No Reason to Stay in the Real World Any Longer Anime Series and Spirituality in Post-Aum Japan

Messuti, Giovanni Stigliano

No Reason to Stay in the Real World Any Longer Anime Series and Spirituality in Post-Aum Japan

James Alexander Gordon on 21st January 2026

Author Information

Giovanni Stigliano Messuti, The University of Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract

In 1995, the sarin gas attack by Aum Shinrikyō provoked a short circuit in Japanese society. New New Religions (shin shinshūkyō) became associated with sectarian violence disappearing from the public discourse, while trust in media and government plummeted. Against this background, I argue that animated series Serial Experiments Lain (1998, Triangle Staff), Boogiepop Phantom (2000, Madhouse), and Paranoia Agent (2004, Madhouse) helped young adults of the Lost Decade (ushinawareta jūnen) fulfill their longing for transcendence outside discredited religious frameworks. These series did so by means of narratives where hypertechnology (Lain), contact with superhuman beings (Boogiepop Phantom) or paranormal entities (Paranoia Agent) invite an existentialist redefinition of the “self” and its relationship with society. They also share a quasi-stand-alone structure, where each episode is conceived as a self-sufficient “experience” (taiken) addressing a different human type, thus replicating the intimacy of spiritual experiences. Finally, they all foresee some sort of apocalypse (i.e., the Wire reset in Lain, the pillar of light in Boogiepop Phantom, the black ooze in Paranoia Agent) whose costs outweigh the benefits. By engaging in a formal and linguistic analysis of each episode of each series, I have summarized the preliminary findings regarding how these anime are telling of the trying times they were produced in, and how they reopened the discourse on spirituality in the post-Aum scenario.