(This is my first anime review, please try and bare with it.)
“If you’re not remembered, then you never existed.” Serial Experiments Lain is a psychological horror, sci fi, mystery anime about Lain and her ties with the WIRED and her existential crisis. The show delves into the psychological aspect of teenagers making connections through technology and the effect it has them. Connections pop up very frequently throughout the show and leads to what could happen if we take them for granted. There are two core themes that make up Serial Experiments Lain, existence and connections. Chiaki J. Konaka the writer for the show explores these themes to its utmost potential through the character Lain.
“No matter where you go, everyone’s connected.” Connections are shown in many ways throughout the course of the show, physical, online, mind and even the connection of wires. If a single wire fails, the whole system will gradually fall apart one by one. The questioning of when a person exists is probably my favourite aspect of the show, the aforementioned quote gives us a something easy to go off, Lain herself says this. This quote foreshadows the fate of Lain and the antagonist and gets linked back to at the end of the show. I’m going to get into some spoilers now so be warned. Eiri the main antagonist of the show tells Lain in episode 10 that what makes him a God is that his followers believe in him, he is later shot down by Lain telling him the he is a false God because he forced his followers to believe in him. Memories tie in with the theme of existence because it is how Lain practically commits suicide at the end making everyone forget about her. So yeah, this show is deep, it is also very perplexing, even now I’m thinking about a lot of the aspects of the show like if this and that are linked and so on. Luckily, I feel as though its perplexing in a good way, if you think long enough and hard enough everything starts linking together, but the best part about this is that most people will link those same things differently to how you did, this leads to massive amounts of discussion and keeps the fans engaged for years. The quote I had mentioned at the beginning links to even this, if everything is given to you then there isn’t much to discuss, so then the show would eventually become forgotten.
“There was no reason for me to stay in the real world any longer. In the real world, it didn’t matter if I was there or not. When I realized that, I was no longer afraid of losing my body.” Now let’s get into the place that is mentioned the most in this show, the wired. The wired is basically Lain’s version of the internet but becomes even more advanced, some people even give up their bodies to reside in the wired as the quote above suggests. Lain first starts getting into the wired because her dead schoolmate sent her an email after she died. She tells Lain that she should follow suite and get into the wired as soon as possible. Lain both frightened and curious at the same time asks her father for a new “Navi” this worlds computer system. Soon enough Lain becomes hooked and so the true horrors of the show begin. I feel as though watching this show now was the greatest time to watch it as online connectivity has become the norm, this show was ahead of it’s time by quite a bit and that’s what makes it truly frightening. Although things like becoming one with the online world and Gods of the internet don’t exist in our world they still relate to our world in some way. If you become too absorbed with the online world it can lead to destroying both your mind and body. As there is in this show there are false Gods of the internet in our world as well, people who claim to be powerful and knowledgeable don’t need to show themselves completely since they can be anonymous. In reality they are the weakest ones in the room, they are too insecure about themselves, so they decide to harm others and get pleasure out of it. This can be seen in some characters in the show as well (Knights, Eiri).
“The truth has power because it’s the truth. And because it is the truth, that makes it just. It’s persuasive, isn’t it? Don’t you want truth like that?” Looking for the truth is one of the key ideas of Serial Lain and is also something that can be related back to pretty much every human on earth. Everyone has some sort of truth they are looking for whether it changes every day or stays the same their whole life there is always something. The truth behind the extinction of the dinosaurs, the truth behind God, the truth behind why she rejected me that one time, the truth behind who ate my cookie. It could be the dumbest thing ever, but humans always strive for the truth, its in our nature. This all relates to the characters of Serial Lain, while Lain is looking for multiple truths I feel as though it all connects to one singular question, “Do I really exist?”. Lain wants to know the truth behind whether she really exists and whether it matters or not, it’s a frustrating, confusing, saddening and scary question. Questioning one’s own existence is not something most people feel comfortable thinking about, and it makes sense, if they start questioning their existence their truth starts to waver and they break. Sometimes what we think is the truth may just be a lie and that’s where this quote comes into full play. It makes fun of us humans for wanting something to be the truth when it might not even be the truth, God, the Bible, the Quran, religion in general.
Who knows whether these are fake or real, regardless of that some people choose to believe it to be the truth, whether it be because it’s what they were taught, fear, signs, etc, they think it’s the truth and that’s all the matters to them. The idea of truth is one of the most overused ones in modern entertainment, but if you tie it together with interesting themes and other interesting ideas it can morph into something spectacular like it does in this show. Other characters that a strong desire of truth manifests is Arisu and Taro.
“People only have substance within the memories of other people.” Memory is an integral part of humans, its usually one of the things we rely on the most, which is funny because sometimes we warp our own memories to see things we never really saw. This makes memories very fragile, easily made and broken, they could be real, or they could be fake. For something we rely on so much it’s funny how easily falsified it can become, you may have memories you may have of your friends but they may have never happened, it could have been a dream or just made up then and there. This is where the quote from Serial Lain kicks in, just as the quote suggests, we are what other people perceive us as in their memories. This once again ties in with the other ideas of the show like truth and the themes of connection and existence. What they perceive you as could be a false truth, a false connection and this can lead to a false existence. This is shown when Lain starts hearing about things that she has done and said that she never really did or say, this makes Lain more insecure and starts beginning to start her existential crisis. This is due to the wired Lain going around doing things and saying things she wouldn’t normally do or say. This makes her connections waver and distrust starts forming between her and her friends at school. This goes to show that memories of people you might have had may not always be the truth. To counter this, she tries to find out why people remember her this way and who is causing her to go through so much pain and suffering. The way the idea of memories fuses together with the other core ideas and themes is so brilliantly done that everything else that tries to pull of these ideas and themes pale in comparison.
Now onto the characters, the only real character in this show is Lain almost everyone else in the show is there to develop Lain but are still very interesting. Lain is probably the most complex and well written characters I have ever seen and experienced in fiction. There is so much going on with her character that I could go on for hours on end, but I’ll try to keep it as short as possible. Lain is the embodiment of most of the shows core themes and ideas. (Somewhat of a spoiler upcoming) Since Lain has a split personality disorder this makes her able to become more fleshed out and toyed with as a character. There are three personalities that she has, her real-world version of herself who is introverted and doesn’t have too many friends. Her wired self which is the complete opposite of her real-world self, cheeky, playful, extroverted, and there is her more sinister personality who has malicious intent toward Lain and the people who are close to her. Her personalities are like people who do things they wouldn’t do online furthering the idea of truth. These other personalities make Lain feel more vulnerable, even more so than she already is. Over the course of the show we get to see her personalities fusing little by little making real world Lain do things she normally wouldn’t do. Other notable characters are Arisu, Lain’s sister’s, Eiri and Taro, although like I said before these characters are mostly used to further develop Lain’s character but are still very interesting.
Finally, I have finished talking about the narrative and writing (although there is so much more I want to touch on I feel as though this will become way too long), now onto animation, art and tone. The animation and art are kind of dated, and it shows, but I feel as though this is an advantage. The dark, dull colour palate sets the tone very nicely. It fits the overarching narrative as well as the characters very well, it being dull make the characters feel like normal people, just like most of us are. This makes it a little more relatable, although at the same time the characters designs are weird as are most anime’s character designs. This however sets the atmosphere of the show very quickly and communicated to the viewer very well. The animation at times stale becomes expressive at times making for some brilliant scenes. Making the characters facial expressions more animated and surreal scares me at times. There is also one scene near the end of the show where the animation becomes very good. This becomes even greater with the fantastic directorial work. Although the production may not be great you need to remember that this show came out in 1998 and is nowhere near as flashy as the stuff we have now.
Last but not least, sound. Sound is integral for any sort of entertainment I watch, whether it’s for excitement or setting the atmosphere and tone, it needs to be great or I’ll be uninterested. Luckily the sound of Serial Lain is fantastic, the use of music or rather lack of music is used very well in this show. At times ambient tracks play in the back and sometimes it’s a grueling guitar, and then most times there is just the sounds of static. This not only fits the core elements of the show but also adds to the psychological horror aspect of it. Sometimes when I was watching the show, I felt like I heard something when the static was playing, I thought I really was hearing something but in reality, my mind was just playing tricks on me. This elevated the eerie dread I felt throughout the show tenfold. Also the opening is one of the best I’ve seen and heard in all of anime, a folk tune that embodies the nature of the show and the visuals of the opening are so well suited to the song that it makes me wonder “what went wrong with this era of anime openings?” .
Serial Experiments Lain has a narrative so complex and deep that it makes you wonder about every little detail, the core ideas and themes are so well done that it puts others who try the same to shame. Connection, Existence, truth and memories are all excellent concepts that were so well tied together in this show. The characters of the show are brilliantly done especially Lain, one of the most complex and deep characters I’ve had the pleasure of viewing. Making Lain the embodiment of the core ideas and themes was so well executed that makes me yearn for more. The animation and art although dated is used as an advantage to set tone and atmosphere extremely well. At times stale it becomes expressive and makes for some brilliant scenes. The sound of the show is excellent with a great soundtrack and a great use of static noises to create unease and eeriness. Overall this the prefect show for someone like me and is the best anime I have seen thus far.
