When Serial Experiments Lain Aired After 9/11

In 2022, a clip of the anime Serial Exeriments Lain that aired after 9/11 went viral online and was described as "bizarre" and "surreal." This is the full story of how that clip came about, from the PBS station KTEH to its upload last year.

[Acheronianer]

Seeing Lain, Sakura Wars, and then NGE in that order on Sept 9th 2001 all in a row sounds like a sensory rollercoaster.

[Hlecktro]

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

[OwlNoire]

This is probably the first and only time that Youtube 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.

[SorryBones]

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

[TheJadedJames]

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.

[camchem]

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!

[barahng]

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.

[tekkaman]

Showing Eva right after 9/11 is insane given how many buildings get knocked down throughout the show.

[turbomayonnaise]

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

[llamah]

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.

[affordablex]

Showing Lain after 911 is crazy considering the first episode has someone jumping from a building💀

[choux]

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.

[miku..]

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 🙏

[Anonymous]

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.

[FrozenAfricaPrincess]

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.

[JamesnLollify]

Its uniquely disturbing watching the text go by, even though it happened 22 years ago.

[johnwhite]

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!

[movie]

It's pretty awesome that an American Public Broadcast Company saw the benefits of anime.

[axelprino]

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.

[ChrisHilgenberg]

Another, well known anine video essayist on YouTube, 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