Serial Experiments Lain

Original Title: シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン
Romanized: Serial Experiments Lain
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

In a year not at all far from today, the Internet has taken one step farther into becoming a world of its own; with powerful systems called Navis, everyone from businessmen to kindergartners jumps into the Wired to interact, play games, make friends, and gossip. Imagine that. Left out of this is Lain, a reserved junior high school student who has never taken much to the Wired, despite the fact that her father is in the computer business. That begins to change when a classmate of Lain's commits suicide, and a few days later several students--including Lain--receive e-mails from the girl, telling them that she merely left her body, and is still alive and well in the Wired. Slowly, Lain's attitude begins to change, but as she becomes more involved with her Navi, the world around her and her friends becomes increasingly more unstable. More suicides and bizarre killings happen one after another, and Lain is somehow connected to them... But how?

Quick Review

Rating: 4 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-08-05

Slow, surreal, layered with symbolism and a vague, wandering non-story, Serial Experiments Lain is a unique and defiantly weird series. As with most things that go this far out on an artistic limb, you're likely to either find it enthralling or be unable to stand it, but there's little room for middle ground. Built around a frightening, dreamlike vision and laid out with a steady, confident hand. Every scene, every action feels significant, however little sense it might make, and everywhere there are subtle hints and allusions to... something. Twisting, disturbing, surrealist scenes comprise almost the entire first third of the series, and are where Lain is at its best throughout. Sadly, while utterly successful on a visceral level, the more it explains--particularly through the middle stretch--the less impressive it becomes, although it recovers in time for a powerful climax.

In the end, Serial Experiments Lain is a unique piece of anime, featuring a masterful blend of strange characters, unusual art, and a surreal setting, all employed toward exploring the boundary between what is real and what is Wired. Most definitely not for everyone, but an engrossing experiment and a complete departure from the norm.

US DVD Review

The DVDs are very nice. They include some sharp looking menus that match the visual style of the show, Japanese and English stereo soundtracks with an English subtitle track. The menus provide access to a well organized, thumbnailed chapter index, with several chapter stops in each episode, a bunch of production sketches, and a couple of very short promo videos, creditless opening and endings (on later discs) as well as the standard Pioneer catalog section. The next-episode previews are also included (after the credits of the final episode on each disc, or accessible through the menu), which are short, weird live action clips of various "devices"--parts of the human body. The audio transfer is pristine, and the video transfer is similar to Pioneer's other DVDs; very crisp, but with some slight mottling visible in large, nearly black areas (and there are a lot of those in this one).

Content Guide

Pioneer appropriately rates the series 16-up. Though there is little explicit sexuality or violence, the general themes and imagery are adult and at times disturbing.

Violence: 3 - Several scenes of not overly graphic but realistic violence.

Nudity: 2 - Not much nudity per se, but there is a tasteful pan during the closing credits.

Sex/Mature Themes: 3 - Several short bits of making out and other generally mature themes, drug use among them.

Language: 3 - Not extreme, but significant profanity in a few scenes.

Notes and Trivia

General Trivia

Serial Experiments Lain is so loaded with references and symbolism that you could fill a book with interesting observations, but here are a couple that I found interesting:

To begin with, it's worth noting that the very appealing intro theme Duvet, sung entirely in English, is by boa, a British band. They are easily confused with the now very popular Korean J-pop singer BoA, who despite having sung several anime themes and having a nearly identical name, had nothing to do with Lain.

If you think that the girl in the Device previews looks a bit like Lain, you're right. She is Kaori Shimizu, Lain's voice actress, and Lain's character design was loosely based on her.

Being a bit of a computer buff, I noticed dozens of interesting and mostly quite subtle technical references throughout the production. Much of the technical end of how the Wired works (a cyberpunk-style extension of the modern Internet) is based in fact.

Technological Trivia

If you're curious, the IP (Internet Protocol) version 7 that becomes involved in later parts of the story involves real concepts; the data that you received to read this web page traveled through the Internet thanks to IP. As of 2006 most of the internet is still using IP version 4, but version 6 (the main version in use during the story) is slowly becoming more widespread (there is no version 5).

There's a relatively subtle reference in each episode to the BeOS (a next generation multimedia operating system that never went anywhere; it was eventually bought by Palm and pretty much disappeared). The "To Be Continued" phrase at the end of each episode features a blue and red "Be", which was the original logo of the BeOS. Similarly, the word "nExt" in "Close the world, Open the nExt." is a capital-inverted reference to NeXT, a lesser-known computer company founded by Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, which was later bought by Apple.

On another OS front, I'm pretty sure whoever made Lain not only used Macs but was a fan of them. First off, Lain's old Navi looks quite a bit like a 20th Anniversary Macintosh, a special edition "futuristic" machine produced in limited quantities in 1997. Second, I'm pretty sure the voice that introduces each episode is from Apple's MacInTalk speech synthesis software (specifically, the "Whisper" voice as pointed out by a reader). It has since become a narrator in other anime, such as Scryed. Third, the operating system that Lain uses shares part of its name with the code name of an old, never-released revision to the MacOS--Copland. And, finally, though this has to be a coincidence due to the date, Lain logs onto her system with a voice password, which was a feature in MacOS 9. In one of the Devices clips you can also see a real-life Mac tower in the background. There are many, many more references to spot, but those should get the Mac conspiracy theorists started.

Spoilers: Plot Summary

First, for those who saw the series spread out or just want to confirm that they "got it", here is a very loose rundown on the concrete part of the story. This isn't intended to delve into any of the symbolism or explain anything past the main points of the technical end of the plot, and do not read it unless you've already seen the series.

Essentially: in the future, a crazy man by the name of Eiri wrote a couple of additional features into the newest version of the protocol that the Wired (Internet) uses; one was his own memories and personality, making him essentially "part" of the Wired, and the other was a feature that allowed the Wired to interface directly with humans without any machine, thanks to electromagnetic resonance. As it turns out, this change in the way humans are networked brought the Wired and the human network to a new level--essentially touching the domain of God, or perhaps a Gaia-type force (alluded to as the "network of humans" that existed in the past). This is why the Wired begins to infringe on the domain of the real world. Somewhere along the way, Lain was born out of this information network, an omnipresent, omniscient being of the Wired. Eiri, or rather his Wired-integrated ego after his death, used the newfound power of the Wired to give Lain physical form as a child, a sort of hologram in the real world, unaware (initially) of her origin. Eiri thought of her as something less than him, but as she realizes what she is, it becomes clear that she is the God of the Wired, not him. In the end, she "deletes" Eiri from the Wired, and in fact "resets" the real world to a state before she entered it, and before Eiri had any effect on the Wired. But Lain continues to exist as a sort of guardian angel of the Wired (and to a degree the physical) world, always present and quietly watching.

Spoilers: Symbolism

Finally, here are a couple of things that weren't included in the review on account of being major spoilers. Again, do not read them if you haven't seen the whole thing yet.

I'd like to touch on just a couple of the religious parallels in the story. Eiri and Lain can easily be cast as Internet-age representations of Christian symbols. Eiri, the False God, is a sort of Antichrist--trying to gain control of all people, thinking of himself as a God when he is actually not. More easily, he can be interpreted as Satan, pretending to have true power and tempting Lain. Lain, in turn, is an obvious Christ figure: She is the God of the Wired (and perhaps even connected to the true God, as is at least obliquely implied by the story), but is also made flesh and experiences the world as a human. At some point, she becomes aware of her true nature, and must eventually sacrifice her Earthly form so that the world might return to a peaceful state--a forgiveness of sins, if you will. And she continues to subtly watch over this world and its inhabitants, all-knowing, not unlike Christians believe Christ does. If you want to take it a step further you can even parallel some of her trouble coming to grips with simultaneously being everywhere and knowing everything--being many Lains to many people--while still being the one Lain as an interpretation of the mystery of the Trinity (one God manifested in three persons), or even as an interpretation of the myriad of religions, each with their different deities, but perhaps all really looking at the same force.

Lain can similarly be interpreted as a representation of Zen Buddhist concepts; Lain has physical form but for her to transcend reality she must delete herself from the Real--attain a state of nothingness, so to speak. Only through completely discarding her connection to the physical world can she attain peace.

And that is enough random comments for any series.

Availability

Available in the US from Geneon (formerly Pioneer) on four hybrid Signature Series DVDs, which are re-packaged versions of the original four-disc release. The four volumes are also available in a box set. It was originally also available on four subtitled or dubbed VHS volumes, now out of print.

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