Reviews

Serial Experiments Lain is one of those clever shows where everyone has their own different theories and interpretations about what's happening on screen and lots of important stuff is implied rather than shown, in short it takes patience and a quite a lot of pondering before you reach your own conclusions on the plot. The story is said to take place in the present and centres around a middle school student, Lain, becoming obsessed with a kind of virtual reality world called the wired that's not all too different from our own internet. Initially a shy, good natured but ultimately anti-social girl, Lain begins to develop a multitude of undesirable and uncontrollable split personalities that wreak havoc in her life and eventually lead to a full blown existential crisis. Unsure of which world she truly belongs in, the cyber or the physical, Lain delves deeper and deeper into the world of the weird becoming powerful enough even to insert her body as well as her consciousness into cyberspace. That's the simplest introduction I can muster and I won't go any further but I will say the rest of the story involves failed psi experiments on children, the internet's own version of God and his elite fellowship of hackers known as the Knights and an infinite cauldron of sci-fi references to everything from the Roswell incident to the Cetology work of John. C Lilly.

The depth and complexity of the storyline is absolutely mind-blowing and I personally thoroughly enjoyed watching in my darkened living quarters until three in the morning then lying awake until five trying to process it all. However despite appreciating the subtlety and being allowed to make up my own mind about the meaning of the story, I did feel like the show could/should have thrown the viewer just a little bit more of a rope in terms of explaining some of the more important plot points, not a big rope but just big enough not to drown in the sheer intrication of the Lain universe. On the other hand, I believe the confusion helped me empathize with Lain herself, so I can forgive.

On to the audio/visual side of things. The atmosphere in this show is really just top-notch. Although the animation is quite choppy at times and the character design looks quite dated (to me at least), the eerie lack of strong colours combined with some brilliant moments of cyberpunk mindfuckery and medium blending led to a tense and unnerving visual feast. There wasn't really much in the way of music that stood out for me (apart from the opening theme by the obscure British indie band Bôa) but the use of various creepy sound effects was... effective (hur) particularly the hummings of electricity cables that dominate the supposedly calm scenes, in which Lain travels to school, contributing yet more suspense. Until the hilarious semi-forth wall breaking scene in which Lain appeared to read my mind and shouted at them to shut up, which they promptly did. The slow animation and minimal dialog in certain scenes gave even the most seemingly trivial scenes of the story a strange piercing quality and the whole show made me very uncomfortable, right up until the end, in a good way.

Character-wise, each one was interesting in their own way but the only characters I really sympathized with were Lain (a lot), Arisu and to a lesser extent Lain's father towards the end. The main villain, Eiri (at least I think he was the main villain) was nice and ominous but overall less scary than the concepts and atmosphere of the story itself, which are terrifying so don't worry.

I would thoroughly recommend Lain to anyone with even the smallest interest in Psychological anime. It provides unparalleled food for thought and a truly unique viewing experience, if you give it the attention and thought it deserves.

Oh yeah and the shadow affects in Lain's road that look like they're reflections of the cosmos are REALLY COOL, like, cool enough for an additional pointless sentence.