And welcome back to Otaku No Video as always. Thank you very much for joining me. Where today I am talking about serial experiments lane as part of my ongoing video series about it, focusing today on the art style of the series, certainly distinctive. The show uses a specific color palette, focusing on subdued blues as well as this odd thin yellow color. Almost as though the show occurs either in twilight or in very bright late afternoon light. This is demonstrated most strikingly in layer 7, where lane is being interrogated by that guy from Tachibana Labs. The show begins with the use of these strong yellow and gold colors. This makes sense since it occurs after lane has come home from school, so it's presumably late afternoon. But halfway through the scene we cut away, cut back, and the rest of the scene is using these cool blues, a complete color shift, despite the fact that it can't have been a long time between those cuts. And I think that's intentional. The show is highlighting the personality switch over the lane has right at that point in the scene. It's also worth noting the relative realism of the world. There are no strange hair colors, no weird hairstyles. Everyone has dark brown or black hair. This is important for a series in which a lot of weird stuff is happening. There has to be some baseline of normality. If the entire world is strange, then when something strange happens, you don't know if characters should react with surprise or not. The show also features minimal animation, mainly because it has a minimal budget. It is also worth noting though how well the show uses that minimal animation. It uses repeated frames of animation in smart ways, particularly in representing the people of the wired. It adds some movement to scenes without requiring a lot of time and repeated drawing. This all comes together with Yoshitoshi Abe's character designs. When he was growing up, he wasn't allowed to really watch anime read manga. So his art style is not a typical anime art style. It feels more realistic, a little more rounded. The characters don't have quite as large eyes as they do in other anime series. So it has that realism to it, while still feeling somewhat abstract as is appropriate for an anime series. This also allows the series to be interpreted in many ways, because the colors aren't normal real world colors, because it feels like a somewhat constructed world. One can apply all sorts of theories about what's actually going on in this strange environment. It's an excellent use of color and art to make a work that is a piece of art.