Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain is an anime series. It was made by Yasuyuki Ueda. It first started airing on July 6, 1998 and ended on September 28, 1998.^[1] It was made by Triangle Staff.^[2] It follows a young girl named Lain Iwakura she explores her connection to a digital network called the Wired. The theme song for the series is "Duvet" by the British rock band Bôa.^[3]

A video game of the same name was released on November 26, 1998 only in Japan.^[4] Lain character designer Yoshitoshi Abe also released a dōjinshi titled The Nightmare of Fabrication in May 1999.^[5]

The show was popular and well liked. The anime was described as "weird" and different by critics because of the show's artistic and writing choices but they enjoyed the show anyways.^[6][7] Critics praised the clean designs of the characters and soundtrack.^[8] Serial Experiments Lain was awarded the Excellence Prize at the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival.^[9]

Plot

The series follows a young girl named Lain Iwakura who is living in Setagaya City, Tokyo. Chisa Yomoda, a classmate of Lain's jumps off a building and commits suicide. After this, Lain in her class begin to receive emails from Chisa. The emails state that Chisa had only given up her physical form and was still alive in the Wired (similar to the internet) with "God". After receiving these emails, Lain begins to become interested in computers and asks her father for a new Navi computer. After researching for a while, Lain starts to hallucinate, with the hallucinations urging her to join the Wired.

Lain is told by her classmates Alice, Julie, and Reika that they went to a nightclub called Cyberia and somebody there looked exactly like Lain but had a different personality. Lain goes to the club to investigate after getting an email and sees a boy under the effects of a drug called Accela, which causes the user to have increased brain stimulation. The boy is shooting a gun off in the club before Lain approaches him. He yells that "you made me do this!" which she replies with "No matter where you are, we humans are all connected." The boy begin to cry before putting the gun in his mouth and shooting himself. The next day, she receives a letter in her locker with a device called a Psych chip. She does some research and finds out that Psych was made by a group of hackers called the Knights of the Eastern Calculus. Lain starts to hear about a video game called Phantoma which was popular with the kids who were dying recently. She enters the Wired to watch a boy play it and watches him shoots a woman. She later finds out that this game was created by the Knights and is almost killed by two men who are standing outside of her house. She ends up using her power to shatter the headset of one of the men.

After some more research on the game, Lain finds out that a professor named Hodgson worked on a experiment called the KIDS System. The system stored the PSI abilities of children. She ends up tracking the professor down and confronting him about it. The professor stated that the point of the experiment was to see what would happen if the stored forces of many children were combined. Many children were killed during these experiments and he tried to hide the existence of it but it was leaked to the public by a lab technician named Masami Eiri. Masami was responsible for the thought of getting rid of the physical body to live on the Wired and called this Protocol Seven, saying it was the only way to survive. Masami created Lain to be a holder for Protocol Seven and was later found dead. Lain's father Yasuo Iwakura also worked on the experiment with Masami and took Lain in as his own when Masami died. Yasuo erased the memory of Lain so she didn't know that she was holding Protocol Seven.

After the two men show up at her house again, she goes out to confront them before her house blows up. The two men then reveal that the Knights sent a parasite bomb to her computer's cooling system and drive off. After seeing the men again some time later, she goes with them and they drive to Tachibana Lab where she is told that the Knights want to use her for something and they need to be stopped. She gets angry and leaves. At school, Lain is accused of spreading rumours about a classmate named Alice and denies it, with Alice believing her. Lain attempts to find out what happened and comes face-to-face with an evil Lain that was created by the Knights. After receiving a chip, she starts to relive all the memories which her father erased. After she finds Masami Eiri, she rejects his attempts to have her follow him into the Wired. Lain then reveals the names and identities of members of the Knights which leads to many of them either being murdered or committing suicide. The men in black try to rewrite Protocol Seven but are betrayed by their boss and killed by the Evil Lain.

Lain feels like she is constantly hurting those around her because of her existence and being a bridge between the real world and the Wired. She decided to erase her memories and reset the world so those that live can have better life.