Serial Experiments Lain is hard to talk about if only because of the fact that it relies heavily on viewer interpretation. If you go into Lain without thinking about what you're watching, chances are that nothing will actually make sense to you. Regardless, there's still a plot that Lain follows from beginning to end. Throughout the show, we follow Lain Iwakura: an introverted and technologically inept girl who ends up falling prey to circumstance. The recent suicide of a classmate leads to everyone getting emails from this now-deceased person and once Lain finds out about this, she decides to get with the times and see this for herself. She makes contact with the so-called classmate via mail and this person tells Lain that she merely gave up her physical form to exist on "the Wired" (I'll talk about this later) and by doing so, she apparently found God. What happens next is entirely up for you to experience.
Now this of course raises a lot of questions: did this girl actually find a way to exist on the Wired or is it just a prank that some punk decided to play? Is there really a God and if there is one, does God exist on the Wired? What about Lain? Is she God? What significance does Lain herself hold? As you keep watching, the questions keep mounting but there's nary an answer in sight... or so it would seem. You see, Yoshitoki Abe and the rest of the SEL team actually put all of the answers (well, more like answer choices) right in front of you and scattered them about so it's entirely up to you to find them. Think of Serial Experiments Lain as the anime equivalent of a word search puzzle, but with a LOT more words to find than what's normally present in a word search puzzle.
In regard to the concept of "the Wired," think of it like this anime's equivalent to the internet. Well, that's the closest to an equivalent I could think of anyway. The Wired combines various concepts like virtual reality, communication, and our understanding of the Internet as it was back in 1998 and the end result is this weird mix of past and future in that computers still have CRT screens but also have the capacity for voice commands and virtual reality. I mean, the show itself takes place in the "present day" and "present time" (hahahahahaha) but it still begs the question of how long it would actually take until Serial Experiments Lain ends up about as technologically accurate as a Silver Age comic book, especially with standards advancing as quickly as they have within the last few years.
Even so, the enigma surrounding "the Wired" and its very nature is what makes this show so captivating to watch in the first place. Throughout the show, a major theme is where "the Wired" ends and reality begins (technical limitations notwithstanding, ofc) and this theme still holds a lot of relevance today, especially with the advent of stuff like Google Glass combined with the fact that the bulk of us online would probably suffer from severe withdrawal if we were severed from our phones, video games, computers, and internet access. There are many other themes this show explores, but I feel like this is the one that's aged the best and is the one most people will focus on when they even bother talking about this show in the first place.
From a production standpoint, Serial Experiments Lain certainly isn't Cowboy Bebop in terms of animation quality but in terms of stylistic visuals, Lain and Bebop may very well be equals. The character models aren't anything special and are occasionally drawn off-model (unintentionally, I'm presuming), but where this show shines is how it handles its atmosphere. Serial Experiments Lain is one of those shows that just loves to jump between the mundane and the surreal, but it doesn't go overboard like the bulk of everything produced by SHAFT tends to do. Rather, the surreal imagery in Lain is quite subdued (for the most part) and serves to strengthen that sort of creepy and uncanny atmosphere this show tries its hand at creating. The animation quality is also rather fluid and given how it integrated CG to render the Navi operating system (among other things), I'm surprised that this show didn't go all Evangelion on us and have the animation quality gradually deteriorate as time went on.
Of course, the animation could've been nothing more than inanimate character models sliding across the screen and that creepy atmosphere Lain has wouldn't suffer a bit because it's the audio that actually sells the entire thing in the first place. From ominous guitar chords, hardstyle techno beats, and other such delectations, Lain knows how to set the mood and roll with that shit. There's also no shortage of scenes where background music is thrown to the wayside and we're left with ambient noises which further hammer in the point that the show's trying to make. This show also goes so far as to have an English opening theme sung by a native speaker of the language! "Duvet" by Boa (the rock band from the UK, not the Korean JPop singer) is an enchanting OP theme and it strangely fits the tone of the overall story. The ED theme is also quite nice, and I have both of them saved on my phone so I can listen to them when I'm not near a computer as well.
Unlike the OST, the dubbing across both the Japanese and English tracks is decidedly average. Now, the English dub produced by Geneon (or rather, Pioneer as they were known at the time) is fair enough but it's not the kind of English dub that'll make people scream in ecstasy over how amazing it is. Sure, there are some great voice actors here and there (i.e. Kirk Thornton, Jameison Price) but Serial Experiments Lain isn't exactly one of their more noteworthy performances. If I really had to say whether or not you should go for the sub or the dub, it really depends on how many subtitles you want to read. Bizarrely, Geneon didn't edit any of the Japanese text in the show so that it reads in English when they were localising it so you still end up reading subtitles no matter which one you watch (before you ask, the Funimation release of the show still has subtitles). Personally, I prefer the dub since I'm an illiterate bastard who can't handle reading anything with more than one syllable in it, but that's just my take on the whole situation.
So, final thoughts? If you're the kind of person who binge-watches stuff like Hunter x Hunter and Attack on Titan, chances are that you won't get a lot out of this show but to those of us who watch re-runs of The Twilight Zone on TV Land or enjoyed stuff like Ghost in the Shell (either the movies or Stand Alone Complex, either works), chances are that you'll get a lot out of it. What it boils down to is your desire to actually think about what you're watching rather than relying on the show to tell you everything that's going on. Regardless, Serial Experiments Lain is one of those shows that you should give a chance at some point down the line. Whether or not you'll like it is entirely up for you to decide, but it's one hell of an experience and that much certainly can't be denied. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)
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To people who say that Serial Experiments Lain had no influence whatsoever, I beg to differ. Large portions of the Western programme "Code Lyoko" were influenced in part or in whole by Lain. Look no further than Aelita and her backstory or Lyoko itself if you want some examples. Similarly, the plot of "Lost Souls" from Batman Beyond was also influenced by Serial Experiments Lain to some degree. I suppose the same can be said about films like "The Matrix" and possibly "Dark City" as well, although "The Matrix" feels more like Ghost in the Shell than it does Lain.
Whatever, point is: Lain had some influence over other stuff.
