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TV anime, 1998

Serial Experiments Lain

A thirteen-episode television series about a quiet girl, a computer network called the Wired, and the question of where a person ends when everyone is connected.

The story

Lain Iwakura is fourteen and lives with her family in suburban Tokyo. She is withdrawn, barely speaks at school, and has little interest in computers. Then a classmate, Chisa Yomoda, takes her own life, and days later students start getting emails from her. Chisa writes that she only gave up her body: she now lives in the Wired, and God is there.

Lain asks her father for a better computer and starts going online. The deeper she goes, the stranger her life becomes: people in the Wired know her as someone bolder and crueler, a club in Shibuya talks about a "Lain" she has never been, and men in black suits start watching her house. The series follows her as the line between the network and the real world, and between Lain and the other Lains, gives way.

People

Lain Iwakura
The shy student at the center of the story, who turns out to be more than one person.
Alice Mizuki
Her classmate and only real friend.
Masami Eiri
A designer of the network protocol that runs the Wired, who claims to be its god.
Yasuo Iwakura
Lain's father, absorbed in his computers.
Mika Iwakura
Her older sister, indifferent to her until the Wired reaches her too.

Themes

Lain is about communication and loneliness, about identity and memory, and about what is real once most of life happens over a network. It mixes school drama, cyberpunk and horror, and was made at the moment the internet was reaching ordinary homes, which is why it is often called prophetic.

Credits

DirectorRyūtarō Nakamura
WriterChiaki J. Konaka
Character designYoshitoshi ABe (original), Takahiro Kishida (animation)
ProducersYasuyuki Ueda, Shojiro Abe
AnimationTriangle Staff
Opening"Duvet" by Bôa
AiredJuly to September 1998, late Monday nights on TV Tokyo
Episodes13 ("Layers")

After 1998

The series won an Excellence Prize at the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival and is counted among the most important anime of the 1990s. It was released in English and shown on TechTV in the United States in 2003; Funimation has held the North American license since 2010. The PlayStation game, a separate story by the same team, came out in Japan on 26 November 1998.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org archived · ja.wikipedia.org archived · Anime News Network archived · Japan Media Arts Festival archived · Konaka's lain pages archived

In Japanese

The title is written all in lower case, serial experiments lain, and read シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン. Lain's name is 岩倉玲音. How the series was sold:

聞こえないはずの声が聞こえる、来ないはずのメールが届く・・・。
Kikoenai hazu no koe ga kikoeru, konai hazu no meeru ga todoku...
You hear a voice you should not hear; an email arrives that should never come... (2005 TV-BOX copy)
ミッドナイトサイコホラーTVシリーズ
middonaito saiko horaa TV shiriizu
Midnight psycho-horror TV series (DVD lif.02 and TV-BOX copy)
深夜TV放映&PSゲームで話題騒然の新感覚サイコアニメ
shin'ya TV hoei to PS geemu de wadai sozen no shinkankaku saiko anime
The new kind of psycho anime causing a stir on late-night TV and PlayStation (Pioneer release page, lif.01)
存在は認識=意識の接続によって定義され、人はみな繋がれている。記憶はただの記録にすぎない。
Sonzai wa ninshiki = ishiki no setsuzoku ni yotte teigi sare, hito wa mina tsunagarete iru. Kioku wa tada no kiroku ni suginai.
Existence is defined by awareness, the linking of minds, and everyone is wired together. Memory is nothing more than a record. (World premise as given by Japanese Wikipedia, where it was added without a source by an anonymous editor on 31 August 2004 (originally 記憶とは); no official source has been found)

And a few lines from the series:

あたしは、ただ肉体を捨てただけ。
Atashi wa, tada nikutai o suteta dake.
All I did was throw away my body. (Chisa Yomoda (email), Layer:01 WEIRD)
どこにいたって、人は繋がっているのよ。
Doko ni itatte, hito wa tsunagatte iru no yo.
Wherever you are, people are connected. (Lain, Layer:02 GIRLS)
リアルワールドと混同してはいけない。
Riaru waarudo to kondou shite wa ikenai.
You must not mix it up with the real world. (Yasuo Iwakura (Lain's father), Layer:04 RELIGION)
不思議な感情ですね、愛というものは。
Fushigi na kanjou desu ne, ai to iu mono wa.
Love is a strange feeling, isn't it. (Karl (Men in Black), Layer:10 LOVE)
あなたは確かにワイヤードでは神様だった。
Anata wa tashika ni waiyaado de wa kamisama datta.
In the Wired you really were a god. (Lain, to Masami Eiri, Layer:12 LANDSCAPE)
玲音は神様なんだよ。
Rein wa kamisama nan da yo.
Lain is God, you know. (the other Lain, Layer:13 EGO)
神様になっちゃえば楽じゃない。
Kamisama ni nacchaeba raku janai.
Wouldn't it be easier to just become God? (the other Lain, Layer:13 EGO)
明日の天気はどうなるの？
Ashita no tenki wa dou naru no?
What will the weather be tomorrow? (Weather Break end card (on-screen text), Layer:02 GIRLS)

Translations are the archive's own. Sources: ja.wikipedia.org archived · serial-experiments-lain.com archived · the episodes

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