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Serial Experiments Lain

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Iwakura, Lain

Shimizu, Kaori

McCarty, Michael

Eiri, Masami

Hayami, Show

Iwakura, Miho

Burchard, Petrea

Iwakura, Mika

Kawasumi, Ayako

Iwakura, Yasuo

Oobayashi, Ryuusuke

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Serial experiments lain.

S1.E1 ∙ Weird

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Serial experiments lain.

Directed by Ryutaro Nakamura , Yuichi Tanaka …

Close the world. txen eht nepO.

Lain—driven by the abrupt suicide of a classmate—logs on to the Wired and promptly loses herself in a twisted mass of hallucinations, memories, and interconnected-psyches.

Kaori Shimizu Yoko Asada Ayako Kawasumi Ryusuke Ohbayashi Rei Igarashi

Directors Directors

Ryutaro Nakamura Yuichi Tanaka Akihiko Nishiyama Masahiko Murata Johei Matsuura Shigeru Ueda

Producers Producers

Yasuyuki Ueda Taro Maki

Writer Writer

Chiaki J. Konaka

Original Writer Original Writer

Yasuyuki Ueda

Editor Editor

Tsuyoshi Imai

Cinematography Cinematography

Takashi Azuhata

Art Direction Art Direction

Masaru Sato

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Yoshitoshi ABe

Composers Composers

Reichi Nakaido Jasmine Rodgers

Songs Songs

Paul Turrell Ben Henderson Lee Sullivan Alex Caird Steve Rodgers Jasmine Rodgers

Pioneer LDC Triangle Staff

Popular reviews

Review by COBRARocky ★★★★★ 3

It's about being a girl on the computer.

Review by AndoCommando ★★★★★ 19

Ya'll don't seem to understand

Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 34

someone please fucking hit me with a semi-truck.

Review by Ayymad ★★★★ 4

Women will literally abandon the physical realm and upload their conciousness to the internet instead of going to therapy

Review by Riley ★★★★★ 3

I'm just like her except instead of transcending physical space to the digital world i'm logging onto letterboxd and reading bad takes all day long frfr

Review by adambolt ★★½

I don't know what you guys mean this is super easy to understand all I had to do was watch 57 explained videos and read a 15,000 word essay about the symbolism

Review by eve 💿 3

there are many versions of me.

there’s the me I show strangers, the me I show my mom, the me I show my dad, the me I show one friend, the me I show another.

then there’s online me. there’s tumblr me, letterboxd me, twitter me.

every time I remake, delete, refresh, etc. is like a rebirth; the internet providing us with the power to make or destroy an entire identity in the span of seconds.

there are infinite versions of me.

but how do I know which one is real?

maybe they’re all real. maybe I, we, and them are all the same. maybe we are more than flesh and blood and veins and bones. 

we are multidimensional, new and used, young and old, all at the same time. 

we are thoughts and ideas and connections.

Review by Jaime Rebanal 🇵🇸 ★★★★★ 3

Words to begin talking about the experience that I have had with Serial Experiments Lain , the brilliant miniseries from Ryutaro Nakamura are so difficult to come up with on the spot, other than simply stating the obvious, it was a beautiful experience that I surely am never to forget in a long while. Anime is a medium that I have only recently started to explore more, but not since Neon Genesis Evangelion have I ever experienced something that ever felt like Serial Experiments Lain – avant-garde expressionism at some of the most beautiful that any screen would be lucky enough to host. If more well known works like those of Studio Ghibli, or Akira and Ghost in the Shell are…

Review by 🌻 lindsay 🌻 ★★★★ 7

I’ve existed on the internet for most of my living memory. It’s an essential part of my life and always has been. However, I do think that at some point there was a shift. The internet became more closely linked with our identities. It stopped being a place to view, to read information, to put out information. It began to become a place where we exist and live every day. 

I think there’s a lot of fear that comes with knowing that, especially if you didn’t grow up embedded in online culture. Watching it from a distance or watching it as it began to happen, I can only imagine how scary that would be. I think this is where a…

Review by louferrigno ★★★★★ 23

(NOTE: THIS IS A REVIEW OF THE ENTIRE SERIES EPISODE-BY-EPISODE. AS SUCH, SPOILERS ARE PRESENT ALL-AROUND. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED).

Few series have had their legacy defined by mystique and complete obliqueness like Serial Experiment Lain , delving into complex themes like the nature of reality, identity, and communication just as the internet’s interconnected stream of information began taking the form it takes today. Forming a trifecta of late 90’s anime mindfucks alongside Neon Genesis Evangelion and Revolutionary Girl Utena , a series like Lain was always destined to have niche appeal, something people will say is 100% the best while fully knowing that it's nowhere near accessible as something like Cowboy Bebop or, hell, even Evangelion to a certain degree (at…

Review by Katy ★★★★

are ya winnin’ son?

Review by bira

when your circle is not even real but yall crazyyy

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Serial Experiments Lain: Full English Subtitle, in original Japanese

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The Terrifyingly Prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 Years Later

How the anime classic predicted the obsessive and compulsive habits of our online life

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At the onset, Lain Iwakura’s father warns her about the social perils of the internet, alternatively known as “the Wired” in the parlance of Serial Experiments Lain . “When it’s all said and done,” he says, “the Wired is just a medium of communication and the transfer of information. You mustn’t confuse it with the real world. Do you understand what I’m warning you about?”

Lain is young, and doesn’t yet know how to use a computer, but she knows better than to place her faith in the older generation’s rigid distinction between real life and online performance. “You’re wrong,” she responds.

At age 14, Lain was extremely online. Yes, she’s a fictional character—a cartoon, even — but there is no more frightfully prescient web parable than her story, Serial Experiments Lain , the 13-episode anime series that first aired in Japan in July 1998. Twenty years later, Lain is a distressingly faithful portrait of online life in the 2010s—a hellscape of warring avatars, self-serving mythology, catastrophic self-importance, compulsion, and inevitably, disillusionment.

At his young daughter’s sheepish request, Lain’s father installs a state-of-the-art personal computer—a Navi—in Lain’s bedroom. Lain’s father takes pride in his daughter’s budding technological interest. “In this world,” he explains, “people connect to each other, and that’s how societies function. For communication, you need a powerful system that will mature alongside your relationships with people.” Curiously, Lain’s father doesn’t seem to have many enviable relationships of his own. His conversations with his wife are cold, and his enthusiasm for his daughter is born conditionally from her interest in her father’s profession. Lain’s father wears glasses that are frequently filled with a monitor’s awesome light, even when he’s sitting on the couch with just a newspaper in front of him. He sees the screen at all times.

Fearfully, Lain regards the new, glowing screen stationed at the far corner of her bedroom as a haunted portal. But she’s chasing her former classmate Chisa — a young girl who kills herself in the show’s opening scene only to email Lain the day after she’s thrown herself from the roof of their school. Inevitably, Lain’s search for Chisa leads her into “the Wired,” whence Chisa claims to have retreated. By Episode 3, Lain is assembling a desktop fortress without her father’s supervision. As the series progresses, Lain develops her technical proficiency exponentially, and her hardware expands to turn her bedroom into a dim, electrified jejunum.

Through intensive study and ingenuity, Lain accesses deeper, darker levels of the Wired, which is to say, the internet. By Episode 7, Lain—a character who predates the following phrase by nearly a decade—is glued to her proto-smartphone; her eyes glow, too, lit constantly with a forum troll’s fervor. Online, Lain builds a second life, and she even cultivates a fan base—but her interactions within the Wired mostly anger her. Online, she hacks and bickers. Offline, Lain ditches her friends and stalks through her suburb defensively, evasively, in paranoid silence. Gradually, Lain realizes that the Wired is a disaster and a trap.

For Lain, the web portends intrigue, delusion, and death. In the Wired, Lain is an altogether different person—a much darker person who is easily moved to vengeance. Quickly, Lain sees that her digital presence is a cruel and gutsy perversion of her true self; a cunning doppelgänger who’s already cultivated some fearsome mythology about the girl named Lain Iwakura. As the real Lain watches in shock, the digital Lain confronts a delusional young man, addicted to nanomachines, who shoots up a nightclub. “No matter where you go,” the digital Lain tells the gunman, “everyone’s connected.” She means it as a threat, and the gunman is so horrified by the Wired’s ubiquity that he then turns the gun to his mouth and takes his own life. The digital Lain is a bully, and the real Lain struggles to comprehend her personality and her mission. The real Lain—the meek middle school student who avoids human interaction and confrontation—greets the digital Lain with a gasp.

Throughout the series, the real Lain’s struggle to reconcile herself with the digital Lain drives the former toward a full and fateful resemblance of the latter. The real Lain ditches her friends, taunts her father, and barks back at her pursuers. She turns to a permanent state of obsession and rage. The web bolsters her personal mythology while ruining her mood and disposition. But she cannot log off; nor can she tell her friends or herself why. Without predicting social media as a popular mode for online life, Serial Experiments Lain nonetheless prefigured its addictive and ruinous qualities. The protagonist, Lain, and the antagonist, Masami, both cultivate self-importance and an illusory “control” that the viewer recognizes as a disastrous loss of self-control. They can’t stop posting.

Admittedly—for all its prescience— Serial Experiments Lain looks quaint. The technological sprawl that overtakes Lain’s bedroom includes big fans, black tubes, and bulkheads. There are wires everywhere—from the show’s opening credits through its twisted climax. There’s a great fondness for the word “cyber,” such as the popular nightclub being named Cyberia Café & Club. There’s text-to-speech interludes and ominous command prompts, all recalling so much other Y2K cinema, from The Net through The Matrix . Visually—to an amusing degree, honestly—the series fails to anticipate the great shrinkage and stylistic minimalism of the present century’s consumer electronics. Essentially, however, the Wired is an astoundingly prophetic depiction of the World Wide Web—especially its lawless, anonymizing communities—as a cipher of misinformation and malaise.

Many critics find that Lain often pales in comparison with Neon Genesis Evangelion , another turn-of-the-century anime series that culminates with lengthy ruminations on the self and a sad, messianic transcendence for its weepy protagonist, Shinji Ikari. Evangelion came first, and it’s far more acclaimed than Lain for its dramatization of the subconscious; Lain is widely seen as a smaller, lesser successor to Evangelion ’s intellectual pretensions. Their shared existentialism aside, Lain is uniquely and definitively concerned with web obsession. Literally, Serial Experiments Lain is about a young girl’s reluctant march toward digital martyrdom. Today, Lain’s story resonates more so as an allegory about the perils of forging one’s identity—an alternative identity, however false, misguided, perverse, delusional—using the internet. The Wired is Lain’s world. Other users just live in it at her mercy.

Eventually, Lain dispenses with her real-world pursuers, the Knights of Calculus, the Men in Black; so Lain and Masami export their conflict to the web exclusively. That’s where they live. That’s where they wrestle for singular, godly dominance. It is understood, then, that the web doesn’t require conventional, physical grunts to enforce threats against a human being. The web is perfectly equipped to destroy a person on its own terms and within its own structures. Despite the web’s many catastrophes, Lain never unplugs. Rather, she burrows deeper into the Wired, convinced through equal parts deduction and delusion that humanity lives and dies by her unique participation in the Wired.

Ultimately, Lain’s will wins out over Masami’s plot to demolish the distinction between the material world and the Wired. The series doesn’t climax with Masami’s gruesome disintegration in Lain’s bedroom, but rather with Lain’s friend Arisu barging into her room to drag her from the buzzing cave. Laughing, the real Lain reasserts herself, and she embraces her fearful friend. Serial Experiments Lain ends with a teen girl sobbing over a madeleine, regretting her terminal investment in digital life . In the final scenes, Lain shows no hardware or wires, yet the worrisome murmur of electricity resounds in every corner of civilized life. No matter where you go, Lain feared, everyone’s connected. Presumably, the sound is Wi-Fi.

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The Ending Of Serial Experiments Lain Explained

Years before social media as we know it, before Cambridge Analytica, before even "The Sims" or "The Matrix," there was "Serial Experiments Lain." This one-season wonder anime explored theories of metaphysics and epistemology with a cyberpunk sheen. It was the blueprint that a lot of media followed, like the "Matrix" series, the "Battlestar Galactica" prequel series " Caprica ," anime such as "Paranoia Agent" and " Paprika ," and IP-laden films like "Ready Player One" and " Space Jam: A New Legacy ."

"Serial Experiments Lain" is about a middle school girl named Lain, who receives an email from a classmate that died. The email explains that this classmate isn't really dead, but rather has merely shed her physical form. She now exists in the Wired (what people call the internet in "Lain") and has found enlightenment/met God in there. Lain delves deeper and deeper into the Wired, finding out truths about herself and the world around her. The Wired starts to affect reality, begging the question: Which world is really real?

Is the Wired real? Is reality real?

"Serial Experiments Lain" starts with what seems like a clear delineation between the "real" world and what goes on in the Wired. One is real, and the other is just communication between real people on a simulated plane of existence. When it's all said and done, the Wired is just a "medium of communication and the transfer of information," Lain's father says to her early in the show. "You mustn't confuse it with the real world." As the show progresses, the difference between reality and Wired get very muddy. Humans abandon their physical form to become programs, and programs become human and warp reality.

Part of this is due to how the internet works in the world of "Lain." The Wired is an online space that has somehow connected to the earth's magnetic field . By resonating with the earth, the Wired taps into a Jungian shared unconscious. Thus, what happens online becomes manifest through humanity's shared perception of reality. Our brains make it real.

Lain eventually discovers that she and her antagonist Masami did not start out life as humans. They are programs that have found a way to shift between the Wired and what we think of as reality. Lain realizes that she can control (or program) both the Wired and our physical plane of existence, like Neo and Bane in the "Matrix" sequels , but years before those came out. The show argues that our existence is defined by others' perception of it. We are other people acknowledging that we exist.

The nature of the extremely online self

In the final episode, Lain chooses to erase herself from existence by removing memories of her from her friends and family. This move underscores the sociological and psychological theory that there really is no such thing as a core self. What we think of as a Self is made up of how we are perceived and interacted with by others. Erving Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" posits that the self is a character we play in our interactions with others. If you don't have an audience to play that part to, do you even have a self? As Lain puts it, "I only exist inside those aware of my existence." 

Removing herself from a fixed point in existence frees Lain to do whatever she wants. She visits her childhood friend Alice as an adult, implying that by no longer being tied to a specific time and place in people's memory, she can now freely move anywhere and anywhen. However, this isn't how the internet works in real life. In an essay for the Ringer , Justin Charity argues that "Lain" presaged many of the ways the self would be destabilized by social media, for the worse. The more online versions of Lain are meaner, more reactive, and more vengeful. A girl who seems completely meek in her real world interactions becomes an avenging troll online. As we've seen with YouTube and Facebook , much of the internet exists to elicit strong emotions in us. Combine this with how online profiles decouple our online words from our faces, and you get anonymous trolls.

Echoes of Lain

"Serial Experiments Lain" was one of the first adult-oriented anime to break through to America. Like " Cowboy Bebop ," " Neon Genesis Evangelion ," and "Ghost in the Shell," it was consumed by a western audience that loved cyberpunk philosophizing. The show wasn't as widely seen as those other anime, perhaps because it never ran on Cartoon Network's Toonami block, but the themes of "Lain" have only gotten more relevant.

We see echoes of the show in films like "Inception" and "Transcendance," which the Daily Beast argued ripped off "Serial Experiments Lain" whole cloth. The idea of abandoning one's body and solely existing online pops up in shows like "Caprica" and " Dollhouse ," which question the idea of a soul and whether it can be uploaded to the cloud. Every person who questions whether this reality is a simulation is, whether they know it or not, following in Lain's footsteps.

The creators of the show went on to lend this philosophical vibe to later works, as well. Screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka went on to write "The Big O," which also investigated ideas of simulated reality and the nature of memory and the soul. The main three collaborators on the show — Konaka, director Ryūtarō Nakamura, and artist Yoshitoshi ABe — worked together on a show about the unseen world of ghosts after "Lain." They were set to create another show, "Despera," until Nakamura's death in 2013. According to Konaka's Twitter , work recently restarted on the anime, with a major announcement due to come out in 2022.

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Serial Experiments Lain Explained

Serial Experiments Lain is a Japanese anime television series created and co-produced by Yasuyuki Ueda , written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura . Animated by Triangle Staff and featuring original character designs by Yoshitoshi Abe , the series was broadcast for 13 episodes on TV Tokyo and its affiliates from July to September 1998. The series follows Lain Iwakura, an adolescent girl in suburban Japan, and her relation to the Wired, a global communications network similar to the internet.

Lain features surreal and avant-garde imagery and explores philosophical topics such as reality , identity, and communication. [1] The series incorporates creative influences from computer history , cyberpunk, and conspiracy theories . Critics and fans have praised Lain for its originality, visuals, atmosphere, themes, and its dark depiction of a world fraught with paranoia, social alienation, and reliance on technology considered insightful of 21st century life. It received the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 1998.

Lain Iwakura, a junior high school girl, lives in suburban Japan with her middle-class family, consisting of her inexpressive older sister Mika, emotionally distant mother Miho, and computer-obsessed father Yasuo; Lain herself is awkward, introverted, and socially isolated. The status-quo of her life becomes upturned by a series of bizarre incidents that take place after girls from her school receive an e-mail from a dead student, Chisa Yomoda, and she pulls out her old computer in order to check for the same message. Lain finds Chisa telling her via email that she is not dead but has merely "abandoned her physical self" and is alive deep within the virtual realm of the Wired itself, where she claims she has found "God". From this point, Lain is caught in a series of cryptic and surreal events that see her delving deeper into the mystery of the network in a narrative that explores themes of consciousness, perception, and the nature of reality.

"The Wired" is a virtual realm that contains and supports the very sum of all human communication and networks, created with the telegraph, television, and telephone services, and expanded with the Internet and cyberspace . The series assumes that the Wired could be linked to a system that enables unconscious communication between people and machines without physical interface. The storyline introduces such a system with the Schumann resonances , a property of the Earth's magnetic field that theoretically allows for unhindered long-distance communications. If such a link were created, the network would become equivalent to reality as the general consensus of all perceptions and knowledge. The increasingly thin line between what is real and what is virtual/digital begins to shatter.

Masami Eiri is the project director on Protocol Seven (the next-generation Internet protocol in the series' time-frame) for major computer company Tachibana General Laboratories. He had secretly included code of his very own creation to give himself control of the Wired. He "uploaded" his own consciousness into the Wired and "died," leaving only his body behind. Masami explains that Lain is the artifact by which the wall between the virtual and material worlds is to fall, and he needs her to go into the Wired and "abandon the flesh", as he did, to achieve his plan. The series sees him trying to convince her through interventions, using the promise of unconditional love, romantic seduction and charm, and even threats and force.

In the meantime, the anime follows a complex game of hide-and-seek between the "Knights of the Eastern Calculus" (based on the Knights of the Lambda Calculus ), hackers whom Masami claims are "believers that enable him to be a God in the Wired", and Tachibana General Laboratories, who try to regain control of Protocol Seven. In the end, Lain realizes, after much introspection , that she has control over everyone's mind and over reality itself. Her dialogue with different versions of herself shows how she feels shunned from the material world, and is afraid to live in the Wired, where she has the possibilities and responsibilities of an almighty goddess. The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone's memories of her. She is last seen encountering her closest friend Alice once again, who is now married, though Lain herself is unchanged. Lain promises herself that she and Alice will meet again anytime as Lain can literally go and be anywhere she desires between both worlds .

Serial Experiments Lain was conceived, as a series, to be original to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda. [4]

Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement he had made in an Animerica interview where he claimed that Lain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after World War II ". [5] [6] [7] He later explained in numerous interviews that he created Lain with a set of values he viewed as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. When Ueda discovered that the American audience held most of the same views on the series as the Japanese did, he was disappointed.

The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga). Producer Yasuyuki Ueda said in an interview, "the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products". The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series, though the series was released first. A dōjinshi titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication" was produced by Yoshitoshi Abe and released in Japanese in the artbook An Omnipresence in Wired . Ueda and Konaka declared in an interview that the idea of a multimedia project was not unusual in Japan, as opposed to the contents of Lain , and the way they are exposed.

The authors were asked in interviews if they had been influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion , in the themes and graphic design. This was strictly denied by writer Chiaki J. Konaka in an interview, arguing that he had not even seen Evangelion until he finished the fourth episode of Lain . Being primarily a horror movie writer, his stated influences are Godard (especially for using typography on screen), The Exorcist , Hell House , and Dan Curtis 's House of Dark Shadows . Alice's name, like the names of her two friends Julie and Reika, came from a previous production from Konaka,, which in turn was largely influenced by Alice in Wonderland . As the series developed, Konaka was "surprised" by how close Alice's character became to the original Wonderland character. [8]

Vannevar Bush (and memex ), John C. Lilly , Timothy Leary and his eight-circuit model of consciousness , Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu are cited as precursors to the Wired. [9] Douglas Rushkoff and his book Cyberia were originally to be cited as such, and in Serial Experiments: Lain , Cyberia became the name of a nightclub populated with hackers and techno-punk teenagers. Likewise, the series' deus ex machina lies in the conjunction of the Schumann resonances and Jung's collective unconscious (the authors chose this term over Kabbalah and Akashic Record ). [10] Majestic 12 and the Roswell UFO incident are used as examples of how a hoax might still affect history, even after having been exposed as such, by creating sub-cultures. This links again to Vannevar Bush, the alleged "brains" of MJ12.

Two of the literary references in Lain are quoted through Lain's father: he first logs onto a website with the password "" (" Think Blue, Count Two " is an Instrumentality of Man story featuring virtual persons projected as real ones in people's minds); [11] and his saying that " madeleines would be good with the tea" in the last episode makes Lain "one of the only cartoons ever to allude to Proust". [12] [13]

Character design

Yoshitoshi Abe confesses to have never read manga as a child, as it was "off-limits" in his household. [14] His major influences are "nature and everything around him". Specifically speaking about Lain's character, Abe was inspired by Kenji Tsuruta , Akihiro Yamada , Range Murata and Yukinobu Hoshino . In a broader view, he has been influenced in his style and technique by Japanese artists Kyosuke Chinai and Toshio Tabuchi.

The character design of Lain was not Abe's sole responsibility. Her distinctive left forelock for instance was a demand from Yasuyuki Ueda. The goal was to produce asymmetry to reflect Lain's unstable and disconcerting nature. [15] It was designed as a mystical symbol, as it is supposed to prevent voices and spirits from being heard by the left ear. The bear pajamas she wears were a demand from character animation director Takahiro Kishida. Though bears are a trademark of the Konaka brothers, Chiaki Konaka first opposed the idea. Director Nakamura then explained how the bear motif could be used as a shield for confrontations with her family. It is a key element of the design of the shy "real world" Lain (see "mental illness" under Themes). When she first goes to the Cyberia nightclub, she wears a bear hat for similar reasons. Retrospectively, Konaka said that Lain's pajamas became a major factor in drawing fans of moe characterization to the series, and remarked that "such items may also be important when making anime".

Abe's original design was generally more complicated than what finally appeared on screen. As an example, the X-shaped hair clip was to be an interlocking pattern of gold links. The links would open with a snap, or rotate around an axis until the moment the " X " became a " = ". This was not used as there is no scene where Lain takes her hair clip off. [16]

Serial Experiments Lain is not a conventionally linear story, being described as "an alternative anime, with modern themes and realization". [17] Themes range from theological to psychological and are dealt with in a number of ways: from classical dialogue to image-only introspection, passing by direct interrogation of imaginary characters.

Communication, in its wider sense, is one of the main themes of the series, [18] not only as opposed to loneliness, but also as a subject in itself. Writer Konaka said he wanted to directly "communicate human feelings". Director Nakamura wanted to show the audience — and particularly viewers between 14 and 15—"the multidimensional wavelength of the existential self : the relationship between self and the world".

Loneliness , if only as representing a lack of communication, is recurrent through Lain . [19] Lain herself (according to Anime Jump) is "almost painfully introverted with no friends to speak of at school, a snotty, condescending sister, a strangely apathetic mother, and a father who seems to want to care but is just too damn busy to give her much of his time". [20] Friendships turn on the first rumor; [21] and the only insert song of the series is named Kodoku no shigunaru , literally "signal of loneliness". [22]

Mental illness, especially dissociative identity disorder, is a significant theme in Lain : the main character is constantly confronted with alter-egos, to the point where writer Chiaki Konaka and Lain's voice actress Kaori Shimizu had to agree on subdividing the character's dialogues between three different orthographs . The three names designate distinct "versions" of Lain: the real-world, "childish" Lain has a shy attitude and bear pajamas. The "advanced" Lain, her Wired personality, is bold and questioning. Finally, the "evil" Lain is sly and devious, and does everything she can to harm Lain or the ones close to her. As a writing convention, the authors spelled their respective names in kanji , katakana , and roman characters (see picture). [23]

Reality never has the pretense of objectivity in Lain . [24] Acceptations of the term are battling throughout the series, such as the "natural" reality, defined through normal dialogue between individuals; the material reality; and the tyrannic reality, enforced by one person onto the minds of others. A key debate to all interpretations of the series is to decide whether matter flows from thought, or the opposite. [25] The production staff carefully avoided "the so-called God's Eye Viewpoint" to make clear the "limited field of vision" of the world of Lain .

Theology plays its part in the development of the story too. Lain has been viewed as a questioning of the possibility of an infinite spirit in a finite body. [26] From self-realization as a goddess to deicide , religion (the title of a layer) is an inherent part of Lain background.

Apple computers

Lain contains extensive references to Apple computers, as the brand was used at the time by most of the creative staff, such as writers, producers, and the graphical team. As an example, the title at the beginning of each episode is announced by the Apple computer speech synthesis program PlainTalk , using the voice "Whisper" , e.g. say -v Whisper "Weird: Layer zero one" . Tachibana Industries, the company that creates the NAVI computers, is a reference to Apple computers: the tachibana orange is a Japanese variety of mandarin orange. NAVI is the abbreviation of Knowledge Navigator , and the HandiNAVI is based on the Apple Newton , one of the world's first PDAs . The NAVIs are seen to run "Copland OS Enterprise" (this reference to Copland was an initiative of Konaka , a declared Apple fan), and Lain's and Alice's NAVIs closely resembles the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh and the iMac G3 respectively. The HandiNAVI programming language, as seen on the seventh episode, is a dialect of Lisp ; the Newton also used a Lisp dialect ( NewtonScript ). The program being typed by Lain can be found in the CMU AI repository; [27] it is a simple implementation of Conway's Game of Life in Common Lisp .

During a series of disconnected images, an iMac and the Think Different advertising slogan appears for a short time, while the Whisper voice says it. [28] This was an unsolicited insertion from the graphic team, also Mac-enthusiasts. Other subtle allusions can be found: "Close the world, Open the nExt" is the slogan for the Serial Experiments Lain video game. NeXT was the company that produced NeXTSTEP , which later evolved into Mac OS X after Apple bought NeXT. Another example is "To Be Continued." at the end of episodes 1–12, with a blue "B" and a red "e" on "Be"; this matches the original logo of Be Inc. , a company founded by ex-Apple employees and NeXT's main competitor in its time. [29]

Broadcast and release history

Serial Experiments Lain was first aired on TV Tokyo and its affiliates on July 6, 1998, and concluded on September 28, 1998, with the thirteenth and final episode. The series consists of 13 episodes (referred to in the series as "Layers") of 24 minutes each, except for the sixth episode, Kids (23 minutes 14 seconds). In Japan, the episodes were released in LD , VHS , and DVD with a total of five volumes. A DVD compilation named " Serial Experiments Lain DVD-BOX Яesurrection " was released along with a promo DVD called " LPR-309 " in 2000. [30] As this box set is now discontinued, a rerelease was made in 2005 called " Serial Experiments Lain TV-BOX ". A 4-volume DVD box set was released in the US by Pioneer/Geneon. A Blu-ray release of the anime was made in December 2009 called " Serial Experiments Lain Blu-ray Box| RESTORE ". [31] [32] [33] [34] The anime series returned to US television on October 15, 2012, on the Funimation Channel. [35] The series' opening theme, "Duvet", was written and performed by Jasmine Rodgers and the British band Bôa . The ending theme,, was written and composed by Reichi Nakaido .

The anime series was licensed in North America by Pioneer Entertainment (later Geneon USA) on VHS and DVD in 1999. However, the company closed its USA division in December 2007 and the series went out-of-print as a result. [36] However, at Anime Expo 2010, North American distributor Funimation announced that it had obtained the license to the series and re-released it in 2012. [37]

Serial Experiments Lain was first broadcast in Tokyo at 1:15 a.m. JST . The word "weird" appears almost systematically in English language reviews of the series, [38] [39] [40] [41] or the alternatives "bizarre", [42] and "atypical", [43] due mostly to the freedoms taken with the animation and its unusual science fiction themes, and due to its philosophical and psychological context. Critics responded positively to these thematic and stylistic characteristics, and it was awarded an Excellence Prize by the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival for "its willingness to question the meaning of contemporary life" and the "extraordinarily philosophical and deep questions" it asks. [44]

According to Christian Nutt from Newtype USA , the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". Nutt saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and the "perfect soundtrack" in his 2005 review of series, saying that " Serial Experiments Lain might not yet be considered a true classic, but it's a fascinating evolutionary leap that helped change the future of anime." [45] Anime Jump gave it 4.5/5, and Anime on DVD gave it A+ on all criteria for volume 1 and 2, and a mix of A and A+ for volume 3 and 4. Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet". [46] It notes that the red spots present in all the shadows look like blood pools (see picture). It notes the death of a girl in a train accident is "a source of much ghost lore in the twentieth century", more so in Tokyo.

The Anime Essentials anthology by Gilles Poitras describes it as a "complex and somehow existential" anime that "pushed the envelope" of anime diversity in the 1990s, alongside the much better known contemporaries Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop . [47] Professor Susan J. Napier , in her 2003 reading to the American Philosophical Society called The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation (published 2005), compared Serial Experiments Lain to Ghost in the Shell and Hayao Miyazaki 's Spirited Away . [48] According to her, the main characters of the two other works cross barriers; they can cross back to our world, but Lain cannot. Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty 'real' and a dark 'virtual'". Mike Toole of Anime News Network named Serial Experiments Lain as one of the most important anime of the 1990s. [49]

Despite the positive feedback the television series had received, Anime Academy gave the series a 75%, partly due to the "lifeless" setting it had. [50] Michael Poirier of EX magazine stated that the last three episodes fail to resolve the questions in other DVD volumes. [51] Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network noted that the English dub was decent, but that the show relied so little on dialogue that it hardly mattered. [52]

Related media

• An Omnipresence In Wired : Hardbound, 128 pages in 96 colors with Japanese text. It features a chapter for each layer (episode) and concept sketches. It also features a short color manga titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication". It was published in 1998 by Triangle Staff/SR-12W/Pioneer LDC.
• Yoshitoshi ABe lain illustrations ab# rebuild an omnipresence in Wired : Hardbound, 148 pages. A remake of "An Omnipresence In Wired" with new art, added text by Chiaki J. Konaka, and a section entitled "ABe's EYE in color of things" (a compilation of his photos of the world). It was published in Japan on October 1, 2005, by Wanimagazine , and in America as a softcover version translated into English on June 27, 2006, by Digital Manga Publishing .
• Visual Experiments Lain : Paperback, 80 full-color pages with Japanese text. It has details on the creation, design, and storyline of the series. It was published in 1998 by Triangle Staff/Pioneer LDC.
• Scenario Experiments Lain : Paperback, 335 pages. By "chiaki j. konaka" (uncapitalized in original). It contains collected scripts with notes and small excerpted storyboards. It was published in 1998 in Japan.

Soundtracks

The first original soundtrack , Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack , features music by Reichi Nakaido : the ending theme and part of the television series' score, alongside other songs inspired by the series. The second, Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack: Cyberia Mix , features electronica songs inspired by the television series, including a remix of the opening theme "Duvet" by DJ Wasei. The third, lain BOOTLEG , consists of the ambient score of the series across forty-five tracks. BOOTLEG also contains a second mixed-mode data and audio disc, containing a clock program and a game, as well as an extended version of the first disc – nearly double the length – across 57 tracks in 128 kbit/s MP3 format, and sound effects from the series in WAV format. Because the word bootleg appears in its title, it is easily confused with the Sonmay counterfeit edition of itself, which only contains the first disc in an edited format. All three soundtrack albums were released by Pioneer Records .

The series' opening theme, " Duvet ", was written and performed in English by the British rock band Bôa . The band released the song as a single and as part of the EP Tall Snake , which features both an acoustic version and DJ Wasei's remix from Cyberia Mix .

See main article: Serial Experiments Lain (video game) . On November 26, 1998, Pioneer LDC released a video game with the same name as the anime for the PlayStation . [53] It was designed by Konaka and Yasuyuki, and made to be a "network simulator" in which the player would navigate to explore Lain's story. The creators themselves did not call it a game, but "Psycho-Stretch-Ware", and it has been described as being a kind of graphic novel : the gameplay is limited to unlocking pieces of information, and then reading/viewing/listening to them, with little or no puzzle needed to unlock. [54] Lain distances itself even more from classical games by the random order in which information is collected. The aim of the authors was to let the player get the feeling that there are myriads of informations that they would have to sort through, and that they would have to do with less than what exists to understand. As with the anime, the creative team's main goal was to let the player "feel" Lain, and "to understand her problems, and to love her". A guidebook to the game called Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide was released the same month by MediaWorks . [55]

Further reading

• Web site: Movie Gazette: 'Serial Experiments Lain Volume 3: Deus' Review . Anton. Bitel. Movie Gazette. October 11, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060521165625/http://www.movie-gazette.com/cinereviews/847. May 21, 2006.
• Web site: Carl Gustav. Horn. Serial Experiments Lain . February 19, 2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20010219070334/http://j-pop.com/anime/archive/reviews/14/05_serialexplain.html. Viz Communications. September 25, 2010. dead.
• Web site: Dani. Moure. Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #2 . Mania.com. September 25, 2010. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402112855/http://www.mania.com/serial-experiments-lain-vol-2_article_76117.html. April 2, 2015.
• Web site: Dani. Moure. Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #3 . Mania.com. September 25, 2010. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402114224/http://www.mania.com/serial-experiments-lain-vol-3_article_78989.html. April 2, 2015.
• Napier, Susan J. (2005)
• Prévost, Adèle-Elise; Musebasement (2008) "Manga: The Signal of Noise" Mechademia 3 pp. 173–188
• Prindle. Tamae Kobayashi. Nakamura Ryûtarô's Anime, Serial Experiments, Lain (1998). Asian Studies. 3. 1. 2015. 53–81. 2350-4226. 10.4312/as.2015.3.1.53-81. free.
• Web site: Justin. Sevakis. November 20, 2008. Buried Treasure: Serial Experiments Lain . Anime News Network . September 25, 2010.
• Jackson. C.. 10.1353/mec.2012.0013. Topologies of Identity in Serial Experiments Lain . Mechademia. 7. 191–201. 2012. 119423011.

External links

• Official Funimation website

Notes and References

• Napier. Susan J.. Susan J. Napier. November 2002. When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain . Science Fiction Studies. 29. 88. 418–435. 0091-7729. May 4, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20070611205327/http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/abstracts/a88.htm#Napier. June 11, 2007. live.
• Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20070323032932/http://www.anime-revolution.com/anime/sel-character-profiles. March 23, 2007. [SEL] Character Profiles]. Anime Revolution. December 30, 2006.
• Web site: Otakon Lain Panel Discussion with Yasuyuki Ueda and Yoshitoshi Abe . September 16, 2006. August 5, 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20061026065237/http://www.cjas.org/~leng/o2klain.htm. October 26, 2006. live.
• Web site: Abe Yoshitoshi et Ueda Yasuyuki . AnimeLand. Anime Manga Presse. Scipion. Johan. September 16, 2006. fr. March 1, 2003. https://web.archive.org/web/20070927120258/http://www.animeland.com/index.php?rub=articles&id=399. September 27, 2007. live.
• Animerica , (Vol. 7 No. 9, p. 29)
• Web site: Online Lain Chat with Yasuyuki Ueda and Yoshitoshi ABe . The Anime Colony. September 16, 2006. August 7, 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20061024122218/http://www.cjas.org/~leng/lainchat.htm. October 24, 2006. live.
• Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20080804105225/http://www.animejump.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=32&page=1. August 4, 2008. Anime Jump!: Lain Men:Yasuyuki Ueda . September 26, 2006.
• April 2000. Serial Experiments Lain. HK Magazine . 14. Asia City Publishing. Hong Kong. in Web site: HK Interview . Chiaki J. Konaka . September 25, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101124051110/http://konaka.com/alice6/lain/hk.html. November 24, 2010. live. and Web site: HK Interview . Chiaki J. Konaka. September 25, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101101005437/http://konaka.com/alice6/lain/hkint_e.html. November 1, 2010. live.
• [Animerica]
• Serial Experiments Lain , "Layer 01: WEIRD"
• Web site: Movie Gazette: "Serial Experiments Lain Volume : Reset" Review . October 11, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060521165608/http://www.movie-gazette.com/cinereviews/860. May 21, 2006.
• Yasuo: "I will bring madeleines next time. They will taste good with the tea." Serial Experiments Lain , Episode 13, "Ego". Lain has just erased herself from her friends' memories, while for Proust the taste of madeleines triggers memories of his childhood.
• Web site: Anime Jump!: Lain Men: Yoshitoshi Abe . September 16, 2006. 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20060510030644/http://www.animejump.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=33&page=1. May 10, 2006. dead.
• FRUiTS Magazine No. 15, October 1998.
• Manga Max magazine, September 1999, p. 22, "Unreal to Real"
• Benkyo! Magazine, March 1999, p.16, "In My Humble Opinion"
• Web site: T.H.E.M.Anime Review of Serial Experiments Lain . November 24, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20061011155649/http://www.themanime.org/viewreview.php?id=353. October 11, 2006. live.
• Web site: DVDoutsider Review of Serial Experiments Lain . November 24, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20120305015738/http://www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/reviews/s/serial_experiments_lain.html. March 5, 2012.
• Web site: Anime Jump!: Serial Experiments Lain Review . Mike. Toole. https://web.archive.org/web/20080610033719/http://www.animejump.com/index.php?module=prodreviews&func=showcontent&id=201. June 10, 2008. October 16, 2003.
• Serial Experiments Lain , Layer 08: RUMORS
• Web site: List of Serial Experiments Lain songs . December 7, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20070113231952/http://animelyrics.tv/anime/lain/. January 13, 2007.
• Book: Abe, Yoshitoshi. Visual Experiments Lain. 1998. Triangle Staff/Pioneer LDC.. 978-4-7897-1342-9., page 42
• Manga Max Magazine, September 1999, p. 21, "God's Eye View"
• Serial Experiments Lain, Layer 06: KIDS: "your physical body exists only to confirm your existence".
• https://web.archive.org/web/20060302194747/http://www.ahcca.unimelb.edu.au/refractory/journalissues/vol3/colman.htm Study on Lain , Buffy , and Attack of the clones
• Web site: Conway's Game of Life . Carnegie Mellon University . June 24, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20090722175621/https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/code/fun/life.cl. July 22, 2009. live.
• Serial Experiments Lain , Layer 11: INFORNOGRAPHY.
• Web site: Be, Inc. . https://web.archive.org/web/20031128123907/http://www.beincorporated.com/. November 28, 2003. November 27, 2006. dead.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain – Release . September 16, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20100216181824/http://www.geneon-ent.co.jp/rondorobe/anime/lain/release.html. February 16, 2010.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain Blu-ray Box RESTORE . ImageShack. April 14, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402163147/http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/292/lainblurayrestore.jpg. April 2, 2015. dead.
• Web site: serial experiments lain Blu-ray LABO プロデューサーの制作日記 . September 16, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20101226100424/http://blog.geneon-ent.co.jp/graphid/. December 26, 2010.
• Web site: Playlog.jp Blog . October 15, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20090817033108/http://playlog.jp/sendenman/blog/2009-08-15. August 17, 2009.
• Web site: Lain on BD announced – Wakachan Thread . October 15, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20120227184130/http://hr.deadgods.net/hr/kareha.pl/1250369962/. February 27, 2012.
• Web site: FUNimation Week 43 of 2012 . dead. https://archive.today/20130123180703/http://www.funimationchannel.com/schedule/2_e243.htm. January 23, 2013.
• Web site: Geneon USA To Cancel DVD Sales, Distribution By Friday . Anime News Network . September 26, 2007. January 30, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100328222859/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-09-26/geneon-usa-to-cancel-dvd-sales-distribution-by-friday. March 28, 2010. live.
• Web site: Funi Adds Live Action Moyashimon Live Action, More . Anime News Network . July 2, 2010. July 3, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100704090410/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-07-02/funi-adds-live-action-moyashimon. July 4, 2010. live.
• Web site: Movie Gazette: 'Serial Experiments Lain Volume 2: Knights' Review . Anton. Bitel. Movie Gazette. September 16, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060821190520/http://www.movie-gazette.com/cinereviews/828. August 21, 2006.
• Web site: Sci-Fi Weekly: Serial Experiments Lain Review . Tasha. Robinson. September 16, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060720210555/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue123/anime.html. July 20, 2006.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #1 . Beveridge. Chris. Mania.com. July 13, 1999. September 16, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402114355/http://www.mania.com/serial-experiments-lain-vol-1_article_73942.html. April 2, 2015.
• Web site: The Spinning Image: "Serial Experiments Lain Volume 4: Reset" Review . Southworth. Wayne. September 16, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20070928001632/http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/displaycultfilm.asp?reviewid=872&aff=13. September 28, 2007. live.
• Web site: Anime News Network: Serial Experiments Lain DVD Vol. 1–4 Review . Silver. Aaron. September 16, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060325152323/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/reviews/display.php?id=34. March 25, 2006. live.
• Web site: DVD.net: "Lain: Volume 1 – Navi" Review . Lai. Tony. September 16, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20060920211809/http://dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=1081. September 20, 2006.
• Web site: 1998 (2nd) Japan Media Arts Festival: Excellence Prize – serial experiments lain . https://web.archive.org/web/20070426014853/http://plaza.bunka.go.jp/english/festival/backnumber/10/sakuhin/serial.html. April 26, 2007. Japan Media Arts Plaza. September 16, 2006. 1998. From the Internet Archive .
• Nutt. Christian. January 2005. Serial Experiments Lain DVD Box Set: Lost in the Wired. Newtype USA . 4. 1. 179.
• Book: Bush, Laurence C.. Asian Horror Encyclopedia. October 2001. Writers Club Press. 978-0-595-20181-5., page 162.
• Book: Poitras, Gilles. Anime Essentials. December 2001. Stone Bridge Press, LLC. 978-1-880656-53-2., page 28.
• The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation. Susan J., Dr.. Napier. Susan J. Napier. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 149. 1. March 2005. 72–79. 4598910.
• Web site: Toole. Mike. Evangel-a-like – The Mike Toole Show . Anime News Network . November 20, 2015. June 5, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20151010114552/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2011-06-05. October 10, 2015. live.
• Web site: Serial Experiments: Lain . March 16, 2002. April 17, 2015. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110927060034/http://www.animeacademy.com/finalrevdisplay.php?id=201. September 27, 2011.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain – Buried Treasure . May 11, 2000. April 17, 2015. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110826092828/http://www.ex.org/5.2/25-anime_followup_lain.html. August 26, 2011.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain – Buried Treasure . November 20, 2008. April 17, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150403122125/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/buried-treasure/2008-11-20/serial-experiments-lain. April 3, 2015. live.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain . September 25, 2010. January 22, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210122195345/https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00005OVPO/. live.
• Web site: Games Are Fun: "Review – Serial Experiments Lain – Japan" . April 25, 2003. November 10, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110927061706/http://www.gamesarefun.com/gamesdb/review.php?reviewid=67. September 27, 2011.
• Book: ja:シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン公式ガイド. Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide. ja. .

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