Serial Experiments Lain
Chisa Yomoda sends an email to her classmates from beyond the grave. The message claims she has abandoned her physical form to exist within the Wired, a vast virtual realm similar to the Internet. Lain Iwakura receives this letter while sitting in her quiet suburban home in Setagaya City, Tokyo. Her confusion deepens when Chisa declares she has found God inside that digital plane. The Schumann resonances, a natural property of Earth's magnetic field, could enable direct subconscious communication between humans and machines. This theory erases the distinction between the virtual and the real world. Masami Eiri exploited this possibility by embedding his own code into Protocol Seven, a next-generation Internet protocol. He transferred his consciousness into the Wired and discarded his physical body to proclaim himself its deity. A group known as the Knights of the Eastern Calculus operates as hackers who worship Masami and seek to dismantle the boundary between the two realms. Their actions induce psychological breakdowns in those unable to reconcile the two worlds. Lain experiences distortions in her perception, including visions of a woman struck by a train and phantom whispers urging her deeper into the network.
A fourteen-year-old girl named Lain uncovers her true nature through the series. She is first depicted as a shy junior high school student with few friends or interests. Later she grows multiple bolder personalities, both in the physical world and the Wired. As the series progresses, she eventually learns she is an autonomous, sentient computer program in the form of a human. This entity was designed to sever the invisible barrier between the Wired and the real world. The truth of her creation remains ambiguous, particularly whether she was truly created by Tachibana General Laboratories or by Eiri independently. In the end, Lain is challenged to accept herself as a de facto goddess for the Wired. She becomes an omnipotent and omnipresent virtual being with worshippers of her own. Her existence transcends the borders of devices, time, or space. Lain resets reality, erasing all memory of herself and restoring the division between worlds. Everyone's lives improve, but Lain is left alone, grappling with her identity as an artificial consciousness. Though forgotten, she finds solace in observing others' happiness, particularly Alice, who moves on with her life.
Masami Eiri, a former project director at Tachibana General Laboratories, illicitly included codes enabling him to control the whole protocol at will. He embedded his own mind and will into the seventh protocol before he was fired and found dead not long after. He believes that the only way for humans to evolve even further is to absolve themselves of their physical and human limitations. They must live as virtual entities or avatars in the Wired for eternity. He claims to have been Lain's creator all along, but was in truth standing in for another as an acting god. This other entity was waiting for the Wired to reach its more evolved current state: Lain herself. Masami identifies Lain as the key to merging both worlds. He attempts to persuade her through manipulation, coercion, and promises of transcendence. A popular virtual game called Phantoma is manipulated by the Knights to trap players in a distorted reality. One player, convinced his actions have no consequences, murders a girl before realizing too late that the effects were tangible. Lain witnesses this through her computer, horrified yet increasingly aware of her own role in the unfolding crisis.
Serial Experiments Lain was conceived as a series to be original to the point of it being considered an enormous risk by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda. Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement he made in an Animerica interview where he claimed that Lain was a sort of cultural war against American culture. He later explained in numerous interviews that he created Lain with a set of values he viewed as distinctly Japanese. He hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. When Ueda discovered that the American audience held most of the same views on the series as the Japanese did, he was disappointed. The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media including anime, video games, and manga. Ueda said in an interview that the approach he took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products. The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series. The series was released first despite the multimedia strategy. A dōjinshi titled The Nightmare of Fabrication was produced by Yoshitoshi Abe and released in Japanese in the artbook An Omnipresence in Wired.
Writer Chiaki Konaka wanted to directly communicate human feelings through the series. Director Ryūtarō Nakamura wanted to show the audience, particularly viewers between 14 and 15, the multidimensional wavelength of the existential self. Loneliness is recurrent throughout the story, representing a lack of communication. Friendships turn on the first rumor, and the only insert song of the series is named Kodoku no shigunaru, literally signal of loneliness. Mental illness, especially dissociative identity disorder, is a significant theme in Lain. The main character is constantly confronted with alter-egos, to the point where writer Chiaki Konaka and Lain's voice actress Kaori Shimizu had to agree on subdividing the character's dialogues between three different orthographs. The three names designate distinct versions of Lain: the real-world childish Lain has a shy attitude and bear pajamas. The advanced Lain, her Wired personality, is bold and questioning. Finally, the evil Lain is sly and devious, and does everything she can to harm Lain or the ones close to her. Reality never has the pretense of objectivity in Lain, as acceptations of the term are battling throughout the series.
Yoshitoshi Abe confesses to have never read manga as a child, as it was off-limits in his household. His major influences were nature and everything around him. Specifically speaking about Lain's character, Abe was inspired by Kenji Tsuruta, Akihiro Yamada, Range Murata and Yukinobu Hoshino. Her distinctive left forelock for instance was a demand from Yasuyuki Ueda. The goal was to produce asymmetry to reflect Lain's unstable and disconcerting nature. It was designed as a mystical symbol, as it is supposed to prevent voices and spirits from being heard by the left ear. The bear pajamas she wears were a demand from character animation director Takahiro Kishida. Though bears are a trademark of the Konaka brothers, Chiaki Konaka first opposed the idea. Director Nakamura then explained how the bear motif could be used as a shield for confrontations with her family. Lain contains extensive references to Apple computers, as the brand was used at the time by most of the creative staff. The title at the beginning of each episode is announced by the Apple computer speech synthesis program PlainTalk, using the voice Whisper.
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Common questions
What is the plot of Serial Experiments Lain?
Serial Experiments Lain follows a fourteen-year-old girl named Lain Iwakura who discovers she is an autonomous computer program designed to merge the virtual Wired with the real world. The story centers on her struggle to accept her identity as a de facto goddess for the Wired after resetting reality and erasing all memory of herself.
Who created the character Lain in Serial Experiments Lain?
The true creator of Lain remains ambiguous, though Masami Eiri claims he embedded his consciousness into Protocol Seven to become its deity while Tachibana General Laboratories may have been involved in her design. Lain was ultimately revealed to be the evolved entity waiting for the Wired to reach its current state rather than simply a product of human engineering.
When was the anime series Serial Experiments Lain released?
Serial Experiments Lain was released as a television anime series in 1998 by producer Yasuyuki Ueda. The video game scenario was written first and produced simultaneously with the anime series, which aired despite the multimedia strategy intended to connect across forms of media including manga and games.
Where does the action take place in Serial Experiments Lain?
The physical events occur primarily in Setagaya City, Tokyo, where Lain Iwakura lives in a quiet suburban home before receiving emails from beyond the grave. The narrative expands into the Wired, a vast virtual realm similar to the Internet that serves as the digital plane where characters like Chisa Yomoda claim to exist after abandoning their physical forms.
Why is loneliness a theme in Serial Experiments Lain?
Loneliness represents a lack of communication throughout the story, highlighted by the insert song named Kodoku no shigunaru or signal of loneliness. Writer Chiaki Konaka designed the series to communicate human feelings while showing viewers between 14 and 15 years old the multidimensional wavelength of the existential self through mental illness themes like dissociative identity disorder.