Serial Experiments Lain

Lain Iwakura, an awkward and introverted fourteen-year-old, is one of the many girls from her school to receive a disturbing email from her classmate Chisa Yomoda—the very same Chisa who recently committed suicide. Lain has neither the desire nor the experience to handle even basic technology; yet, when the technophobe opens the email, it leads her straight into the Wired, a virtual world of communication networks similar to what we know as the internet. Lain's life is turned upside down as she begins to encounter cryptic mysteries one after another. Strange men called the Men in Black begin to appear wherever she goes, asking her questions and somehow knowing more about her than even she herself knows. With the boundaries between reality and cyberspace rapidly blurring, Lain is plunged into more surreal and bizarre events where identity, consciousness, and perception are concepts that take on new meanings.

Written by Chiaki J. Konaka, whose other works include Texhnolyze, Serial Experiments Lain is a psychological avant-garde mystery series that follows Lain as she makes crucial choices that will affect both the real world and the Wired. In closing one world and opening another, only Lain will realize the significance of their presence.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Iwakura, Lain Main

Shimizu, Kaori Japanese

Mizuki, Arisu Supporting

Asada, Youko Japanese

Eiri, Masami Supporting

Hayami, Show Japanese

Iwakura, Yasuo Supporting

Oobayashi, Ryuusuke Japanese

Iwakura, Mika Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Yomoda, Chisa Supporting

Mutou, Sumi Japanese

Haushofer, Karl Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Taro Supporting

Takimoto, Keito Japanese

J.J Supporting

Chikada, Wasei Japanese

Sui-Xi, Lin Supporting

Yamazaki, Takumi Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Ueda, Yasuyuki Producer, Planning, Original Creator

Maseba, Yutaka Producer

Abe, Shoujirou Producer

Reviews

Mar 3, 2025

TrendFox

Recommended

I had a chance to watch "Serial Experiments Lain." Profound and unsettling, this anime explores some pretty heavy philosophical themes while capturing them through its visuals. The shot compositions are extremely intentional and will push your brain to think more about them than the surface level. If I had to critique it for something, it would be that it sometimes loses itself in its philosophical ideas and jumps around from one to another while trying to tie all of them up, which will leave many (me included) confused.

However, that is kind of expected when with Psychological Cyberpunk Thrillers.

But that's why it's one of my ... favorite genres.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 18, 2025

Miggzy64

Mixed Feelings

I'm a fan of what thematic meaning I was able to extract from this, and I'm sure that on a rewatch things might click a little more into place. Unfortunately, everything is presented with such mundanity that I don't think I'll ever get around to that. It has everything you need to make a great, hard-hitting show about the oppressive always-on connectedness of the internet, but they forgot to make it an entertaining show. I can stomach something like this for about 120 minutes but this is 13 episodes of TV. I was never excited about tuning in next week to see more vibey shots ... of mundane life/ the internet paired with musings on what it means to be a person/ data/ memories/ exist in a place. There are cool ideas here but it does very little to exploit the strengths of TV anime. A short OVA, theatrical film, manga, visual novel, or essay could all get these ideas across without losing any of what makes Lain great.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Feb 15, 2025

MaiDeNaBysS

Not Recommended

Funny

Informative

For better viewing I highly recommend watching at 1.5x speed to improve: animation fluidity and timewasting cost-cutting slowed time overall, even the OP/ED music sound much better and more ethereal once one gets used to it.

Released in 1998 shortly after a much similar movie, Dark City and shortly before that one's inspired movie, The Matrix (1999). Serial episodes Lain is a rather surface-level depiction of the 1-note concept of an AI singularity that never moves beyond the 1st episode, instead rehashing the 1 concept of a machine god over and over again every episode for the entire series (in serial) and ultimately failing to do ... anything with it, even going so far as to progress negatively in the end when it self-deletes effectively to ep 0 and then says "omnipotence means anything is possible so it can be whatever don'tcha know?"

The themes raised are barely explored and mostly just there by nature of the scifi premise, it doesn't actually make any morality conclusions about anything really beyond a general pessimistic bitterness towards everything/society: religion/cult/celebrity, pedophilia (lewd shots of children, adults manipulating MC to undress to better build internet-infrastructure, teachers dating children, etc. for no reason, in other words the writer just likes making pedophilia), god, identity, singularity, technology vs luddite, conspiracy theories(aliens. illuminati, men in black gov, etc.), nihilism.

This is a frustratingly shallow depiction of basic scifi/psychology concepts which refuses to ever actually explore those concepts with any actual depth. Instead it merely introduces each concept, then loses interest after doing a few pointless scenes related to it. For example:
Videogames that cause violence: pretty self explanatory concept. Merely a pretext for 'technology makes people go crazy' and 'must become one with the digital world'.
Accel-drug-nanobot: introduced (along with irrelevant infodump wiki copypasta explaining basic concepts about nanomachines or whatever) merely as technology-addiction-drug parallel for pretext for 'technology makes people go crazy' and 'must become one with the digital world'.
Dead girl suicide and emails: introduced because technology addictive and makes people go crazy and must become one with the digital world, goes nowhere, effectively dropped beyond pointless ghost appearances.
Dead guy suicide: introduced because technology addictive and makes people go crazy and must become one with the digital world. (Gee we seem to be repeating the same concept and not going anywhere with it).
ALL CHARACTERS: Sister: gets fridged harder than Casca because technology makes people go crazy and become one with the digital world (but mostly because character writing is hard and she got dangerously close to being an actual character and having a role in the story so just nip that in the bud and have a bunch of pointless scenes of her being a vegetable instead, this goes nowhere but at least it's consistent). Mother: kissing, annoyed, non-character, dropped. Alice in Wonderland: Complaining, WAHHHHHH (Lain loves you because you were a little friendly to her and the least mean of the 'friend' bitches bullying her and totally not because lesbian pedophilia ok?).
Knights(illuminati): want to make the singularity, so help a program learn to self-actualize its code better before becoming irrelevant to machine god. Lain exposes them for no reason and then the G-men kill them all because the writer can't think of anything else to actually do with any of these potential (non)plot-lines.
G-men: like to watch little girls for the entire season while cryptically saying filler, girl god kills them because writing is hard.
ESP: IS REAL DONTCHA KNOW, MAYBE THAT'S HOW STUFF DOES THE THING, WHO KNOWS? immediately dropped and never mentioned again after 1 scene.
The scientist created a hivemind AI by killing children: HEY THAT'S HOW LAIN ORIGINALLY, UNLESS- dropped forever immediately.
ALIENS ARE REAL: because alienation, get it? Immediately dropped as anything other than superficial symbolism to never actually be explored.
Identity!?: intro-psychology 1-sentence copypastas that mostly are dumb on the face of it if they even manage to be more than rambling nonsense. I THINK I AM LAIN THEREFORE I AM LAIN BECAUSE LAIN IS LAIN. HOW CAN THERE BE OTHER VERSIONS OF ME?!?!?! This waste of dialogue gives Eva's final 2 episodes a run for the crown of most juvenile attempt at introspection sequences.
GOD: EXISTS. IN VARIOUS POTENTIAL FORMS. TALKS CRYPTICALLY. DOES NOTHING. THE END.
I'll not go on as you can see none of it actually goes anywhere.

Spoilers: The plot itself is incredibly bare bones and mostly just wastes your time: (unlike all these other plebs) our Lain is a divinely created being from the beginning of ep 1, therefore she is already in a world manipulated by the authorial insert of god (who is either: the true creator god, a creator of their potentially simulated reality, the scientist who coded the origin of the singularity in Wired and digitized his mind, or (passing the buck) a prior godly iteration of Lain (instead of a prior iteration, it could be god Lain of the future retconning reality/herself in the past)) and the world is either a simulated reality and/or a bs/arbitrary reality where nothing matters dicked around by the whims of an actively extant god. Frankly the only worthwhile/realistic/reasonable explanation (aside from near equally uninteresting fku God/magic/dream cop outs) for how Lain can rewrite reality through tinkering computers into singularity is that we only see a simulated reality in the matrix from the start and it's all just a visual metaphor for Lain rewriting her own code to evolve as a further and further advanced AI.
So we watch lain become a new god of the machine. 1-note plot. Takes the entire goddamn series and does nothing with it. Personally I'd go with it all as a simulated reality and her 'techy father' is a body avatar for those running the simulation, overwriting her 'non-techy father' occasionally to guide Lain towards singularity, and afterwards he reveals himself to god Lain as her father again yet as a real (alien) god himself beyond her reality's control. Congrats, you've depicted the concept of AI singularity. Shame you didn't really do anything with it. The show is just spectacle over substance.

At least the random little Engrish puns are fun for us English speakers: Weird Wired World dot com, Lain LAN lane.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	Serial Experiments Lain is getting a new official game adaptation RobertBobert - Mar 18	22 replies	by tsukor »» Mar 23, 1:10 PM
	Poll: Serial Experiments Lain Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) AgathaKazar - May 12, 2008	155 replies	by unfeigned_nerd »» Mar 19, 6:11 PM
	Poll: Serial Experiments Lain Episode 13 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) nini - Dec 30, 2008	418 replies	by PokefanPT »» Mar 14, 4:41 PM
	Poll: Serial Experiments Lain Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) cureroyale - Jan 27, 2009	138 replies	by Rajidae »» Mar 14, 2:56 PM
	Poll: Serial Experiments Lain Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) aero - Mar 16, 2009	144 replies	by PokefanPT »» Mar 12, 4:01 PM

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