Serial Experiments Lain Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-08-05 (updated 2013-08-29)
• 4 stars out of 5 (?)

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.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-08-05 (updated 2013-08-29)
• 4 stars out of 5 (?)

Before the opening credits even roll, when an edgy voice cackles out "Present day... present time" in English, you get the sense that Serial Experiments Lain is something different. Slow, surreal, layered with symbolism and a vague, wandering non-story, it 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.

Serial Experiments Lain is a piece of truly impressive filmmaking, 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.

The production has the look and feel of a music video or an issue of Wired magazine--constantly shifting, colorful, abstract, and filled with barely comprehensible information. Despite this, it is most definitely not fast-paced--even though the story jumps, twists, and weaves around reality, it does so at pace that is at times maddeningly slow. It establishes an uncomfortable stillness, interrupted by sudden bursts of motion, information, or departures from "reality" that keep you constantly off-guard, never quite sure what to expect next. Guessing what will happen next is particularly hard since you're never quite sure what's happening to begin with, and when the series eventually does begin to explain itself, it's even weirder than you might think.

Lain is surreal in the truest sense of the word: There is a definite "real world," but there is a sense that something is terribly wrong with this reality. There are constant departures, both subtle and not, from what appears to be reality, and you're never exactly sure what is real, what is a hallucination, what is connected to the Wired, or the why of any of it. Add to that a creepy mood--varying from vaguely unnerving to subtly frightening--and you have a show that is unsettling to watch yet absolutely engrossing.

On a more analytical level, Lain explores the ever-blurring line between the real world and interaction over the Internet--unusually accurately for something produced in 1998--and how this affects individual interactions and civilization. This is achieved through the various levels that the story takes place on, and the fuzzy border between them.

First is the Real: Lain's life is an exaggerated analogy of the modern Japanese teen, consisting of a nearly-non-existent family relationship and some relatively normal friends. Her life, however, seems somehow detached and drained of emotion, and paints a picture of extreme alienation despite an outwardly normal setting.

Then, in a prescient reference to modern blogs, there are levels of rumor. We see parts of various deaths and hear allusions to everything from grand conspiracies to Lain's exploits, but the word is spread through rumors in the Wired--almost fact, but not quite.

More detached still are the events at Cyberia, a place as familiar as the local dance club but that seems to be unconnected from the real world. Then there are ventures into the Wired, which vary from the completely abstract to the mundane. Finally there are Lain's visions, which hint at some connection between everything.

All of these levels are constantly overlapping and mixing, and you have the feeling that it will all come together somehow (which it eventually does). Adding an additional unsettling touch, Lain's childish look makes otherwise normal scenes--working on a computer, a group of friends in a dance club, a police interrogation--seem not quite right. Clever, weird, and entirely confusing, but undeniably unique storytelling.

Unfortunately, as strong as Lain is on a visceral level, the intellectual aspect of the story is its sole weak point. The first part effectively has no story, which, though disorienting, works surprisingly well. As the series progresses, we start to get fragments of the big picture, and the more it makes sense the weaker the series becomes.

The worst of it is the middle stretch, where Lain begins to seek out answers to all the questions raised. Lain (and hence the viewer) is given a series of facts and left to put them together into a semi-coherent picture. Conceptually, this is fine--challenging to the viewer, and it leaves enough unsaid that it's hard to complain about any logical flaws. But it also feels forced--the info-dumps are far too straightforward and too close to standard anime sci-fi to blend comfortably with the surrealist mood. Along with the explanations come metaphysical rambling--bordering on pseudo-religious conspiracy theory--that fit better, but are a standard feature in too many anime shows.

Once the story has been (vaguely) laid out, the series moves into its final stretch and regains some of its footing. As the climax approaches, fractured reality returns in force, and the story begins to take on an emotional tone, something that had been conspicuously absent. Cleverly, the palpable alienation has left you desperately craving emotion, heightening the impact. The themes also take on an apocalyptic edge which, while slightly out-of-scale, held my attention and builds the story to its crescendo.

The series finally lays out its (perhaps too simple) message in a short, simple, and powerfully touching scene near the end. On the unfortunate side, the introduction of a clear "bad guy," albeit a creepy one, is entirely unnecessary, and the heavy-handed metaphysical questions keep coming. I was also disappointed by the conclusion in the last episode. Simultaneously concrete and wildly metaphysical, it makes perfect sense within the story, and is every bit as strange as the rest of the series demands. Even so, it's far too clean for my taste, and felt like a cop-out when compared to the rest of the series.

Once the series is over and you start thinking about it, another problem crops up. Though many of the fragments fit together in the end, there are a number of creepy sub-plots and hints that never go anywhere, and are never explained. Had everything been abstract and mysterious, I wouldn't have minded at all, but once I was given a framework to put the pieces into I expected most of them to fit somewhere. Some bits are just there to make a good scene and others are sidelights of the larger story, but the ones that are seemingly forgotten toward the end (like Lain's sister) feel more like oversights than intentional mysteries.

In all, the first part is visceral and spectacular, but the more sense the series makes, and the more it tries to explicitly discuss its "point," the worse it gets. Nonetheless, the steady-handed direction and fascinating imagery held my attention from beginning to end.

Indeed, so much of the story is told visually that the unique imagery doesn't just mesh with it, it defines it. Some of the best parts of the series are a purely sensory experience. On one hand there are a host of images and unusual effects more at home in an experimental short film than an anime TV series. The heavily symbolic Wired is cast as a land of disembodied parts and locations, interacting in an otherwise empty void, and even some of the backgrounds in the Real are completely abstract. In sharp and effective contrast are realistic computer hardware and everyday places. Yet even the most mundane locales are given an unsettling look by an eerie splattered effect in the shadows, and much of the art manages to make normal locations seem to be something more through strange lighting, harsh shadows, and uncomfortable camera angles.

The character designs are unusual, yet realistic in their own way--they're not shaped like real people, but the Japanese schoolkids look the part, without exaggerated hair or huge busts. The eyes--which many scenes feature important close-ups of--are realistic and small by anime standards, with pupils that are expressive and out of the ordinary. The rest of the character animation is of similarly high quality. The facial expressions in particular are understated, effective, and occasionally very creepy. While there isn't a lot of animation and it isn't notably smooth, it isn't at all detrimental to the air of quality. Appropriately, there is pervasive use of computers for the visuals, both subtle and not. The computer displays are digitally painted (even if they are abstract and don't look much like the real thing), and digitally composited cel art on top of computer-generated backgrounds gives the whole thing a clean, superrealistic look. The only flaw is the character art, which is occasionally inconsistent.

The experience of watching Lain is complimented not by a musical soundtrack, but by a masterfully subtle soundscape. Almost every scene features some sort of ambient noise--chattering conversation, humming transformers, the soft scratching of a hard drive, chalk relentlessly tapping on the board in a motionless classroom. These sounds are much more unnerving than any music could have been, and are an integral part of many scenes. It's well worth watching in a quiet room with the volume turned up to properly appreciate the sound design.

The only music in the series is the thumping dance beats at Cyberia, but the opening and end theme are 180 degrees from the anime norm: A lovely, folksy, alternative tune by British group Boa for the opening (accompanied by appropriately weird imagery), and a low-key techno end theme by Chabo, who also scored the few bits of background music.

The acting is appropriately low key and well cast in both Japanese and English. The Japanese is the better of the two--all-around good acting with the right balance of normal schoolgirls, the strange inhabitants of Cyberia, and Lain's near-emotionless monotone, provided by Kaori Shimizu. It also fits the location better, of course. The acting in the English dub is solid, but some of the writing is a little overzealous.

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. The whole series isn't, unfortunately, as strong as the early parts--as it gets more concretely weird it loses some of its mystery--but the exquisite filmmaking and mind-bending nature of the initial episodes carries through to the end. Most definitely not for everyone, but an engrossing experiment and a complete departure from the norm.

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Related Recommendations

There is nothing quite like Serial Experiments Lain; Boogiepop Phantom and Ghost in the Shell both have notable similarities which I'd like to go into in some detail, but first a few other notably similar things.

The closest, paritcularly in terms of soundscape, would be Ghost Hound, although that series has a somewhat more conventional narrative style. Perfect Blue has the very similar themes of Internet rumors and deteriorating reality, but is a much more concrete movie. Vampire Princess Miyu (the OAVs) is vaguely similar for the generally unsettling feel, and Revolutionary Girl Utena is worth a mention for the heavy symbolism, even though the execution is the diametric opposite of Lain's.

As for Ghost in the Shell (the original film), it and Lain are similar inasmuch as they both examine the boundary between the human mind and technology, and they are both slow, deliberate, and set in a realistic future world. But there is a subtle difference in the theme of the two that carries through into a drastically different style of storytelling. Where Ghost in the Shell focuses on the boundary between the human mind and body, and what makes a mind, Lain is more interested in the boundary between the mind and the worldwide network, and the boundaries of reality in a networked age; Ghost in the Shell is a movie about cybernetics and artificial intelligence, where Lain is about the Internet.

Ghost in the Shell's sequel, Innocence, and the Stand Alone Complex TV series (particularly Second Gig) touch on these themes of networking more, but both movies are differentiated less by the destination than the road to it. In Ghost in the Shell, every action and motion is deliberate and planned, and although the fabric of reality is discussed and questioned by the characters, it is solid--it is the perception of it that is flawed. The reality of Lain is constantly in a state of flux, occasionally throwing you off balance with a barrage of images or sound, and never letting you quite get your bearings.

I discuss the similarities with Boogiepop Phantom in that review, but in a nutshell: Lain is an abstract and surrealist metaphysical story that always keeps you at an emotional arm's length from the characters. Boogiepop Phantom is an equally twisting but very concrete story where the viewer's standpoint is all too close to the tortured psyches of its characters. Lain depicts the breakdown of external reality, where Boogiepop Phantom does the same for the breakdown of an individual's perception of outside reality.