my generation, because I felt similar back then too. Was on the West Coast at the time. Consciously or unconsciously, whether or not we fully understood it, kids/teenagers living in North America (and later, the rest of the world) felt a sharp dividing line struck culturally. September 10th and September 12th became two completely different lifetimes, and there was going to be no going back.
I was living in San Jose for most of the 90s. I got to see some great anime on KTEH. The series I remember were Please Save My Earth and Key the Metal Idol. I watched Lain and Evangelion on VHS in the 90s.
Holy Fuck this brought back so many memories. I’m from San Jose and hadn’t heard the term KTEH in decades. This video hit so weirdly remembering being 10 years old and watching towers fall. This pastiche is the definition of that heartbeat of a moment, the time when we were all Americans, the calm before the storm of war.
(That Time) When Serial Experiments Lain (form of the word 'lay'?) After 9/11 It raises questions about where the Serial Experiments were laying _before_ 9/11.
It’s surreal, eerie, but also…strangely kinda chill. The analog features, scrolling text, and Lain of all anime makes it a really interesting piece of media on how various Americans reacted to the attacks of September 11th.
I remember back in 1999-2000 or so, when I was a wee lad, a friend of my parents' came to visit us. At the time, he was studying Japanese (the language) in university, and he told us he was writing his thesis on a project he was currently undertaking. For this project, my parents' friend was translating an anime that had aired in Japan recently, in addition to documenting his subbing process on a blog. I'm pretty sure he had uploaded one of the episodes of this show to AOL, which he brought up and played on our TV. My memories of what happened are pretty hazy, and my parents don't remember that day very well, either. But the images that stuck with me for over a decade were a panning-out shot of a girl in a dress slumped over a pile of... something (books? computers? I couldn't remember for the longest time) while a distinctly English song played in the background. That, and a chaotic scene with lots of flashing lights in which a man pointed a gun at a girl and then shot himself in the head. That was when I learned what laser sights were. I'm surprised my parents let me watch all of that, honestly. For over a decade, the hazy memory of that day floated in and out of my head and I couldn't remember what the show was called at all. It wasn't until Serial Experiments Lain started to gain a new cult following in the past 8 years or so that the pieces fell into place. I had watched the first two episodes of Lain before - as far as I know - anyone had subbed it and uploaded it online. I had no idea about this 9/11 Lain airing until just now, either. It's just wild to think of how prescient Lain was even at the time, when most peoples' contact with anime was limited to what you rented from the video store or whatever was airing on TV. It's even wilder to think about how this show had an overseas following even just a few years after it aired in Japan - and how Lain itself aired in Japan a year before the greater Japanese public got access to the Internet at all. As an aside, I haven't seen that family friend in years. The last I heard, he was studying to become a Buddhist monk. I'd love to get in touch with him again and pick his brain on Lain and whatever else he was up to so many years ago.
I forgot I was watching a RUclips video, the inexplicable feelings this piece was able to provoke. I hope you keep making content, and I hope more find their way to it.
KTEH was an important early player in American airings of anime. I was able to attend their panel at San Jose's FanimeCon this year, and the behind the scenes and small details and history of this channel and anime were so fascinating. It's also part of the beauty of PBS stations - they can do a lot to make niche (which anime was, at this time) content extremely accessible because someone is passionate enough about it. I think, part of what I miss about TV, despite the fact that the internet has objectively become the best medium through which to share niche content, is the amount of passion it took to get that stuff on the air. You could tell that whoever was putting it out there, really genuinely cared a lot.
Similar to you, I am fascinated by this piece of footage because of how surreal it is. I was alive at the time but a small child, but it’s one of my earliest solid memories. The lain clip feels like it captures the weird feeling when nobody really knew how to respond in the immediate aftermath. Reminds me of walking onto the school playground the day after, and not knowing what to say, even though I knew that it would be something that everyone’s going to talk about (even if none of us actually understood it because we were so young).
This is a fantastic video and criminally underrated. Extremely interesting and well made. It’s honestly wild how so many talented people are out there creating content that the algorithm has not picked up. This deserves hundreds of thousands of views for sure. Excellent work, I subscribed!
You know how in games, you have this tutorial, and after a certain beat, the real game begins? That's what it felt like to go through 9-11. An unsettling drop into the reality of the adult world. I was 15, but I immediately felt like I had been granted this understanding I was not ready for. Thank you for documenting this.
Amazing video, thanks for making it, you described it perfectly and as also a someone born in 2000 the way we feel the repercussions of what happened after 9/11 the uncertainty, the war, our family being sent off to fight after 9/11
This hits home, literally. KTEH was how I discovered British scifi and anime in high school. I was my ritual to stay up for Sunday Science Fiction Night
I should mention, Serial Experiments Lain is directly influenced by William Gibson's 'Neuromancer'. I highly recommend it as a read to all, as it also strongly influenced Cowboy Beebop and Outlaw Star. Cyberspace is merely our version of hyperspace! Neurons are the original 'Net'.
what a strange feeling watching this video, and just can't help but draw the comparison to lain stumbling upon the deep world of the wired in the show as you talk about uncovering the lost past of media in the 2000s, uncovering something that's new and familiar at the same time while feeling a heavy sense of nostalgia.
Love that KTEH is still remembered for being the trailblazers they were. I'd always make it a point to be in front of the tv Sunday nights when they'd air Tenchi Muyo or whatever show they had at the time. When Eva hit netflix a few years back and everyone was making a big deal about securing the licensing you'd occasionally see it mentioned that a small PBS channel managed to secure it two decades prior during the height of its Japanese popularity. It was still two wildly different markets back then, something that would dissipate in the coming decade.
I posted about this on the anniversary of the airing. I spent this 11th and 12th reminiscing about the end of the 90s and the violent thrust into the uncertain 2000s. I wasn't old enough to remember it, and I wound up spending hours going through videos, news, and media from the week of the attacks. It was like feeling everything through a familiar window that I couldn't really step through. When I found the archive of this episode last year, I found the words so haunting at the beginning of Episode 7. "Let me tell you what's happening. What's beginning to take place in our society, without you ever being even vaguely conscious of it."
I was only a month old when 9/11 happened, so i was also alive for it, but with no memories of it. I too have been watching old vids of it from different perspectives this year in particular, where i haven't really had interest in learning and "seeing" before. Its honestly is surreal. I was alive. The tv was where i was with my mother calling grandma and grandpa, but i have no attachment to that time in my head.
Toonami takes a lot of credit for things KTEH and International Channel did before. Heck due to Anime Network starting in 2002 originally as a 24/7 channel before becoming video on demand in 2008 i truely believe Toonami's influence is vastly overstated.
Jus because they werent first, doesnt mean their "influence is vastly overstated". Whole generation of kids grew up on toonami not ever knowing about this KTEH thing.
I watched this as a kid, I remember this scrolling text. Didn't think too much of it at the time, but now realizing its true gravity now that I'm older. Good coverage on this.
I remember watching these on kteh. It was awesome. One night they had an origin uncut episode of DBZ and it tripped me out as a kid seeing all the blood juxtaposed with the super serious and hard-core way (or to my young ears) the Japanese VAs spoke. It blew my little mind 😆
As a Bay Area resident it is wild to have been a part of this spearpoint for anime in the west. KTEH was my gateway to a lot of anime programming that I wouldn't have known otherwise and even at the time I realized it was something special to have broadcasted over the air. Even just the simple exposure to animation that was more adult driven and to have a PBS affiliate recognize the artistic value of these programs was unprecedented. Real kudos to the team who fought hard to bring us such programming, in hindsight it almost seems a miracle they pulled it off.
I love the video because it's from a time that I had not experienced or been around, from someone else's perspective, from another time. The vintage feel, the aesthetic, and the context. It was recorded on a VCR, something most of us have knowledge of what it was like, nowadays you can just pirate anything off the internet (not encouraging it). Serial Experiments Lain always had this awareness feel to it, like they knew what they were doing and I always felt like Lain was trying to communicate with me, connect with me, especially in the final episode. As for the text, it cements the feeling that this was taken place at a specific place and time. One that is completely out of our reach and one only few have ever seen/experiences. Life is a unique experience
This is a great summary of the profoundness in the Kteh Lain clip. I feel the themes of Lain combined with the tragedy of 9/11 both give off ominous emotions about the future. That’s what makes this coincidental combination so fitting.
i feel like there is so much more to this that people don't realize and you perfectly summed it up at the end. A show from japan on a station in america talking about a tragedy across the country back when the internet was not a staple of everyday life. We have this pretense that it wasnt until the internet that truly "wired" our world but I feel like you can take any incident in history no matter the timeline and still trace it back to anywhere in the past present or future. It really reminds me of the concept of rhizomes and how there truly is not start or end, just a network (of knowledge) that connect toward each and every other point.
That’s correct, the Sunday Science Fiction Night programming from the following week was pushed up to the 16th (the same shows still ended up playing the following week though). Happy to see this video found it’s way to you! I enjoy your videos a lot!
0:51 when he’s saying how it had a “grip on him” and that he wanted to figure it out, it made me realize how different people are. because i saw that video too, and i wanted to figure it out as well, but i didnt *do* anything, and he did. just a thought i had.
Thank you for this I'm pushing 40 yrs old, I lived thru all this. Lain was very important to me and was one of my escapes during such strange times. It's hard to think of what to say...I really enjoyed the old television clips of news and talk shows, the PBS clips. Never knew it debuted in the US that way - I thought it was through VHS! I remember seeing some of those live, The Daily Show especially. It's interesting to see the newer generations take on both Lain and the 9/11 tragedy. Very well done. Let's all love Lain
Thank you for sharing this. I'm old enough to have been affected by the attacks (not personally, but I watched it live on TV and was about an hour area from NYC so was scared for my safety). Surprising to hear that you were only 1 year old when it happened. So many of the younger people today only have old footage to watch to experience even a fraction of what it was like for everyone watching or experiencing it live. For whatever reason young people like to joke about it a lot, but it was a very serious tragic event that forever changed a lot of lives.
As someone who doesn't live in America and was in school when it it happened, (with a teacher bringing in TV for us to watch during school), this is pretty foreign to me. It's super wholesome to see a ln old man talking about spending 2 years to get SEL to air and asking for funding to keep the station going. It's almost grassroots.
You got my sub sir. This is 95% of how i felt watching that clip and you've expressed it articulately, with great edition to boot. Hope the channel grows
I find this kind of stuff unsettling and melancholy, because it reminds me of how young I was even two decades ago, and how my body is failing me now, more and more. In 1992, Saint Seiya was broadcasted for the first time in Mexico. I used to ask mother to record some episodes in my VCR because sometimes I was not home, and I didn't want to miss an episode. I did this for Sailor Moon, Ranma and the original Dragon Ball, as well as an official Nintendo TV show called Nintendomanía. I might still habe some of those tapes, but without a functional VCR, it will be hard to find them. I used to record a radio show specialized in gothic rock, I still got a bunch of those tapes. See, in 1996, it was hard to find all the music you wanted.
I was born in 1996. The earliest memory I have is sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with duplo blocks. I can still feel the carpet in the smooth plastic of the bricks. The phone on the wall in the kitchen rang. Because that's where phones were back then, cell phones were something for rich businessmen and smartphones weren't even a idea at that point. My mother walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone, it was my father. After a short conversation, probably less than a minute, she hung up and ran into the living room and change the TV from Nickelodeon to the news, and right as she changed it, I watched the second plane fly into the towers. Of course at the time I didn't know what was going on, I just watched. Later on I realized that that was the moment that, even in my childish mind I came to realize that the world was not a safe place. The next day my mother bought a newspaper, something she didn't really do before and hasn't done since. It's an issue of the Houston chronicle, with the picture of the towers with smoke billowing out of them as the front page. It's on the top shelf of the closet in the hallway even today, stacked with an issue of Time magazine I believe it is that contains the famous image of the jumper. Savor, my friends, what you have in this moment. You have no idea when it will be gone.
9:40 But life doesn't go on, at least, not the old life. The hat hangs there, frozen in time, at the exact moment Lain looks up into the sky. Her face is eclipsed by the shadow of a bird flying in the air. The old life she was living has now paused indefinitely, and it probably won't ever resume. It's almost a direct metaphor, or perhaps a parallel. It's like going about your daily life pre-9/11, and then being shocked by something that knocks you off balance, and then looking up to see the plane crash into the tower, the wing of which has taken up all of your vision....that's it. That daily life will never happen the way it was supposed to. You can walk the same way you were, but you'll never get your hat back that the crash blew away. It's so eerie...
It was a good time growing up an anime fan in the 90s-early 2000s. So many memorable shows....but Lain still stands above everything else for me. It might not have been the case initially....but everything it depicted the internet and the future would be....have to admit its almost eerie, just like the show. I'm not surprised theres still so many coincidental stories that are found out about it to this day. My computer background still shows a poster of Lain, never changed it in over 20years :p
Serial experiments lain is so odd. I was born in the late 90s and didn’t watch the show until I was an adult, the culture of adolescent drug use, apathy, aswell as this sense of narcissistic pseudo schizophrenia that took over the western world in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It was surreal watching this show from around the time I was born allegorically show me the world I grew up in, the world that came a decade after it’s creation.
Present day present time. Hahahaha That line always gave me a little chill in 1998. I also liked that you had to track down the few places that had the imported VHS tapes. They never had all of them and never more than one. Felt like hidden knowledge. Flash forward to today and a lot of the predictions came true....
Seeing Lain, Sakura Wars, and then NGE in that order on Sept 9th 2001 all in a row sounds like a sensory rollercoaster.
I feel like there is a person out there who watched all three of those shows on that date who’s definitely deeply changed by that specific sequence and doesn’t realize it.
How Incredibly Interesting
Intensely Unique
@@bansheebwoi5056 anyone alive back then was changed in some way by that week. i'm not being sappy about the victim, i'm talking about absurdity, superposition of layers of reality, etc; it started there. the madness;
I did but I was born in 1995. My older brother always put really weird stuff up on the TV
@@siddbastardanyone in US tbf.
This is probably the first and only time that RUclips has recommended me a video that had under 1k views that could pass for a video with 100 times or more the views it currently has.
Same, this is a very good video
Hard agree. I rarely come across gems like this on my own. I guess that's another thing that becomes more satisfying because of it's rarity though
The editing and the tone of his voice already hooked me
It just came out let’s hope it gets more in the passing weeks!
This video has potential for +200k views, investing at 3.2k
5:21
Wait, they aired Evangelion to fill space after 9/11? It is literally about cities being evacuated because monsters were coming to destroy everything. The 2nd episode has Shinji beat up by a guy whose sister was buried under rubble because of the robot fight. Holy shit lol
It’s like they aired it on purpose holy shit
late 90s/00s was an interesting time. So many things wouldn't even occur in today's time.
Don't forget that Drakengard 1's Ending E was inspired by Neon Genesis and 9/11...
What do you mean? Isn't that like a childrens cartoon?
@@followingtheroe1952 💀
I feel like watching the entire series of LAIN on bootlegged vhs recordings would be awesome and add so much to the stilted, unnerving vibe of the show
I watched it in the early 2000s as ~130MB/episode 400x320 DivX files. Everything by then was small DivX files, (S)VCD, or eventually DVD (usually PAL). I don't remember anyone bothering with VHS bootlegs by then.
I watched it last week on a bootleg copy i got off ebay and it was a pretty weird experience watching it all in the middle of the night with the lights off
On a CRT no less! No show fits better.
was gonna say, gotta rock it on a crt for the perfect experince ! @@rushnerd
@@timewave02012 It's crazy that you can now get 1080p at roughly the same filesize using AV1 now. How far we've come.
What I think is interesting as a child of the '90s/'00s is all the time I spent switching on and off VCRs during ad breaks to edit commercials out. But if anyone ever finds an old VHS tape in the present day, they aren't going to care about that random episode of Buffy from 2002, but they are going to be fascinated by the time capsule of 2002 commercials. It's easy to just watch Serial Experiments Lain now ... but these recorded broadcasts really take you back to that time period.
I agree !!! My family was fanatic about excluding commercials when we recorded something , and even muted them during actual watching. But one time I found a vhs tape labeled x files on top of a garbage can in 2010 and I was delighted to see the time capsule of commercials from 1995. I was able to determine exactly the year by trailers for David Finchers Seven. Lots of Honey Nut Cheerios commercials as well 🐝 💕
It is quite the thing but back in those days life wouldn't be the same without advertisements, it would just be episodes you've probably watched.
Very true, I found some old VHS a few years back and seeing all those old early 00’s commercials was a trip
I really wish I had my old VHS recordings. I had some early 2000s Cartoon Network and Disney Channel stuff that would have been really cool to convert.
I am honestly amazed and appreciative of how respectful KTEH was towards anime at that time. They clearly didn’t think of these anime as “kids shows,” they saw them for what they were and even complimented them as such live on the air. Thanks for sharing this cool piece of history!
Thought that was super cool too! Seeing a well dressed older guy like Tom have genuine compliments for Lain on a network not specifically targeted at kids is awesome.
Yeah it’s really fascinating and super cool to see Japanese anime being acknowledged to such a high degree back then.
@@Rad-Dude63andathird I know this is cynical, but that was just a section asking for donations - I'd curious to know his actual thoughts were there no financial insenitive for him to speak positively about the show.
@@max3446 he clearly had at least some level of respect for it because he mentioned that they were trying to track down licensing rights for the show for years, and according to the schedule spreadsheet somebody posted on reddit it seems like it was one of the shows they played the most frequently
@@max3446it's PBS. You have to fund the air slot yourself as well as the costs for buying the rights to air the shows, as it's public access television lol.
Showing Eva right after 9/11 is insane given how many buildings get knocked down throughout the show.
if they showed end of eva, everyone would be traumatized
3:40 Pretty cool to see an old guy talk about anime, in 2001. Not only is he not dismissive of the idea of airing anime on PBS, he seems to be an anime fan himself.
After watching Serial Experiments Lain, Ghost in the Shell and Monster I was surprised that I never heard of them before because they were so good
@@smartsmartie7142 I know right? There are really well thought out, thought provoking anime out there but the most popular ones obviously won't be those because most people (obviously) don't want to have an existential crisis while watching an animation lol. I would reccomend Golden Kamui as well, I think you'd like it if you enjoyed the others ✌️
@@mikehawk8984 I watched Sonny Boy, Paprika and Perfect Blue, those are some of the weirder ones that take you months of reflection before you understand what happened. But I liked them all.
@@mikehawk8984 After Sugimoto charged through machine gun fire I didn't expect the anime show how the Ainu cook. The anime feels very fresh
People his age at that time were literally the folks that brought anime and manga to the west. They had been fighting since the 70s, meaning they were in their 20s at that time. By 2000 those people were in their 50s-60s. It's because of them that we have any of the things we have today. We all want to pretend or think that anime is a young person thing like they are responsible for bringing that over. Anime took decades to become mainstream in the west. Old weebs had a totally uphill battle to get that stuff over here. Young people disrespecting like those guys had nothing to do with it.
I think that looking at it in retrospect, the early 2000s was an era that is similar to a liminal space. It was a time before people were recording stuff all the time, but after TVs blew up and became mainstream so quickly that everyone had to adapt to the way it affected their lives. Especially looking at it from a technological perspective, it really feels like a time that will never be relived again; that's what makes this clip so captivating to me. All of the rare circumstances that had compiled to create this moment, and for it to create a tangible theme of change, is incredible. Great vid.
Wow, very well put. Thank you for that perspective
WOW, bravo. I have been trying to describe it for 15+ years what the 2000's felt like (don't worry I'm not 15 lol). It definitely felt like coming out of a darker (albeit not depressing/scary darker) time like the 90's into just... the space of the 2000's.
people were recording tv all the time since the mid-late 80s and tvs "blew up" decades before the 2000s... I'm not really sure what you mean
Didn't TV "blew up" in the 1950s or so? Looool
It is my entire childhood during high school. It was a wonderful time
I remember seeing the same clip last year too! I had never heard of Serial Experiments Lain beforehand, and that clip actually got me to watch the show. However, I never knew the importance of KTEH. RIP Karen Roberts, thank you for airing 90s anime onto public television and thank you Tom Fanella for presenting them to us.
It was pleasant surprise to me watching how passionate Tom here in regard of distributing anime, especially considering how I perceive US public for the times treated them like another children entertainment (mostly thanks to 4Kids...), he's clearly respected it as a medium.
Same the fact that this guy made a video breaking down the whole thing is really bizarre and i never expected it to happen
My PBS station back in LA are 2 I know like KOCE and KLCS.
Exactly it makes me sad about his passing even more@@raydhen8840
Tom seemed like such a cool chill guy and you could tell he had a passion for entertainment and television. i think he'd be super happy to see how anime and other foreign shows are so accessible now in the USA
Lane is one of those anime/scifi stories that feels strangely prophetic as time goes on, coupling it with the events of 9/11 makes it even more eerie! Thanks for the video! I can't believe you were able to present such a vastly intriguing story in under 15 mins!
It's called predictive programming.
@@M_CFVit’s called social commentary. Japan’s internet society was light years ahead of America’s, which is why it feels like a prediction rather than commentary. Same goes for metal gear solid 2
I remember the day it happened, the whole school made everyone leave their classrooms in a single file line and we all stood in the playground to do the pledge of allegiance. My 2nd grade teacher was holding back tears during it. All day, most of the TV channels were replaying the same clips of the towers collapsing over and over. Even the typical 3pm cartoon block on Fox Kids and Kid's WB was canceled in light of the event.
Still can't believe we did that to ourselves to start a 22 year war.
And it was wholly unnecessary.
God. I hate how much this country fellates itself.
I was 8 yo. I remember the teacher bringing in a tv so she could watch the news, stalling teaching. All the kids knew that the adults were tense, but we were too young to really know why.
I also remember the days following the media openly pushing for open and brutal war, but not specifying any specific country.
___
It’s honesty really sad because, the US before 911 wasn’t perfect, but everyone seemed happy. Like they had a place and were enjoying new tech. Post 911, all I remember is people being extremely hateful and fearful.
speaking of lost media, I was 10 when I saw 9/11 happen live on TV and I actually started recording it on VHS because I thought it would be considered too graphic and disturbing to ever show again but was a piece of history that needed to be preserved, wonder if that tape's still out there
@@Justin.R.Ferris Bro, just no.
Its uniquely disturbing watching the text go by, even though it happened 22 years ago.
It's really disturbing but it's truly only a visual effect on the psyche. When you think about it, after 2001 we lived through so much tragedies, especially in the last 2 years. Some even bigger than 9/11. The world was never truly peaceful.
It's pretty awesome that an American Public Broadcast Company saw the benefits of anime.
That one specific PBS affiliate that was located in Southern California. It's not like this was aired nationally. It was quite confined and the director of the studio has free reign to choose it's schedule. They just receive funding from the government. Besides that, they have very little to do with with the scheduling and airing.
Imagine if PBS is as funded as the BBC…
@@marishiten5944It was in Northern California, just in the southern part of the Bay Area. San Jose also had the first anime convention in the country to reach 1000 attendees. With the prices for lisencing being cheap and the right enviornment, it was one of those things that seemed like it just worked.
I grew up watching it, and KTEH was legendary during its time. Anime in America was pretty hard to come by around then, and they showed the best during that era. It was insane how good it was.
Indeed i’ve never heard of it until now but it’s clear how important KTEH was for anime in america
@@GreenDbzKTEH and Cartoon Network
Did you live in San Jose? Or was it known around the country?
@@GreenDbzand this is why PBS is an American asset
I was watching Sailor Moon when it was interrupted by the events of 9/11. I live in Europe, but similar to this, Sailor Moon was broadcast on a small regional channel. They didn’t have a 24hrs breaking news style studio, so they switched to a homely looking studio where two people calmly explained what was happening. It was crazy and I switched to a proper news channel after that. I never saw the end of that Sailor Moon episode and I remember it was not just the season finale, but show finale with Sailor Moon vs Sailor Galaxia. That whole era was so strange, esp. living through it as a kid and all the media broadcast at the time. The channel I switched to had a correspondent live on the ground. Both towers were still up, but there was chaos and noise from police and fire trucks etc. As he is reporting suddenly there’s a huge rumble and the 4th wall is broken if you will. Journalist and crew just start running live on air as debris starts falling and a restaurant or some kind of shop door is open with people calling them to come quickly. They all dash into the restaurant, close the door and the outside goes pitch black, the first tower had just collapsed. Sorry for such a long comment, but I remember this having a huge impact on me at the time watching all the way from Europe, this was completely unexpected, nobody thought it possible. I’ve always wondered where this footage is now, probably lost in an archive somewhere. If you are interested in this topic and haven’t already, you might want to look into Enya’s song Only Time which became a huge hit as a kind of unofficial anthem of 9/11. Such a strange time, really.
i just turned 27, am going through a rough time - the ending quote you made in this video resonated with me and was award-worthy
thank you for the awesome video 🙏
Thank you so much for the donation and the kind words. Hoping things get better for you as soon as possible! Hang in there
I appreciate your reflection on this odd moment from history, how it is mundane yet still historical, and sends a chill down the spine of those of us who share the memories of being in collective shock at the time.
I remember watching Evangelion, Dirty Pair Flash, Serial Experiments Lain, and Ruin Explorers on KTEH during this time period; I even recorded some of them on VHS, as well.
Another, well known anine video essayist on RUclips, hazel covered SEL in depth a while ago. The fact that there was a PBS station of all things bringing the first of its kind airing of shows, and Lain being broadcast on 9/11 is so surreal and I think she'd appreciate this video along with maybe a follow up to this particular topic
Hazel is a fantastic creator! I love her PlayStation Lain video and her video essays in general. Would love to know her thoughts on this topic.
i love hazel !! hell yeah dude
Maybe it's just because I know KTEH when it was really itself, that makes me question why it's so weird a PBS station would air such things. That was part of the point of PBS. At least to me from my experience.
@@coyoteartist Many PBS stations focused on bringing over BBC content (Dr. Who, Mont Python's Flying Circus, etc), but this is the first time I heard of one bringing over Anime. I shouldn't be as surprised, but I would have killed to have another channel playing Anime (besides Toonami) growing up.
@@ChrisHilgenberg I recall back in my college days -- tail end of the '90s -- the Sci-Fi Channel, before it became SyFy, would air 2 hours of anime every weekend. It's through this block that I was able to see shows like Project A-Ko for the first time. I can't remember too many other specific movies or shows, but I think they showed Urusei Yatsura one week, and maybe even a heavily edited version of Wicked City or Ninja Scroll? I feel like they also showed Birdy the Mighty at once point. It was all the kinds of anime you'd find on VHS tapes at Suncoast Video back then, basically, with minor content edits for TV.
So it wasn't only PBS channels back then, but it was indeed very rare. Before that, the only anime I saw on TV were the shows that got adapted for syndication by Saban or other distributors, like Samurai Pizza Cats, Teknoman (the American rebranding of Tekkaman Blade), Ronin Warriors (Yoroiden Samurai Troopers), Sailor Moon, etc.
many people don’t understand just how widespread this tragedy truly was. And it is undoubtedly true, everyone in the world knew after that day, things would never be the same. Another fun fact to tie into this video, the designer of the towers was a famous Japanese architect.
I remember my mom crying, in Lithuania. No matter the distance such events touch all.
Wasn't alive for it, but it really changed my mom's opinions on everything. She was in the building right next to the towers, and was engulfed by all the smoke before making out alive. Honestly, it's really interesting to hear yall's stories and I think I realize more and more how this really affected everyone.
@@mussy9387 i dont call it an american tragedy, I call it a human tragedy. im a firefighter but i wasnt one yet when these building came down, but its a very sensitive topic because of all my borthers and sisters who died from this.
I think people get the idea how big of a deal it was. And on top of that, most countries in Europe and Asia (Japan specifically) have experienced entire cities being decimated by bombing runs, so they're aware of how bad it is.
The only reason it was a big deal to Americans is because they've been so insulted from attacks on their own soil due to them being isolated geographically. It hasn't happened since the 1800's. In actuality, 3000 lives is nothing compared to Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo fire bombings, bombings of Berlin all spearheaded by the Americans in the 1940's. How do you think those people felt? A couple buildings didn't get hit, entire cities were turned into smoking rubble.
@@marishiten5944 Dresden, Germany too, which wasn't even of any strategic military value. You could see this attitude, including back then, many Americans eagerness to "avenge" this attack by Saudi nationals by attacking Iraq(!!!!) Europeans had a bitter taste of retaliations and are a lot more sober about the use of military.
I grew up watching this channel/broadcast! I remember they also played the original Urusei Yatsura series. It's really cool to see someone talking about this obscurity because lots of people have not believed me when I tell them a PBS station played anime, often the subtitled version even.
So glad that someone who watched KTEH at the time found this video! It’s pretty incredible how ahead of their time they were, especially playing many of the shows subbed instead of dubbed. Tom Fanella seemed disappointed they could only acquire the dub for Lain.
It's so weird to hear someone talk about 2001 as a time long gone, but yeah it kinda is now. I tend to forget that there's people that weren't there watching that particular event live on TV simply because they were too young or hadn't even been born yet.
As someone who isn't from the US, who has never been to the US, and who was eleven years old at the time of the attacks it was a very surreal and disconnected experience to see those towers collapsing on TV, I knew it was actual people dying but I was too young and too far away to understand any of the emotional weight of the situation, what for some was a tragic and traumatic moment for me was just a very weird day when every single channel was showing and talking about the same event.
Same, Im a 1991 guy from eu, it sure was surreal for me, I remember seeing it all in tv and then reading some newspaper articles about it. To me it was weird esoteric news, but in usa it traumatized whole generation of people.
@@neutronshiva2498 I was also 1991 but in the US. I remember the teacher wheeling in a crt, and showing us all the news until our parents came to pick us up. All the adults seemed a little freaked out, but I was like "That's crazy, anyway I'm gonna play Banjo Tooie." lmao. Some of the other kids seemed a little off the next day at school though. Who knows how the world would be if that hadn't happened.
@@MiddleFingerLimitedthere are some theories that the future Jonh Titor mentioned in his chats could have happened
@@rossana8958 Must've been the choice of stein's gate...
@@rossana8958El Psy Kongroo
Thanks for the content. I love lain and was 13 in NY during 9/11, cut school that day, got home and turned on the TV saw the towers on fire and looked out the window to confirm, left the house with my friends and stopped into a grocery store, and some woman hugged me while crying because she said her nephew worked in one of the towers. We then went to blockbuster and rented "Exit wounds" with Steven Segall and DMX...
Edit: I realized i first saw lain when we moved downtown across the highway from the World Trade Center, it was a very fancy building with relatively cheap rent because everyone was afraid to live there, either in fear of another attack, or the smog of asbestos and other contaminates that still kind of lingered in the area.
I hope that woman's nephew survived :(
I born in 93, south korea. And 9/11 was a huge news for us too. I still remember mom holding remote control and whole family watching the news of tower collapsing, in shock. I found out Lain very late, 2011. Since then it’s one of my favorite anime. I can relate the experience of Lain deeply, have my own understanding to the show. So when this clip show up in my feed, with as you said recent odd popularity, it really felt, idk, weird. It was like the first time I found this anime again. Thanks for the great video. It’s really well made.
How the actual hell does this have only 20 views.
And why do you have only 600 subs?
What the hell is going on this content is awesome why doesn't it get more recognition?
youtubes algorithm is like that, unfortunately.
haven't you heard? Shallow millionaires "reacting" to content is all the rage these days
4.6K views
@@Abridgimation what?
@@GDTasteYouHave Reaction videos are why content like this has 20 views. Because people are too lazy to be creative so they steal other's content under the guise of "reacting"
Lain has gotta be near the top of my favorite animes. It's aged so much better than western takes on early internet or cyberpunk culture.
It just has such a hypnotic dreamlike vibe. It's like a Jeff Noon novel come to life
It pretty accurately captures the feeling of being on irc and bbs in the 90s
I realize i still love Anime cause somewhere im still looking to find something like Lain but it is so gone. I think im now more attached to the concept of Anime then what it is actually today.
@@liilalemuri2329Ghost in the shell
I think it's quite wonderful that a PBS station was interested in bringing foreign TV shows to an American audience. There is just something charming to me seeing some older folks taking an interest in Japanese animation and showing it on a network they worked at.
It's just surreal and strange how these two are not similar in their own way but somehow they still relate from one another. Amazing video man, glad RUclips finally recommended something great.
I just got recommended the original video, and this one autoplayed afterwards, crazy how youtube's algorithm works.
9/11 was such a weird day. I was in High School, 9th grade. All we had were rumors in the halls and one teacher with a black and white tiny camping TV with an antenna that barely got a picture. There was this eerie silence and heavy feeling in the air. A lot of people were worried we'd be next, as if this was some nation wide attack. Some kids were crying because they knew people in New York. This was before Cell Phones were really a thing and the internet was basically non existent, so there was no outside communications or live information. I remember coming home and all the channels were playing either clips of the actual planes hitting the buildings or just were just blank. Some channels were playing normal things but had a scrolling text like the Lain clip. It was such a bizarre time that would only ever be rivaled by the VERY early stages of the lockdown during the Pandemic in 2020.
Today has been the most coincidential day for me. Today is also 9/11/2024.
I just finished watching Serial Experiments Lain only just hours ago and went on to process what I just saw. Afterwards I went thru RUclips to watch any analysis or breakdowns of Lain to see what other people may have thought in comparison to what I got out of experiencing the show.... only to stumble upon this video.
I had to do a double take before I started the video as I always thought Lain was a '98 anime and expected this to either cover a hoax or a possible reairing in Japan that addresses possible American residents? Looks like I was half right.
Although I never expected Lain to have aired in the US during the early 2000's, especially in San Jose's PBS station. I'm from Socal so I'm a bit envious that Norcal got an anime block way back, though I would've been too young to watch Lain or the other shows.
Thanks for the informative upload! I'll be sure to share this video around and look forward to future videos after witnessing this crazy fateful experience.
The chances of that lol
i REALLY appreciate people just doing something they feel is right or they intrinsically want to do something.
having a TV station work for airing Anime and being a "unicorn" while doing so, makes me appreciate their work more.
Work hard even if its niche.
7:45 You get a sub from me for being one of the only people on RUclips to use the proper term "VCR" instead of the strangely prevalent misnomer "VHS Player"
Also great video all around. Keep up the good work.
Serial Experiments Lain was my first anime that got me attached to anime. I saw it and went, "I've never seen such amazing story telling before." It premiered to me on TechTV's Anime Fridays.
Honestly, a lot of Lain's musing on the internet and whatnot can feel dated at first glance because of the the older imagining of technology (i.e: she needs a beeeg beefy computer to access the internets well, etc...) but the way it raises and interrogates its central question, that of identity in a world where the digital world is increasingly overlapping with "real life" and the boundaries between them getting blurrier is amazingly prescient. The more we move in this direction, the more relevant this question becomes
Lain and its themes are getting more and more realistic with internet escapism becoming more and more prevalent. And in the late years they've been throwing AI into the mix too. It's getting scary.
I'm crying. I'm not sure when I started crying, but this video was, somehow, deeply moving.
One of the few times I am thankful a recommended video came to my feed. Very glad you made this as I was not the only one that thought about how bizarre and surreal it was to see an anime like Lain respond to an imense tragedy in the face of ever changing times with the fears of the early internet and uncertainty. It felt almost symbolic of the times and people had no idea.
Just started the video and I can already tell this channel is gonna be in my sub list. This anime is how I discovered Duvet and by extension Bôa due to the single recently becoming viral again. The band is in talks of getting back together again from about a month ago. Can't wait to see what comes of it because I'd fly across the world to see them play if I had to
Also, this goes to show that if you were a kid growing up on the west coast (California), you got all the great local programming. My sister and I's first mainstream exposure to Anime was through toonami in the mid/late 90s, but this PBS station had been airing subtitled Anime in the states before then. That's the wild part I think of this entire thing (also goes to show how far shows like Eva has come when it demands 9 figures to be on a streaming platform, but early 00s it was obtainable by a PBS station)
Man this was a 10/10 video, it was SO interesting and well documented, not to mention well edited. You obviously have the talent for this, keep it going man. INSTANT sub.
I'm glad you made a video about this. This gripped my attention and imagination as well and you took the words right out of my mouth in your intro. it's beautiful yet haunting. Unintentional yet reflects the "no mans land" transition between the pre-9/11 and post 9/11 world. I have heavy nostalgia for the early 2000s pre-2010s. and it's always this type of stuff. Even the towers themselves on the old footage their recorded on look like a vaporwave video because they're always frozen in time. So the people will always look 80s and 90s and 2000 and all the analog pre y2k looks that go with it.
Your channel is a hidden gem. Thank you for the upload.
The early 2000s felt like such a wild time. Probably because it was my teenage years. That odd feeling of such an event happening, just as everything changing about my body and my thoughts will always make me feel like 9/11 changed my life directly. While in a political sense everyone's lives were changed by it. I just wonder if the raw nerve of puberty was amplified or dulled by growing up in the shadow of terror and war on the news. Strangely I find myself stoned out of my mind most nights longing to wander the halls of my highschool once more and talk to so many of my friends who I have either lost over the years or fallen out of touch with.
I recorded Cowboy Bebop from Adult Swim at the time. I remember being frustrated when I later watched the tape and the shuttle episode wasn't on it. Then I remember that they pulled it from airing the night of 9/11.
There was also all those weird coins being sold on TV with Bush and the Towers on them. Bet you those things ain't worth shit now.
I should stop typing. I am stoned.
idk about you, but id absolutely pay good money for one of those bush coins. im weirdly obsessed w 9/11 and its impact on the collective american psyche though, so that is like right up my alley lol
@@sleepful1917 I kinda would love to own one as well 😅
The world was changing, has changed, very rapidly and dramatically. I'm sure it's been like that in many times/places, but it's surreal.
You sound like someone in my generation, because I felt similar back then too. Was on the West Coast at the time. Consciously or unconsciously, whether or not we fully understood it, kids/teenagers living in North America (and later, the rest of the world) felt a sharp dividing line struck culturally. September 10th and September 12th became two completely different lifetimes, and there was going to be no going back.
I was living in San Jose for most of the 90s. I got to see some great anime on KTEH. The series I remember were Please Save My Earth and Key the Metal Idol.
I watched Lain and Evangelion on VHS in the 90s.
This is an EXCELLENT mini-documentary. Great job man!
Holy Fuck this brought back so many memories. I’m from San Jose and hadn’t heard the term KTEH in decades. This video hit so weirdly remembering being 10 years old and watching towers fall. This pastiche is the definition of that heartbeat of a moment, the time when we were all Americans, the calm before the storm of war.
As someone unaware of this anime I really struggled making sense of the title of this lol
I don't see how
(That Time) When Serial Experiments Lain (form of the word 'lay'?) After 9/11
It raises questions about where the Serial Experiments were laying _before_ 9/11.
It’s surreal, eerie, but also…strangely kinda chill. The analog features, scrolling text, and Lain of all anime makes it a really interesting piece of media on how various Americans reacted to the attacks of September 11th.
I remember back in 1999-2000 or so, when I was a wee lad, a friend of my parents' came to visit us. At the time, he was studying Japanese (the language) in university, and he told us he was writing his thesis on a project he was currently undertaking. For this project, my parents' friend was translating an anime that had aired in Japan recently, in addition to documenting his subbing process on a blog. I'm pretty sure he had uploaded one of the episodes of this show to AOL, which he brought up and played on our TV. My memories of what happened are pretty hazy, and my parents don't remember that day very well, either. But the images that stuck with me for over a decade were a panning-out shot of a girl in a dress slumped over a pile of... something (books? computers? I couldn't remember for the longest time) while a distinctly English song played in the background. That, and a chaotic scene with lots of flashing lights in which a man pointed a gun at a girl and then shot himself in the head. That was when I learned what laser sights were. I'm surprised my parents let me watch all of that, honestly.
For over a decade, the hazy memory of that day floated in and out of my head and I couldn't remember what the show was called at all. It wasn't until Serial Experiments Lain started to gain a new cult following in the past 8 years or so that the pieces fell into place. I had watched the first two episodes of Lain before - as far as I know - anyone had subbed it and uploaded it online. I had no idea about this 9/11 Lain airing until just now, either. It's just wild to think of how prescient Lain was even at the time, when most peoples' contact with anime was limited to what you rented from the video store or whatever was airing on TV. It's even wilder to think about how this show had an overseas following even just a few years after it aired in Japan - and how Lain itself aired in Japan a year before the greater Japanese public got access to the Internet at all.
As an aside, I haven't seen that family friend in years. The last I heard, he was studying to become a Buddhist monk. I'd love to get in touch with him again and pick his brain on Lain and whatever else he was up to so many years ago.
I forgot I was watching a RUclips video, the inexplicable feelings this piece was able to provoke. I hope you keep making content, and I hope more find their way to it.
KTEH was an important early player in American airings of anime. I was able to attend their panel at San Jose's FanimeCon this year, and the behind the scenes and small details and history of this channel and anime were so fascinating. It's also part of the beauty of PBS stations - they can do a lot to make niche (which anime was, at this time) content extremely accessible because someone is passionate enough about it. I think, part of what I miss about TV, despite the fact that the internet has objectively become the best medium through which to share niche content, is the amount of passion it took to get that stuff on the air. You could tell that whoever was putting it out there, really genuinely cared a lot.
Similar to you, I am fascinated by this piece of footage because of how surreal it is. I was alive at the time but a small child, but it’s one of my earliest solid memories. The lain clip feels like it captures the weird feeling when nobody really knew how to respond in the immediate aftermath. Reminds me of walking onto the school playground the day after, and not knowing what to say, even though I knew that it would be something that everyone’s going to talk about (even if none of us actually understood it because we were so young).
This is a fantastic video and criminally underrated. Extremely interesting and well made. It’s honestly wild how so many talented people are out there creating content that the algorithm has not picked up. This deserves hundreds of thousands of views for sure. Excellent work, I subscribed!
You know how in games, you have this tutorial, and after a certain beat, the real game begins? That's what it felt like to go through 9-11. An unsettling drop into the reality of the adult world. I was 15, but I immediately felt like I had been granted this understanding I was not ready for. Thank you for documenting this.
Do you Understand it ??
Have you already looked into A m a l g a m V i r g o ? (Note the Date & the fella they have playing the terrorist)
Amazing video, thanks for making it, you described it perfectly and as also a someone born in 2000 the way we feel the repercussions of what happened after 9/11 the uncertainty, the war, our family being sent off to fight after 9/11
damn this is a well documented video, it surprises me that you got little amount of subscribers, i bet you'll get big real soon
This hits home, literally. KTEH was how I discovered British scifi and anime in high school. I was my ritual to stay up for Sunday Science Fiction Night
What I love about this snippet of media is the fact that the scrolling text seems to be in a font (at least similar) of the anime itself.
I should mention, Serial Experiments Lain is directly influenced by William Gibson's 'Neuromancer'. I highly recommend it as a read to all, as it also strongly influenced Cowboy Beebop and Outlaw Star. Cyberspace is merely our version of hyperspace! Neurons are the original 'Net'.
Amazing video! Was not expecting such a topic coming from this channel but I'm all here for it!
what a strange feeling watching this video, and just can't help but draw the comparison to lain stumbling upon the deep world of the wired in the show as you talk about uncovering the lost past of media in the 2000s, uncovering something that's new and familiar at the same time while feeling a heavy sense of nostalgia.
Love that KTEH is still remembered for being the trailblazers they were. I'd always make it a point to be in front of the tv Sunday nights when they'd air Tenchi Muyo or whatever show they had at the time. When Eva hit netflix a few years back and everyone was making a big deal about securing the licensing you'd occasionally see it mentioned that a small PBS channel managed to secure it two decades prior during the height of its Japanese popularity. It was still two wildly different markets back then, something that would dissipate in the coming decade.
I posted about this on the anniversary of the airing. I spent this 11th and 12th reminiscing about the end of the 90s and the violent thrust into the uncertain 2000s. I wasn't old enough to remember it, and I wound up spending hours going through videos, news, and media from the week of the attacks. It was like feeling everything through a familiar window that I couldn't really step through. When I found the archive of this episode last year, I found the words so haunting at the beginning of Episode 7.
"Let me tell you what's happening. What's beginning to take place in our society, without you ever being even vaguely conscious of it."
I was only a month old when 9/11 happened, so i was also alive for it, but with no memories of it. I too have been watching old vids of it from different perspectives this year in particular, where i haven't really had interest in learning and "seeing" before. Its honestly is surreal. I was alive. The tv was where i was with my mother calling grandma and grandpa, but i have no attachment to that time in my head.
@@MyDudeman222 Same here, I was about a month old.
Toonami takes a lot of credit for things KTEH and International Channel did before. Heck due to Anime Network starting in 2002 originally as a 24/7 channel before becoming video on demand in 2008 i truely believe Toonami's influence is vastly overstated.
Jus because they werent first, doesnt mean their "influence is vastly overstated". Whole generation of kids grew up on toonami not ever knowing about this KTEH thing.
I watched this as a kid, I remember this scrolling text. Didn't think too much of it at the time, but now realizing its true gravity now that I'm older. Good coverage on this.
I remember watching these on kteh. It was awesome. One night they had an origin uncut episode of DBZ and it tripped me out as a kid seeing all the blood juxtaposed with the super serious and hard-core way (or to my young ears) the Japanese VAs spoke. It blew my little mind 😆
This video is amazing man. It really brings me back to that time and the overall feelings of the world
It’s so weird seeing a video like this being so unknown
I don't think I ever felt so somber after watching a RUclips video
All these people who were alive back then and recorded these obscure stuff for us to see are legends
As a Bay Area resident it is wild to have been a part of this spearpoint for anime in the west. KTEH was my gateway to a lot of anime programming that I wouldn't have known otherwise and even at the time I realized it was something special to have broadcasted over the air. Even just the simple exposure to animation that was more adult driven and to have a PBS affiliate recognize the artistic value of these programs was unprecedented. Real kudos to the team who fought hard to bring us such programming, in hindsight it almost seems a miracle they pulled it off.
I love the video because it's from a time that I had not experienced or been around, from someone else's perspective, from another time. The vintage feel, the aesthetic, and the context. It was recorded on a VCR, something most of us have knowledge of what it was like, nowadays you can just pirate anything off the internet (not encouraging it). Serial Experiments Lain always had this awareness feel to it, like they knew what they were doing and I always felt like Lain was trying to communicate with me, connect with me, especially in the final episode. As for the text, it cements the feeling that this was taken place at a specific place and time. One that is completely out of our reach and one only few have ever seen/experiences. Life is a unique experience
Evangelion being aired on the same station that aired Arthur is crazy to think about
Some anime even had the WTC mentioned in it. I find it odd seeing the towers in non American media, especially after 9/11.
im so hyped for when this channel truelly blows up in about 8 months and this creator gets to make 2 hour longer videos like this one
This is a great summary of the profoundness in the Kteh Lain clip. I feel the themes of Lain combined with the tragedy of 9/11 both give off ominous emotions about the future. That’s what makes this coincidental combination so fitting.
i feel like there is so much more to this that people don't realize and you perfectly summed it up at the end. A show from japan on a station in america talking about a tragedy across the country back when the internet was not a staple of everyday life. We have this pretense that it wasnt until the internet that truly "wired" our world but I feel like you can take any incident in history no matter the timeline and still trace it back to anywhere in the past present or future. It really reminds me of the concept of rhizomes and how there truly is not start or end, just a network (of knowledge) that connect toward each and every other point.
great video! it really does feel otherworldly. looking forward to seeing more of your work!
Yeah, this was most likely the 16th. KTEH usually aired their anime on sundays, so unless I'm wrong (which happens), that would make the most sense.
That’s correct, the Sunday Science Fiction Night programming from the following week was pushed up to the 16th (the same shows still ended up playing the following week though).
Happy to see this video found it’s way to you! I enjoy your videos a lot!
0:51 when he’s saying how it had a “grip on him” and that he wanted to figure it out, it made me realize how different people are. because i saw that video too, and i wanted to figure it out as well, but i didnt *do* anything, and he did. just a thought i had.
Thank you for this
I'm pushing 40 yrs old, I lived thru all this. Lain was very important to me and was one of my escapes during such strange times. It's hard to think of what to say...I really enjoyed the old television clips of news and talk shows, the PBS clips. Never knew it debuted in the US that way - I thought it was through VHS! I remember seeing some of those live, The Daily Show especially. It's interesting to see the newer generations take on both Lain and the 9/11 tragedy. Very well done. Let's all love Lain
Anime kiddos and shonen casuals nowadays don't truly appreciate and know how easily available anime is today
Thank you for sharing this. I'm old enough to have been affected by the attacks (not personally, but I watched it live on TV and was about an hour area from NYC so was scared for my safety).
Surprising to hear that you were only 1 year old when it happened. So many of the younger people today only have old footage to watch to experience even a fraction of what it was like for everyone watching or experiencing it live. For whatever reason young people like to joke about it a lot, but it was a very serious tragic event that forever changed a lot of lives.
As someone who doesn't live in America and was in school when it it happened, (with a teacher bringing in TV for us to watch during school), this is pretty foreign to me.
It's super wholesome to see a ln old man talking about spending 2 years to get SEL to air and asking for funding to keep the station going. It's almost grassroots.
You got my sub sir. This is 95% of how i felt watching that clip and you've expressed it articulately, with great edition to boot. Hope the channel grows
I find this kind of stuff unsettling and melancholy, because it reminds me of how young I was even two decades ago, and how my body is failing me now, more and more.
In 1992, Saint Seiya was broadcasted for the first time in Mexico. I used to ask mother to record some episodes in my VCR because sometimes I was not home, and I didn't want to miss an episode. I did this for Sailor Moon, Ranma and the original Dragon Ball, as well as an official Nintendo TV show called Nintendomanía. I might still habe some of those tapes, but without a functional VCR, it will be hard to find them. I used to record a radio show specialized in gothic rock, I still got a bunch of those tapes. See, in 1996, it was hard to find all the music you wanted.
I was born in 1996. The earliest memory I have is sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with duplo blocks. I can still feel the carpet in the smooth plastic of the bricks. The phone on the wall in the kitchen rang. Because that's where phones were back then, cell phones were something for rich businessmen and smartphones weren't even a idea at that point. My mother walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone, it was my father. After a short conversation, probably less than a minute, she hung up and ran into the living room and change the TV from Nickelodeon to the news, and right as she changed it, I watched the second plane fly into the towers.
Of course at the time I didn't know what was going on, I just watched. Later on I realized that that was the moment that, even in my childish mind I came to realize that the world was not a safe place. The next day my mother bought a newspaper, something she didn't really do before and hasn't done since. It's an issue of the Houston chronicle, with the picture of the towers with smoke billowing out of them as the front page. It's on the top shelf of the closet in the hallway even today, stacked with an issue of Time magazine I believe it is that contains the famous image of the jumper.
Savor, my friends, what you have in this moment. You have no idea when it will be gone.
WAIT VHS’S DEGRADE OVER TIME??? Shet i gotta check on mine
Wow the ending music is the theme for lain
9:40 But life doesn't go on, at least, not the old life. The hat hangs there, frozen in time, at the exact moment Lain looks up into the sky. Her face is eclipsed by the shadow of a bird flying in the air. The old life she was living has now paused indefinitely, and it probably won't ever resume.
It's almost a direct metaphor, or perhaps a parallel. It's like going about your daily life pre-9/11, and then being shocked by something that knocks you off balance, and then looking up to see the plane crash into the tower, the wing of which has taken up all of your vision....that's it. That daily life will never happen the way it was supposed to. You can walk the same way you were, but you'll never get your hat back that the crash blew away.
It's so eerie...
Lain looking up at the Text: "Wait, What Happened?"
It was a good time growing up an anime fan in the 90s-early 2000s. So many memorable shows....but Lain still stands above everything else for me. It might not have been the case initially....but everything it depicted the internet and the future would be....have to admit its almost eerie, just like the show. I'm not surprised theres still so many coincidental stories that are found out about it to this day. My computer background still shows a poster of Lain, never changed it in over 20years :p
Chiming in here, this is criminally underrated. Great work.
Serial experiments lain is so odd. I was born in the late 90s and didn’t watch the show until I was an adult, the culture of adolescent drug use, apathy, aswell as this sense of narcissistic pseudo schizophrenia that took over the western world in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It was surreal watching this show from around the time I was born allegorically show me the world I grew up in, the world that came a decade after it’s creation.
Man, hearing Dirty Pair mentioned in 2024? Am I in the twilight zone
Beautiful editing
Present day present time. Hahahaha
That line always gave me a little chill in 1998.
I also liked that you had to track down the few places that had the imported VHS tapes. They never had all of them and never more than one. Felt like hidden knowledge. Flash forward to today and a lot of the predictions came true....
Good luck man you are going to make it someday with quality content like this
Madness that the majority can both acknowledge and forget 911.