It’s sometimes interesting to note how time can often change our understanding of certain cultural touchstones. For Serial Experiments Lain, time has lifted the anime to cult classic status within the medium that’s still remembered through pop-up shops, online Club Cyberia music broadcasts and more. Yet the other elements of what was once a Serial Experiments Lain multimedia project featuring a one-shot manga, a PS1 game, and music have been forgotten to the sands of time.

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Lain - Code T-Shirt. By chiselovesong. $20 $13 10:27:27. Serial Experiments Lain T-Shirt. Design inspired by the one-shot manga by Serial Experiments Lain, 'The Nightmare of Fabrication', with the possibility of interaction (QR codes with hyperlink to the comic). Serial Experiments Lain PS 1 مترجمة. Addeddate 2021-06-24 22:28:58 Identifier serial-experiments-lain-ps-1 Identifier-ark. Serial Experiments Lain was also the groundbreaking anime that introduced the rest of the world to the artwork and style of Yoshitoshi ABe; it also inspired a game and manga (The Nightmare of Fabrication). Consisting of 13 episodes, Serial Experiments Lain aired between July 6 and September 28, 1998.

Meanwhile, the content of the show, which at the time could be interpreted as a warning against the growing digital intrusion in our lives, feels more like a prophecy and a way to re-examine our fraught relationship with the internet and the way it influences our lives today.

The fact that these broader aspects of the multimedia project have been overlooked is unsurprising, considering the manga was short and Japan-only and the Serial Experiments Lain PS1 game sold low numbers upon its release, making it a rare commodity today.

And yet this is somewhat of a disappointing outcome, since this game does a great job in expanding upon Lain as a character and the ideas of the show, as it tackles mental health, our reliance on external coping mechanisms, and where we root our sense of self in the age of computers.

It’s an interesting play, even if the game has more than its fair share of problems.

Entering the Wired, and Lain’s Past

For those who have seen the anime, the core component of the series is the intersections between the real world and the online world, and how our personalities are split between the internal and external self, personified through these two versions of Lain that exist in these realities. Further tossed into the mix is how technology intersects with our lives and how the influence of technology can change our relationship with the world around us.

The show depicts the battle between the internal and external through the lens of technology by showing Lain slowly disregard the real world for greater immersion into Wired (a sort of immersive internet), where she is heralded as a myth and a god. The show is weaponizing techno-futurism and philosophical discussions to explore the essence of how humans connect with one another and how technology plays a rapidly changing role in this fundamental aspect of humanity.

In essence, the Lain anime is a series about understanding human connection, which can only come by understanding the self.

Serial Experiments Lain Episodes

The Serial Experiments Lain game for the PS1, released a few months after the anime finished on Japanese TV on 26 November 1998, acts as somewhat of a prequel to the events of the anime by exploring a younger Lain. While the anime is about exploring how humans connect and interact with one another, and what role the internet and technology has to play in that discussion, the game takes the opposite approach: it gives further backstory on who Lain was when she was younger.

To call Serial Experiments Lain on PS1 a game is perhaps overselling the experience somewhat, since the reality of this ‘network simulator’ is that of a non-linear visual novel and interactive file manager. The player is placed in control of Lain’s PC as we explore the files she has saved on her computer, from recordings of meetings with her therapist and diary entries to clips from Lain’s life. We see how her social isolation both at home and at school sends her into a depressive spiral and how technology is for her a means of escape. Rather than simply following these clips in order, however, we view these diary entries and audio and video clips in fragments. We browse and slowly piece together who Lain is supposed to be.

We aren’t meant to view these clips and diary entries as part of a linear story in the same way the anime uses non-linearity to further push the core themes of the series: as described in an interview with series creator Chiaki J Konaka in Animerica in 1999, by interacting with these fragments ‘users can actually feel the Lain who exists inside the web’. While making for a difficult-to-follow story in the traditional sense, each of these comments can be replayed and are attached with tags that, when viewed together, form a cohesive idea on the topic in question, whether that be individuality, study, or something more.

This approach to storytelling is what helps the Serial Experiments Lain PS1 game act as a perfect compliment to the story of the anime. Not only does it expand on how Lain became invested in the Wired, as her suspicions on the people around her lead her to dissociate and seek a place to root herself in, but this story is being told entirely from her perspective. Each file on this computer forms a piece of Lain’s gradual journey of self-reckoning, while also acting as a way for her to seal away these negative childhood memories. She seeks to deconstruct the self in order to create a new Lain she can rely and coexist with.

This is where the game’s portrayal of self-harm and the traumatic events witnessed by this young Lain come into play. Her inability to understand and find acceptance in her world sends her into a destructive spiral that ties to the origins of her Wired persona. In that sense, it’s a shield.

In this interpretation, Lain is an unreliable narrator, driven by her scared and confused emotions that come from growing up in a household and world she is unable to understand and interact with. This is only further supported by how we interact with the computer, with the support and reactions of the Wired Lain to go alongside it.

All that being said, no matter how interesting an experiment the Serial Experiments Lain PS1 game is, the experience of interacting with this story is what lets it down. Scrolling through menus on a Playstation controller is slow and clunky, adding undue delay and tedium that pulls you out of the story being told. Especially when you start flicking through multiple layers to view story elements in cluster later on, the lack of mouse controls due to the console’s limitations make the smooth operation of the Wired OS an impossibility. It is detrimental to the experience to the point that it’s difficult to recommend it, even before we discuss the difficulty in sourcing a copy of the game because of its scarcity.

There is a fanmade webgl ‘remake’ that recreates the interface through a web browser, complete with an English translation, but without the nuances for many of the entries, some translation issues, and without the virtual Lain, it, too, is far from an ideal experience (EDIT (29 March 2021): since this article was published, a full fan recreation of the game for web browsers has been released, and while it retains the clunkiness of the original PS1 release, this is also the easiest way of playing the game in English as originally intended. You can read our article on this effort here).

Serial Experiments Lain Watch Online

Time has a way of changing our view on things, and in the case of Serial Experiments Lain, it has erased the PS1 title from the memory of all but the series’ most dedicated fans. Which is a shame as, despite its flaws, what it brings to the franchise is undeniable: Even with a clunky interface, it may be worth working through an aging interface to experience this very modern 1998 story. Just like the anime, it remains as relevant as it did 23 years ago.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/NightmareFuel/SerialExperimentsLain

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

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Serial Experiments Lain Wallpaper

A classic late '90s anime with beautiful animation best described as 'creepy, cool, seinen, and cyberpunk'. It's pretty much one of the most confusing anime out there. That and it can be very scary at times, as the following examples can attest.

• The repeated use of the establishing shots of a traffic crossing, street lights shot in poor focus, and power lines humming in each episode somehow becomes scarier with each viewing.
• There's also the short voiceover to start every episode: *Static* 'Present day... heh heh heh... PRESENT TIME... HA HA HA HA HA-' *static*
  • And then there's the 'Whisper' synthesized voice that's used to say the layer titles at the beginning of each episode...
  • Especially when it starts forming recognisable words.
• Particularly disturbing is the alien (shown above, inexplicably clad in a green and red striped sweater) who spied on Lain, and then grinned at her.
  • What made it scarier was the fact that it just suddenly appeared at her doorway out of nowhere before disappearing.
    • Also, some of the conversations Lain overhears on the Wired imply that this... thing has been appearing in the bedrooms of several people.
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  • Then Lain has its body. Or it has her head.
• ... Not to mention Masami Eiri turning into a grotesque gooey fleshy monstrosity that uses its giant tongue to try to eat Lain and Arisu/Alice in the final episode.
• Not just by what happens in the episodes, but also think of the psychological horrors about the Wired (the equivalent to our Internet)...?
  • And the part where Mika's all alone on the street and surrounded by dark blob things.
  • And in the restaurant bathroom, when the lights suddenly go off and the stall door right behind her slowly creaks open...
  • Serial Experiments Lain has a special connection to preteens in another way—the director also directed Digimon Tamers. Unsurprisingly, that season is host to some of the most screwed up stuff that's ever been connected to the franchise.
• The train scene in Episode 1. After inexplicably teleporting to several places (or perhaps not) Lain suddenly appears in front of a railroad, where a girl stands in the mist in the path of the oncoming train. The strange, dreamlike feel of the scene is eerie enough... but then we get a look at the girl's face. Her facial expression distorts from a odd combination of Slasher Smile and Psychotic Smirk to terrified/sad to just HOLES and repeats once more.
  • I always took the girl's expression in the train scene to be a flickering mix of joyful, childish laughter, a scream of horror as she realizes she's about to be hit by the train, and HOLES. The fact that all three of the expressions looked like they were on her face at pretty much the same time made that the most horrifying scene in the series for me.
    • Also, it's like they threw in some good old-fashioned Uncanny Valley in there to taste. The face is disturbingly realistic.
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  • Episode 2. As Lain's walking to school she catches sight of a guy just kind of standing off to the side of the road behind a telephone pole. Lain initially tries to ignore him and just keeps walking, but she stops at one point and realizes that he's staring at her and not blinking. This gives Lain enough incentive to run the rest of the way to school.
    • Later, after class, Lain is walking down a deserted school hallway when she stops and notices a figure enshrouded in shadows peering out at her from a doorway, and then paper-thin, rainbow silhouettes suddenly phase through the school walls and move by her. The shadowy figure slides close to Lain, and we once again get a close-up of the disturbing, distorted face of the girl that we last saw at the railroad back in episode 1. The unusual being seems to slide right through Lain, leaving her alone in the hallway, hunched over and quaking in silent terror.
    • Here's a minor one from that episode: a brief text conversation. (It's also a little narmy, but...)
      'What's dying like?'
  • Episode 4. Don't tell me that little girl bearing down on the boy playing PHANTOMa isn't terrifying. It quickly turns into a different kind of horror when you realize what really just happened when he shot the 'monster'...
• I cannot decide what is the most freaky thing between having almost been shot by a guy who killed two people, said it was all your fault, and then killed himself (all right in front of you); coming back home afterwards in the middle of the night to find that absolutely nobody's home and the beds are all made; or how Lain. Doesn't. React. At all. And just changes into her teddy bear pj's and goes to sleep.
• The first meeting with evil Lain.
• The deaths of all the Knights in episode 10. The worst was that little boy calling out to his mother, ignorant of the fact that she had been dead for some time.
• Lain's parents sitting motionless at a table, staring vacantly ahead. Lain asking if she's really Lain. No response whatsoever. Looks away. Looks back. Both parents now staring directly at her, equally motionless.
• The shadows in a lot of the external shots of the show are... unnerving. They are accurate cast shadows, dead black, with... large splotches of red floating through them. The fact that they are usually imposed on bright white backgrounds, so you can't help but see them, doesn't make it any better...
• The sequence with the static-skinned people... with only one facial or bodily feature for each person - the rest of their bodies are just empty. Going back further, the lines of headless, kneeling avatars with gibbering mouths, spouting rumours randomly. And when we go back to them later on... They all have Lain's head. They're still gibbering, but their mouths don't even look human... and there's no sound coming from any of them.
• 'Beep... beep... beep... understood... beep... beep... beep... now communicating, logging on... beep... beep... beep...'
• In Episode 12, The Men in Black recieve final 'payment for services rendered' from 'The Office Worker'. After a brief exchange about what the activation of Protocol 7 and the total loss of devices forever would entail, 'The Office Worker' drives away, at which point the MIB see... something... through their head-gear, which causes the dark-haired, pony-tailed, no-nonsense skeptical MIB to completely freak out. His body twists and lurches as he appears to have a kind of seizure. 'Karl', the more serious and laterally-minded of the pair, wrestles him to the ground to see what's the matter. While his partner is still crying out in terror, he looks into his partner's retina to find an image of Lain, and his partner dies in his arms, foam dribbling out of his mouth. 'Karl' turns and sees what appears to bereality collapse around him. The last we ever see of them is the look of pure terror on 'Karl's face. The last we ever hear of them is 'Karl' screaming bloody murder at... whatever he saw. Possibly the most terrifying moment in the whole series.
• At one point, Lain has smoke emit from her fingers and fill the classroom. It is in fact a fairly typical schizophrenic hallucination to perceive yourself emitting ectoplasm from your body. This, along with many other incidents in the early episodes are foreshadowing to the assumption that Lain is mentally unstable.
• 'Look at me, I'm committing suicide! *laughter*' To put it into perspective: the scene is Real!Lain, in a fit of rage over her identity being stolen by Wired!Lain, attempts to strangle Wired!Lain, while flashes (that look like camera flashes) go off in the background. The twist? The line is spoken, in sick glee, by Wired!Lain as she's being strangled.
• A rather subtle yet very unnerving detail about Masami Eiri is that in all of his appearances as 'God', his clothes are always in the same position, impossibly suspended in mid-air. Always. Seeing him as perfectly unmoving even when the wind is blowing hard enough to make trees shake is unnerving because it just feels wrong.
  • There's also something to be said about his smile that stretches horrifically across his face...◊
  • Or how about the fact that there's duct tape wrapped around his arms and his torso, which initially seems like a strange stylistic choice until you realise that it's symbolic of the fact he got hit by a train - he literally taped himself back together!
  • To say nothing of his incredibly creepy face, his Dissonant Serenity and the overall vibe he gives off. In the Japanese version, during his first few conversations with Lain, he speaks a feminine way, which actually makes him more disturbing, especially knowing his deep masculine voice. He actually speaks in a feminine voice because he and Lain switch bodies temporarily.
• Beginning to episode 12:
  • Protocol Seven is expected to allow the seamless sharing of information between the Wired and the real world. And now, the following message: Let's all love Lain! Let's all love Lain! Let's all love Lain! Let's all love Lain!