Serial Experiments Lain
God is in the computer...
Review by: M.H. "This is your brain on Everquest" Torringjan
Series length: 13 episodes
Genre: Mindfuck, End of Eva style.
Watched: 13 eps, subbed, three eps dubbed.
I watched this series because I saw a message that it was being released in the states and was pretty interested. I ended up picking it up in one week and watching it in that same amount of time. At the time, I hadn't seen End of Evangelion, and I was not familiar with the sheer depth that can be given to a mind-fucking. At the time, I thought I would need to go on some sort of medication just to recover from the series. Since then, I've changed my opinion to take into account the sheer damage done to me by each time I view End of Eva (approximately a thousand brain cells per viewing, or the equivalent of a bottle of beer for philosophy students, 3/4 of a bottle of Smirnoffs for non-philosophy students).
Plot summary: Lain Iwakura is a normal 13-year old girl who gets a personal computer, called a Navi, to stay up with the times, from her parents (rather a silly notion that her parents would know how to stay up with the times, but there you go). As she begins to get upgrades for the computer, she begins to hear about strange happenings in the Wired (the Internet) and notice strange things in the world around her, which leads her into a web of mystery, which oddly enough does not involve chain mails about enlarging your penis size or pornography web-sites. The mystery involves a group known as the Knights and somehow revolves around her, hence the men in black suits sitting outside of her house. When she begins hearing tales of a Lain with a different personality from her own, she begins to suspect that indeed, she is not in Kansas anymore.
Artwork: We're looking at pseudo-realism here. Most of the series is realistic, human-looking drawings, which comes out well-done, although fairly standard. Character design is somewhat similar to Kare Kano, in that it's well-done, realistic humans, although nothing to write home about. However, let's take a bit of a U-turn and look at the Wired. The abstract world of the digital realm is interestingly represented by appropriately abstract artwork, although somewhat minimalist for the most part. What appears to be some digital graphics are inserted on occasion to spice things up, and they blend in to the artwork very well, since they don't usually involve actual characters or anything like that. In addition, as the series progresses and things get weirder as far as the plot goes, the two styles start to overlap, with the realism and surrealism blurring in a really trippy way. Basically, if you were going to be watching anime on weed, I'd make Lain the first on a short list. You'd be guaranteed to get your money's worth out of the dime bag and the anime.
Music: The music in this one's got a bit of a mix in it. There's a hint of techno at times, some electric, and some accoustic music. The music blends very well into the background and sets the mood pretty well. Another nice touch was the use of silence to set the mood. There was none of this Glasser music crap to force upon the viewer, "hey, this is important!" It's a classy soundtrack and pretty well-done overall. Plus, the opening track, "Duvet" by BoA is one of the best openings I've heard anywhere. It's almost always on my Winamp list.
Characters: A short list, this one. Start out with Lain, a socially inept, shy girl who tries to get a computer to fit into the "in" crowd. That's one of my problems with this show, that it portrays computer nerds as cool-looking and popular, when that couldn't be much further from the truth. Now, if she'd at least had five-inch thick glasses, I'd have been much more sympathetic towards its choice of plot points. Anyway, Lain passes most of the series as a confused young girl trying to cope with the strange events surrounding her, trying to find the truth of her existence. She comes off as a believable, sympathetic character that most of us could relate to, and she's just darned cute in those bear pajamas! Don't ask me why she's wearing bear pajamas, she just is. Her family is a normal family, not very sociable, so we don't know much about them (other than that the father is a bit of a computer dork who actually looks like one and her sister's a little bit loose). Lain's best friend, Alice, is a girl to whom the song "Hot for Teacher" applies, fairly literally. She has a secret crush on one of the new male teachers at the school and it comes across in her fantasies and dreams. She's part of the "in" group who tries to get Lain to come out of her shell, to little avail. The characters are fairly thin to start out, but develop as the show goes along. As such, if I told you much more about them, I'd have to kill you.
Plot: The mystery begins when a girl at Lain's school kills herself by jumping from a building and Lain starts seeing things. The mystery unravels in a somewhat jerky manner, witrh revelations usually coming in awkward places and not really explained until the end. This is definitely a series you'll have to watch more than once if you're going to get anything out of it, unless you're on the aforementioned weed, in which case you can watch the first episode over and over again and get something new out of it each time. The depth of the philosophical issues covered in this range to the relationship of man and technology, the nature of religion, and how to find a good cream donut (trust me, I'm sure you could say it was in there somewhere). Definitely not something you'd want to watch if you don't want to think about stuff or if you want everything explained in meticulous detail and alphabetized.
CHICKS!! Zippo. Nada, nothing, zero, nil, negatory, big goose egg, empty-handed, rien, uh-uh. Okay, so I'm ignoring the lolicon people who could potentially be reading this page. If you guys (and you know who you are) want it, Lain's confused situation lend you to feel for her, and I'd be willing to say that she might even need a hug during most of the series. If only she'd take those damned bear pajamas off... Alice, her only real friend, seems a bit more mature and mentally stable and less likely to try to convince you that you're all just programs in a computer (definitely more entertaining on a date). Give her a couple of years to fill out and come of statutory age, and she'll definitely be a more viable target for any otaku's lust (at one point in the series, you get to see her at an older age, and she looks pretty darned good, if I do say so myself).
Overall: This series really pulled me in during the first episode with the abstract images and mysterious ambiance, and later on, when it really started to get into the issues that it was going to deal with, my interest was only cemented. The level of intellectual investment required to understand this series is an attractive feature for people such as myself, who really prefer thinking about the things that he watches. Meanwhile, it's a much less arduous task to understand this series than it is to understand, say, End of Eva or RahXephon. In all, this series is a nice addition to anyone's list of "seen" animes, even if only so that you can say to other people, "Hey, I survived Serial Experiments Lain!"
In a Nutshell:
+ Intellectual series
+ Yet still comprehensible
+ Appropriate artwork
+ Nice soundtrack
- Some characters not very deep
Final grade: 9/10
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