serial experiments lain

naught

~~~img620(https://giffiles.alphacoders.com/171/171450.gif)~~~ Serial Experiments Lain tells the tale of a 14 year old girl, Lain, trying to find out what her role in both reality and the internet is. That is obviously a very vague synopsis, and my reason behind this is that the story is truly something that must be experienced firsthand. I feel obligated to mention how weird (but by no means bad) the pacing is. The actual story doesn't even really begin until halfway through, but that doesn't make the first half, which is focused more about Lain discovering both herself and "the Wired" (SEL's version of the internet) any less gripping. Serial Experiments Lain does not spoonfeed its story and purposefully leaves you in the dark at times, which only heightens the engagement level and makes the payoff that much more rewarding when you actually do figure out why all these strange events surrounding Lain are happening. Later on in the series there are a few "exposition dumps," but luckily they are executed perfectly. Even one mistake in this aspect would result in a plethora of plotholes considering how intricate the story is, but the way the exposition is handled allows Lain's masterful plot to truly shine. # _"hey what kind of anime you wanna watch?"_ # _"just fuck me up fam."_ ~~~img370(https://i.imgur.com/AIfgYFP.gif)~~~ This is not a story for those in search of action and borderline naked girls, and to a further extent not a story for those looking for any sort of casual watching experience. I consider this the opposite of a “turn off your brain” type of anime - through each episode of Lain I found myself questioning what I was seeing, constantly looking to connect the abstract imagery and symbolism presented, and generally just figure out what the hell was going on. Rather than the more direct exposition of most anime, Lain tells its story through a combination of sparse, but philosophically dense, dialogue alongside a ton of symbolic, and often trippy visuals. Much of the allure of the show is in how much intertext and hidden meaning there is, and this is something immediately apparent from episode 1 with the first 7.5 minutes having a total of 10 lines of dialogue, opting instead to set the tone with a depiction of a young girl committing suicide. ~~~img620(http://i.imgur.com/gmI728F.png)~~~ Even after a rewatch or two you will consistently find little connections and cryptic visual messages you missed that tie into the overall narrative of the show, such as this subtle shading connecting the aforementioned suicidal girl from the beginning of episode 1 to the Wired, as the same shading is frequently used later on when hinting at the protagonist transitioning between “reality” and the Wired. ~~~img320(http://i.imgur.com/9aewmEP.png) img320(http://i.imgur.com/9AFRbjR.png)~~~ ~~~img320(http://i.imgur.com/MNbOjZP.jpg) img320(http://i.imgur.com/A7nNkGI.jpg)~~~ It can be very information dense and very easy to lose yourself the first time watching, but by the end you will have your mind blown even if you didn’t fully understand everything (you likely won’t). And it isn’t only the story that’s given in an experimental manner, the ways Lain conveys its message is equally unorthodox. It is often hard to distinguish between when the show is depicting reality and when it’s depicting the Wired, but this emphasizes a central question it asks – what is the difference between reality and the internet? What does reality even mean? Everything you see is shown through Lain’s perspective, which is very distorted. This blur between real and virtual gives SEL a sense of unreliability to the viewer, akin to Satoshi Kon’s works at times, but this only serves to strengthen the message it presents. #Iwakura Lain If I had to find one shortcoming of Serial Experiments Lain in my mind it would be the small cast of relevant contributing characters. Despite the complexity of the story, because so much of it is told through visuals and the protagonist’s self-questioning there isn’t a need for a lot of characters like you see in many other psychological anime. However, what SEL lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality, especially with the simultaneously endearing and mysterious MC. This show entirely focuses on one character, Lain, and yet I still wanted to see more of her by the end. This is partly due to how much Lain evolves throughout the series, her personality can change so much that it sometimes seems like a different character entirely. ~~~img420(https://i.imgur.com/eWo8lHm.gif)~~~ I could count the characters that actually affect the plot on one hand, and even then their contributions aren’t all that significant, apart from Lain obviously. In saying that, the supporting cast did lead to some particularly poignant moments. In addition, very few of the side characters are given any backstory whatsoever, but the way they are presented more than makes up for this. I never felt like I needed to see anything relating to a character’s background because I already knew everything I needed to know from their dialogue and expressions. After all, this is a story about Lain, not the people around her. #Sights, Sounds, and Feels Though individual animations can be clumsy at times, SEL’s approach to its visuals is nothing short of spectacular. A rather dreary color pallet is used which contrasts nicely with the neon blues and greens of the Wired. One of the first things that stuck out to me when watching Lain was the use of light. Lighting in the show is very harsh and distinctive, typically using a blinding pure white light that interplays beautifully with the frequent use of inky and dismal shadowing, further lending to the mysterious and at times almost nightmarish atmosphere. ~~~img920(http://i.imgur.com/4IgADe9.png)~~~ ~~~img920(https://i.imgur.com/z7pmpJp.jpg)~~~ ~~~img920(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/70/8d/93/708d9300f2fea7b616afb429e7e3fe88.jpg)~~~ But that's not to say the animation isn’t without some faults - the characters are drawn in a fairly realistic fashion compared to the standard of the medium, which to me is preferable for an anime such as this; however, it isn’t always executed perfectly and occasionally leads to some awkward looking character expressions. As far as sound goes, Lain takes an extremely minimalistic approach. Sometimes there are minutes, or even entire episodes, with little to nothing as far as a typical soundtrack would go. However where the OST is prevalent it is utilized wonderfully, often using eerie synths and sparse percussion to set the mood. youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zee9uX7MC0E) Rather than traditional songs, Lain’s audio is filled with sounds such as the bustle of pedestrian traffic, noises of trains passing, the hum of electrical currents through telephone cables, the clicking of a computer keyboard. Sometimes even these are absent, leaving the viewer with extensive silence. The unique artstyle and complementing approach to audio masterfully succeed in creating one of the most enigmatic and memorable atmospheres I’ve encountered. #Let’s all love Lain! Serial Experiments Lain is one of the most thought provoking shows you’ll see, with themes such as identity, modern isolation, and humanity’s reliance and combination with technology prevalent, yet still hidden under a blanket of unconventional exposition. Lain doesn’t look to prescribe advice or answer questions – in fact it raises far more than it answers. If anything, it’s trying bring a series of ideas to attention by offering a layered (heh) postmodern commentary on them. SEL covers some philosophical topics that are very grounded in reality and have only increased in relevance since its release alongside the increasing connectedness of the information age we live in. Subsequently, Lain is an anime that will likely change the way you think about the internet, and possibly even the way you think about humanity and what it means to be alive. A must watch for any fans of the medium.

Lenlo

~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/YGlXunC.png)~~~ _Serial Experiments Lain_ is weird. It is a series unlike any other, wholly unique in anime, both modern and historical. Every aspect of it, from presentation to narrative, is best described as an experience. It is because of this that I believe _Lain_ is a must watch, if only to experience a piece of anime history. That said, _Serial Experiments Lain_ can hardly be said to be an “enjoyable” series. It is certainly evocative, _Serial Experiments Lain_ will bring about emotions and force you to confront reality in a unique way. But I at least did not end the series thinking I would watch it again anytime soon, and this density will no doubt be off putting for many. However while these may keep it out of my favorites, it is without a doubt worth your time. Lets go. __Quick Warning__: There are spoilers past this line. For a better formatted version, feel free to head to my blog [__here__](http://starcrossedanime.com/serial-experiments-lain-anime-review-78-100-throwback-thursday/). ~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/FZhTgUj.png)~~~ # __~~~Animation/Art~~~__ Starting off, let’s talk production. Now, because of _Lain's_ age, we have to be a bit careful how we judge it. _Lain_ comes from the tail end of the era of Cel Animation, where every individual frame had to be made by hand. Compared to Digital, they are two very different mediums and have very different strengths. This isn’t to say that Cel can’t have some fantastic sequences that hold up to this day. You need look no further than _Cowboy Bebop_, or even some of _Lain's_ episodes themselves for proof of this. Cel can still get a fantastic effect, it is simply more expensive and time consuming to produce, and so we got less of it. One could look at this another way though and say we are spoiled for animation now. As _Lain's_ lack of it makes those moments of beauty hit that much harder. Getting to the point, none if this is to say _Lain_ looks bad. Cel animation has a distinct style all its own. Its rougher, more obviously handmade, giving it a level of detail digital often can’t match. In digital, replicating things like brush strokes or pencil sketches are incredibly difficult. Almost impossible. If I had to compare it to something, it would be CGI to Claymation/Stop Motion. The actual physical objects have texture and weight to them that is very difficult to replicate in CGI. It’s very similar with Cel to Digital animation. You can see this in a number of hand-made backgrounds for _Serial Experiments Lain_. Basically, Digital can sometimes look too clean, removing any texture from the scene at all. All my rambling on Cel vs Digital aside, the point is, _Lain_ might not have a lot of animation, but it doesn’t need it to look good. ~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/pBkXNeP.png)~~~ #~~~__Direction__~~~ This all leads into the Direction, which is where Serial Experiment Lain’s real strength lies. When your animation prospects are limited, you have to find other ways to get your scene across. Some series do this with a lot of dialogue. Others fail to do it at all. _Lain_ though… _Lain_ does it with fantastically surreal imagery and depictions of the Wired. Getting information across purely through scene composition. Examples of this include almost every instance of Lain surfing the Wired. With other users being represented by floating body parts, since they cannot fully realize themselves like _Lain_ can. Their forms and the environment they are talking in giving just as much information as the actual conversation. Its things like this that I believe we have lost with the advent of Digital Animation. As the lack of limitations means less creativity is required for any given scene. All that said, this doesn’t mean I think _Lain_ is perfect in this respect. Just more positive than negative. There are a number of scenes, and even an entire episode, where _Lain_ goes a bit to wild for my taste. Completely divorcing itself from the reality of the show, what little there is. This intense imagery also negatively impacts pacing at times for me. Occasionally drawing me out of what is happening or forcing me to either stop the show and examine the scene, or let it play on and miss something important. This goes back to my opening statement about _Lain's_ density possibly turning some people off. It is not an easy to consume show. And however valuable its message and contents are, it is a simple fact that people’s time is limited and enjoyment is something to be treasured and considered in a series. ~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/cevbexX.png)~~~ #~~~__Sound Design__~~~ The last bit of production we will talk about is the sound design. This was really hit or miss with me. Sometimes it was fantastic, really nailing that foley work. For instance any of the Iwakura household meals had some fantastic silverware and eating sounds. In addition the ambiance throughout the show was great to. Such that I almost think they just recorded an actual intersection. However, as much as I enjoyed these, this high bar makes the ones that don’t meet it stand out. For example a lot of the voice acting just feels flat and lifeless. Part of this is no doubt on purpose, as a theme throughout the series is Lain’s humanity. But from the perspective of an average viewer, it can make some longer dialogues a slog to get through. However interesting the content might be, poor delivery will hamper the experience. On the other end of sound design, we have the OST. I’ll be honest here, I had to actually look up and listen to the OST on its own for this review. As aside from the OP and the _Lain's_ theme. All in all, I didn’t find it particularly memorable. There are some interesting tracks inside it, such as "Mist of a Different Dimension" and "Wind of Space and Time". However, as a general album it’s not my style, as general Rock isn’t my personal genre. This isn’t to say I think it was terrible, I think _Lain's_ OST really adds to some scenes. I just wouldn’t buy the album to listen to in the car. Not like I have Yuki Kaijura’s _.hack//SIGN OST_ or _Berserk ’97’s_ OST. So all in all, an acceptable, but not memorable showing here. ~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/LOmjxRc.png)~~~ #~~~__Story/World__~~~ Finally though, we can get to the meat of _Serial Experiments Lain_, the Story and Themes. Now, I am no expert philosopher, I am just your average anime viewer with an ego and a penchant to write to much. So I will not be deep diving into the tiniest of details or attempting to tell you what _Lain's_ message and purpose is. Instead, I will only tell you whether or not I found it worth my time, and why. You see, however dense _Lain_ may be, and it is very dense, I never felt… lost. _Lain_ managed to get the basics of its message across every time. Even if the larger or more detailed aspects are lost on you like they were me, there is still something for us there. A base upon which to build your own philosophy and opinion, rather than say Paranoia Agent’s wild spread. Before I get into that though, I want to talk the ending, as for me endings are paramount. While it still confused me at times, I think _Lain's_ ending was perhaps its best aspect. It managed to wrap up all of these different ideas about reality, godhood, and self-perception in an engaging way. So much so that someone like me, who clearly wasn’t able to grasp the more complex aspects, was able to follow along. To put it simply, _Lain's_ ending was engaging on both a narrative and a thematic level. Fulfilling for both kinds of viewers, regardless of what they enjoyed about the show. Whatever issues the narrative had leading up to it, and there were a few confusing or dull moments, this ending managed to wrap it up nicely, without compromising its characters or themes. Well done _Serial Experiments Lain_. ~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/wgcDSAg.png)~~~ #~~~__Themes__~~~ Now for me, _Serial Experiments Lain's_ theme/plot centers around the idea of our perceived reality. About whether or not a reality exists outside of what you can perceive. _Lain_ hammers this from multiple interesting angles though. From anonymity with the Wired/Internet, to your and others perception of your self, your ego. My personal favorite of these was the idea that you only exist in other peoples memories and how they perceive you. In theory with this line of thinking, there are in fact multiple you’s, each one representing a different public face for that group of people. The question then becomes, are any of them the real you? Or are they all parts of a whole, that whole being how you perceive yourself? This is but one of the questions _Lain_ raises with me, but it is also my personal favorite. _Serial Experiments Lain_ also spends a lot of its time seemingly commenting on the growing use of technology in society. How it will effect our day to day life and our interpersonal connections. Now one must remember for this, _Serial Experiments Lain_ was made in ’98, well before modern internet culture and practices. Because of this, some of _Lain's_ technological commentary and themes are incredibly poignant. Such as its prediction of what is basically Anonymous, or the rise of anonymous internet culture and how people act. Once again returning to our perceived reality. However, for every hit, I think _Lain_ misses the mark on its technology aspect a bit. For instance, I had a hard time reconciling Lain’s veritable godhood with the reach of technology in this/_Lain's_ world. It still works in the larger story, but was definitely one of the aspects that sailed over my head. ~~~img(https://i.imgur.com/1C5xITW.png)~~~ #~~~__Conclusion__~~~ So, all in all, to long didn’t read, how was _Serial Experiments Lain_? For all of its density, it’s difficult subjects and wordy dialogue. In spite of the sometimes surreal visuals and flat delivery, as a viewer, I feel satisfied. In spite of my general distaste for meandering pseudo-philosophy, I feel I left Lain with something new. New thoughts, new feelings, that it made me ask questions on topics I had not truly considered before because they never normally came up. Basically, _Serial Experiments Lain_ contains something for someone of every level anime interest. From newbies just setting their foot into the medium, to old fogeys who have somehow missed this series. There is nothing else like _Serial Experiments Lain_ out there. So while you may not enjoy it in the traditional sense, I believe _Lain_ is worth your time. Even if only to experience a piece of anime history.

Protogeist

__Spoiler alert!__ Serial Experiments Lain is a very special anime. It’s one of those shows that never seem to be talked about enough. One of those anime that have been on my watch-list ever since getting into the “genre”. One of the shows I always wanted to watch but never did in the fear that I would misunderstand it. It might sound silly to say, that you misunderstood art. But even though I know that it’s stupid to feel bad about having a different conclusion to art than others, it’s something I think many of us feel. That our perception of art is somehow less “deep” or wrong, in comparison to others. I’m not pretending to know everything about Serial Experiments Lain, many people have rewatched the show tens of times, and I’m just here watching it for the first. But I’ll try to discuss the show as well as I can even though I know rewatch would give me a better understanding of what the show is about both from a plot perspective and a thematic one. _“Oh, okay. So that’s how it works. I had no idea the world was this simple. I always thought the world was such a big and scary place, but once you figure it out, it’s all so easy! I told you it would be”_ It isn’t often that I am fascinated by a work of fiction. I have seen many interesting shows and movies, but few of them have truly encapsulated me into its world and ideas. Where I feel like the show stays on my mind for longer than an hour. Cause even some really good movies and tv-shows just leave my mind after I wake up the morning after. Maybe it’s just the immense amount of media I consume every day that makes my brain throw out what it feels is less important, or if it simply isn’t worthy of my memory, but that’s how it is. I was in a need of something that could stay, and I got that I think. In many ways, Serial Experiments Lain’s own existence is what compelled me. If it hasn’t been said enough before, it basically predicted how the 21st-century internet works. And while I expected that to be since I had heard so much about it, not to this extent. From episode one I was just in wonder of how similar “the Wired” was to the internet we use today. Both the sense of community and the feeling that everything is fake is conveyed with the Wired, and it is really fascinating to witness. And continuing the show, I found myself enjoying more than just that. There are many movies and series that I feel like have a lot of symbolism and a lot to interpret, but fail to make it interesting after 10 minutes. Where you just get bored with the same symbolism over and over and over again. But just analyzing every detail of every scene was really enjoyable, from the large number of shots of telephone lines and eyes to the excessive lighting. It became more than I expected, more than a prediction. At the beginning of every episode, there is a sequence of shots of the city and its people as we hear a voice. The voice isn’t from anyone or to anyone specifically, but I always figured that they were from Lain’s psyche. And in a way you can see how her character changes throughout the story with this opening, beginning with her curiosity and temptation of the Wired and ending with an understanding of the world, or rather accepting the complicatedness of it. And that’s a big theme of Serial Experiments Lain, our understanding of the world and ourselves. Throughout the story, we see how Lain becomes increasingly obsessed with the Wired and the connection it creates. We see how she wants to understand the world and its people, she loves all of them. But it makes her understanding of herself grow less and less. A big plot point in the series is how a copy of Lain is created in the Wired, who worsens her relationship with the friends she has. It’s a very overused trope, but I think sets itself apart by reminding you over and over again that they are the same. It isn’t really a copy of Lain, but a manifestation of Lain’s mind. It is a part of her that she won’t accept. In one of the later episodes, Lain tries to strangle this “copy” but is yet again reminded that it is herself. She questions why she can feel warmth, why what she is killing is living? After this point, Lain’s character has a big shift. We start to see how she becomes a zombie in the real world, only really living in the Wired. She meets the self-proclaimed god of the Wired, who tries to convince her that the Wired could be a better alternative to the real world. As protocol seven is released, the Wired basically becomes another reality making the idea of switching less and less absurd. Our bodies don’t define us so why be restrained by them? Arisu’s point of view, as she tries to get Lain out of this spiraling obsession. She finds Lain is But this is where I think the message becomes clearer. At a certain point, we start to follow a pile of wires and stuffed toys in her room, convinced that converting her consciousness would be a better alternative. That her body isn’t necessary for her existence and consciousness and therefore useless. But Arisu tells her that she’s wrong. That even though her body might be cold and weak, it is alive and so is Arisu’s. There’s a connection made because they’re physical, one that couldn’t be made if it weren’t for that. And I think it’s here where we see what the show wants to say. How we shouldn’t try to understand the world and its people but to just try to understand yourself. As the voice says at the beginning of episode 12, the world might seem like a big and scary place, but once you figure it out it’s all so easy. The universe isn’t out to get you, there’s a reason why you’re physical. While it might seem like some sort of god wants you dead, there’s a reason why you’re not. In the end, Lain decides to reset the universe but takes away the existence of herself, or at least the memories. She creates a world where she can be absent, a world where the memory of her is no more, where no one’s trying to figure out more than themselves. There’s a sense that everything is right in the world. Everyone’s happy or at least in pursuit of it Still, there’s something off. While Lain still exists in a weird plane of existence, she struggles with the reality she had created. We are told over and over again that Lain has erased the memory of herself in the world, and that if you aren’t remembered then you might as well not have existed at all. And while it’s an interesting idea, I think the show wants to say in the end that you make your own existence. In the last scene, we see how an adult Arisu meets Lain years after the events of the show. Arisu can’t seem to figure out why she feels some sort of familiarity with this stranger. Lain has successfully removed herself from the memory of the world, but she remains. Even if she wasn’t remembered, she made her own existence. And I find that interesting. __A pretty strong 10/10__

cital0pram

>There is no place to hide. Wherever you go everyone is connected. I was talking to a user who has failed to understand Serial Experiments Lain. It is a complex series and that everyone can understand it from different points. It touches controversial issues like reality, identity, the collective unconscious, or mental problems such as dissociative identity disorder. Philosophical themes with high degrees of abstraction such as pure existentialism are also discussed, adding theological elements such as the existence and composition of "God". The content of the series ends up being implicit in the introspection itself that forces you to make, added to that, a plot is generated that seems immobile when in fact it is the opposite. It is for these reasons that I consider it a completely rich, diverse, and interesting audiovisual material, but at the same time complicated, since it is not for everyone because of its complexity, it requires a concentration that does not allow you to distract yourself with what is merely explicit. A fundamental aspect for the development of the plot in "Serial Experiments Lain" is the constant use of puns, close-ups, and silences of the series. For example "Lain" sounds similar to "Line" but it is pronounced differently: "Lain" is pronounced "Lein" and "Line" is pronounced "Lain", making explicit reference to "being on the Line". In the first chapter, whose name is "Strange", reference is made to rare and unusual events. Interestingly, "Weird" bears some resemblance to the term "Wired", which translates to "red". Therefore, we deduce that all the "strange" events that occur are directly related to the network ("wired"). All the chapters are called "Layer", referring to all the stages that our protagonist has to go through to get to the bottom of the matter. At Serial Experiments Lain we follow in the footsteps of Lain Iwakura, a Japanese teenager who lives in a Tokyo between the futuristic and the contemporary in which technology, and more specifically computers and the Internet, are an indispensable part of the life of the entire society. Lain is an introverted and reserved girl, with evident socialization problems both with the outside world and with her family, and even with herself. One day, both Lain and several of his high school classmates receive an email from Chisa, another of the students. Until now everything was normal if it wasn't for Chisa having committed suicide and in the message she talks about her death as a transitional step to abandon "her flesh" to break her ties with the earthly world and be with God in the new world that it is part of the network. After the enigmatic event, Lain installs a new Navi, a state-of-the-art computer, backed by her father, who believes that technology can help his daughter end her social problems and be a little happier and more complete. Lain begins to use the Navi more and more, relentlessly delving into a whirlwind of technology, hackers, secret groups, conspiracies, places, and people of dubious recommendation with the aim of to unravel the mysteries surrounding the death of Chisa and its enigmatic warning from beyond. From the first moment, this anime takes a basic premise of Socratic theories: know yourself. In this series we constantly change who we are, both for ourselves, for society, the world, or even for the time. This is a fundamental premise, since only when we know ourselves can we understand the rest of the things that surround us and that are part of reality. Lain shows us that there are several "I's", and that they do not depend only on us, since each person or environment with which we interact has a different perception of the ego that we know. That is, at the same time that there is a self in your head with characteristics and a way of being that you know and understand, there are a multitude of diverse beings who do not depend on you, but on the vision that the rest of society has of you. A way of complicating things that, however, is inevitable, since the human being cannot live far from society, he is part of it and the form at the same time that it shapes it. And at this point, the Internet, the network, comes into play, a possibility of staying permanently connected with other people and apparently freeing us from the difficulties we always encounter. The network becomes the representation of another of the Platonic theories, which is the existence of a supersensitive world, a world of pure ideas and full freedom that is linked to the paradise governed by God. A higher level that can only be accessed by renouncing "the meat" and living entirely by and for the cyber environment, a suicide that in Lain has two ways of representing itself, both in a real way, with the suicide of Chisa or with Lain's True Social Isolation. This is directly connected with the idea of ​​whether the soul exists or not, and if the human being is the body and soul together, and they cannot exist separately, or if the body is only a wrapper for that set of unknown things that we do who we are. In short, Lain talks about approaches to existence, about what makes things real. I don't know if I was helpful, sorry. I express myself better speaking than writing haha You can find many reviews and explanations online, even when I wrote this some opinions helped me.

ABPAEAE

___This is less of a review and moreso just me collecting my thoughts on this anime since it's been constantly stuck in my mind since finishing it in one binge session. I will try to avoid spoilers.___ _Serial Experiments Lain_ is a relatively popular anime, making its debut in the summer of 1998. It's difficult to tell someone what this anime is about without giving away massive spoilers. I believe even the AL description itself is a spoiler, though only to a mild degree. The best description I've seen so far is off IMDB, and though you've undeniably already read AL's, I strongly urge you to focus on this instead: >Strange events begin to occur as a withdrawn girl named Lain becomes obsessed with interconnected virtual realm of "The Wired". From both my own views and what experiences I've heard others have, Lain is a type of media, anime or otherwise, that feels like you neeed to put effort into sitting down and watching it someday, months after you discover it. Without sounding like I'm rushing you to dive into it, most people really over-exaggerate its complexity, making it seem like an incomprehensible schizo series. I understood most everything watching it in one sitting, and reading the Wikipedia article filled in the few gaps in any ___objective___ understanding I lacked. Objective being a very key word, as there is plenty of themes in Lain to consider in your own personal perspectives. - __Story__ The story of _Serial Experiments Lain_ is greatly underappreciated by so many different mediums and genres. Not only did Lain normalize and set a tone for future anime within the psychological horror and sci-fi genre, I have a strong reason to believe that this is one of the most influential pieces of cyberpunk media within recent history, and I am incredibly eager to see how much of its influence is visible within Cyberpunk 2077 when it comes out. _Serial Experiments Lain_ is as unique as any _story _can get. This is barring any influence from general concepts and influence from sourceless and unfounded common urban legends, particularly within modern Japanese culture. The story is written with such surgical precision, as it intends to pace and control your thoughts like a string puppet throughout your viewing duration. It clearly feels like the absolute number one rule for its writing is to avoid giving the viewer a god perspective. The viewer doesn't know anything more than a fly on the wall present in every shown location of every episode would know. There's various purposeful, small gaps in the story that are left for the viewer to fill in, and the mental stimulation from doing so is like filling that one final empty space in a 300 piece puzzle you did when you were six. Lain definitely isn't a slice of life with a very mindless and relaxed pace (not that there's anything wrong with that genre, it's actually my favorite), it is a show that makes you actively watch rather than passively. It is filled with symbolism and questions of the future of the human society. _Ergo Proxy_ came out 8 years afterwards, and feels strongly influenced off Lain. However, I didn't really enjoy _Ergo Proxy_. It felt like it was going out of its way to be confusing and overly symbolic at times. Lain is multiplication and simple equations as _Ergo Proxy_ is to college-level calculus. I understand Lain, and while I have to put some effort into thinking about how the plot fits together, I don't have to necessarily go to the teacher or the Indian tutorials on YouTube for help answering half the questions (some explanations of _Ergo Proxy_ are dozens, even hundreds of paragraphs long for a full explanation). The themes _Serial Experiments Lain_ explores and the questions it brings up alone nearly makes it a masterpiece outright. Though it came out 22 years ago and was undeniably in production for at least a few years prior, it was incredibly ahead of its time. - __Characters__ In short, a lot of what could be said about the story applies to the characters. The characters are unique, well-written, and heavily tied to the various themes throughout _Serial Experiments Lain_. Explaining the topic of characters within Lain any further, I believe, would delve into spoiler territory, so I'm going to ignore discussing the subject any further, leaving the rest for you to discover on your own. - __Art__ The artstyle of _Serial Experiments Lain_ ties perfectly into the themes, and arguably more importantly, successfully promotes exactly the overall mood the creator was shooting for. It is uniquely depressing, dreary, psychedelic, and horrific. Somewhere between a rainy day, an album of liminal spaces, and a cyberpunk version of _Twin Peaks_ set in Kowloon. Does that make sense? Probably not, but there isn't any one word to explain this kind of style. _~~~What feelings do these images invoke in you? Anxiety? Depression? General unease? Curiosity? Whatever it may be, a simple few screencaps are more than enough to get a general gist for the art.~~~_ ~~~img220(https://unwinnable.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Serial-2.jpg) img220(https://growingbranch.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/snapshot20110502230349.jpg?w=584)~~~ Aside from symbolism and whatnot, the general quality is very good. Ahead of its time, probably not enough so to be a benchmark for future works, but enough to be appreciated in its own right, even against modern anime. - __Music__ Okay, I admit that the music may have been stuck in the forefront of my mind morseo than the actual story and symbolism. The opening theme is an absolute bop, and the music within the episodes themselves very well may be the best fitting music within any anime I've seen. Here's just a couple short samplers to explain with actual audio rather than my shit explanation: ~~~_Cyberia Theme_ youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dbi4N6NGn4) _Bôa - Duvet_ youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SgWum9kHYk)~~~ - __Final Thoughts__ To keep something brief out of this review, there's so much to _Serial Experiments Lain_ I'd like to put into words, but can't due to a lack of words existing in the English vocabulary and my general lack of intelligence. It deserves so much more recognition for its incredible influence in so many different forms of media and genres. I don't give perfect 10/10 scores to things only if they're the best of something I've experienced, but rather if I don't have any complaints against that thing be it personal or objective. _Serial Experiments Lain_ is both __damn well nearing perfection__, as well as being something I don't have any criticisms against. I do not feel like I've let it marinate in my mind long enough to call it an absolute masterpiece, but it's likely I'll give it the title in the near future.

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_Contains spoilers for "Serial Experiments Lain"_ ____ # __The Opening Theme Song__ Much like my Neon Genesis Evangelion analysis, I’m going to start this review off with an analysis on the opening theme song, the first thing you’re met with when you begin watching the series. Although not nearly as hefty as NGE’s opening, SEL still boasts one of the best anime openings in my opinion, because of its strong symbolism and imagery, a lot of foreshadowing and an astounding song. The first 15 seconds of the opening are comprised of scenes that show us “Present Day - Present Time” with a snarky voiceover and then transitions into an image of Lain behind a static TV screen, an imagery that we quickly become very familiar with as it is shown on multiple occasions throughout the anime and opening itself. ~~~img800(https://pa1.narvii.com/6012/8a10f08a07fc97b392249973c5d184dca437c909_hq.gif)~~~ These first 15 seconds have double meanings – the first one is that “Present Day - Present Time” hints at the fact that the message of the show is more prevalent now than it ever was before, always staying up to date and only becoming more and more relevant with the times. The second meaning I derived from these scenes is the foreshadowing of Lain trespassing the laws of physics and time by merging with the Wired as shown by the “Present Day - Present Time” scene followed by Lain behind a screen, hinting at the fact that she will always be here in the present. The following scenes show us Lain with her back turned, being surrounded by crows – which have been associated throughout history with and symbolize magic, personal transformation, a higher perspective, a trickster and adaptability – meaning the crows are a metaphor for the Wired and how she’s surrounded by it yet unaware. The swarm of crows then go to fly past her as her name gets typed on a static screen more and more, leaving her overwhelmed and startled for a second, but then turning to look at the crows – symbolizing her reluctance and fear to get involved with the Wired at first, but then coming to get more and more into it and looking for it. The crows may also be a metaphor for her evil trickster persona that she takes in the Wired. ~~~img800(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/102854222204468544/7A2980B1C1A31D24FAC579D135A59B0924207B7D/)~~~ The former idea is reinforced by the next 10 seconds of the opening, which show Lain walking through the Wired, enveloped in endless text and images. The following scenes that come together with the chorus of the song and go to show Lain behind a static TV screen in multiple instances, in front of multiple people and showcasing different emotions – hinting at her multiple personalities within the Wired. They also go to show how the Wired connects people, especially Lain. This neatly transitions into Lain wandering throughout the world, representing how through the Wired, Lain can be everywhere and anywhere at any moment. ~~~img800(https://thumbs.gfycat.com/NiceFluffyHound-max-1mb.gif)~~~ Then, as close-up images of Lain in the Wired flash, she begins to climb up the stairs that lead to an overpass. As she begins to cross the bridge more images of her in the Wired flash and after a strong wind blows, she turns to look at a crow flying in the sky once again as time stops but never minds it and nonchalantly continues to cross the bridge as a nice and calming instrumental plays. This whole scene foreshadows how Lain becomes one with the Wired as she “crosses the bridge” between reality and it, with flashing images of her in that other world go by as her driving force and finally she completely accepts it and transcends reality as time completely stops, but she continues to walk to “the other side.” ~~~img800(https://thumbs.gfycat.com/WavyLastGalah-max-1mb.gif)~~~ The final moments of this amazing opening both visually and auditorily only go to reinforce my previous statements as Lain blends in with the Wired and it comes to an end. ~~~img800(https://thumbs.gfycat.com/HappygoluckyAmazingChick-max-1mb.gif)~~~ Finally, I would also like to mention how the lyrics of the song are loosely tied with the themes of Serial Experiments Lain and Lain herself. This all comes together to not only make one of my favorite anime opening theme songs ever, but one of the best the medium has to offer. ____ # __Piecing It All Together__ Serial Experiments Lain takes a different approach on Japanese media and media in general and how its presented to the viewers. The first half of the show has an extremely cryptic, yet somewhat linear delivery, focusing more on Lain’s introduction to the Wired and her development with it. The story doesn’t tell you out-right the events that are happening, instead opting to make hints and let you yourself piece everything together much like a puzzle. This is also reinforced by the very slow, drawn out pacing it takes in the first half, as it is necessary for a proper build-up, letting the viewer get familiar with the setting, characters, story and gives them enough time to piece said puzzle together. The importance of the slow pacing comes down to its portray of each scene’s significance, taking its time in revealing said scene’s information, relying solely on each viewer’s intellect and aptitude to piece it all together. ~~~img800(https://giffiles.alphacoders.com/258/2583.gif)~~~ Although some people might say that some scenes are needlessly prolonged and its extremely boring, I’d argue this exposition method that involves your constant attention and brain involvement is more engaging and vastly more interesting than the usual method that media uses – spoon feeding its audience, but this will become more apparent the more you rewatch the series. The latter half of the show picks up the pace a bit, but takes everything else from the first half up a notch, being an even higher amount of intellectual exposition – no longer even hinting at the events that are happening, instead opting to leave it solely to the audience’s interpretation. The philosophical and psychological aspects of the show are never mentioned at face-value, letting the viewer’s own questioning be the answer. The implications of each idea are left to the our own aptitude to string them all together, as there aren’t any narratives or clear explanations to lead us on. All of this illustrates the unorthodox exposition method and its importance to the narrative, akin to a puzzle that you have to piece together to reveal and understand the bigger picture. This also sets Serial Experiments Lain apart from its contemporaries or rivals, being an antithesis to most of media, its mediocrity and treating its audience like dumb kids. ____ #__The Inner Workings of the Wired__ The first half of the show is crucial for setting up the Wired, how it affects humanity and its relationship with it and Lain in particular. It achieves this through two key factors, one of which is realism. Serial Experiments Lain attains this grounded sense of realism by utilizing the suspension of disbelief. While a lot of anime and other media as well try to exaggerate emotions and character expressions or give the world a sense of fantasy (exp. Comedies, Shounen, Shoujo), and as entertaining as that might be this makes it lose its sense of realism and thus creating a sense of disbelief that isn’t innately wrong, but it results in the series losing long-term impact. SEL throws that out the window, instead opting for a mundane, serious and real life-like initial setting, which lacks any of the typical Japanese media tropes, comedy, exaggeration and drama. This serves to ground and immerse the viewer into the world of Serial Experiments Lain, and then once the chaotic and maddening latter half of the show picks up, the idea that this could happen to real people or that it is happening to real characters never oscillates. ~~~img800(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/00/68/7700687e5e0a26ce32e773c55a98c0d5.gif)~~~ The second key factor in setting up the world of SEL in its first half are its plot elements, focusing on what the Wired is and how Lain and the rest of the world interacts with it. As mentioned before, it’s initially mundane approach to the setting is emphasized by Lain Iwakura and her small group of friends. Lain is an introverted, shy 14 year old girl and her other 3 friends are typical 8th grade girls, sometimes secretly going to a nightclub named Cyberia. The things spice up a bit after a classmate kills herself and rumors of emails sent by said deceased classmate start circulating. A short while after Lain learns this, she receives such an email and introduces her as much as the audience itself to the Wired. At first sight, the Wired seemed like Serial Experiments Lain’s version of our world’s internet, but the more you dig in and the more the story progresses you get the sense that it is on a much grander scale than the internet, especially in the aspects of connectedness between individuals and the thin, nearly indistinguishable line between the Wired and the ‘real world.’ This is all illustrated through events that take place in the first half of the anime – one of which is the aforementioned suicide, where one of Lain’s classmates gets her consciousness transferred into the Wired; another event being the incident with a “video game” called Phantoma, in which a teenage boy starts hallucinating being trapped in a dungeon video game, akin to 1993’s Doom, and ultimately ending up in the boy killing a little girl that he deemed to be a dungeon monster. ~~~img800(https://lain.wiki/images/thumb/a/af/1669_900.png/300px-1669_900.png)~~~ One of the first instances in which the dissimilarity between the Wired and the real world gets called into question is when Lain’s father tells her “When it’s all said and done, 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?” to which Iwakura Lain responds with denial, stating that the difference between them isn’t as clear-cut as he makes it out to be. This all comes together in the latter half of the series, when it’s revealed that a scientist named Masami Eiri, in search of attaining Godhood, secretly implements within the Wired the ability to connect all individuals on Earth on an unconscious level, no longer even needing a body, which, might I add, is aptly similar to one of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s aspects. This is known as “The 7th Protocol.” This teaches us that, from a technological standpoint, the Wired can affect and manipulate the psyche of everyone on Earth. In this aspect, Serial Experiments Lain likes to borrow philosophical ideas from the likes of Alan Turing and french philosopher Julien Offrey de La Mettrie, which contain the idea that there is no clear distinction between a machine and a human, saying that humans don’t even need an organic body to be humans, except for the brain, and even that doubting by going as far as to ask the question: “if one’s brain would get replaced with a functionally identical piece of machinery, would said person still be human?” to which Julien Mettrie would answer “yes.” ~~~img800(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jxV2vwkG6-A/XOIy0JjjnwI/AAAAAAAAmUQ/FBJiZWvYwIUWmC8kzSnkGlI1OImvFw2lgCLcBGAs/w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu/LE%2BMETRIE%2BJULIEN.jpg)~~~ On a second note, SEL takes these ideas and implements them in its use of digitalization of humans’ consciousness, completely translating the aforementioned consciousness into a construct of information contained within the Wired. This is proven in the first episode by the classmate that kills herself and uploads her consciousness into the Wired, and much later in the series, when its revealed that Masami Eiri, also known as Deus or God, did the same to become a pretend God in the Wired. The second philosophical idea Serial Experiments Lain likes to borrow and implement into the Wired’s inner workings is the metaphysical aspect. In this aspect, SEL takes ideas from epistemology and especially idealism. Lain’s quote “I only exist inside the people aware of my existence” reveals this key theme that SEL likes to play with extensively. This theme is later supported by Iwakura’s conversation with Deus in which he states that he can be God because people believe in him, but Lain goes on to disprove this in the final acts of the series where she, the only one left still believing he is God, states that he is only disguising himself as a God, and is no more than a mere fake as he forced himself in that position and his followers to believe that. In episode 5 it is said that everything experienced by someone who is connected to the Wired are projections, or 'holograms', of information stored within the Wired. This further on blurs the line between reality and the Wired, as all of humanity is connected to the Wired, meaning that the entirety of experiences and observable reality is, in fact, the Wired and diminishing the reality as non-existent. This goes even beyond, meaning that even the human body and brain is nothing more than a construct of information projected through the Wired, which, as demonstrated by Lain in the last episode, can be altered, created or even erased. ____ #__Iwakura Lain__ So how exactly does the story’s protagonist, which the series spends the majority of its time exploring, play into all of this? Well, Lain Iwakura is introduced as an extremely shy and detached person. She is not only detached from the world around her, but from her own self as shown by her identity crisis and lack of self-understanding throughout the entirety of the show. SEL makes the audience as well as Lain herself question Iwakura Lain’s identity as a singular being from the get-go, when her friends claim they saw her at the nightclub Cyberia making a fuss; when a young regular at Cyberia named Taro asks her to go on a date with her other, more tenacious persona; and when the DJ of the nightclub recognizes her but remarks the fact that she’s playing up the little kid persona. Lain Iwakura did have a few instances where her rumored, more assertive demeanor surfaced, first of which was when the nightclub shooter kills himself as Lain approaches him. Although this might seem like a split personality disorder at first, it goes much deeper than that, as a lot of Serial Experiments Lain does. This is first shown in the middle of the series, when for about 2 whole episodes Lain Iwakura takes the aggressive persona as she tries to comprehend the KID System and tracks down its creator. Another crucial part of Lain’s identity as a whole is her relationship with the Wired. Up to this point in the series it is hinted at and mentioned on numerous occasions that Lain possesses some sort of magnificent power within the Wired and that she is vastly important to it. The first incident to really engrave this in ours and Iwakura’s mind is the aforementioned nightclub shooting incident, in which the man recognizes Lain and in a fit accuses her of forcing him to do this then, presumably from Lain’s power, kills himself as she approaches him and says that everyone is connected in a threatening manner. ~~~img800(https://i.imgur.com/eN7vUz3.png)~~~ The second incident to provoke this idea is Lain’s meeting with the KIDS creator, which served as a prototype for the Wired, professor Hodgeson, in which the professor tells Iwakura Lain that she has immense power, potential and importance to the Wired right before fading and, presumably, dying. Where this identity crisis situation starts to boil is in the next episode, episode 8, where Lain is accused by her friends and the entire school of doing something terrible. Iwakura denies these allegations as she doesn’t even understand what is transpiring or what her friends’ questioning, in particular Arisu, refers to. In the last quarter of the episode it is inexplicitly revealed that this was the doing of another personality of Lain’s, the trickster Iwakura Lain. Arisu is seen being aroused, sexually stimulating herself and fantasizing about her crush, a school teacher, seen evidently by her image of him over her, as she notices with the corner of her eye the mischievous Lain sitting on her bed. This throws Arisu into emotional distress and a fit, to which the trickster Lain responds with mocking remarks and laughter, making it clear that this isn’t either the familiar shy Lain nor the aggressive Lain and that the usual shy Lain wasn’t the one that spread the rumors of Arisu’s fantasies to the whole school. ~~~img800(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DhjL2SLU0AAwUEh.jpg:large)~~~ This is then reinforced, as simultaneously, the shy Lain, lying in bed, is having an apparent fit of panic as she’s forced to see her aggressive persona fight with her mischievous one inside her head, enduring it, and leading to this being a depiction of her mental breakdown. The following scene is of Lain, presumably in the Wired, talking with a depiction of Masami Eiri, aka Deus, showing him as a floating, discolored blob, in which the series once again states that she is truly powerful and omnipresent within the Wired, which Lain ultimately accepts and gives her the idea that she can simply delete the information containing her spreading the rumors about Arisu to the school, in this case meaning that she will erase those events and memories from everyone on Earth. After a scene showing “deleting…” on the screen, the normal, shy Lain is shown walking to school as she’s greeted by her friends, including Arisu, making her believe that it worked and those events have been erased from existence, but as soon as she tries to greet her friends, another more sociable and upbeat Lain comes out of her and greets them instead and the shy Lain, like a ghost only observing, is left there denying the events that are happening and watching the other sociable Lain walk off with her friends. The trickster Lain then confronts the introverted Lain and tells her “Lain is Lain, I am Me.” The Episode ends with Iwakura searching for her computers’ affirmation whether she is herself, and that the only Lain is Lain. This ultimately leaves us with the answer to Lain’s existence, as she is omnipresent and basically all-powerful, being able to create, modify and delete at will in the Wired, and as I’ve stated before, the Wired is intertwined with reality to the point of nearly no distinction, making her, unlike the pretend God that is Masami Eiri, a true God. But as to who Lain is as a person, that is completely left up to the interpretation of the audience, only leaving us with the fact that she is the culmination of a multitude of Lains, without knowing which one is the first, the last or the real one if there even is a ‘real’ Lain. ____ #__Serial Experiments Lain’s Philosophy__ Throughout the course of this analysis and review, I’ve already touched up on the philosophy and psychology behind Serial Experiments Lain, especially in part 3, but never extensively, which is what I’m going to do now – delving deep into the intricacies that involve SEL’s philosophy, psychology and how its applied to the story and characters. First off, I’d like to mention how said philosophies of the show, which im going to talk about more later, are used not only to present thought-provoking ideas and themes that remain to stay relevant throughout the ever-changing times, but also to further on add even more to the realism of the series, making Serial Experiments Lain more grounded and the absolute madness that transpires by the end of it more scientifically feasible and logical than it might appear like at first sight. Most of what happens in terms of philosophical and psychological horror is completely based in highly advanced levels of wireless technology, an absolute understanding of how consciousness works in the brain, which allows for its manipulation, and global-scale virtual reality. And while, truth be told, this is tenfold of what current science and technology can achieve or what it will be able to in the foreseeable future, none of the notions seem so utterly fictitious that I wouldn’t believe that they are, in fact, possibilities. The key point that Serial Experiments Lain’s fictitious aspects behind the philosophical themes and ideas get called into question is what makes SEL seem so strangely grounded, logically feasible and real behind all the seemingly incomprehensible events that take place. Now to get into the nitty-gritty details of the philosophical and psychological aspect of the series, which are implemented magnificently, seemingly connecting with each other, building upon themselves as you go further and further. ~~~img800(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e4/8a/ea/e48aeaac9f9688addda36cb41539f35a.gif)~~~ Serial Experiments Lain goes above and beyond tackling the themes of the psychological self’s perception of reality from a myriad of different angles by using philosophical themes such as the aforementioned idealism, epistemology, materialism and metaphysics as well as the concept of the self. Making the characters, as well as us, question the world surrounding us and how we feel about existence. The first and most apparent theme in Lain is the ambiguity between the Wired and reality, using metaphysical and ontological ideas as prefaces. As I’ve mentioned before on numerous occasions, the line between the Wired and ‘reality’ is so obscured, to the point that they are entirely indistinguishable from each other. One’s consciousness being transferred from reality to the Wired, thus proving that the Wired isn’t simply a virtual reality network, but it is much more, as the mind becomes a part of the Wired itself. Meaning the Wired is a reality of its own – the ultimate reality. From this idea, the show unravels a web of more dark and twisted ideas. One of the most prevalent ideas to come from this is how humans perceive reality and even further – what is reality. Serial Experiments Lain approaches this idea by introspecting on what it really means to exist in reality, or to be more precise, for an event to have actually occurred. SEL answers this by showing the ontological idea that the basis for every event that occurred, or for anything that existed, is human memory. And as proven by Lain Iwakura in episode 8, in which she erases the memories of her spreading rumors around school, and in the final 13th episode, where she erases all records of her existence from the collective memory of everyone on Earth – tamper with that memory and you can change reality itself, or even destroy it. From these events and ideas that Serial Experiments Lain presents, it exhibits a certain, grim theme: an event or object’s existence is solely based on the delicate human mind. If one’s own records of existence were to be completely erased, how would anyone be able to confirm their existence, or even further – how would anyone even be able to recognize their ignorance of said person? To the human mind, if these conditions were to be met, how could it possibly tell the difference between something ever even existing or not? If this were to happen, and all information surrounding an event or object were to be completely annihilated, it would result in a state no different from complete non-existence and complete unawareness from the collective mind – meaning it’s as if the event or object in question was never even developed to begin with. So, after everything said and done, what does this all lead to? It basically entails that memory is not only a key part in Serial Experiments Lain, but also our lives. It speaks up on the ontology behind what the human psyche comprises – meaning that all experiences that we build our lives on are, at the end of the tunnel, all based in memories. If you were to think back on what motivated you to reach a certain point and what you build your ideals up on, it all comes down to pleasant or not so pleasant memories of events, people you are intimate with and more. These things shape who you are, and ultimately, meaning that everything which dictates our self-image, self-worth, ideals and behaviours is fated to our own memory records. This is where SEL introduces one of its most frightening, Lovecraftian notions: at the whims of another being, specifically Iwakura Lain, your whole comprehension of an idea can be erased, and you won’t even realize it. Your most important, beautiful or ugly memories that shaped you as a person could get erased, reducing you to someone entirely different from who you were, and it would go totally unnoticed. This creates within the series and the viewer’s mind the sense that free will is only an illusion. But even more than it affects the side characters or the viewers, it affects Lain herself. We, as humans, see ourselves as living externally from the world around us, meaning that for something to be inherently important to us, it has to affect us on an intimate level, or in other words ‘enter our world.’ Humans require there be a fine line separating what has happened and hasn’t happened, and how important it is to us. But what happens when this line gets blurred? The one to experience this is Iwakura Lain. Each time she alters history and reality itself, she becomes more and more broken, as she realizes that there isn’t any distinguishability between her imagination of the world around her and the real world around her anymore. ~~~img800(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cb/79/cf/cb79cf7ba5f175cb464c38ae6e3bc822.gif)~~~ The first instance of her breaking is the aforementioned event in which she deletes all memories of the nasty rumors about Arisu, and as she begins to greet her friends, the sociable Lain greets them instead, leaving the shy Lain behind. But this notion is best represented in the last episode of the series. Lain has her final confrontation with Masami Eiri, which causes Arisu, which was observing, to descend into an uncontrollable fit of madness at the unexplicable things she has witnessed before her eyes. As a response to this, Lain erases herself from humankind’s memories as she wishes everything were back to normal and the Wired to be non-existent. This leaves Iwakura Lain in a state of limbo, in which she realizes the meaninglessness of notions such as friends, family, dear memories and more as they all are at the whims of her imagination and under her control. All possible experiences can be imagined, which in turn, equate to nothingness. This makes Lain go to a boil and puts the final nail in the coffin. But after Lain’s mind ultimately snaps, she has a conversation with someone separate from Lain Iwakura’s will, presumably God, which portrays her father, the only family member that at least somewhat loved Lain despite everything. After this, the series closes on Lain realizing and accepting her omnipresence and power. This is exhibited by her seemingly chance meeting with her friend Arisu, now grown-up and with no recollection of the events that have occurred back in her teenage years with Lain. Arisu points out the familiarity she feels from Iwakura Lain and notes that they’re going to meet once again for sure, to which Lain responds “Anywhere, anytime.” ____ #__The Creation of Serial Experiments Lain__ Last but not least, I’d like to talk about how Serial Experiments Lain came to be, it’s influences and references, and its unorthodox visual and audio design and presentation. First and foremost, the man most responsible for SEL and its quality is Chiaki J. Konaka, the series composer and scriptwriter for the series. He always specialized in cyberpunk themes and horror stories, drawing Lovecraftian influences, which evidently become very apparent factors in Serial Experiments Lain. Prior to his work on Lain, he wrote a live-action drama in 1995 and worked on a PlayStation game called Alice in Cyberland, who’s main three characters got their names recycled for characters in Lain. ~~~img800(https://i1.wp.com/www.animemaru.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/konoka.jpg?fit=640%2C360&ssl=1)~~~ The original concept for Serial Experiments Lain was that it’d communicate the essence of the work through a total sum of many different media products. One of those media products was the PlayStation game, which had its scenario written first and was produced concurrently with the anime series, but the anime was released first. The final released piece of media was a manga chapter illustrated by the anime’s character designer, Yoshitoshi ABe titled Serial Experiments Lain: The Nightmare of Fabrication and was released in an artbook. Konaka took a large amount of influences from a wide variety of works including The Exorcist, House of Dark Shadows, Hell House and obviously some of H. P. Lovecraft’s works. As precursors to the Wired are included real life figures, counting the likes of Ted Nelson, John C. Lilly, and the first hypertext project, Project Xanadu. ~~~img800(https://images.ctfassets.net/spoqsaf9291f/6i7lfUtqoVWw36kJNJTDx1/86f504e7886f97fbc97ff2486ecff76f/ted-nelson-thumb.jpg)~~~ Some of the more prevalent references the series includes or uses are: the nightclub Cyberia being named after a 1994 novel by the same name; notions such as the collective unconscious; the Majestic 12 and the Roswell UFO incident. Some of the smaller references are: the Navi system being a contraction of Knowledge Navigator, a term invented by Apple’s former CEO, John Sculley in his book Odyssey; the operating system of choice in Serial Experiments Lain, Copland OS, while being the name of an unreleased operating system by Apple Inc.; another reference to Apple being Tachibana Labs, tachibana being a citrus fruit; the Knights of the Eastern Calculus, usually simply referred to as the Knights, being a reference to the Knight of the Lambda Calculus, a semi-fictional group of the programming languages Lisp and Scheme hackers; and the “to Be continued” card at the end of each episode being a nod to the logo of Be Inc. a 1990 computer company founded by a former Apple Inc. executive, which dissolved in 2001. ~~~img800(https://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/gfx/scr_preview_beinc.jpg)~~~ Now back to Konaka and his masterfully done scenarios and script, I’d like to mention the fact that while working with Iwakura Lain’s voice actress, Kaori Shimizu, Konaka had to divide Lain’s dialogues into three distinctive orthographic projections, designated to three separate voice inflections and mannerisms all relating to one of Lain’s main three personas – the trickster, the assertive and the shy. Lastly I’d like to mention the amazing use of visuals and audio, contributing vastly to the atmosphere and themes of the series. The soundtrack being absent at most times, instead being replaced by complete silence or ambient noises such as footsteps, keyboard clicking noises, and most prevalent, the buzzing sound of telephone poles. When a soundtrack is used though, it is done so exceptionally, by using electrical guitars, distorted, unsettling or ambient noises resulting in a highly atmospheric and weird soundtrack that perfectly fits each scene. They all come together to form this surreal and fever dreamish atmosphere that the series encapsulates perfectly. This is also helped by the excellent sound mixing, chaotically using filtered voices specific to the Wired that also get used in reality and diegetic, nondiegetic and metadiegetic sounds, making both the characters and the audience question what sounds are in their head, reality, or the Wired, emphasizing the ambiguity between the Wired and reality to which I’ve gone to great lengths to explain. From a visual standpoint Serial Experiments Lain stands its ground just as well, although it does have some clankier animation in some parts. Lain has some clean and realistic yet simple character designs by Yoshitoshi ABe that manage to blend in with the surroundings and add to the realism the show presents. While some of the facial expressions the characters make may seem awkward or weird, I’d argue it is done so intentionally to emphasize the creepiness of the show and its themes, as well as add to the unsettling nature of the world of SEL. The shadowing and lighting in the series is utterly amazing, using a huge contrast between blinding white light akin to a screen and dark large shadows with strange patterns on them, both representing the Wired. ~~~img800(https://giffiles.alphacoders.com/171/171279.gif)~~~ ____ #__The Conclusion__ As a final word, I’d like to put my own feelings on paper. First of all, the themes of the series do resonate with me quite a bit, since there was a time in my life when I got completely sucked into the internet world, spending months on end socializing on the web from dusk until dawn, to the point it affected my real life relationships with people and basically created a whole new me. Those times are long gone, but they still stuck with me to this day. Secondly, I want to say that on my first initial watch Lain didn't impress me all that much, but after rewatching Serial Experiments Lain I can say that this is an experience unparalleled by any other. I do have anime that I like more or that I think are just a tiny bit better, but the originality oozing out of SEL is absolutely astonishing, and I think its an experience that I can recommend to all. It raises more questions than it answers, its unusual presentation of both its themes and its visuals, not to mention audio, as well as the way it makes you engage with the story are all aspects that I absolutely love about it and are what make Serial Experiments Lain first and foremost an utterly unique experience and secondly, an undoubtable masterpiece. ~~~img(https://static0.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Serial-Experiments-Lain.jpg)~~~

D4lton

This is my first review and I'm still new to anime so keep that in mind while reading this. My opinions will continue to change the more I watch/read. Serial Experiments Lain is interesting to tackle from a critiquing stand-point. I will break it down into a very basic pro(what I liked) and con(what I didn't like.) Firstly, I have to acknoledge how absurdly relevant this show is today. it's core plot about the wired is a dystopian future our society today is progressing towards, despite the fact this show was released over 20 years prior. While I appreciate the theme of the show, I feel it's praise(from what I've heard and seen) is slightly overrated. Powerful? yes. Nuanced? Not as much as from what I've heard, but that's going more towards the cons. Additionally, the character of Lain is one of the greatest mysteries I have ever seen, and how much of her character is left to interpretation is a strength of the show. Wrapping up the pros, I'd like to appreciate the subtle technical additions that add immensely to the atmosphere of the show. the shots, the character designs, the color pallet, the music, and the constant buzzing of wires and electricity that encapsulate how digital the society has become. To summarize the cons, I would say that the show is convoluted. It introduces NUMEROUS plot threats that go no where, such as the KIDS project and the drug introduced in Layer 02. Of course some of these incidents are meant to be red herrings, and force the viewer to think, however this constant shifting of the narrative made the show feel all over the place at times. Another, more personal issue I have is the lack of explicit confirmation. A LOT of the story is left up to be interpreted by the viewer, and that is something that can be quite subjective. I personally had hoped for more concrete explanations to the mysteries and intricate details about the wired and the character of Lain. Lastly, I want to touch up on my statement on lack of nuance regarding the theme. Now obviously this show does a stellar job of being left open to analysis and interpretation, so I may be off base here, but the theme I took away from the show was to obvious, to easy. How dangerous it is to escape the real world, blurring the lines between real and fake, and misrepresenting yourself online(something that is extremely prevolant today and insane how this was predicted decades earlier.) Maybe this is just personal expectations vs reality, but I was hoping for more. I seriously felt like SEL had more in the tank, perhaps something darker. And the theme felt obvious from the get-go, as if they are literally saying "the internet is a dangerous place, It can't replace reality." In the end though, this is more of a nit-pick and not something I'm really hung up about. In the end, the show is damn interesting, and a very well done slow-burning mystery that requires the viewer to pay close attention at all times. Feel free to critique the review, I'd love feedback. I had these thoughts racking up, and spur of the moment decided to write this. This literally took 10 minutes with no prior preparation other than my personal feelings lol.

guelerme

Pra começo de conversa, o anime foi ao ar em 1998, ano em que a tecnologia estava em desenvolvimento, em sua forma mais primal e básica. O anime não gerou muito sucesso na época em que foi lançado, e realmente demorou para se destacar, até porque muitos outros animes famosos estavam em ascensão no mesmo ano, como Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, entre outros. O orçamento era baixo, mas isso contribuiu e muito para um desempenho positivo na obra, que fez ficar mais misterioso e sombrio ainda. A ausência de diálogos, cenários com poucas cores, que variam para o violeta escuro e misterioso, e para o amarelo forte e desconfortante. Com essa alteração brusca de cores e vibrações, o anime gera um ambiente psicodélico e confuso. ___--SPOILER, RESUMO DO ANIME--___ Lain Iwakura, uma garota de 14 anos, muito tímida e solitária, se afunda no mundo da tecnologia após testemunhar o suicídio de uma colega de classe. Lain, assim como seus colegas de classe, recebiam e-mails constantemente da garota que havia acabado de cometer suicídio. Isso gerou uma enorme confusão, e é apenas o primeiro passo pra imersão de Lain no mundo da tecnologia. Muito mais interpretativo do que dinâmico, Serial Experiments Lain te dá as peças do quebra cabeça, para desvendar seu mistério. Iwakura Yasuo, pai de Lain, trabalha com computadores e tecnologia. Por causa disso, Lain pede um computador para ele, para entender mais como tudo isso funciona. Em pouco tempo, ela mergulha nesse mundo sem volta, a tecnologia. Rapidamente, Lain percebe a estranha presença de homens vestidos de preto em sua rua, observando-a pela janela. Mas ela não liga muito pra isso, mas mesmo assim fica preocupada. Depois de um certo tempo no anime, Lain vira uma escrava da Wired, (correspondente a nossa internet, apenas um nome dado no anime) e podemos perceber isso em seu quarto, que antes era todo organizado, fofo, com pelúcias em todos os lugares e com a janela aberta. Mas agora, está todo bagunçado, escuro, e com um silêncio perturbador, com barulhos Techno (de eletricidade) no ambiente. Percebemos também que o número de computadores em seu quarto e desumano, com fios passando por todos os lados, gerando um certo medo. E com isso, Lain descobre, discretamente, um grupo chamado de Knigths. (Correspondente aos hackers de agora), e tu vai se encaixando, ela descobre que aqueles homens vestidos de preto, suspeitavam de seu envolvimento com os Knights, porém, Lain nega isso. Durante tudo isso que contei, Lain fez amigas na escola, e já não é mais aquela garota solitária de sempre. A amiga de Lain, Mizuki Arisu, conversa com ela sobre um acontecimento na Wired. O boato é que Lain postou um vídeo de Arisu tendo relações sexuais com o professor. Lain não sabe o que está acontecendo, e jura por tudo que ela não tem envolvimento nenhum com esse tal boato. Com isso, o anime nos dá mais uma informação, (para interpretarmos, óbvio) sobre o que está acontecendo. O que mais nos assusta? A morte? O esquecimento? As pessoas? As memórias? Todas as memórias que guardamos, as escolhas que fizemos e as pessoas que tocamos, tudo deixará de existir. Então, por que valorizamos tanto nosso passado? Isso é apenas uma coleção de memórias às quais a nostalgia nos limita, ou é parte de quem somos? Descubra vendo. ___--FIM DO SPOILER--___ "Na Wired, estamos todos conectados" - Iwakura Lain. Serial Experiments Lain não é um programa comum e, definitivamente, não é algo que você enfrenta todos os dias. É uma peça única de entretenimento que transcende completamente seu gênero e se apresenta como uma obra de arte. Um espetáculo de vanguarda, que não se restringe aos limites da narrativa tradicional e da construção do enredo, criando uma mídia totalmente única e revolucionária. Esta série de anime NÃO é para todos. Uma das razões pelas quais este programa é popular até agora, duas décadas após seu lançamento inicial, é porque seu enredo ainda não está completamente desvendado. A história é contada de uma forma bastante complicada, o que torna o enredo já complexo ainda mais difícil de interpretar. Lain é um daqueles programas que exigem do espectador uma atenção total a cada detalhe, desafiando-o a juntar todas as peças para captar o conteúdo da história. O retrato do tema nesta série só se torna mais relevante ainda agora, que o uso da tecnologia e da internet é cada vez maior. Uma história quase profética do que acontecerá se as linhas da realidade e do mundo virtual começarem a se confundir. Esse anime __PREVIU__ o futuro. Nossa raça está se corrompendo por causa da internet, e Chiaki Konaka, transcendeu seu pensamento ao prever isso.

TheRealKyuubey

If you’ve been following the news lately, you may have heard of Chisa Yomoda, a middle school student who committed suicide by throwing herself off the roof of a tall building in a seedy downtown area of suburban Japan. If you’re like Lain, a quiet, introverted girl who rarely has a word to say to anyone, you may not have heard about what happened until a week later, when her classmates began to receive mysterious emails from the deceased student. Checking her email on her seldom used Navi, Lain discovers that not only has she received an email as well, but it openly references the rumors that have spread since the other emails went out, implying this is more than just a one off prank. Intrigued, Lain convinces her IT savvy father to upgrade her out of date Navi, and she begins to explore the Wired, a world-wide communication tool that Chisa’s email claimed she’d abandoned the living world to ascend to, almost like it was another plane of existence rather than a bunch of ones and zeroes being transmitted between satellites. As Lain delves further and further into the technological rabbit hole, the lines between reality and the wired continue to blur, and the bodies keep piling up in it’s wake. Will Lain be able to discover the truth behind this strange alternate reality? And if she does, will it be the reality she wants to find, or will the revelations regarding her own life become too devastating to bear? Serial experiments Lain was produced by Triangle staff, and if you haven’t heard of them, well, I honestly can’t blame you. They’ve released a few titles I’ve heard of, like Magic Users Club and Macross Plus, but Lain is by far the most famous work that they produced before they folded in 2002. The most recognizable thing about their history is actually the fact that they splintered off from Madhouse, and that does kind of fit in with Lain’s visual style, but they split off way back in 1987, so any actual stylistic connection between the two feels incidental at best. What’s more understandable about Lain in particular is that it’s director was the late Ryutaro Nakamura, and more importantly, it was written by Chiaki Konaka, who worked with Nakamura on Ghost Hound and has a noteworthy taste for dark and psychological subject matter, as his contributions to the Digimon and Cthulhu universes should prove. Much like in Ghost Hound, Nakamura’s visual style and direction is the perfect match for Konaka’s writing, at least on paper. They were, at the very least, on the same page creatively. However, like in Ghost Hound, there’s a noticeable disparity in the animation and art quality. Since Ghost hound came out nearly a decade later and had a much better studio behind it, the divide between normal human animation and the trippy surreal animation was distinct, but both still looked good. In Lain however, this is far from the case. The surreal animation is outstanding, truly ground breaking stuff. It plays primarily with static, focus and matrix-like 3D elements, and the ways it uses color turns just about every shadow into a portal to some outerspace pocket dimension dripping with blood-red plasma. The more normal, every day animation just looks bad. Characters are constantly off model, they barely move or even blink when they’re not the ones talking in frame, and frankly, I’ve seen better drawn faces in hentai doujin. It’s pretty obvious that one had to be sacrificed to protect the budget of the other, and it says a lot about the priorities of the series, but more on that in a minute. For the most part, the music ties in directly to the visuals, more to enhance their surreal nature than to stand out on their own, so they’re pretty easy to forget. The exception to this is when composer Reichi Nakado, a professional musician in his own right, was able to shine through with his own rock and roll roots, including one really lengthy sequence that’s basically just an extended guitar solo. It’s a strong, but mostly forgettable soundtrack. The opening, however, is my favorite part of the series. The soulful song Duvet was performed by british indie rock group Boa, and while the lyrics seem largely inconsequential to the series, the song fits well with the visual of Lain wandering aimlessly through an empty town as she peeks in at people through their TVs. As for the ending, well, it’s basically just an extended shot of 14-year-old Lain naked on the floor next to some wires. I get the symbolism behind this... You generally show a character in such a position when referencing either birth or rebirth, so the idea of Lain being reborn through technology is there, but lingering on that one shot for over a minute and a half is kind of creepy and uncomfortable, honestly. The english is dub kind of similar to the soundtrack, as it’s definitely strong and substantial, but it’s mostly forgettable as everyone fits into their roles and does their job to tell the story. Kirk Thornton has a pretty difficult job playing Masami Eiri, someone who’s more of a babbling mouthpiece than an actual character, and he does his best to make his edgelord monologues palatable. Actors like Jamieson Price, Patricia Ja Lee, Lia Sargent and Brianne Siddall perform their roles to perfection, but they’re really only there to act as hypemen for the real star of the show, Bridget Hoffman, who had to play multiple different sides of the main character while still sounding like the same girl, and she absolutely slayed it. It’s a strong dub all around, but it is absolutely HER vehicle. Now, anime is no stranger to surrealism. Honestly, it’s probably the best medium FOR that genre. Don’t get me wrong, people like Darren Aronofsky and David Lynch can do amazing things with live action movies, but no other medium is more perfectly geared towards it than anime. Animation is already rife with possibilities, and there are western cartoons that have experimented with obscure styles and dense visual metaphors, but the western world also sees animation as mostly a tool for either children’s entertainment or crass, immature adult entertainment. Japan, on the other hand, uses animation to reach a variety of different demographics, so there are far less restrictions in place to limit the imaginations of it’s creative minds. There’s also several ways that surrealism in anime can be used. The first name that should come to you when the subject is brought up will naturally be Satoshi Kon, and good. It absolutely should. He had a tendency to use surrealist visuals and concepts to explore the themes of his work, normally after establishing the world, characters and internal logic before gleefully breaking all three of them. The second should be Kunihiko Ikuhara, and again, good. Ikuhara had a lot to say about maturity, gender roles and sexuality, and his work has always been extremely dense with symbolism and avant-garde ideas to the point that understanding what he’s saying drastically alters your viewing experience, but as more of a lateral move than an actual improvement. And then you have works that just plunge you into a strange, surreal world and expect you to still be breathing on the other side. Two of my favorite surrealist anime are Revolutionary Girl Utena and Cat Soup, both of which I’ve reviewed in the past, and while I didn’t go into any heavy spoilers, I do believe I did a pretty good job explaining some element of what they were trying to say. I also enjoy quite a few Satoshi Kon works, but aside from Tokyo Godfathers, whose narrative I felt was a bit weak before I started piecing things together, I haven’t even bothered trying to work out all of the intricacies, because their narratives are usually perfectly concise and coherent regardless of how weird they get. So, because I have some passing familiarity with anime surrealism, and I have at least a rudimentary ability to analyze them, I should be able to come to a decisive opinion regarding Serial Experiments Lain, right? Well, let’s dive in and see where this show lands on the surrealist spectrum. To start, one of the stranger things about Lain is that it’s already using trippy visuals right at the beginning of the story. In most cases, an anime would save it’s surrealist visuals for a little later on, letting you get used to its version of the normal world before things started to get weird, so the difference in setting can feel more striking. When we’re introduced to Lain, after a gaudy sequence leading up to Chisa’s suicide, she’s already walking past shadows and power lines that look like they had more artistic effort put into them than she did. She’s already having trouble focusing on the board in class, causing letters her teacher is writing to go in and out of focus before Chisa’s death, which by the way happened a week prior, was even brought up to her. This could have worked, if what they were going for was some late game twist that Lain was dealing with a mental illness from the start and most of the events of the story were only happening in her delusional mind, but I don’t think they were. To figure out what they were going for, we’ll need to figure out what the plot is, but I don’t think the inciting incident is ever made clear. You could say it’s a mystery surrounding Chisa Yomoda’s suicide, but that whole sub plot feels like more of a McGuffin to get Lain interested in the Wired than anything else. To try and decipher this, I’m going to have to set all the trippy imagery aside and instead look at a literal interpretation of the events of the first few episodes. A girl kills herself, and apparently starts sending out emails to her classmates. A week later, Lain discovers this, checks her email, and somehow develops an interest in computers. She immediately starts hearing about some doppleganger doing things she doesn’t remember doing, and the classmates who told her about the emails invite her out to a night club, where... As soon as she gets there... Some boy who previously ingested some kind of microchip drug starts shooting people, and kills himself right in front of her. Lain is sent one of those drug chips soon afterwards, and tries to figure out what it is. Okay, great, is that the inciting incident? The mystery regarding the microchip? No, because we already know what it is and what it does. Before the shooting, we were told... Yes, I mean that literally, the story stopped dead in it’s tracks to tell the viewer... What it was, and what it did. But the chip is barely brought up after this. It gives the men in black a reason to spy on her, and it gives her a reason to interrogate someone for answers later on, but it’s otherwise unimportant, and you know what? That’s how a lot of things work in this show. Just about every potentially interesting element that gets introduced is just meant to advance the story to it’s next potentially important element. This happens with Chisa’s suicide, with her emails, with the chip, with the Knights, hell, even a ghostly image of Lain in the clouds doesn’t leave a lasting impact on the story. I guess you could just call this a slow burn of a mystery, but what’s at stake? What’s so important about solving that mystery? Well, there’s Lain’s doppleganger, who threatens to ruin her reputation and tear her new friends away from her, but that feels more like a ‘stop looking into this’ kind of threat. The only thing that really remains important throughout the story is the Wired, but what exactly IS the Wired? Conventional wisdom would be to say that it’s basically the internet, but it doesn’t work the same way the internet works. Sure, it sends and receives email, but actual depictions of what it is and how it’s used are pretty scarce. From what little I remember seeing, it’s some kind of social area where people can connect to communicate, which is represented visually through people embodying avatars in some strange pocket dimension. This could just be an artistic interpretation of what’s actually happening, but we don’t see people huddled over computers while using it. We see people walking around in virtual reality headsets, or staring at a screen in a trance while talking disconnectedly to some invisible companion. I don’t think there’s any direct analogue for this in our world, but I guess the best comparison I can make would be to say that it’s like an SAO full-dive version of VR chat, but instead of Ugandan Knuckles, you have the knights using disembodied lips to tell you that Lain is da queen, and you do not know de way. We learn way more about how the Wired came to be and what it’s doing to Lain than we ever do about what the Wired is. There’s an entire episode where they stop the story dead in it’s tracks five entire times to give you an American history lesson, drawing a decades long through-line between Roswell, Area 51, MJ12 and the Schumann resonance... Some of which is factual, some of which is based on old conspiracy theories... Until it eventually diverges into a fictitious Japanese guy using the Wired to try and start the Human Instrumentality Project. Keep in mind, this same episode featured a little grey alien in a Freddy Krueger shirt peeking in on people, which Lain is later accused of doing(she is literally accused of discovering Arisu’s deepest secret and spreading it, but I’m pretty sure HOW she allegedly did any of this is never explained, at least not in a way that Arisu or anybody else could believably buy into) and this is all happens after a previous episode where Lain interrogates an old German man who ran psychic experiments on children. Okay, so the plot is hard to follow, that’s nothing new, but what is the series trying to say? I actually think I have this one in the bag. Throughout the story, people get sucked into the Wired, and the lines between that reality and their original one become so blurred that they kill themselves to jump into it, because they don’t need their fleshy bodies holding them back anymore. It also creates alternate versions of Lain that get her into trouble and threaten her personal life and attachments. This is clearly intended to be a cautionary tale about a technology that was still brand new in the Pre-Y2K time period that she show was made. It’s warning that the internet could become a tempting market substitute for reality, and could even lead to people developing split personalities and suicidal tendencies as a result. There are two problems with this. First of all, that didn’t happen. Sure, there have probably been a few outlying cases involving people already dealing with mental illness issues in the first place, but the idea that people could abandon the real world for a virtual one to the degree this anime claims has become such a tired and cliched joke by the year 2020 that it almost looks adorable in retrospect. Don’t get me wrong, the internet has claimed a huge place in the modern world, to the point that social media has largely replaced in-person socializing, but mankind has mostly adapted to it’s presence and compartmentalized it to a mostly harmless place where the only thing about it that can really cause suicide on a noteworthy level is cyber-bullying. Also, the idea that you’re a different person from the version of you that exists on the internet just sounds like a lazy excuse for shitty behavior. The other problem is that almost everything else that happens in the story... Aliens, government agents, microchip drugs, conspiracies, the works... Almost feels like window dressing that Chiaki Konaka used to make his message sound more profound and deep than it actually was, because instead of him just telling you what his paranoid, delusional fears for the future of mankind were, he buried it in edgy surreal nonsense, almost like he wrote an essay and then cut it up into a jigsaw puzzle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s some solid backstory to everything going on in the series. There has to be some intricate way everything’s connected, and I’m willing to bet Konaka spent hours obsessively slaving over it to make it as airtight as possible, because Lain reeks of genuine effort like the passion project that it obviously was. If you’ve pieced it all together, or if someone else has, I’d love to hear about it, but I’m never going to figure it out for myself, and the reason for that is that I don’t care. I love analyzing surrealist anime. I enjoy coming back to them and discovering some new element every time I do, which is why I hold shows like Utena and Madoka Magika in such high regard, and why Cat Soup is one of my favorite movies of all time. The reason those shows keep pulling me back in but Lain doesn’t is pretty simple: Lain gives me nothing to care about. There’s no plot, there’s no stakes, but most importantly of all, there’s almost no characters. The only people I give a crap about are Lain’s sister, who was the only character in the show who had realistic or relatable reactions to all the weird shit going on around her up until she went comatose halfway through the story, and Arisu(I am NOT going to call her Alice), who was the only character who seemed to genuinely care about Lain as a person. And then there’s Lain herself, who is little more than a vehicle for the writer to explore his concepts through. She has no personality. Everything about her that should make a main character compelling, from her wants and needs to her arc and development, is designed specifically to revolve around the Wired, so Konaka can use it as a metaphor for the early internet. I have no idea why she pursued the Wired as fervently as she did, and I’m pretty sure in order to figure it out, I’d have to piece the show’s lore together to discover that she was some kind of psychic homunculous created by the German scientist to find that one Japanese guy who’s posing as God in the Wired and ascend to kill and replace him. The only thing I can really grasp about her as a person that’s at least kind of compelling is that she’s depressed about her neglectful family, and that does extend a bit farther into why she’d form such a strong attachment to Arisu, and that’s all great, but it’s still pretty bare bones when we’re talking about the development of a main character. I’m totally fine with anime having deep, complex meaning and conveying some political or social message, but there has to be something else there that’s worth getting invested in. I don’t analyze Utena because I want to know what Ikuhara’s saying, I do it because I care about Utena, Anthy and all of their amazingly written costars. I don’t binge Cat Soup over and over again because it explores the conflict between family and religious values, I do it because of the little boy cat trying to save his big sister cat. All of the depth these pieces of media have is just icing on the cake, with the cake being stories and characters I love and identify with. Depth is great, but unless you’re given a reason to care, it can never become poignant. I didn’t mention it before, but there’s another way surrealism can be used in a narrative. You can use it as a distraction from content that’s not strong enough to stand on it’s own. There’s a LOT of anime that do this, from Haruhi Suzumiya using it to keep viewers from falling asleep during it’s endless philosophical monologues to... Well, pretty much anything directed by Akiyuki Shinbou, for better or worse. This can be done well, but most of the time, it’s done to make material come off as smarter, deeper and more complex than it actually is. It’s hard to call a popular anime pretentious without getting called out for ‘just not understanding it,’ but when Lain starts devolving into edgelord monologues claiming there’s no God outside of the internet and using condescending words like “Merely,” it’s hard to take anything it’s saying seriously, and that’s before it decides to go the route of a heavily cliched style of ending... We’ll call it a Jesus ending, as that’s the least spoiler-y thing I can call it... Which is something that I will freely admit I’m personally biased against. I don’t even like it when it’s done well. Madoka Magika had an ending that was kind of similar, and even though it works perfectly in context, it’s still my least favorite part of the series. At least I cared about Madoka. All of this leaves Serial Experiments Lain as an anime that’s more style than substance, more tell than show, more convoluted than complex, and more falsely prophetic than emotionally resonant. The only genuine emotion it manages to convey is the occasional fear of a character in danger, and the constant confusion of the viewer. I can marathon six episodes in a row, then turn on a random youtube video and forget almost everything I just saw. As I said before, it does seem like the people making it genuinely cared about it, and it doesn’t seem the least bit lazy or half assed. On the contrary, they truly believed they had something to say, and they poured their hearts and souls into saying it, but by focusing more on making the show look deep than on giving it any actual depth, they missed the mark pretty hard. I respect it for it’s creativity and ambition, but unless you’re looking for something trippy to watch while stoned, I can’t recommend it. I give Serial Experiments Lain a 4/10

holdenreklaw

Think you are smart? Think again. I always considered myself capable; I have scored a 129 IQ. Far from a genius, but match me against your average Joe, and I could probably outwit him if I tried hard enough. Serial Experiments Lain made me feel like a monkey. But I still really liked it. I only wish it was slightly less complicated so I can enjoy it more, but maybe that's the best part. I doubt Lain would have the same charm if it were the same story but just easier for my monkey brain to understand. Speaking of my monkey brain, this is what it was able to comprehend. Lain is our protagonist; she is a 14-year-old student who is pretty shy and introverted. In this universe, there is a 'realm' I guess you could call it that parallels the modern-day internet; for instance, it is assessable via a computer, but this internet is way more advanced, and it's called the Wired. One crazy thing about Wired is you can upload your own self conscious there, which is what one of Lain's classmates does before she takes her own life, and because of this, the girl can still send emails to her friends and other 'computer' things people can do. Lain receives one of these emails, which prompts Lain to get connected to the Weird and upload her conscience online. Now, this sounds like a great start to a cyberpunk/matrix-style show. Wreck-it Ralph Breaks the Internet type shit. Absolutely it is not. As the audience, we are given no context as to what is real, what is fake, what is online and what is offline. All we have little clues that Lain fans have spent decades decoding. Personally, the decoding of clues doesn't seem worth it; we don't know what is real and what is fake for a reason, at least in my opinion. I very much see Lain as a commentary on technological advancement, addiction, the blurred lines between truth and fiction, the possession of possessions, all that shit. As interesting as it is to entertain the idea that Lain is actually God, it is just too frustrating for my monkey brain. I think a place we all get confused is when it comes to the fact this show was made in 1998, and yet the most obvious meaning behind our questions seem to reflect on issues we see in our own world. I obviously wasn't around in 98, but I can't imagine kids were dealing with internet addiction, only feeling like they belong in online spaces, and so forth the way they do today. Like, how many people even had a home computer in 1998? I guess the fact Lain's dad is like Japanese Bill Gates makes this more understandable, as to how well Lain can just transform into an online personification of herself in just days after she gets hooked into the Wierd. However, the attention to detail in this area is still impressive because the people who worked on this show did not know what we do now. Personally, I don't believe any of the shit about Lain being an embodiment of the Earth's power or that she is the god of the human consciousness or any of that bogus, I think Lain is about obsession and technology, and it just happens to be set to a gritty cyber aesthetic that I absolutely love. Plus, I haven't been able to stop singing the theme song either. I would highly recommend but be wear that it'll make you feel dumb as shit. This is a brilliant show.

YuiHirasawa39

This is a review that is a long time coming. Before I begin, I feel like I need to preface this in a specific way. I do not claim to understand this show – even in a superficial sense. I realize that there’s a lot of well-researched and reasoned theories around Serial Experiments Lain, and I’m not targeting any one of those in this review. This is merely my thoughts about the show, its motivations, effect and legacy. I, like so many others, don’t seem to understand it either. Speaking of that lyric – I’ve been listening to Duvet for a very long time. Much before I knew what show it was from, what it stood for, or even what the genre of psychological horror. Even up to when I heard that we were going to watch this anime in weekly installments in my college anime club, I was originally unmotivated to see it. I’m not at all into the horror genre. However, I held a certain modicum of respect for the show. I knew that it was widely positively received, and I certainly appreciated Nakamura and the show’s influence on the Haruhi series. Once I learned that the show focused very little on jumpscares or the “shock” horror motif, I decided, albeit with some trepidation, to watch the show in its entirety. I can say, with some hesitation, that I’m glad I did. After consideration I’ve decided to follow my casual, rather than formal, format for this review. Serial Experiments Lain has been widely discussed and picked apart by individuals far more intelligent than I, with much greater exposure to its interactions with contemporary and modern anime. Instead, I’m going to look at the parts of the show that stood out to me, my experience watching it over the course of several months, and ultimately my interpretation of some of its thematic moments. First of all, it should be said that I absolutely fell in love with the show’s art within the first few episodes – almost love at first sight. I think the scenes on Lain’s street are probably among the most powerful in the show, and not just for the ubiquitous power lines. The use of void color to contrast with the washed-out nature of the abandoned road, the way that camera angles are used to accentuate the physical and nonphysical players, and the use of light to show emphasis all give an uncanny sense of nonbeing. Perhaps my very favorite moments from this setting are the few times Lain steps through her front door into the light that is somehow both foreboding and welcoming. It’s very hard to describe, and perhaps its just the sheer contrast of the greyscale-heavy landscape with the colorful, light shows that I usually prefer. The artists use this very effectively. Nothing is wrong with the way that her street is portrayed, but something just feels…off. Trust me, it’s not just the power lines – just as their accentuated buzzing heightens your sense of hearing, the overwashed lights and darks play with your sense of sight and depth. It is seriously impressive for a show that was released, at this point, 22 years ago. What I really appreciate about the use of the art is the way that it draws contrast between the expected and the supernatural. However, it’s not done in the way that one might initially expect. I can say, with some confidence, that the writers never intend to give their audience a false sense of normalcy, of pedestrian security that this show it set in a normal world to begin with. The case of Chisa’s suicide, arguably the incident that spurred Lain’s descent into the Wired, is somewhere between the normal and the unreal. Again, the topic of what inspires Lain’s journey has been thoroughly discussed not only in these reviews but elsewhere across our own wired, and I’m not hoping to get too deep into it here. Mainly, I want to point out that this show never once seeks to hide its abnormality from its audience. It’s baked right into the title of the first episode – it’s Weird. Describing the plot of Serial Experiments Lain is a tremendous challenge for me. The obvious explanation, of course, is easy enough to roll through. Lain, through increasing interaction with the Wired, discovers two alternative personas beyond her reserved corporal self. Her interactions with Eiri and the Knights of the Eastern Calculus all culminate in her realization that she is none other than god – the god of the Wired, which itself is closely lined with the real world. In an attempt to reverse her antagonistic persona’s harassment of her best friend, Lain concludes the series by apparently deleting her memory from the world, which invalidates the events of the series so far. But I’m not overly happy with just that plot explanation by itself. And why? Perhaps I’m just frustrated with the seeming lack of explanation. I never felt content with why the Knights were murdered, with whether or not the Office Worker did it, or even with my own interpretation that Lain is the perpetrator. I’m unhappy with never knowing why Karl and Lin suffer from their terrible fate, albeit in a different way. I’m dying to know how Eiri’s entrance into the Wired is somehow inferior to Lain’s, and if he is a legitimate demigod or just a clever impersonator. All of this, however, pales in comparison with how much I feel we don’t get regarding Lain’s relationships, and that’s where I’ll turn next. Let’s look at the obvious first. Lain’s family merely exists to “Play House,” and although this explanation is relatively tame compared with some of the others that we get throughout the show, it’s one of the ones that frustrate me the most. It’s not exactly a mystery that even from a non-supernatural sense, her family is highly dysfunctional. Lain’s mother Miho and sister Mika are both distant, certainly in a figurative sense, due to their apparent and unexplainable disdain for her. However, I also like to note that they’re also quite distant from a physical perspective. Miho’s response when seeing her younger sister in the middle of a busy intersection is to remark on her stupidity and walk away, distancing herself in whatever way possible. Miho is similar – even if she was a real human, it’s hard for me to see a meaningful relationship between mother and daughter. The only member of Lain’s “family” who shows any sense of connection toward her is Yasuo, her father, who is arguably the one responsible for introducing her to the Wired in the first place. By his own admission, he dislikes “playing house,” but seems to be the only one of the three who actually takes his job seriously. Their final separation, in the final episode, confirms this. And next it’s time to turn to Lain’s friends. I did note initially that the entire plot seems to be sparked off by Chisa’s suicide – a girl she hardly knew, yet now writing notes to her from the other side. It’s easy for me to see Lain’s apparent connection with someone she only superficially interacted with as evidence of how much deeper the Wired goes. However, I also think there’s weight to the argument that Lain hopes to reverse the situations that led to Chisa’s death – by deleting herself, does she hope to divert Alice’s focus onto her peer? Alice, of course, is most interesting to me of them all. I never played Alice in Cyberland, or watched the OVA, but it’s apparent to me that Alice provides the alternate side of the Lain narrative. After all, she seems to be the only one who retains any connection to Lain after she erases her memory from humanity, despite her apparent misunderstanding of the technology that permitted it. It’s also arguable, from episode 12, that it’s Alice’s existence that manages to push Eiri out, rather than Lain’s power alone. It’s among these relationships that one of the central dogmas of the show arises. The Freudian nature of Lain’s self-discovery becomes one of the most significant and complex parts of the show. The dominating Lain – sneering at her onlooking self. The confident Lain – assembling computers on her bedroom floor. The opening Lain – reserved and quiet. The Id, the Ego, the Superego. The three sides of each one of us, brought to light in the human world, the wired, and the liminal space in between. Konaka shows that when one Lain betrays Alice by spreading awful rumors, the second will try to reverse the damage, while the third is pulled taught between them. The same is true for Lain’s family – it’s not hard for me to see how each aspect of her personality evokes a different response from those meant to be closest to her. Okay, so I’ve ranted for a while on the art, the relationships, and even the person herself. But the most significant aspect for me about this show is how it explores the topic of person. I said it earlier, but there’s several clear influences that we see reflected from Lain into Haruhi – and not only the obvious of a questionably self-aware female god, but also the use of light to show clarity and the power of perspective, among others. But one of these most powerful influences is that of names and being named. The god’s name – “Lain” – is spoken with significance throughout the series. Characters seem to be obsessed with the word “Lain.” So many of the lines either end with it or start with it, often accentuated slowly and deliberately, even such that a non-native speaker such as myself can’t help but notice. As far as I’m able to tell, Lain is named after Ronald David Laing, a 20th century psychiatrist who criticized conventional methods for “treating” schizophrenic patients, such as shock therapy and sedation. Laing, known for his founding of the infamous Kingsley Hall in London, a haven for schizophrenic patients with none of the forced sedation and repressive techniques common in the medical world at the time. While the details of Laing’s stance and works are somewhat obscure and controversial, it seems that he saw psychosis as not a mental defficiency but a spiritual or sensational experience in which individuals worked out their own experience with reality. Now I haven’t researched Laing extensively, nor do I propose to understand his complete disposition towards mental illness, but it seems to me that his opposition to cruel techniques such as electroshock and lobotomy was unique in his era, as was his disposition that mental illness was not fully understood. In Lain’s case, throughout the show, I could not help myself but see endless connections to a psychological explanation to the absurdities. Lain, disdained by her mother and sister, reaches out into a world where she finds people who seem to care about her. The death of someone she knew pushes her deeper into her own self and reliance on the Wired and her experiences in it. It’s not hard for me to see the obscure disappearance of her family from her own house one night as representative of the mental and physical distance that they keep from her, or her experience watching a live shooting as parallel to the games she plays online. Even her experience of herself as god, and seeing passer-by worship her figure in the sky, doesn’t seem unreasonable given the intense psychological distortion that Lain experiences. Most satisfying to me, however, about this explanation is episode 9, “PROTOCOL,” otherwise known as the alien episode. My brother’s explained this episode to me as being an expert troll of the community due to the absolute absurdity (come on, when else should E.T. show up in a psychological horror anime about the internet), but I’ve never been totally satisfied. I’m not saying that psychological experiences and extraterrestrial experiences are the same thing, but I think it’s worth noting that one’s sense of imagination may be heightened when introspective. Most importantly, I believe that Laing pioneered the school of thought that such an abnormal experience such as alien encounter is not necessarily a sign of schizophrenic disorder. I’m not sure. By this time, this review has gotten far too rant-y, so it’s time to wrap things up. Did I love this anime? In the first few episodes – yes, absolutely. I saw so many metaphors in the light and shadow even before Lain got deep into the wired, and they delighted me. But by the time things started to escalate, I found the show harder and harder to follow. The narrative that I tried to draw out seemed more and more contrived. Now that’s not a bad thing – again, this show is definetely Weird – but I found it harder and harder to follow a single theme or motif as the show progressed. Like I mentioned earlier, I wish we had more about the other characters, and more about Lain’s relationships, but alas, only 13 episodes restrained us. I’m not sure if any more episodes would have helped with a satisfying conclusion, or even that a satisfying conclusion is appropriate for a show like this. So take this review and rating with a grain of salt. Half of me wants to give it a 7, the other me an 8. Again, I don’t want to portray myself as an expert, or even as someone who has read up extensively on other perspectives. I haven’t even played the PS1 game (though I plan to, for sure). Do I appreciate this anime, for its unique story and characters? Absolutely. Do I appreciate it for its legacy on anime like Haruhi? By all means. Do I really know enough to understand it? No way.

savagespencer1

This review is split into 4 parts: A spoiler-free section, a spoiler-filled section, some scattered thoughts, and my conclusion. Enjoy! ------------------ # ~~~__No Spoilers__~~~ Let’s start with the pitch. Why should you watch this show? I can sum it up in one word. Atmosphere. Serial Experiments Lain succeeds in creating an atmosphere to an extent that I have not experienced with any other show. For me, it began with the name. It screams cool, dark, and mysterious. Paired with the beautiful yet haunting cover art, I was immediately set on watching this show. When I started it, I was shocked to discover that I had only skimmed the surface of how the show pulls you in. If the concept, title, or art style of the show intrigues you, I highly recommend watching the first episode to understand exactly what I mean when I praise its atmosphere. Some may be put off by the fact that the show was released over 20 years ago, but it has aged well. In particular, its depiction of the internet, known as the Wired, is still relevant to this day. Now I’ll move on to why you might not like the show. Obviously I was a huge fan of it, but there are some weaker aspects that could make someone feel differently. The two main issues that I see people have with the show are: 1. The story is confusing 2. It is “pseudo-intellectual” I agree with the first complaint, but I disagree with the second. As far as the first goes, this is a surreal show with a complicated and convoluted story. While I thought this was to the show’s benefit, if you don’t like confusing plots or not knowing exactly what is going on this is not the show for you. For the second point, I think it comes from some fans more so than the show itself. The show brings up some deep topics in an engaging way and in my mind doesn’t deserve to be called pseudo-intellectual. From what I've seen, the show gets its reputation from a subset of fans who think they are smart for liking the show. That is not necessarily the case and can lead to unfortunate elitism. Instead of talking more about this "issue", I will put forward another potential issue, which is the dialogue. I thought it was a bit stilted. For me it added to the uneasy atmosphere, but you have to buy into the atmosphere to love the show. If you aren’t immersed in the atmosphere, you probably won’t like this. _(If you don’t want to be spoiled, you can skip to the Various Thoughts or the Conclusion)_ -------------- #~~~__Spoilers__~~~ Now, the part that you Lain fans and haters have been waiting for. My unfiltered thoughts on the series. The suicide scene completely shocked me. I knew that the events in the show were kickstarted by a suicide, but I was floored at how graphic they made it. All the same, I loved it. It was dark and disturbing, yet also oddly fascinating. There were many more such events throughout the series. I especially loved the shooter in Cyberia and the entire Rumors episode. Everyone just looking at Lain was unnerving as hell. As far as the plot goes, I’m not gonna lie I didn’t understand all of it. But the great part is I felt like I was learning all of these things at the same time as Lain. I’m still a little confused as to how Lain doesn’t know her powers and about her alter ego. I think it's something to do with memory erasure, but I'm not sure. Other than that, I think I understood what was going on for the most part. The ending of the show was unexpected for me. After 12 episodes of layers upon layers of trippy content, the show ends with the state of the world rewound to before it even began. Everyone has completely forgotten about Lain’s existence and she is once again alone. At first, I didn’t like how it ended. Once I thought about it a bit though, I grew to appreciate it. Based on Lain’s personality, she couldn’t just erase everyone’s memories and go on with her life after seeing how Alice reacted to her doing just that in episode 12. She might have been able to erase her own memory as well, but it could lead to the exact same scenario with Lain not knowing her true self. The final scene with Alice was bittersweet. Lain is able to watch her loved ones live their lives but she is cursed to never be able to be a part of them. ----------------------- # ~~~__Various Thoughts__~~~ For a show that came out over 20 years ago, it is a scarily realistic depiction of internet personas and the increasingly blurred line between the internet and the real world. I instantly added the opening song, Duvet, to my Spotify playlists. It is such a good song and contributes to an outstanding OP. Once again, the art of Lain leaning against the chain-link fence backlit by a purple sky is beautiful. Layer 08 was my favorite episode ------------- # ~~~__Conclusion__~~~ To put it simply, Serial Experiments Lain is an experience. While some aspects of it are slightly lacking, I found the atmosphere to be the greatest of any show I’ve seen to date. This aspect is what makes me give it a 10/10 (amazing) on my rating scale. I can't wait to rewatch it and see all of the little details I missed! ~~~https://anilist.co/anime/339/Serial-Experiments-Lain/~~~

Bandi

~~~img480(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/864108061182787604/895785575645319239/thumb-1920-1061607.png)~~~ ~~~__Hello everyone! Welcome to my SEL Review, which is also my first anime review ever made public.__~~~ Let's start off with a note/warning first. I cannot within reason explain even minorly what my opinions/thoughts are on this masterpiece without "spoiling" it a little. Though I don't think it should be a problem, because when you are in school, and your teachers mention a great book in literature and it's events, you would still read it if you are interested and enjoy, despite knowing what may happen. If you are interested in SEL, and want (or watched) it, my review will incite you to seek more to this (or think, understand better). Now on to the actual (rather long) review: Now you have heard this many times how Lain is unique and fantastic. And it is unique in terms of how much of a classic it truly is, and how it's the anime genres’ more philosophical/ cultic anime title. Sadly, many struggle to find meaning in the anime itself despite what it has to offer. Hence why I __never__ recommend it to anyone. Though many surely begin their journey with SEL due to encountering countless Lainfags on the internet, which is an understandable standpoint! People forget, or just don't know, that this is an anime made to make you think, and immerse you with ideas. "Serial Experiment" already states how this general idea is a serialized (PS1 game + Anime) social __thought__ experiment for the viewer made to do their research upon. This anime is not for people who seek a fantastic journey and feelings in SEL, that they usually see in other, more popular anime. The creators of Lain have made a progressive cyberpunk anime which is HIGHLY informed and operative on multiple layers, both figuratively and literally. No single explanation or speech or essay can hope to encompass all that is Serial Experiments Lain, even this review will not cover 10-20% of what you can see. As such, Lain will always be open to interpretation and always encourage us to do our own research, our own experiments. If you don't like thinking outside the box, think of SEL more as an anime where a person struggles in three worlds of existence: on the internet, on the mental field, and in reality. However still tries to find meaning in her life, and of the world given her stimuli and experiences. Now your perception & receptivity makes Lain far more ideal to watch. ~~~img620(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/864108061182787604/895797381155684382/How-to-Watch-Serial-Experiments-Lain-anime.png)~~~ What I love most about SEL great music and classic opening aside, is that the anime's story can be interpreted in some ways. Though the main themes are definitely about existentialism, idealism and about the internet & cyber world in general. However Lain's character can be interpreted in two major ways. One being less detailable, the other is much more philosophical. (Here is where minor spoiler phobic people should close the review). -Lain is a byproduct of the Protocol-7 (the project responsible for the merging of the Wired and the Real World) and she is created as a Jesus/God like figure that will save & lead Humanity in exchange for her very own life. This Lain of the Wired's activities quickly make the The Knights interested (the MIB you see stalking over Lain by the later episodes) as their goal might be to unite human consciousness with the "divine" "true" consciousness, which is through this ever-so-famous, prophetlike entity that is Lain starts to be. However Lain starts to get more understanding of her origin. Her fake dad, her fake friends. her fake life, the fake world, and fake struggle against what it means to be God, as seen by the latter episodes. She came to understand that she is not human in reality, and that if she erases everything, she is forever saved from the destiny she was made to. -Or that she is just an average user who finds herself getting lost in this new world. After many time spent on said new world, her reality starts fading, and she'd have such strong delusions and philosophical wonders, which is why the anime can be really loved, and which I will be writing about later. She also develops DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, that creates three sense of Lain further in the story, and the Wired just so happened to influence that. ~~~img620(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/864108061182787604/895798488560963625/839761.png)~~~ Just, for a second imagine yourself as Lain shown in the second example for real. The Internet isn't really that common in the world, this completely new technology feels so... alien, yet so inviting, that you feel it was made for you. However the issue is, you hardly know much about it, nor computers for that matter. But eventually it drags you in. You see this insanely strange sense of being perceived, and connected to others. A whole new perception of the world just opens up in front of you. A COMPLETELY new world! It was said how Lain is insanely lonely before, and the fact how much she could connect to everyone by the power of the Wired, throughout the anime is insane. It made her realize that humans are indeed connected. But she questioned the ego around the people. What is their purpose? What purpose does she have herself as well...? And she seeked more of this. She started to heavily invest all that is the wired, she started taking everything that could make her feel more "awake", even by integrating many things into her computer. Her idea of feeling more awake reached to the point of completely believing bodies are unnecessary, as these limitations hinders us in connection & growth, or hinders our ability to find meaning within our lives, as a lifespan is too little to "fill" that answer for us. As she dives deeper and deeper into this completely vast world, she finds out that she is having influence, and due to the fact how, just like you, can act so much differently with others online due to the power of anonymity, she begins to ask what even is she? Till it eventually worsens to a disorder level, and even when she hangs with her friends, she struggles in her head knowing she isn't herself anymore, this was one of the scenes shown in the anime. ~~~img620(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/864108061182787604/895800693384962088/unknown.png)~~~ Not only that, but in the current universe, the saying "everything is connected" means a far greater meaning. This is also the great quote said by the anime repeatedly "humans are connected on a subconscious level" . One could reasonably state that there is no moment when something isn't observed by a multitude of senses - be it those of living beings, or the clashing of molecules and waves with each other, creating a sort of 'universal sense' of existence. Even the Earth itself has a constant magnetic field, all atoms connected to each other, which we subconsciously perceive, and are connected to. The philosophy of idealism & existentialism truly starts to make a new understanding about how we perceive such things, because many things are connected, it always have been, we just don't think about it, so we don't see it as "existing". However it is there, as said in the anime by this exact example (during the documentary found in layer:09 "PROTOCOL") Interestingly enough, if you go deep enough - down to sub-atomic particles, this vast 'universal sense' breaks down and ceases to be a constant. There are waves that only 'decide' what state they are in once directly observed. This is the phenomenon at the base of quantum physics. This means that while at the macro-level, for example a tree will always make a sound, even if alone in the field. However, at the sub-atomic scale, deep down inside even atoms, there is a world perceived by other atoms where it may make both sound and no sound at all, at the same time. Given this epiphany about the fundamental nature of the Universe, Lain may be ultimately both correct and incorrect at the same time regarding her sophos. ~~~img620(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/864108061182787604/895799726530777148/unknown.png)~~~ Of further interest, the ending speaks about one more new thing. That is whether or not one can ever truly 'erase' information at all. Given enough tertiary information, we should be able to trace back anything that ever happened in the Universe, given how everything is interconnected and the ripples of an action live on in perpetuity. Because information, and everything in this world crosses time and space as no more than motes of dust, light, and radiation, the only thing that might be able to destroy information is a black hole. And even then, it might only just convert it through complex, but not fundamentally unknowable processes. To put it simply, convert into something else we are yet to understand. What I'm getting at is that while Lain could be both right and wrong regarding her views on existence, she is most likely fundamentally wrong regarding her ability to erase information. Even when your empty your trash can on your PC those deleted files aren't truly deleted. Because the best she could do, is mask it for those unable to look deeper. And just like someone or something capable of piecing back her existence from the ripples she left behind, we can see her, and her journey. We remember her. Thus, Lain is, ultimately, still alive, and will be "alive" as information in our minds, even if she doesn't realize this herself through her world. ~~~img620(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/864108061182787604/895802810321469470/unknown.png)~~~ That wraps up the anime in a nutshell, however it's worth noting that the PS1 Game gives a much greater sense of this "piecing back her existence" as we are to piece tons upon tons of files linked to her and her life, that honestly after a while was emotionally draining. If you wish to play the game, you needn't have an emulator, or a PS1 & Copy for it luckily. Just go and open https://laingame.net There are even more philosophy things in there, and even stronger feels, and better relatability. Also the story there is about Lain and her therapist. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed reading this massive text! It'd be awesome if it either incited you to watch it, re-watch it, or to think more about it. Or on the other hand, helped you understand it much better! :)

WitherThrakh

I understand its popularity but I do not think the anime is a mind screw anime like many consider it to be, I do not think it is hard to understand what is going on, at least to me. The anime is more fanciful than grounded-realist, personally I need more grounded-realism than fantasy in any show I watch if there is both but it is not liked it was off-putting. I very much liked it, I don't consider myself a fan but I enjoyed it, I thought that it was very interesting, the themes used such as the consequences of the web which are loneliness, obsession, questionable behaviors, escapism, being out of reality (not knowing yourself or where you live anymore) and becoming superficial were well handled. I also liked the allegories between religion and the web (visually, dialogues and metaphor-wise). Lain actually leading the hackers was something I expected 2 episodes before the reveal, was not a twist for me, Masami Eiri is very weird but his story and motives were interesting even if I would have liked a bit more backstory on him. My only small disappointments were that the fantasy aspect was more used than grounded-realism and it lacked the subject on why people use internet before getting to the consequences, the KIDS project was only something that was just there, no development on it or at least a little more important focus on it to truly have the bigger picture clearer. The sub conscience into the conscience leading to non-moral behaviors that includes loneliness and fear of getting exposed on the web subject with Alice was the most interesting part for me. The memory subject was good too but was more about Lain, it was interesting to see if her parents were real or just memories created sub conscientiously and I think that more could have been showed of what is happening inside the wired. The solipsism and dualism used was good but considering the motives of the main character and the enemy but they were not primary themes but it is not like they were needed to be important. The secret agents investigating on Lain, the hackers and the wired in general were afterthoughts unfortunately, the parents and sister of Lain and their relation with their daughter was a good side-story but they felt more like pawns for the continuity of the story rather than important, I think that it needed to be clearer about them, the parents and the sister seem to be memories created by Lain which explains why she is alone when people like the secret agents or the postman are here. More hackers could have been showed as well. Lain creating her own "reality" and her parents/sister as the latter are not real were a good touch to show her hidden loneliness but more could have been done I think on that part. The final moral was good too (internet being a creation just like god which is why it is better to not get brainwashed by the web like religion), the suicide theme being used as a bad path metaphor to god for the religion and the web was interesting too. Overall, it was more about Lain than what happens with the wired, I think a balance between the two would not have been bad. Would I rewatch it? Maybe but I do not think I would learn anything new.

LunaEndWitch

The starkest memory of lain for me is going to be when lain’s sister broke down, when an out-of-body experience with the twisting reality around her, a malicious information overload broke her into a twisted different husk. The other is when, not too few episodes later, lain herself started fragmenting and fighting her fragments. Vivid imagery showcases the identity clash, this fight between the many creations people made of her, the personalities she grafted from them, that are still ultimately Her. I turned to my best friend for a bit after that and had to take a not-so-insignificant break to just sit down and try not to utterly lose it. One of my leading issues is the imitation game. My identity is a similarly fractured being, all running in the Wired comparatively and in contrast with how I go day-to-day in the flesh. To make things worse, I’ve already mentally rejected that flesh, but accepted that I have to live with it and all the suffering it brings me until I get a real chance to take action towards it. The attempts I’ve made to keep that delay as pleasant as possible were themselves delayed, which just heightened the pain of that anticipation and made me find more avenues to escape as a consequence. I’ve lived like that for years ever since the question of identity came up sincerely in my head. In fact, I’ve lived with such tolerance for the world of flesh that I question if I’m really in pain anymore and if I really should transition to what I want to be. Is that escape I’ve crafted, this identity I show off to myself and other friends I hold dear through the wire, is that real? Am I truly who I present myself to, do I actually want the “Real” to reflect that, are these fragments just as thorny and unwanted as lain’s own? How can I truly say that any part of who I am and act differently towards groups of friends is all a part of me when they’re all just intricate complex imitation games that rely on these people’s encouragement? What is my real sense of ego, anymore? Can I say I’m not similarly hollow? Admittedly, I do not have answers to these questions. In fact, I probably bring myself pain by even expressing them. They’re thorny, discordant thoughts that I try Very Fucking Hard to not think about. But they are relevant ones, they’re in themselves a part of the whole this show represents, and they deserve to be faced. Whether intentionally or not, the communication web we created has become an ultimate part of us. The show’s main thesis is that the web is just as real as the ones we walk. Scaringly, the monstrous hate-infused and encouraging places lifted by corporations attempting to connect us further have become brainworms we must live and work with. We can treat it but it doesn’t stop that Everyone Is Already Connected, even if that first step for some was the worst way possible. Certainly, this is barely even an inkling of the reading here. That last couple lines came with further context that the wired is not a higher plane, nor is it really even a good thing. Liberating maybe, I can name countless lives I’ve lived in other people’s DMs, all of which gave me a sense of euphoria in being truly ‘myself.’ Were it not for them, and my SO, would I have even survived quarantine? But it’s still equally toxic, burning with info stress from disinfo sources and detached mouths spewing contextless lines at nothing, that we will equally treat as fact. There’s an entire conspiratorial network that weaves through lain, a lot of it mouthed off profusely as truths after we’re already punched into a corner where we must accept them. The logical grounding is smokescreen, metaphors for this enormous overload that drives people to burning corpses as the comprehension breaks down and is exposed. In the latter points of Lain I looked for the ending hoping for solace and conclusion. I was treated to a painful ego death as I cried for the girl forcing herself to treat herself so insignificantly in order for people to survive. ‘Death’ in lain is shown to be transcendent in that those voices spoke back to people alive, but then that turns out to be more information than we can reasonably process and has to be quarantined. So then death becomes a fleeting memory, not able to persist in an apathetic world. But that’s a lie. Lain knows better than that, and she herself undoes that sacrifice in part just to be remembered again. Her voice carries, and we all love her for it. I’ve projected a lot on this show, these are barely even coherent thoughts with very little in the way of structure. I choose to end it positively though. I won’t need to undo these wires to love myself, the mess is a whole that is affirming. I just need time.

Calxylian

Personally, Serial Experiments Lain is more interesting in terms of the concept of existence, metaphysics, hyperreality, and other philosophies than anime as a whole. However, the audience cannot put it aside to talk about the whole theme. There are anime that are simply entertaining for the sake of fun, and there are anime that go beyond the limits of human imagination. The series falls into the second category. For other reasons, the series stands out as a true classic, pushing a spot of ink into the perceived notion of what can be done with television, the media, the internet, and politics. On the other hand, the series provides entertainment and insight into deep beliefs about technology and its role in society.

Considering how the development of the Serial Experiments Lain story is very mixed up, if the execution is minimal, the series will be full of many plot holes and stories that make the audience think of a logical fallacy. However, the series doesn't have to worry about the story and plot in the same sense as anime in general. Instead, it relies on characters and atmosphere to tell its narrative. What a small plot the series has, the series works wonderfully apart from some might argue that avant-garde plots entirely drive the series. However, it is each own and deviates as far as possible from the bland episodic story. Audiences can describe it like 12 Angry Men, It's a Wonderful Life, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and other arthouse films. The series, above all else, is also a character study that moves forward under the characters.

In one unit, Serial Experiments Lain tries to answer what exists and is abstract and general from a metaphysical point of view. The Wired, a term to describe the internet immersively in the anime, uses a universal theoretical perspective that affects the soul. The Wired way of working is fully integrated into the human mind in a limited way and acts as an absolute human. In the fifth episode, the Wired projected a human as all the characters included them as the alter ego of the stored information. Given that all of humanity is connected to the Wired, it logically means that all that humans experience and observe from all reality is the Wired. This projection can also imagine how other basic realities are equated with non-existence since the mind is inside Wired but has no suggestion for physical touch outside of Wired. Wired's fundamental connection to all phenomena goes beyond human protection. However, it extends to the mind of every human observer himself. Not only as an external projection of information but every level of psychology in Wired forms the subconscious human being and acts as an autonomous construction of information.

Serial Experiments Lain barely hinders the overall enjoyment of the series despite the artwork being off-center in terms of traditional anime. It's important to note that the series benefited from the unique art style. The animation is not a big pull factor for the series. Apart from the artwork, the series relies on a minimalist approach to music and sound. The dialogue is deep and sparse at the same time. Sound effects are rarely used either, but in short, they have a lasting impact on the experience. The lack of quality would normally spoil the enjoyment of anime but became one of the series' strengths. It's all sound effect pieces and the impressive artwork that add to the overall impact of the series.

Serial Experiments Lain shines the brightest when it comes to characters. The series stands out as an anime that takes characters to a level that most anime can only dream of achieving. Lain Iwakura is probably the most profound and relevant character in anime today. To explain this point, one has to watch the series, understand the various themes, and understand its motives. However, the series can briefly summarize the character as rising from human status, human closeness to God, and worship to the greatness of the internet or technology. It is a simple concept but pays tribute to its arguments, and rightly so. Side characters are also beautiful when talking about characters, and all of them are very deep characters from each problem.

In the end, Serial Experiments Lain tells the audience that red threat will always connect people no matter where they are and can't run away from it. Watching the series with an open mind will do more than entertain. Being a truly revolutionary anime of its time, the series and Neon Genesis Evangelion categorize references to religion, existence, postmodernism, and others by comparing Other characters with philosophies from the shadows of dementia and psychology. Audiences can find deeper and more universal meaning as time goes on and adapts to eras. The series is an anime that makes the audience watch it and encourages them to think continuously.

Maliona

Serial Experiments Lain is one of the best pieces of media I have ever consumed. I'm going to split this review into 5 main sections, Plot, Characters, Music, Art and Philosophy. Plot: Serial Experiments Lain's plot takes a backseat for most of the show, with more focus being given to Lain's deteriorating mental state from the 2nd episode until the final 2 episodes of the show. However I find the plot that is there incredibly interesting. The idea of what Lain as a person is and what she represents for the world as a pseudo 'God' hadme gripped and the wired kept me questioning what was reality and what was a fabrication throughout the show. Finally the ending and Lain's decision to erase herself and therefore the removal of the wire as a total integration to the world was incredibly bittersweet. Characters: This is the show's greatest strength in my opinion. Iwakura Lain is the perfect protagonist for me, her slow loss of grip on her reality and growing dependence on the wired was something I found heartbreaking to watch, and her relationship with Alice and eventual salvation through realising there is value to both the wired and physical form gave me a beautiful conclusion to her arc. On a smaller note I found Eiri to be a very good antagonist and Lain's family gave a very strong throughpoint for her character, especially her Father who's words play a large part in grounding her to reality and the themes of the show. Music: Lain's soundtrack is odd to say the least. Where most shows would have a great score Lain gives.... static? I love this about Lain though and it definitely does have stand out tracks besides my joking. But where would I be without mentioning the Opening and Ending themes! Especially Duvet is just one of my favourite songs of all time. Art: Lain's art is absolutely beautiful and ABe knocked it out of the park with the style of this show and it's supporting art. The visual style if the blearing white light outside and the dark damp confines of Lain's room. I find the visual style of Lain overall very strong, even if it is minimalistic. I also love how certain sections of the show taking place within the wired are portryed, a stand out scene to me was the strange disfigured figure's Lain talks to withing the Wired while keeping her normal human form. Philosophy: Lain is not anti-technology. I repeat, Lain is NOT anti-technology. Lain carried many themes of transhumanism and the effects of technology on out everyday society, however while the show does stand on the point of there being worth to our human bodies I would argue it never demonises technology as many people would say. I found the philosophy and themes gripping and I loved how they played into Lain's growth as a character and her relationships. Overall I honestly think this show is near perfect, and while if you or someone else dislike it that is also completely valid, I could never bring myself to dislike this show. On a side note though it is a shame that almost every Lain discussion on this website is a pissing contest between people saying they are big brain or that show mid. If you do want to talk about the show either positively or with issues you have I'd love to talk about them

alphabeta

Serial Experiments Lain is a show that has eluded me for so long. Its opening taunted me into its clutches by maintaining that I “don’t seem to understand”, as it leaped from perplexing episode to the next. By the end of its thirteen-episode run, I found that the show was correct in its initial taunting promise. The show is very ambitious in the themes it decides to tackle which range from consciousness, our dependence on technology and how said technology is changing the way we communicate with one another. This is accented by a discussion on God and how faith has changed with the advent of the internet which has emerged as its own untamed Eden. Was the show successful in presenting these lofty themes? The answer to that is complicated. Let us begin with the title character: Lain. She is presented as a recluse who maintains a distance from her friends. She is mostly quiet and monotone attracting very little sympathy from the viewer. When she is not quiet, she is mostly confused by what the fuck is happening around her. This makes for a dull viewing experience that neither asks interesting questions nor cares enough to resolve any plot threads in a satisfying way. Lain is lost in the shuffle of the plot, alternating from an uninteresting husk to a social butterfly without much rhyme or reason. It is only until the end of the show that the viewer is filled in on why she changes so abruptly and the answer to that question is deeply disappointing. This brings us on to the plot which is willfully obtuse and refuses to give the viewer anything to latch onto for its thirteen-episode duration. It also pays very shallow lip service to the themes I discussed above refusing to elaborate or skilfully fold its ideas into the contents of the characters. The plot serves only to present an aesthetic of intellectualism without delving into why these specific characters were important in telling this story. Instead, the show reads like a terrible thesis statement with the thin veneer acting as the story. Why then has the show accrued such a following? I am afraid that is a question I have no sufficient answer for because the show itself did not provide me with any suitable conclusions itself. Instead, the show trailed off into incoherent ramblings about objectivism and other tired, half-baked philosophical concepts without realising that the characters suffered as a result. My initial optimism for this show was beaten down episode after episode of sparse characterisation and obtuse abstract imagery which signified nothing. I do not recommend Serial Experiments Lain.

endlessness

Вы когда-нибудь встречали в сети Лэйн Ивакура? Мне 21 год. Естественно, написывая на anilist это ревью, я понимаю, что когда мне исполнится много лет, я могу изменить свое видение мира. Видение смысла жизни, идеологию, род занятий, свои увлечения и прочее. Я буду читать это ревью и думать: "Еб твою мать, какая же глупая хуйня!". Но сейчас, пока я нахожусь под сильным впечатлением от просмотра Лэйн, которую я осилил месяц назад, мне позволительно взять и написать что-то, что и другие могут посчитать хуйней. Согласно богослову Фоме Аквинскому, одна из основополагающих частей христианской добродетели - Божественный замысел. Иными словами, любая благая мысль, которая посетила твою голову не совсем принадлежит тебе в полном понимании. Просто в какой-то момент твоей головой мыслит Бог, давая тебе думать "благостями". Эта мысль не просто актуальна. Она стойко вошла в парадигму мышления западного верующего человека, пока мир христианства не начал разрушаться под воздействием пагубного влияния новомодных атеистических "штучек". И в таком, практически неизменном виде, эта идея дожила до наших времен. Вернее, до 90х. Мир начал глобализовываться. Но, о нет, не совсем так, как вы подумали сразу. Я имею ввиду не культурную глобализацию. Я имею ввиду интернет-глобализацию. Он был не у всех, не в каждом доме, да и, скажем прямо, не в каждом городе. Но он постепенно начал затягивать в свою сеть людей. Заражать собой отдельные дома и целые города. Люди, видевшие вживую, как он развивается и захватывает все больше и больше разумов, начали потихоньку задаваться вопросами. Эти вопросы были разного характера. Технического, например. Но лично меня интересует иная сторона вопроса распространения доселе неизвестного вида существования человека в мире. И, собственно говоря, все понимают, к чему я веду. Человек, человеческая душа, его помыслы, его память, все, связанное как с отдельно взятым человеком, так и с целым миром вокруг. Все это внезапно населило интернет. И уже об отдельно взятом человеке можно узнать всю доступную информацию, потому что теперь она существует в интернете - в некоем пространстве, которое очень не похоже на наш мир, но при этом вселяет его в себя. Я не могу судить за людей, которые жили в то время. И тем более судить мир, окружающий их, на том же уровне и теми же оценками, потому что мы разные и у нас разные представления о жизни. Поэтому, НА ИХ МЕСТЕ у меня возникло бы два вопроса. Может ли Божественный умысел существовать в сети интернет? Можно ли создать никогда несуществующего человека в интернете и убедить каждого в существовании его или вызвать ложные воспоминания о его жизни у реальных людей? И Лэйн дает вам эти вопросы. Но не дает ответы на них. И при этом задает гораздо больше неудобных и сложных вопросов, о которых, наверное, я и не смог догадаться при первом обращении к этому аниме. Приятного просмотра

A1ayna

My favourite anime, my first attempt at criticism. Welp. So here's the classic play: ‘SE Lain’ could justifiably be called pretentious, and that isn't entirely unfair. However, it would be more accurate to describe its core weakness as deliberate obscurity, because it has genuine depth, and plenty of it. The chief problem, in this regard, is how it conveys its ideas. To unravel the themes and story demands multiple viewings — which is not necessarily a fault. But it often feels as though writer Chiaki Konaka (author of ‘Ghost Hound’ amongst others) has gone out of his way to present it as impenetrably as possible. And while stunning, director Ryutaro Nakamura’s bleak and lengthy tableaux do little to clear up the stubborn ambiguity. Take for example when, during one of the most crucial conversations in the entire intricate story, two of the characters inexplicably swap voices. This is confusing and reduces the impact of a climactic scene? While we can speculate as to the meaning behind this decision, it ultimately feels like a smug prank at the expense of a casual viewer. “Nudge nudge, see what I did there, clever right?” This sort of behaviour is not to ‘Lain’s’ credit. The series’ second key problem is pacing. The main story only really gets going halfway in, and before that is riddled with subplots that don’t really add all that much (looking at you, KIDS and PHANTOMa). If you can hold through to the midpoint of episode seven, the pace picks up dramatically. But once again the series’ hostility towards a first time viewer is disappointing. Ok, all this in mind, what does ‘Lain’ have going for it? Isn’t this supposed to be a positive review? Where’s the hype? First off, ‘Lain’ is simply PROPHETIC in its themes. You’ve probably heard this before, so I’ll gloss over it. It explores or suggests topics such as internet addiction, mental illness, underage sexualisation, celebrity culture, fake news, digital narcissism, mind uploading and plenty of other transhumanist bs... And in case you need any reminding, this is a show from 1998 — more than three years before the original iPod released. That ‘Lain’ was ahead of its time is indisputable. You’ll hear “Present Day” a lot, but see it even more. These meaty topics — ethical and cerebral — underpin Lain’s stellar character development. She’s the only person given a significant interior, but that interior is so deeply explored (without ever being exhausted) that it hardly matters. Avoiding giving away too much: she starts off shy and listless, and emerges steadily (although definitely NOT linearly) into a confident and powerful being capable of — well, watch and see! Such strong characterisation is rare; in a thirteen episode anime-of-ideas it’s all but unheard of. The two-dimensionality of the supporting characters isn’t even such a structural problem since it reinforces the show’s rather solipsistic method. ‘Lain’ wants you to dive into a mind struggling with disconnection and alienation, and the fact that those around her are inconsistent and often unsubtle reinforces that immersion. You’re trapped inside her lonely reality. That’s not to say that the show lacks moments of genuine emotion and warmth. Whether it’s atop a rooftop, bed, or floating chair, every time Lain truly connects with someone we see how positively overwhelming the intimacy is for her. It’s touching. But these scenes are few, far between, and fleeting. If you’re looking for something more consistently charming, this is not your anime. To think a bit about the art and direction: I feel that ‘Lain’ is gorgeously designed though it’s quite a YMMV vibe. Initially sparse without being inviting. over the course of the show the drab real world clutters without becoming appealing. In contrast, The Wired (the show’s cyberspace) glitters and whirs cryptically as it expands across Lain’s psyche. The tone differences in the art make it easy to see why so many characters compulsively prefer it. The sequencing is often lethargic, and the camera absolutely obsessed with Lain (gaze is a recurring theme — to the point of exploitation). There are moments when characters’ faces are not quite proportional, and Lain’s spacey eyes can take a bit of getting used to. But in general, the unorthodox staging supports the disintegration of the main character excellently. Lain disses one of the entities she encounters as “more noise than signal”. This might seem an appropriate description for the show itself. But the more you tune in, the more powerful the signal becomes and the more urgent, the more relevant. It’s up to you if — and how — you listen. I hope you try: in my opinion, the character insights and thematic clout of ‘Serial Experiments Lain’ are well worth all the infuriating static. Overall: a muffled masterpiece.

Kishbokai

~~~ Inspired by @NovaZero review on Steins;Gate ___ # Present Day, hahaha # Present Time, HAHAHA ___ I’m going to split this review into two parts. The first part will be for those on their first watch of this anime. The second part will be for those on their second watch or fans of the anime already. You’ll understand why, newcomers, in a moment. ___ # Part One: Newcomers Serial Experiment Lain is quite an infamous anime. Known for being a favourite among elitists, it often gets tossed along with other anime like it (Evangelion, Welcome to the NHK, Ghost in the Shell, etc. ) Though, unlike those anime, it is very different from them in a sense it is something you have to go into wanting to find a deeper message. Unlike those anime, they are usually some “surface level” enjoyment at first before you dive into the complex themes. Lain is like a car that is already accelerating to the highest point it can go. Because of this, I find it hard even to explain what it is about because the first episode is filled with symbolism and random meanings. Serial Experiment Lain is tricky, but I will try my best to pitch it to the newcomers to this show. The anime is about a 14-year-old girl called Lain Iwakura. She isn’t exactly the most normal Japanese student. She seems very distant; hears voices, unable to read what is being written on the board and has trouble socializing with the few friends she has. Her family seems to ignore her a lot but provides for her. Her only real hobby is putting on teddy bear pyjamas while staring off into the void. img520(https://yuliaryzhik.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/lain_bear_toys.png) Yep, this is our protagonist. But then, one day, a girl that goes to her school committed suicide. If that wasn’t awful news enough, emails are being sent by her to many students in the school. Oddly enough, Lain receives one. When she opens it, the girl, Chisa Yomoda, seems to be able to talk to Lain in real time despite no longer living. When Lain asks, why she killed herself, Chisa simply says, “God is here.” From there, Lain becomes curious about computers, and The Wired, something similar to the internet in our world. By the end of episode one, the whole world literally seems to tell her to come to The Wired for whatever reason. So begins thirteen episodes of Lain becoming curious, and discovering The Wired. One small note: Everything I told you may or may not be true. You may be perplexed by that statement, but allow me to explain. Serial Experiments Lain loves to do that. It loves to confuse you by placing events that occur in an episode and then make you wonder if that’s even the case later on. The biggest appeal of this anime is watching it, and trying to figure out the message and deeper meaning. Which lies its biggest strength, but biggest weakness. While it’s a lot of fun to discuss what the show could mean, a lot of it only comes down to that. It’s hard to say if it has any other strengths because everything could be worked into a deeper message. But what I can objectively say is the anime feels like an art student tried to be so different, you can’t even tell if what they made is art or not. A lot of this anime can be dismissed, and that could be the message to you. It’s like a box of legos. It can be anything you want it to be even if the legos come from certain sets. I use that example because there are commonly agreed-upon overarching messages, but that could also be completely wrong. You just don’t know unlike Evangelion, Welcome to the NHK, Ghost in the Shell, etc. Regardless of that, this anime does have a lot of charm. The art style is very unique and cute, adding this sense of innocence to everything, but can easily turn dark and disturbing. The soundtrack fits the vibe of the show greatly with the opening song, Duvet being such a fire track. (There’s also a Cyberia mix that is even better than the soundtrack.) youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bty0bNS7i0g) youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEHUFRRK9Sk) Now the voice acting and animation is where it becomes up to interpretation. A lot of the animation is pretty bland, and sometimes, just repeated shots or still images. The voice acting works the best when the emotion starts to get high, but, when those scenes aren’t at play, it seems like a person trying their best to not wake up their parents. Again, those aspects are up to interpretation. I had a great time with this anime for my first watch since I do like figuring out my message. I can’t lie though, sometimes, I got extremely bored during episodes because of the randomness of it all. But if you’re a fan of that type of stuff or the fact my explanations may or may not be true intrigues you, I totally recommend you watch it. When I first realised my message for the show, I was in such a weird mood like I had realised a dark truth. _My score for this anime is a 81/100_ No need to look at the second part, just go watch it or exit the tab. ____ … … …. ____ # Part Two: Experienced Viewers Are the newcomers gone now? Okay, fans of the anime and second-time watchers. I will tell you what I think the message is. However, let me just say, this sucks to rewatch. A lot of the charm gets completely lost on you as you realise how random some scenes are. Some scenes are fucking there for no reason at all. For example, in episode four, Religion, that whole episode was a drag. You start to realise how the episode directors must have added things in because they thought it was cool or interesting only for the next episode to disregard it. It started to get mind-numbing to take my notes as I kept watching along only to have to figure out how on earth children looking at the sky fit into my message. However, I did figure one out. First, here’s a quote I found on the Wikipedia page for the show from an interview by the main director: "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after World War II".[10] He later explained in numerous interviews that he created Lain with a set of values he took 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 he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed Keeping this in mind, I concluded this. The Wired is something like Heaven. It is a place where you can do and say whatever you want, and become your true self. Realistically, you can become something so different that your online and real-life selves are two different people. The anime tries to show how dangerous a place that humans can access would be. That’s who the black suit guys are: The government trying to stop the danger coming from that place. Then, the Knights are people who reach this twisted version of truth for the Wired. The Wired and the real world are one and the same in that has a God. So, they attempt to merge the two by doing twisted games for children from past experiments to have the next generation accept that truth. Although, they want the same pleasures from the real world to enter Wired as they can still see a difference. Now Lain is someone that gets to that message but in a worse way. Lain wants to be normal and accepted in life. She wants to be that cool girl for her friends, and for her family to care about her. She just naturally doesn’t know how. But the Wired helps her be happy. It helps her be in a reality that accepts her. Unfortunately, this requires her to ignore reality itself. At some point, I think the characters closer to her become representations of reality like her sister is how her reality is indifferent to her turning into this distorted version that shows Lain is ignoring reality. By episode 5, everything after is Lain messing up her reality to the point she questions her own being because she has no idea what even is real. But here’s what I think is real. Lain is in her room and becomes hikikomori. Her family, who adopted her, regrets their decision and leaves the house to her. Accidentally or on purpose, she finds information about her only true friend and spreads it over the school resulting in that friendship being broken. Thing is, Lain doesn’t see it like that. Instead, she sees it like an innocent child would and thinks she did nothing wrong but has to fix it somehow. She starts to lose herself slowly with multiple parts of her personality coming in and out, and the pressure of being the head of this giant conspiracy gets to her. Eventually, she meets “God” someone that help create the Wired and tries to use her to create an actual God, and acquire the Knights’ goal as Lain killed them out of spite to prove she is a God. But she soon realises how miserable she has become. Her life is now connected to this computer, becoming like a machine and wants to even commit suicide, but thinks that won’t even help because of her newfound knowledge. So, what does she do? Create a false reality in her head. In this reality, she tries to help Arisu get rid of the rumours and succeeds in doing so. Though she had Arisu exactly like how she is in the real life. Perhaps she wanted some reality after all? Arisu visits her and sees the mess Lain is in only to realise that she is being used. That’s when she creates another false reality where no one knows she even existed. Everyone she loves, including the “God” lives happily, but Lain is even more miserable. But, she is stuck in the Wired and reality that she doesn’t know if resetting would even work. The show ends with her meeting Arisu as an adult, who doesn’t remember her. But I think Lain is still in that false reality. Because the whole theme of this show is a warning to the nations, Japan and America. America, to not try to be this God, all-knowing being. Japan, to not be absorbed in their own false reality. But Lain as a character is a warning to everyone on the internet. To save our reality before it’s too late. There are a lot of moments that hit me when she is talking to online friends, and they feel straight out of my memories. How she complains about reality but does nothing to change it. How she feels accepted, yet realises how little she means to them. How she regrets her actions, for she was too late to realise the truth. Expect, Lain never got out of that, and now has to live with the consequences. So Lain is Japan while “God” is America, and their relationship is how America treats Japan. But on a wider scale, Lain is how people who are different in both countries are treated. Lain ain’t a God. She’s as human as one can be. It's a lot to take in, I know, but that's what I think Serial Experiment Lain is about. A cautionary tale about reality and fiction. ____ # Time to wrap it up! I would add more of my notes or even how this anime was ahead of its time, but I rather not because how this rewatch bored me. You really feel those episodes the second time around that you start to question why you’re doing it. The themes of the show start to speak to you more as you wonder why you’re spending your time on it. For that reason, I have to give it a 69/100 for this part. Therefore, my final score, to compare them, would be 73/100. It’s a great show if you’re the type to enjoy stuff like this, but on the second watch, it’s like doing homework. Have a good day and keep trying to enjoy life -Kishbokai ~~~

GonzoLewd

~~~img600(https://gonzonyan.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/mv5bywy1mwjjodytmjk5yy00ogy3lwfjnjctmjjlmdbimmi0odk1xkeyxkfqcgdeqxvyntayodkwoq4040._v1_.jpg)~~~ There are rare moments when you start browsing through anime as a newbie, trying to familiarize yourself with the medium. You look at one in particular that catches your eye almost immediately. From looking at its description and everything else around it, you know it will either be your favorite anime or not. Serial Experiments Lain was that for me, and to say it kept me invigorated from beginning to end would be an understatement. The year is 2011, and I was starting my life in college. I was already knee-deep in my anime fandom and keeping track of almost every anime that came out each season. Not only that, but I was also into philosophy from any era or field, as well as science fiction literature. Out of all of the sub-genres of science fiction that allured me the most, Cyberpunk was the one that stood out from the rest. I read most things William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, etc., around this time of my literary phase. So when I saw that there was an anime called Serial Experiments Lain that merged these two things, it was an instant watch for me once I read the description. I would call Lain a Postmodern, Cyberpunk, and psychological turducken are what I would call it. ~~~img600(https://gonzonyan.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/opening-screenshots-serial-experiments-lain-37181317-1520-1080.jpg)~~~ Lain blends all of these things perfectly. Using the atmosphere to create a level of paranoia for the viewer to experience could be compared to reading a Philip K. Dick novel or a thriller film by Polanski. The experimental nature might be a turn-off to many who go into this blind. Some may say that it only tries to be this way to mask any plot inconsistencies and so forth. But I don't think that's the true purpose of why Lain tells its story in a seemingly disorganized and messy way. The atmosphere it is trying to convey fits accordingly to the avant-garde narrative style. It doesn't feel contrived or unnecessary. It creates an unsettling mood that fascinates us with what is going on by giving us minimal exposition. With Lain, it makes sense not to because if the writers tried to provide us with too much context on what is going on, it would lose that sense of paranoia and psychological horror. So, the lack of exposition is a positive exception to this narrative rule. Another thing that gives Lain its unique atmosphere and tone, besides the narrative structure, is its art direction. What's strange about it is that it is incredibly exceptional yet dated simultaneously. It still has that stiff TV animation you typically see from late 90s anime. The character designs don't have much pop or character as other anime did during this period. Yet, all of this works despite themselves. Yoshitoshi Abe, who has done original character designs for Haibane Renmei, Texhnolyze, and others, is always a visual treat to see his characters blossom in animation. While I think his original creations have transferred better in other anime, the design of Lain herself is incredible and has stood the test of time. ~~~img600(https://gonzonyan.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/coalgirls_serial_experiments_lain_04_1008x720_blu-ray_flac_260d7cf9-mkv_snapshot_12-05_2011-08-17_06-54-30.jpg)~~~ Outside of character designs, everything else around them, art-wise, is the true visual treat of Lain. Every background gives us a visual metaphor, like the red dots on the shadows in certain scenes to represent the Wired. The retro 90s aesthetic of the computers gives off a wave of nostalgia that encapsulates the rise of the internet and the computation of its time. Sure, it does come off as dated almost 25 years later, but like how music genres like vaporwave and all of its sub-genres are celebrations of nostalgia, watching Lain invokes that same celebration from repeated viewings years later. The visual representations of the Wired itself are about as surreal as one could expect from an anime like Lain. They all feel concise and purposeful in what they try to represent in their symbolism despite how avant-garde they look. It's not often I get to praise the sound design of an anime, as many of them don't have what I would call unique sound effects or off-kilter sound design. But Lain is one of those rare exceptions where you will remember various sounds sprinkled in each episode. We all know the famous white noise generated in the outside scenes whenever we look at telephones that create the sound of "the Wired" that Lain always hears. It gives the anime an ominous aura that helps reinforce the mysterious atmosphere that it is trying to convey to the audience. As for voice acting, for what little there is since it heavily relies on narration and not much dialogue between characters, it does its job very well, especially the woman who plays Lain. ~~~img600(https://gonzonyan.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/mhdjcox-1.jpg)~~~ Serial Experiments Lain's story is what I always love about Sci-fi, Psychological, and Philosophy done right. Everyone loves to deconstruct the plot of Serial Experiments Lain in what everything symbolizes and what the true nature of the character Lain is. I won't go into that whole spiel, as it has been done to death in various blogs and youtube video essays. I will explain how the story, particularly the character Lain, impacted me as I watched it firsthand. My feelings for Lain are more on a personal level than anything else. I promise I won't go on an autobiographical tangent. Lain, as a character, is the closest character in anime or any other medium that represents how I was around her age. Having very few friends, going on my computer for untold hours at a time, and trying to discover what I am as a being in this world. Now, the whole God part is out of the question as even at that time, I was/am an atheist and the implied paranoid schizophrenia. But the story of Lain trying to find her self-worth and identity through Wired resonated with me as a young college kid and invoked this wave of euphoric nostalgia as this was released around the same time I started scouring through the internet. I was a strange kid like Lain, thinking of myself as enlightened than everyone else, as egotistical kids tend to be. I can't say that anyone else will have the same experience, but this is to explain how this will forever remain special in my anime-watching career. Outside of my own experiences, the plot of Serial Experiments Lain still has much to offer despite its minimal presentation. You'll most likely be scratching your head at the lack of exposition it gives. I look at it in that it's more about the journey than the destination. It doesn't matter what the climax will be as long as you are invigorated by the artistic merit Lain gives and the psychological issues our heroine goes through. You're more or less witnessing Lain stumbling through bouts of schizophrenic paranoia. That's the most you're going get out of the plot. To me, that's all you need to know. It's less of what is happening outside of Lain and her friends and more of watching the gradual shift of personality we see with them. The way it is directed with little explanation is a positive in Lain's case, as I've mentioned before about its atmosphere being mysterious and out-there. It would lose all those aspects if it were bogged down with exposition. While it might frustrate many, the ones that do not get frustrated will be rewarded. ~~~img600(https://gonzonyan.files.wordpress.com/2022/10/screenshot3.png)~~~ I might as well talk about the OP, as it is one of my favorites of any anime. While many might critique it as being a little too pop-y for the type of anime it is, I think the way it complements the visuals of the OP and how well-played the instrumentation is. I will say the ED is not a fan of it at all. It isn't as pleasant to listen to and feels more out of place as it sounds like something you'd hear from an action seinen anime. This anime is a difficult one to review and recommend to anyone. Lain is something that rewards your patience. If you can't have the patience to decipher what is going on, you're probably not going to in the future unless it suddenly clicks. When you're someone like me who gravitates to stories and themes that Serial Experiments Lain tries to tackle, this is a no-brainer as my favorite anime. I can't guarantee that even someone like me would have the same sentiment, but it's safe to say it was an unforgettable experience almost ten years ago. Let's all love Lain.

Matheusmiranda96

Muito me foi pedido, por pessoas próximas a mim, que escrevesse sobre Lain. Contudo, persistentemente resistia pelo fato do anime conter algumas falhas. Portanto, tomei a liberdade de escrever atentando-me apenas aos símbolos apresentados e, a ideia central, do que a história do anime em si. Serial Experiments Lain, usualmente abreviado para SEL, ou Lain, trata-se de um anime cyberpunk de 1998 produzido por Ryutaro Nakamura (direção), Chiaki Konaka (roteiro), Yasuyuki Ueda (produtor) e Yoshitoshi Abe (design). O show arremete à Iwakura Lain, uma garota tímida, ingênua, com uma total falta de interesse em aparatos tecnológicos mas que vive, como toda obra situada em cenários cyberpunks, em uma sociedade submersa nesses tais avanços tecnológicos. A história inicia com o suicídio de uma colega de classe de Lain e o surgimento de supostos emails misteriosos enviados por esta garota, após sua morte, à diversos outros alunos de sua classe. Ao chegar em casa, e embebecida pela curiosidade, após ouvir o boato dos supostos emails, Lain decide averiguar em seu antes ignorado Navi (device tecnológico de última geração) se também era uma dos destinatários. Após ler o intrigante conteúdo do email, Lain tem-se por ainda mais confusa. Chisa, a garota que se suicidara, dizia que não morreu. Antes, havia abandonado seu corpo físico e partira para um estranho local, denominado Wired, onde havia encontrado deus. Segue-se, a partir de então, uma série de experimentos, ocasionados por estranhos acontecimentos, que farão Lain questionar sua verdadeira existência, o que é ou não real, bem como a existência concreta da barreira que separa Wired e realidade. SEL é um dos típicos animes que ganharam status pela fama de confusão mental causada por seu enredo, tais quais o são Neon Genesis Evangelion, Mawaru Peguindrum, Paranoia Agent. No entanto, SEL possui uma particularidade em relação às obras citadas. Ao contrário da maioria destas obras "mindfucks", que começam relativamente "normais" e progridem rumo à estranheza, Serial Experiments já começa mergulhando nas bizarrices. Os primeiros cinco episódios servem para construção de mundo do anime, apresentando as personagens principais, como Lain, seus familiares e amigas próximas, bem como figuras emblemáticas, tais quais são o grupo dos Knights. Sem muitos spoilers, tenho por objetivo discorrer acerca dos principais símbolos apresentados neste show. O show possui fama de profético quanto à influência da tecnologia e da internet na vida cotidiana. Misturando algumas hipóteses científicas e teorias filosóficas, o enredo levanta as possíveis relações que a internet teria com o futuro da humanidade. Abordagens como a do conhecido Bug do Milênio estão frequentemente ali inseridas. O existencialismo e o gnosticismo são figuras bastante presentes na simbologia do show. O fato de serem apresentadas 3 Lains ao longo do show apontam tais questionamentos. Qual a verdadeira Lain? Qual a primeira a surgir? Qual se sobrepõe? A Lain que existe no mundo real, a Lain existente na Wired mas que é capaz de espalhar boatos afetando pessoas no mundo real, a Evil Lain que é vista somente por pessoas sob efeito alucinógeno no Cyberia? img(https://i.imgur.com/M4wrd2G.png) img(https://i.imgur.com/yykcp0I.jpeg) De acordo com Kierkegaard, principal expoente dentre as teorias existencialistas, a essência é posterior a existência. Para ele, o indivíduo deve abster-se das abstrações e ater-se à praticidade do que é palpável. Além de investigar a subjetividade humana a partir da angústia do indivíduo diante da vida. Esta subjetividade dando margem à diferentes ideias culmina em diferentes realidades experienciadas pelo indivíduo. Como é o caso do questionamento sobre qual Lain é a verdadeira, visto que cada uma experimenta sua própria realidade, a partir de suas próprias escolhas. No show, dissociação entre o real e o virtual é dado por respostas. No entanto, esta mesma dissociação ganha formas quando real e virtual coexistem entre si. Um exemplo desta coexistência são as sombras coloridas apresentadas ao longo dos episódios. Elas representam a existência da wired no mundo real, sendo observada apenas pelas sombras. img(https://i.imgur.com/T0cHlU0.png) Ainda sobre a experiência observada no anime, Yasuyuki Ueda comentou, em entrevista para a Otakon, quando perguntado sobre as fumaças que saiam pelos dedos de Lain: > "Se você quer saber sobre o significado, a fumaça saindo é uma realidade observada por ela, mas para todos ao seu redor elas não podem ser vistas, não é parte da realidade deles. Então nesse sentido, todo mundo tem a sua própria realidade que outras pessoas não podem ver, é meio que uma brincadeira entre realidades para cada indivíduo". img(https://i.imgur.com/2sW7qUX.png) Ao mesmo passo esta dissociação entre real e virtual, representado na figura da Wired, trás à tona esta visão gnóstica. Sendo esta mesma Wired a representação o Mundo Pleromal de SEL. A Problemática da dissociação da realidade Na atualidade, existe uma grande confusão causada em virtude da separação dos mundos real e virtual. Não dando-se por satisfeito, os avanços tecnológicos intensificaram a fuga da realidade em busca de experiências emuladas no ambiente virtual. É comum encontrar pessoas que vivem vidas diferentes, simulando diferentes tipos de personalidades para se adequar às comunidade que frequenta. Em muitos casos, são pessoas populares pelas conquistas adquiridas como players de jogos, influenciadores de mídias digitais, mas que jamais experimentaram do mundo real. São pessoas que conhecem como a palma da própria mão o mapa de uma fase em algum game mas desconhecem a cidade em que vive. Pessoas conhecidas por muitos no ambiente online, mas que não conseguem manter uma conversa com alguém durante uma refeição. img(https://i.imgur.com/ixD650S.jpeg) Para Aristóteles, existe apenas um mundo: o real. O mundo vivenciado por todos. Para o filósofo, o ato de contemplar os fundamentos do mundo real é o que leva o indivíduo à prática de filosofar. Por isto, somente a experiência vivenciada pela realidade é capaz de compreender os questionamentos condicionados à existência humana. As experiências vivenciadas pelos indivíduos não são dissociadas da realidade, tampouco condicionadas à experiências relativizadas pelo subjetivismo pessoal. Não se pode separar o real do inteligível, tampouco ignorá-lo, como na filosofia existencialista. Todo leitor, ao ler um livro, tem totais capacidades de compreender qualquer acontecimento da história, bem como as motivações de cada personagem, mesmo sem ter vivenciado situação semelhantes. Estas experiências cognitivas sensíveis surgem da interação com os fundamentos inteligíveis presentes no mundo real. Portanto, Serial Experiments Lain surge como um clássico de vanguarda mas que teve sua relevância tão somente pelo período em que foi criado. A crise gerada pela grande depressão dos milleniuns, as incertezas do novo século, a mítica da nova tecnologia, foram fatores que ajudaram a popularizar Serial Experiments, muito antes de clássicos como Matrix. Como um grande zeitgeist, Lain tenta se manter vivo pelo grande esforço dos seus fãs. No entanto, diferente de obras como Ghost In The Shell, SEL não teve a intenção de ser o que se tornou. O roteiro não foi premeditado, as falhas existentes comprovam isto. Contudo, o show não tem, e provavelmente nunca teve, a intenção de apontar uma grande história. Serial Experiments, na verdade, foi o verdadeiro experimento. Os próprios Abe e Ueda já disseram que não tiveram grandes intenções com o anime, antes queriam observar as reações de cada telespectador. Odiado por uns, amado por outros. O fato é que Serial Experiments Lain é o verdadeiro experimento em forma de anime, uma figura do expressionismo pós moderno.

mazzystar

~~~__God is here. ~~~__ ~~~img1000(https://ancdn.fancaps.net/3327153.jpg) ~~~ Serial Experiments Lain is an anime that's out of this world, a kino that's sure to leave you wired (pun intended) with its _mind-bending_ themes and trippy visuals. It's like a big bowl of brain candy, a thought-provoking treat that's sure to make you question reality. This anime is a must-watch for any anime connoisseur who wants to have their mind blown and enjoy a truly unique experience. One of the standout aspects of Serial Experiments Lain is its exploration of themes such as technology, identity, and the __nature of reality__. The show takes place in a world where technology is advanced to the point where people can connect to a global network called the "Wired", which is like the __internet on steroids__. The show explores the impact of this technology on humanity and how it affects our understanding of reality and our sense of self, it's like a big tech-topia. img1000(https://ancdn.fancaps.net/3328387.jpg) The characters in Serial Experiments Lain are also a major strength of the show. The show follows the journey of Lain, a high school student who is withdrawn and shy, but as she becomes more involved in the Wired, she starts to question her identity and what is real. It's like a big identity crisis, but in anime form. The show also features a diverse cast of supporting characters, each with their own unique story and struggles, making for a truly compelling and emotionally resonant narrative. The animation in Serial Experiments Lain is also top-notch. The show uses a mix of traditional animation and more modern techniques to create a truly cinematic and visually striking experience. The use of color, lighting, and camera angles are used to great effect to create an immersive and atmospheric experience, it's like a big acid trip but anime. The soundtrack is also an essential element of the show. It adds to the overall atmosphere and enhances the emotional impact of the scenes. The use of electronic and experimental music adds to the futuristic and mind-bending feel of the show, __it's like a big techno party in your ears. __ Serial Experiments Lain is an anime that stands out as one of the best examples of the genre. With its trippy visuals, mind-bending themes, and thought-provoking storytelling, this show is truly kino and is not to be missed. It's a show that will make you question reality, and will stay with you long after the series is over. So put on your headphones, or your speakers, and get ready to have your mind and ears blown away by Serial Experiments Lain. Because I can tell you for sure that they will be. img1000(https://ancdn.fancaps.net/3332349.jpg)~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lym

__A quick review of Serial Experiments Lain__ Main theme Serial Experiments Lain is... WEIRD. And the show accepts it as it starts with its Layer 1 (episode 1), "Weird". The main theme of this show is that the world of wired (internet) and the real world is connected, not just in technical terms but also physical and philosophical terms. This show keeps many of its themes totally unexplained or leaves them on your interpretation and that makes it really really tough to comprehend because different people have different perspectives, they can interpret anything as they want. This show feels like collection of random events, which literally make no sense (not even after the end). But as I said, if you add something from yourself, it starts making a little sense, at least for you, but it depends on how much you are putting in it. My interpretation For me, SEL is divided into four parts. So Part 1 (Weird, Girls, Psyche, Religion) introduces you to the world of wired and how people get into it or how people are already in it. Part 2 (Distortion, Kids, Society, Rumors), this part focuses on how things work in the world of wired and how they affect the real world. Distortion in people's mentality, manipulation of kids, social interactions through wired and rumors that get spread through wired (it all sounds like Social Media of present day). Part 3 (Protocol, Love, Infornography), this part is related to human emotions, values, morals and ideologies. This part is where the random things happening kind of start making sense and then the last part (Landscape and Ego), this part is about realisation of everything that happened in the previous parts and rebelling against the one opposite force which was making the previous events happen. Analysis Obviously, I didn't get everything that this show wants to offer as it was my first watch but still, the things I've deduced and learnt from this show are pretty interesting. If I have to explain the whole plot of SEL in one sentence. "SEL is a story of a god-like entity created by humanity itself, trying to understand what humanity is". There are so many confusing technical aspects to this show but its philosophical and psychological aspects are more important as they try to tell you how humanity is losing its originality. As humans are progressing towards the future, they're forcing themselves to evolve. If there is any way for humans to further evolve after technological advancements, it's only with the help of internet, the wired, as it connects everyone and it can help humanity progress and evolve collectively. But everything has its dark side and as the dark side of this evolution, humans are losing their individuality as they're becoming one. Humans are losing their emotions, their friends, their families. We all are connected yet we are so far from each other. Not only our physical individuality, we also are losing ourselves psychologically. There is a huge difference between our personality in real life and our personality on the internet, the social media, the wired. Conclusion SEL goes deep but it still feels so random, it's definitely not for everyone. You cannot understand every little thing that this show tries to convey through it, even if you try to, because as I said, it depends on your perspective what understanding and comprehension means to you. For an example, in the show, Lain has different personalities in the wired. But in an episode, it is revealed that she also has split personality disorder in the real world. They call that personality "Lain of the wired". But what the show is trying to tell then? Is this other personality only bound to the world of wired. Well, no, depends on how you interpret it. Some can interpret it as, she has a split personality disorder and that's why she's different in the world of wired than she's in the real world. Some can interpret is as, she has a different personality in the world of wired which sometimes takes over her in the real world and some can also interpret it as, both interpretations are true. It's also mentioned that Lain has multiple personalities, not just two or three, which makes it clear that people interact with different people differently, not just in the real world but in the world of wired, the internet too. Later it's revealed that Lain is something beyond human, something that was created by humanity which actually connects everyone through the wired, the internet, that means everyone in the world is Lain, everyone has some part of Lain in them, and even if that part of all of us is sometimes cruel, sometimes kind, we have to accept it. We can't hate that part of ours, we have to love that part present in everyone, we have to love Lain in everyone. So, "Let's all love Lain". ~~~img200(https://i.postimg.cc/PJh1dMY0/cdd64d43625e131c659f25dc748760ca.jpg)~~~ Opinion My opinion about SEL is that, you should definitely watch it if you haven't just because how unique it is. I don't think something like SEL exists (or at least I've not seen it till now). It's a really complicated but an interesting show. Also, the OP and ED for this show, both are just bangers. You can give it a try but don't forget that you'll have to put something from yourself into it. So this was my review of SEL, my tiny brain was able to process only this much.