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Appreciating the Lain Fanart of Kobaneko

Recently, I was diving through the Internet Archive, looking through old Serial Experiments Lain fan sites. One of those websites was the so-called “diosa_lain” website, also known as “Serial Experiments Lain: Who is Lain?”

The website seems to have been created by a fan of Lain from Mexico, and has archives that stretch all the way back to 2004. It’s one of the earliest Spanish-speaking Lain fansites that I’ve found so far!

One interesting corner of the website was the “Imagenes” (Pictures) section. I always like to scour through the galleries of old Lain fan sites to see if there are any old pieces of fan art that haven’t been archived yet. Plus, it’s fun to get an idea of what art and content Lain fans were enjoying over 20 years ago.

With this fan site, I was in luck – not only did they have a surprising amount of photos that were archived, but they also had some extremely well-drawn fan art in relatively high resolution! I’ve included my favorite picture below.

I was immediately curious: Who drew this art? Where had it been published? It was available on this website as far back as August 29th, 2004, so I knew it had been drawn before then…

I performed a reverse image search on the artwork using the service TinEye, which brought me to Safebooru, which led me to Danbooru – a well-known repository of anime fan art.

The photo was uploaded to Danbooru on 2009-11-02, by the user “dotKuro”. Interestingly, the version of the image on Danbooru was actually lower resolution than the version from the 2004 fan website! (205×600, vs. 400×1168). This is likely a symptom of being saved and reposted across so many fan sites for so many years…

Also, I was in luck – danbooru listed the artist’s name: kobaneko. Unfortunately, the source of the image was incorrect – it linked back to a Russian Lain fansite from the mid-2000’s (lain.ru) instead of kobaneko’s website… but we were getting closer.

Clicking further through Danbooru, they had 8 total kobaneko images archived, so I decided to look through each of them – and finally got a hit! (I know there are more than 8 images in that screenshot, but that’s because I uploaded a few while working on this blog post…)

This Lain fanart was uploaded to the service way back on 2008-11-21, by the user “Shinjidude”. Checking the source, it seems to properly link back to kobaneko’s website: http://www4.cds.ne.jp/~kobaneko/cg/gazou/cg/lain/lain-10.JPG

Moving back to the Internet Archive, I plugged in the new URL and checked the sitemap – we were in business! Over a thousand saved pages, mainly spanning from 1999 to 2004. It seems sometime after 2004 the website was abandoned and eventually went offline… I hope kobaneko is doing well.

If you have the time, I highly recommend checking out the various artwork presented on kobaneko’s website – they are/were a very skilled artist. Their website can be browsed on the Internet Archive at the link below:

Kobaneko Homes – https://web.archive.org/web/20041205154651/http://www4.cds.ne.jp/~kobaneko/cg/index2.html

Links & Citations

3 responses to “Appreciating the Lain Fanart of Kobaneko”

  1. spaztron64 Avatar
    spaztron64

    Excellent work at finding the origin of these illustrations! I’ll add them to the LainNet CG archive soon.

    Reply
  2. alwaysselflessd20f9d0dc6 Avatar
    alwaysselflessd20f9d0dc6

    : )

    Reply
  3. alwaysselflessd20f9d0dc6 Avatar
    alwaysselflessd20f9d0dc6

    Hi~

    When I was browsing Danbooru before, I also noticed these images with similar art styles and the same logo. To be honest, I really like the style of these fan arts—it feels like stepping back into the 2000s.
    Eventually, through reverse image search, I was able to trace the images back to this website again via Safebooru/Danbooru (thanks also to the person who uploaded the source link!).

    However, I found more potential leads on Pixiv and Twitter. On Pixiv, there’s a user with the same ID name—also “Kobaneko”—who registered an account around 2009 but has since gone inactive. I’m not sure if it’s the same person.
    On Twitter, there’s also an account named “kobaneko,” registered in 2011, with a bio describing themselves as a “Railway Signaling Designer.” Again, I can’t confirm if it’s the same individual.
    Both accounts publicly list their location as Yokohama, Kanagawa—the same place the artist specified in their profile.

    Interestingly, there are many Lain-related images on Danbooru from the 2000s and 2010s whose original sources can no longer be traced or were never properly credited with source links—they exist now only as archives, and some have even vanished from the Internet Archive. I think it’s best not to disturb them. Nothing in this world is immune to decay; those who chose to fade from the internet surely had their reasons. All we can do, perhaps, is to cherish their memory and seek out the legacy of that era.

    ———————————————————————————————— translated by AI
    original

    您好! 我之前刷Danbooru的时候也注意到了这些画风相似有同样Logo的图,老实讲,我很喜欢这些Fan arts的风格,像是回到了2000年代一样. 最后我在反向搜图的时候也通过Safebooru/Danbooru重新定位到了这个网站(也要感谢上传这个source link的朋友!)

    不过,我在Pixiv以及Twitter上找到了更多可能的信息,Pixiv上又一个同名ID的人,他的名字同样也是Kobaneko,大约在2009年左右注册帐号,不过没有了动静,我也不知道是不是本人 在Twitter上同样也有一个叫kobaneko的社交帐号,在2011年注册 简介上说是 “Railway Signaling Designer”,我同样也不知道是不是本人 这两个帐号公开的地理位置都是 神奈川横滨 而作者在Profile上标注的就是来自神奈川横滨

    有趣的是,在Danbooru上有很多来自2000/2010s与Lain相关的图片 已经找不到具体的来源或者没有标注source link, 只能被存档 甚至有一些在WebArchive上也找不到了.我想,还是不要打扰他们好了,世界上没有什么东西是不会腐朽的,他们选择退出互联网,想必也有他的原因,我们能做的,恐怕只有怀念/找出那个时代的遗产了.

    Reply

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