Reflection on Alice and Lain
When Eiri created Lain, he knew so well that he was creating something that could be more powerful than himself. Therefore, Lain was created to be a small girl, emotionally dependent and vulnerable, self-doubting, even with low self esteem. Even Alice, Lain's best friend, wanted her to be less withdrawn and be more positive. However, this 'weakness' turned out to be her greatest strength.
In the show, Alice had two dreams; one was to help Lain to become more 'normal'; another was to go out with her teacher. However, everything went terribly wrong.
Indeed, Lain became more 'normal', happy and positive at the end of Layer 11 and the beginning of Layer 12, but she was far more than 'normal'. First, the evil Lain, intruded into Alice's room and hurt Alice deeply. Then, in order to make up for this intrusion, Lain further intruded into Alice's memory (To be exact, Lain intruded into everyone's memory except Alice, and Alice felt intruded because she was the only one who knew and the only one who was left behind.). Lain thought that Alice would appreciate how 'normal' she was now, but she was portrayed as 'the object of horror' in Alice's eyes especially at the last shot in Layer 11.
In order to turn the rumour around, Lain replaced one of the main characters of the rumour, Alice, with another girl. Surely, Alice was hurt by the rumour, but she was more concerned having a fulfilling relationship with her teacher, even if the rumour had to exist. This can be seen from Alice's response when Julie offered a 'solution' by arranging her to go out with a guy. Lain misjudged what Alice really wanted and hurt her even deeper.
Lain actually could change Alice's memory too. However, she did not. It was because she would like her best friend to know her true identity, and understood what she had done for her.
The climax of the show was the visit of Alice to Lain's room.
(Alice) Why did you left only my memory?
(Alice) Why? Why only I have to remember the painful memory?
(Alice) Do you hate me so much? Lain?
(Alice) I can no longer bear this...
(Script translated by Keisuke Shindo)
Alice complained bitterly and she even questioned Lain that she hated her. From the analysis about, Lain did make a serious mistake because she did not understand Alice's need.
(Alice) I 'm not sure. But I think you are wrong.
(Script translated by Keisuke Shindo)
So who was wrong about the reality. Theoretically, Lain's understanding was much more complete than Alice's. However, for Alice, all the matter to her was the physical world, and the Wired was just a more advance communication tool then the phone. And that was why she could not comprehend what Lain did.
(Lain) As you already lost your flesh, you can no longer understand it.
(Script translated by Keisuke Shindo)
How would Lain react? She had two obvious choices:
1. Did what Alice ask - deleted her memory too.
2. Did what Eiri say - took control of Alice's brain.
Lain did not take neither, because she was created as a vulnerable school girl in flesh and so she could empathise the limitation of the flesh. She protected Alice's right to be ignorant about the Wired and let Alice be Alice, and the world be the world again.
Lain was originally created to doubt her existence to order to find Eiri, however, this self-doubting attitude was more powerful than that. Self-doubting could be a positive instrument for her to understand more about her action and prevent her from hurting others. In this case, Lain had reflected and found out she should not continue to take control of Alice, and Alice should remain Alice.
Other commented that where would Lain be without Alice and Alice was the heroine. I agreed totally with them. However, Eiri was defeated also because Lain was vulnerable and emotional. In other words, Lain defeated Eiri with her power of empathy, which Eiri had abandoned.
One question that troubled me so much was that why Lain would not just go back and 'pretend' to be a 'normal' school girl in the physical world again. It was good that the world was reset and no one died, but Lain did not have to withdraw herself from the physical world.
I think that Lain was created to be emotional and she valued her relationship with Alice so highly that she would never let anything went wrong again. If she returned to the physical world, would evil Lain appear again? Would Alice eventually discover the 'truth' of Lain's nature again? Yes, things might be fine if she returned, but she could not handle failure again.
Indeed, Lain did not understand why she did the resetting and why she withdrew from the whole scene totally in the beginning. However, things gradually became clear to her as she became more mature.
Though Alice was such a nice and charming girl that I believed no man could resist, but I tended to believe that Lain arranged for Alice the right time and the right place so that her relationship with her teacher could happen. Lain was studying in grade 2 of the junior high school in Layer 03 and at the end of the show Alice was a student teacher when she finally got together with her teacher, this must be quite a number of years.
From my own experience, I heard that one of my former teacher was going out with my former classmate. I could not even confirm it because both of them did not make any 'official' comment. In the story I heard, the guy was quite defensive though everyone of us who heard this story thought that they were doing nothing wrong. We are all grown up, and anyone is free to fall in love with another person. On the contrary, we are actually surprised that the rumour that we heard in high school was real and they were still together. Therefore, it was very difficult for a teacher-student relationship to work and I believed that Lain arranged it in the background and rescued it from all kinds of danger.
(Lain2) Do you think that humans need to know it?
...
(Lain) How do you do?
(Alice) What?
(Lain) It's "How do you do".
(Script translated by Keisuke Shindo)
Following this logic, in the last scene, Lain just returned to the physical world to check if her arrangement worked. One sign of growing in maturity was the ability acceptance the reality as it was. She accepted that Alice could not understand her true identity because of her physical limitation and so she tried even not to make Alice remember her. She also understood that Alice did not need to know that she helped her. She was already satisfied when she observed both of them from the bridge.
It was really a sad ending as there was practically no memory of Lain in Alice. However, Alice would live in Lain to help her to become 'the caring goddess of the Wired'. She would always remember Alice's caring attitude (Please refer to here for various theories on the fate of Lain) and respect human's limitation. Alice would manifest herself in every actions that Lain made.
The lesson that I learnt are:
1. Even we help someone, he or she may not like it, because we do not understand them.
2. If we help someone, it is not necessary for him or her to have the memory of being help. The memory in us is enough.
3. Even if you are far away from an important friend, he or she will manifest in your daily actions.
4. Being vulnerable is important; it is part of humanity.
May I elaborate on the last point a bit. In this so called 'knowledge' society, we are expected to have lifelong learning, go to a University and 'upgrade' ourselves even after college... We are expected to be 'upwardly mobile' - jump from job to job and have a salary increase for each jump, buy a bigger house when the current mortgage is paid back half for investment, etc. Just be smart and do all the right decisions. Sometimes I just wonder if these are the right things to do and the right way to live. In Eiri's eye, human had to evolve to a higher level of intelligence through Lain, but the creators of Lain told us through Lain this was not right. I think that we need to live a human life and experience both good and bad things in life. Face the bad elements and put a proper value on it. Do not just label it 'terrible' and hide it because one day it will come out again. I hope that you can have a glimpse of it when I worked through the sadness in Lain, though working through it will not make it go away. I encourage you to work out your version of the understanding of the sadness in Lain too.
If Lain was not vulnerable and the story ended in a happy way, it would never had such an impact on me.
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