And here’s the frustrating part.

Some of those visual ideas actually work.

Occasionally an image lands exactly as intended.

Occasionally a surreal sequence genuinely creates an emotional response.

Occasionally I caught myself thinking:

“Now that’s interesting.”

Those moments exist.

They’re simply buried underneath so many repeated artistic flourishes that they lose much of their impact.

Like adding too much seasoning to a perfectly good meal.

Eventually you can’t taste the meal anymore.

Why Lain worked

This is also why I don’t believe you can deliberately create “another Lain.”

People often think Serial Experiments Lain succeeded because it had strange imagery.

No.

It succeeded because every strange image served a larger purpose.

Its silences mattered.

Its pacing mattered.

Its mystery mattered.

Even when you didn’t fully understand what was happening, you felt that something was happening.

The world itself had internal logic.

It felt alive.

It trusted the audience enough to leave questions unanswered.

That’s one of the hardest things any artist can do.

Trust your audience.

Don’t explain every feeling.

Don’t overdecorate every scene.

Don’t mistake complexity for depth.

Sometimes less really is more.

Lightning in a bottle

I think that’s ultimately what disappointed me most.

Not that this anime failed to become Lain.

It never needed to.

What disappoints me is that I think it could have become something uniquely its own.

The original game already had an identity.

It didn’t need to borrow another one.

Instead of trying to become “the next Lain,” I wish the studio had simply embraced what made Needy Streamer Overload different.

Because there is a fascinating story hiding inside this material.

A story about loneliness.

About online validation.

About becoming addicted to attention.

About turning yourself into content.

Those themes are more relevant today than ever.

Ironically, that’s already enough.

No butterflies required.

Final thoughts

Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson I took away from Needy Girl Overdose.

Great art isn’t created by copying another masterpiece’s visual language.

It’s created by honestly exploring your own ideas.

Akira happened because everything aligned.

Twin Peaks happened because everything aligned.

The Shining happened because everything aligned.

Serial Experiments Lain happened because everything aligned.

The right creators.

The right ideas.

The right moment in time.

Lightning in a bottle.

You can’t force that.

You can only keep creating, keep experimenting, and hope that one day lightning strikes again.

And despite everything I’ve written here…

…I’m genuinely glad this anime exists.

Because somebody cared enough to try.

Somebody believed they could create something unusual.

Somebody took a risk.

Even if, in my opinion, that risk ultimately didn’t pay off.

Maybe you’ll absolutely love it.

Maybe you’ll think I’m talking complete nonsense.

And honestly?

That’s perfectly fine.

Art doesn’t need defending.

Art speaks for itself.

Sometimes it whispers.

Sometimes it shouts.

Sometimes it completely misses the mark.

But it always tells us something—not just about the people who made it, but about ourselves and how we experience it.

As for me…

I really wanted Needy Girl Overdose to become Lain 2.0.

Instead, I found a fascinating experiment that reached for the stars but never quite escaped Earth’s gravity.

That doesn’t make it terrible.

It simply makes it disappointing.

Final Score: 4/10

An ambitious experiment with flashes of brilliance, buried beneath a mountain of artistic overindulgence. I genuinely admire the studio for trying something different. I only wish they’d had more confidence in telling their own story instead of chasing somebody else’s magic.