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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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• Edit source

Taro ( タロウ ) is a character of the anime series Serial Experiments Lain .

He is young boy of about Lain 's age. Despite not a member, he occasionally works for the Knights to bring forth "the one truth".

• 2 Personality

He first appears in Cyberia with his friends, Myu-Myu and Masayuki . It's the first time that him and Lain met as they see each other on the club's stairs.

When she receives a Psyche , Lain goes to the Cyberia to ask to Taro and his friends what it is and how to use it. Taro is the first to recognize Lain as he saw her once in the Wired but, at the time, she seems like a completely different person. He then asks Lain on a date but only with her Wired-self.

We see later Taro bumping into Mika in the street, spilling soda on her sleeve. Although it can be see as an accident, it can also be seen as him participating in a plan from the Knights with the goal to bring Mika into her insanity. Later she will try to clean her sleeve with the tissue containing the message that will make her crazy.

As he was playing VR games, Lain comes to him asking him what he knows about a God in the Wired. Later she will come to him once again in Cyberia to go out with him like he proposed the first time. He at first doesn't want to, insisting he wants the Lain from the Wired to go with him, but she convinces him by proving him that she can be her Wired-self. The date is a trap, Lain discovered that he was working with the Kinghts and wants an explanation from him. Forced by Lain, he confesses that he's not a formal of member of the Knights, so he doesn't know everything, but he knows that they are "overwriting" memories starting with the people in Cyberia and that they then wanted to do this on Lain herself. The Knights want the "truth" to become into a reality. He then kisses her and leaves.

He's later seen in an empty Cyberia with his friends. First to discover that all the Kinghts have been listed on the net and then a second time listening to Lain's message on the Wired. He then understands the real nature of Lain calling her "an angel".

After Lain rebooted reality, Taro is seen one last time with his friends on the street. He recieves a cryptic message from Lain but since he doesn't know who she is anymore, he just stays confused. He finally hangs out his NAVI and goes find Myu-Myu and Masayuki .

Personality [ ]

Taro loves VR games and hangs out all day at Cyberia with his friends, Myu-Myu and Masayuki . He uses special technology, such as custom Handi Navi and video goggles. Taro takes pride in his internet anonymity.

Despite being Myu-myu's boyfriend, Taro is prone to flirt with other girls, he asks out both Lain and Mika .

Affiliations [ ]

Taro asked Lain for a date but with her Wired self in exchange for information. He gained a quiet fascination for Lain and her Wired self, leading him to kiss Lain one time.

“ Information isn't free, not in the Wired or in the real world. ” — Episode 03

“ Most people take on a personality in the Wired that's different than what they have in the real world but yours are total opposites. ” — Episode 03

“ I want the wild Lain. ” — Episode 03

“ Mind if I hit on you? ” — Episode 05

“ Nobody knows if there is or not. It doesn't matter to the user if God exists in the Wired ” — Episode 05

“ Nobody knows what's fun and why. ” — Episode 05

“ The Knights are users who are fighting to make only the truth there is into a reality. ” — Episode 09

“ The truth has power because it's the truth. And because it's the truth, that make it just. It's persuasive, isn't it? Don't you want truth like that? ” — Episode 09

“ Hey, it's a date, you know? I'm a guy. I had to do that. ” — Episode 09

“ I kissed an angel! ” — Episode 12

minor edit source: https://twitter.com/lainscreens

Gallery [ ]

• 1 Lain Iwakura
• 2 Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain: The 10 Most Confusing Things About The Anime, Finally Explained

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Serial Experiments Lain is perhaps one of the most important cyberpunk anime shows— and one of the weirdest isekai —to have come out in a long time. First of all, there are the minimalist design choices in animation that fans either loved, or that turned off anyone who wasn't ready for the stripped-down style it was going to offer. The story, instead of focusing on a dystopia created by a hyper-capitalist nightmare corporatocracy, was done in a very tasteful way that instead decides to focus on Lain, a young schoolgirl who suddenly develops an interest in computers and the world of the virtual.

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While the show is pretty much unanimously considered groundbreaking, that doesn't mean it isn't also confusing. In this article, we'll be digging into some of the more obscure parts of the show and checking out some background to hopefully dispel some of the mystery surrounding the story.

10 The Bodhisattva

In Buddhism, we encounter a concept known as the Bodhisattva. In the oldest branch of Buddhism, Theravada, we see that, when someone becomes enlightened, they become something called an Arahat, which is someone who is enlightened on their own and then enters Nirvana.

When the Mahayana tradition started, they decided that a true benevolent enlightened person would instead become enlightened so that they could save all of the other unenlightened people and not abide in Nirvana just yet. If we look at  Lain and the way it plays out, when she enters The Wired, she decides on the latter, existing as a goddess between both worlds, knowing that she would meet Alice again in The Wired at some time in the future.

9 The Flow Of Time Is Convoluted

There's a very strange thing going on in Lain, perhaps one of the things that makes it the most difficult thing to follow. The issue here is that we really can't tell what's happening when while we're watching Lain. If she herself is the thing that exists to make the distinction between The Wired and the real world disappear, how is she already the god of The Wired? How does that make sense?

The answer is a concept known in science as non-linear causality. Non-linear causality means that things that happen in the past can affect the future—which is normal causality, the way we tend to think about it—and that things in the future can have an effect on the past .  Lain is an infinite loop, a snake eating its own tail.

8 Schumann Resonances And Consensus Reality

This is where it gets particularly complicated. The idea used in the series is that of the Schumann Resonance. The Schumann Resonance doesn't necessarily hold up when we shine the light of science on it, but that doesn't mean it can't work in the show. They're basically frequencies that humans can't hear but that surrounds our planet.

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In the show, they're depicted as a way for The Wired to spread all throughout humanity, reaching every individual on the planet. This is pretty much given as the explanation for why there's no distinction between everyone else and Lain at the end of the series, as Lain, at that point, basically is The Wired.

7 If Everyone's Special, No One Is

Feeding directly into this entry from the last one is the fact that the end of the series... doesn't necessarily mean anything? If time flows in a way that isn't constant and the future can have an effect on the past and vice-versa, why does it matter that Lain is essentially God at the end of the series?

After she has her encounter with him, watching how intensely he wants it to be true that he is indeed God, she essentially takes on the characteristics of a Goddess. But also, when she goes back to the real world despite the fact that she now is everyone, Alice doesn't remember her at all.

6 One, Both, Or Neither?

What is the world at this point? When Lain finishes becoming God, she has the ability to exist in The Wired, in-between the two of them, or in the real world. But, what are any of these places? Are they at all distinguishable from each other?

As far as we can see in the series, there really isn't a distinction made between any of these places. There are merely minor differences. While Alice doesn't recognize Lain at the end of the series, this most likely doesn't matter since technically, Lain is  Alice. The distinctions between self and others have disappeared.

5 Free Will Or Determinism?

Lain is both the ticket that Masami Eiri needs to make sure that the lines between The Wired and the real world disappear, but, at the same time, she's a child. She has a family. She has a bit of a social life, even though we see that she only has a couple of friends, and the friends that she does have don't exactly treat her like she's valuable.

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Another thing is that she doesn't really have a social life until the series starts. If her father explains that he didn't enjoy "playing house" at the end of the series, it would make sense that Lain's life happened in a way that meant the point-events in her life were predetermined. Lain had no choice in the manner. That being said, she is the goddess of The Wired, so that means... she played herself.

4 Solipsism

Solipsism is an interesting concept that shows up in tons of different philosophical frameworks, and, heck, in a lot of psychoses and sci-fi , as well. Solipsism is the belief that one's self is the only thing that exists. This can manifest itself in tons of different forms. These can be that everyone around the solipsist isn't actually real, and that they're just a simulation of an actual functional person, or that the solipsist lives in a simulation entirely.

The fact that Lain also has what could be considered multiple personalities also means that the whole thing could be chalked up to mental illness.

3 Who Are The Knights Of The Eastern Calculus?

The Knights Of The Eastern Calculus aren't exactly a real organization, but, in  Lain , they're a shadowy organization that does their best to monitor Lain and anyone who's trying to muck up what they have going on with The Wired, rolling around in dark black cars, wearing black suits, etc. They're basically like the Men In Black of the Lain universe.

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In real life, it's an organization that probably got "created" as a joke at MIT, with various "members" passing pins around to other people who got invited into the secret hacker group.

2 Objectively Speaking...

The most interesting thing about  Lain perhaps is the differentiation between subject and object in everyday life, or perhaps the lack thereof. The creators of the anime actually specifically said that they didn't want the show to mired in the dualism of subjectivity or objectivity, which is why they made sure to ground the series so firmly around Lain.

The events of the show could have happened objectively in the real world, just in Lain's head as a manifestation of illness, or not at all. At the end of the day, there's no way to tell and that's done intentionally.

1  To Be Or Not To Be

Perhaps one of the greatest fears for Lain, and indeed for anyone who starts to ponder existential questions, is that, after one achieves "Enlightenment," is that it may be preferable not to exist at all. In  Lain , this takes the form of Lain following her urges to dive deeper and deeper into The Wired with reckless abandon, regardless of what the implications are.

By the time we reach the end of the show, however, it really doesn't matter because Lain both exists and doesn't exist, depending on the individual manifestation we're looking at. There's really no way to explain all of this with words , but that doesn't mean that we have anything else to go on in the show, unfortunately.  Great sci-fi, though !

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