Serial Experiments Lain is a Japanese anime from 1998 that follows Lain Iwakura, an adolescent girl in suburban Japan, and her relation to the Wired, a global communications network similar to the internet. OR is it a surreal avant-garde experimental art piece with no defined narrative. This is why the idea of objective interpretation is so baffling to me, because I don’t even believe you can create an objective synopsis. You COULD define K-On as a show about five girls in a band that eat cake and drink tea OR you could define it as a coming-of-age story about five high school girls as they form a close bond with each other. Neither of these are wrong, but where it starts getting muddy is when we start trying to objectively define which is more accurate. It’s all up to interpretation. The other day I was arguing with my good friend and fellow writer Demigloom about whether the 3-episode test applies to Magical Girl Madoka Magica in the comments of my latest video. My point was essentially that if you were to understand the point of the series you would enjoy the first two episodes as well as everything after. In retrospect I recognize this was an extremely condescending and pretentious way to talk about how one could enjoy the series. While this may be how I interpret the show, to believe that that is the only correct interpretation and anyone who doesn’t agree is missing the point is completely insane and follows the exact train of thought that I constantly disavow so much. The saddest part of this whole debacle is that I don’t even necessarily disagree with the point I was trying to make. The issue all lies within the way I phrased it. Objectivity in art is a very interesting subject and I hate how the vast majority of the time it’s boiled down to a semantic debate. The phrases “This show is bad” and “I don’t like this show” do not have a different meaning. There is nothing that you could feasibly define as “objectively bad.” But let’s do a little experiment. Let’s see if there is a correct and objective interpretation of a piece of art. Where do you find this correct interpretation? This is where the question of authorial intent comes up. I suppose if you were to judge what something is based on one source, the author is probably your best option, but people need to understand that they might not even fully understand their own work. I know I’ve made a lot of things in which I made up some completely fake backstory as to why it’s so esoteric and confusing due to being berated so much about it. The author’s interpretation is just another interpretation of the work, no more correct or incorrect than MyAnimeList’s description, or a famous anime YouTuber’s description. Take for example Hideaki Anno, director of world-renowed classic anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. There are so many core elements of Eva that seem so meticulously put together and obviously meaningful, but when asked about it, Anno just says it looked cool, or that they ran out of budget. Now this is by no means me saying Anno is wrong about his own show. I’m just saying that authorial intent is just another interpretation and should not be taken any more seriously than adamnyu with 32 subscribers. One of the biggest pieces of evidence as to why interpretation is so subjective is how much it changes over time. When I initially watched Eva for the first time I thought it was a dumb boring robot show and I totally didn’t get it at all. After three consecutive viewings I consider it one of the most intelligent shows of all time, and I easily rank it among my favorites on my MyAnimeList page. How do you interpret my videos? According to my analytics, not at all. I’m a cool girl who makes cool stuff and if you agree with me you can subscribe to my channel. I also have some other videos or something. Thanks again for watching, and I’ll see you next video.