1. At first I thought Lain had multiple personalities and she was hearing voices due to some mental disorder but I was wrong.
2. Some children are raising their hands in the air to a figure of Lain that appeared in the sky. At this moment I realized or rather made an eudcated guess that Lains is so called God of "Wired".
3. The moment Lain is taken to the Tachibana General Laboratory by the man in black is where she realizes there are more than one "Lain". Now the other Lain personality takes over and now is the moment the barrier between "Wired" and Reality starts crumbling
4. After Arisus's ralation with the teacher is exposed, Lain being a good friend just deletes that memory from the minds of all the people in the entire world except for Arisu. At this moment my educated guess was proven correct beyond a doubt. Lane is some sort of god.
5. Some random conspiracyes are shown ending with the rather important discovery of the Schuman 8Hz waves. We meet Masami Eiri, the former scientist who is claiming to be God and manipulating Laine into being hos puppet.
6. Close to the end, Lane and Masami Eiri have a heated argument resulting in Masami's anihilation and Lane realising she is God.
7. After Lane realised she is God and seeing all the chaos she created she decides to delete herself from everyone's memory, a sad ending.
8. The question still remains, How did Laine end up a human with no real memories?
My opinion: Lane being a God, she saw everything humans were doing, every memories they were making and Laine got tired of it so she decided to take a break and have a taste of life for herself but she failed at that, realising she can never escape her true nature, the God of Wired.
Intro:
This show has predicted today's world obsession with the interned, remember this was created before the internetgot mainstream and crazy.
Seriail Experiments Lane is not a series you can judge easily, it is rather troublesome.
Writing a review for it will be either a very long one or a very short one, I chose to make it rather short.
Story: 8/10
The story is not where SEL focused, the story rather moves along and progresses with the characters. The story revolves around a young girls who is thrown is a world of confusion.
The plot is complex and similar to a maze with ambigous progression yet a discernible direction. Its execution is impecable, if the execution was even a bit off, the plot would have been filled with holes and become a disaster. Bulding a show the way SEL was built is a very difficult thing to achieve and I praise the creators for their succes.
A few things bother me:
1. Who are the man in black and who do they work for?
2. Did the teacher really had inapropriate realtions with Arisu, a 8th grader?
3. In the end, an older Arisu is shown being with a man that appears to be the teacher, did she end up with that pedo teacher?
4. In the end, Laine and her father are talking while foathing in the sky. Is her father a higher being or just Laine's creation?
Characters: 8/10
This is where Serial Experiments Lane excels. In a world full of cliches and poor characters, SEL is a breath of fresh air giving me a sense of freedom.
The character of Lain is one of the most deep and pertinent in all anime. I am not sure if I should call it development but whatever it is, it's great. To explain it, Lain starts off as a normal human and in the and achieves or rather regains god-like powers and that is just mind blowing.
I am not going to make remarks on the support characters since it is not needed. All the support characters, such as Masami Eiri (the mad scientist), Yasuo (Laine's father), Arisu (Laine's friend), etc. are great and intriguing in their own way.
Animation: 8/10
The animation is not an important factor in SEL but it does a great job anyway, consider it was created in 1998. The simplistic character design, the empty rooms, the dry backgrounds, it all works great with the tone of the show.
Sound: 8/10
The music or rather the lack of music has a lasting effect and influences the show in a positive way.
Enjoyment: 6/10
I enjoyed the series as "food for the mind", at times SEL felt boring but nothing I would die of.
Overall: 7.6/10
When looked at it as a whole, Serial Experiments Lane comes close to being a masterpiece. I highly, highly recommend this anime.
