The Mysterious Serial Experiments Lain PS1 Game

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

Get ready to dive into the mysterious world of Serial Experiments Lain, the unique PS1 game and its connection to the anime series. Starting off with a bizarre operating system-like interface, the game invites players into a non-linear narrative filled with counseling sessions, diary entries, and an intriguing mix of multimedia storytelling. Our protagonist, Lain, navigates through psychological and digital realms that blur reality and the Wired, sparking thought-provoking questions about existence and identity. This deep dive not only explores the game’s unconventional gameplay but also how it forms a part of the broader Lain universe, all while teasing the mysteries between these two different formats.

Highlights

The PS1 game opens not with a typical menu but an unsettling operating system screen, setting the mysterious tone. 🖥️
Players engage with the game through Lain, navigating nodes of data in a kaleidoscopic storytelling format. 🌌
Key storylines include Lain's counseling, her personal life, and overarching events tying back to the haunting anime series. 📖

Key Takeaways

Dive into the eerie world of Serial Experiments Lain on PS1, a game that defies conventional categorization! 🎮
Experience a narrative that explores existence, identity, and the blurred lines between reality and the Wired. 💭
Discover how the game ties into the iconic anime series, offering new perspectives and deepening the mystery of Lain. 🎥

Overview

Embark on a journey into the surreal world of Serial Experiments Lain, where the boundaries between reality and the Wired blur in this unique PS1 game. Unlike any typical title, the game eschews standard gameplay mechanics for a more narrative-driven experience that plays out like a virtual opera of psychological exploration.

Emphasizing the eerie and philosophical, players navigate a giant cylinder brimming with nodes, each unlocking layers of the story through counseling sessions, diary entries, and animated cutscenes. The storytelling is non-linear, challenging players to piece together the narrative’s fragmented reality, mirroring Lain's own fractured experience.

The game is a fascinating companion piece to the 1998 anime, serving not as a prequel or sequel, but a vital thread in the web of Lain's universe. It invites players to reconsider what it means to exist, layer upon digital and corporal planes, in a narrative as cryptic as it is compelling.

Chapters

00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Game Setup The chapter 'Introduction and Game Setup' begins with the familiar startup animations of Sony Computer Entertainment and PlayStation logos. Instead of a traditional opening cinematic or title menu, players are presented with an operating system boot screen. Here, they must choose to either authorize a user or load data to proceed further into the game.
03:00 - 11:00: Game Mechanics and Initial Impressions The chapter titled 'Game Mechanics and Initial Impressions' recounts the author's first experience playing a game. The first step was to authorize and choose a user name, 'ダンジョン' which hints at a future relevance. After naming, the player enters a game world where 'Lain' is the avatar, depicted as a 2D sprite within a data-filled cylindrical space set against a black void with colorful lines. The environment is likened to a Windows 95 screensaver emphasizing its unusual appearance for a gaming setting.
11:00 - 23:00: Background and Creation of Serial Experiments Lain The chapter discusses Lain's interactions with a mysterious cylindrical structure covered in nodes. Each node has an abbreviation and number, the purpose of which is initially unclear to the observer. Lain is able to open some nodes, revealing surprises as if unwrapping Christmas presents, though not all nodes are accessible to her. Occasionally, Lain fails to open a node, and some nodes are equipped with defensive mechanisms that emit electric shocks when tampered with. Successfully opened nodes can lead to new screens, indicating a progression to different stages or levels.
23:00 - 70:00: Analysis of Anime Series: Serial Experiments Lain In this chapter, the focus is on analyzing the anime series 'Serial Experiments Lain.' It opens with an examination of the interactive elements found within the series, notably the node screens that offer keywords and options to either play or exit. The play option leads to audio recordings, which can be either conversations or diary entries. The narrative describes an interaction within the structure of the series by navigating up and down a cylinder while selecting various nodes, suggesting a unique, non-linear storytelling approach.
70:00 - 137:40: In-depth Look at the Game's Story The chapter delves into understanding the narrative structure of a game, exploring the elements that construct its storyline. It emphasizes the process of gathering information through dialogues, diary entries, and short animations. These components contribute to forming the game's story. It also raises questions about the game's purpose and its connection to the 1998 anime series Serial Experiments Lain. The chapter sets the stage for a comprehensive explanation of these aspects throughout the video.
137:40 - 156:20: Connections Between the Game and Anime The chapter delves into the PlayStation 1 game, Serial Experiments Lain, and explores its intricate connections with its anime counterpart. It raises questions about the medium of the game, suggesting that it functions as a mixed media experiment. The chapter lays the groundwork for understanding how the game intertwines with the themes and narrative style of the Serial Experiments Lain anime, offering insights into its development and publication.
156:20 - 177:30: The Legacy and Cultural Impact of Serial Experiments Lain This chapter explores the legacy and cultural impact of Serial Experiments Lain, focusing on its unique storytelling and thematic exploration of communication and existence in digital spaces. It touches on the initial release history, specifically noting the PlayStation game released by Pioneer LDC on November 26, 1998, exclusively in Japan. The anime, familiar to Western fans, is a 13-episode series that originally aired from July 6 to September 28, 1998. The narrative centers on a 14-year-old girl named Lain Iwakura, who receives a mysterious email from a deceased classmate urging her to rendezvous in the 'Wired,' a virtual world akin to the internet. The series' deep dive into existential themes amidst digital communication has left a lasting cultural footprint, influencing various media forms.
177:30 - 183:00: Final Thoughts The chapter 'Final Thoughts' reflects on the philosophical aspects of the internet and technology through the story of Lain.
183:00 - 187:30: Acknowledgements and Video Conclusion The chapter titled 'Acknowledgements and Video Conclusion' explores the concept of Serial Experiments Lain as a media franchise that extends beyond just the television series. It delves into various elements of the franchise including the PlayStation 1 video game and several supplemental materials. These supplementary resources include 'Scenario Experiments Lain,' which consists of collected and annotated screenplays, 'Visual Experiments Lain,' an episodic breakdown manual presented in a collage style, and a collection of design and conceptual artworks related to the series.

The Mysterious Serial Experiments Lain PS1 Game Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 When you begin Serial Experiments Lain for the PS1, after the familiar Sony Computer Entertainment and PlayStation logo start up animations, you’re greeted not by an opening cinematic or a title menu, but by this operating system boot screen. You’re then prompted to choose either to authorize a user or load data.
00:30 - 01:00 Since this was my first time playing, I authorized a user. On the name entry screen, I chose the name “ダンジョン” for obvious reasons, but we’ll look at how this came back to bite me much later on in this video. Anyway, after inputting a name, you’re thrown into the game. The titular Lain is your avatar, rendered as a 2D sprite, trapped inside a cylinder of data amongst a black void with colored lines streaking through the background. Occasionally an orb of yellow light will float by. The whole thing looks more like a Windows 95 screen saver than a setting for a video game.
01:00 - 01:30 Around the outside of each level of the cylinder are nodes, labeled with abbreviations and numbers. What these letters and numbers signify, you’ll have no idea at first. Lain can open some of the nodes, unwrapping them like Christmas presents and throwing them toward the screen. Others she can’t open. Sometimes she takes a swing at them and misses. Sometimes the nodes have their own defences and will zap Lain with a shock of electricity. The ones that open transition to a new screen with several
01:30 - 02:00 keywords and a choice between Play and Exit in the bottom left corner. Hitting play within these node screens will start audio recordings of either conversations or diary entries. And so you proceed, up the cylinder, down the cylinder, selecting nodes,
02:00 - 02:30 hoping for them to open, scratching your head at the ones that don’t, and slowly, by listening to the scattered conversations and diary entries, as well as watching short snippets of animated sequences, a story begins to form. But what does it all mean? Where is the actual game? What are we meant to be doing here? And what does any of this have to do with the groundbreaking 1998 anime series Serial Experiments Lain? To explain all of that is going to take... well, about the length of this video.
02:30 - 03:00 Welcome to the mysterious Serial Experiments Lain PlayStation 1 game. Serial Experiments Lain is a... game? Audio drama? Mixed media experiment? developed and published by
03:00 - 03:30 Pioneer LDC and released for the PlayStation 1 on November 26, 1998 exclusively in Japan. I’m sure that most Western fans are familiar with the Serial Experiments Lain anime, which is a 13-episode television series that aired from July 6 to September 28, 1998 in Japan. Serial Experiments Lain is about a 14-year old girl named Lain Iwakura who gets a mysterious email from a dead classmate, telling her to meet her in the Wired, the series’ equivalent to the
03:30 - 04:00 internet, because there you can leave behind your physical form and meet God. Lain initially is uninterested in computers, but gradually becomes more and more obsessed with technology and the Wired. It turns out, she has a preternatural gift for hacking and finds herself entangled in a conflict between several shadowy groups. That’s a very straightforward summary of the series. Anyone who’s ever sat down and watched Serial Experiments Lain will tell you the story and presentation are anything but straightforward.
04:00 - 04:30 Furthermore, what some Western fans may not be aware of is the fact that Serial Experiments Lain was envisioned by its creators as a media franchise. This franchise includes the television series, Serial Experiments Lain, and the PlayStation 1 video game, Serial Experiments Lain. To go along with the two main entries in the franchise are several supplemental materials: The collected and annotated screenplays, Scenario Experiments Lain; the collage-style episodic breakdown manual, Visual Experiments Lain; and the design and conceptual artworks collection,
04:30 - 05:00 An Omnipresence in Wired, which also includes a short manga that acts as a bridge between the stories of the video game and the anime series, titled The Nightmare of Fabrication. Not to mention the various soundtracks, singles, and remix albums. An interactive CD-ROM with a bunch of artwork and other goofy stuff on it. As well as various other illustrations and design documents that you can dig up online if you’re really determined. And I was really determined. Thanks, Internet Archive.
05:00 - 05:30 Of course, it’s not uncommon for anime series to feature video games, supplemental materials, artbooks, as well as soundtracks to accompany their release, and it’s not uncommon for most of that miscellanea to remain exclusive to Japan, especially in 1998. The game and the TV series both entered production at the same time, though the game appeared two months after the series had finished airing, and it concerns events that take place when Lain was younger than she is in the TV series.
05:30 - 06:00 I carefully worded that last statement for reasons that will become clearer much later on. If you really want to get technical, The Nightmare of Fabrication was the first Lain thing ever unleashed onto the world, having been published in the March 1998 issue of AX Magazine. I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if that was my first exposure to Lain. But anyway, to unpack everything about this game, we need to look at the TV series as well, since their creations were so intertwined. I had seen Lain several times when I was younger, but it had been a few years, more like a decade, since I had last watched it.
06:00 - 06:30 So before I played the game, I rewatched Serial Experiments Lain, the TV series, twice. Once in Japanese with no subtitles and once in Japanese with subtitles. People familiar with this channel will know that I live in Japan and speak and read Japanese, so the whole watching it with and without subtitles was just my own personal experiment. As you become more proficient in any language, translation subtitles just start to become distracting more than helpful, but I was still interested in seeing how things were translated.
06:30 - 07:00 I then played through the Serial Experiments Lain PlayStation 1 game through a browser reimplementation of the game developed by the team at 3d.laingame.net who went to great pains to rebuild the game so it could run, most effectively, on chromium-based browsers. I played this version of the game because it features English subtitles, whereas there is no fan translation for the PS1 iso. As we’ll come to see, Serial Experiments Lain is made up almost exclusively of audio conversations between characters, so having those subtitles on screen to use for footage in this video is going to be helpful.
07:00 - 07:30 By the way, through the web implementation, you can play the game in French, German, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, or Russian, not just English. The team is open to translating it into other languages too, so you can contact them on their github page if you can provide that kind of support. A link to the website that hosts the game is in the description of this video. It’s impressive that they’ve managed to reproduce it for browsers. You can save your progress and everything, which is great, because 100%-ing Serial Experiments Lain took me about 17 hours in total.
07:30 - 08:00 After completing the game, I also read through the game manual as well as the official game guide, which for some reason was only in Chinese in the bundle I found on Internet Archive, so I had to use Google Translate for that. I was hunting for any other information or clues that would help me unravel this thing’s mysteries. The number one thing I was interested in was finding any solid connections between the anime series story and the game’s story. I also captured a bit of the actual PS1 game
08:00 - 08:30 to get some clean footage for certain parts of this video. After that, I catalogued my recorded footage. As we’ll discuss later, the game is presented in a non-linear fashion, so I was attempting to piece together the story chronologically as best I could. Next, I read through Scenario Experiments Lain, the collected and annotated TV series screenplays by series composer and scriptwriter Chiaki Konaka. And when I say annotated, I mean that there are tons and tons of footnotes written by Konaka himself concerning the creation of the show and expanding upon ideas that the creators were interested in exploring.
08:30 - 09:00 As with most creators who write non-linear, surreal, difficult to understand stories, Konaka isn’t so keen on providing direct explanations to some of the more mysterious aspects of the narrative, but there’s some interesting information and funny stories about the production in here. Then, I read Visual Experiments Lain, which functions as a sort of artbook, but also contains breakdowns of key points for each episode of the TV series. There’s more information here that gives clearer answers to some of the mysteries of the show, but it still doesn’t illuminate everything.
09:00 - 09:30 As is stated several times throughout this book specifically, the creators meant for many aspects of the story to remain ambiguous and even they don’t have concrete answers for certain things. I then read An Omnipresence in Wired, more of a traditional artbook with notes from original character designer and key animator Yoshitoshi ABe about the creation of various characters, devices, and locations throughout the series. An Omnipresence in Wired also contains a 19-page one-shot
09:30 - 10:00 manga written and illustrated by ABe titled The Nightmare of Fabrication. Also, serendipitously, while I was in the midst of my research for this video, Japanese entertainment magazine CONTINUE Motion Graphics’ January 2025 issue hit newsstands on December 18, 2024. And in this issue, number 85, is a 50-page retrospective on the entire Serial Experiments Lain franchise, including interviews with producer Yasuyuki Ueda and original character designer Yoshitoshi ABe.
10:00 - 10:30 I had no idea this was going to come out when it did. I’d never even heard of this magazine before. I happened upon it when I was walking by my local Kinokuniya book store. Talk about fate. While reading through these supplemental materials, I watched several live action and animated series connected to the main creators of Serial Experiments Lain. I also played through a few other PS1 games that were designed or written by some of Lain’s creators. And I’ll talk about all of these things when they become relevant. When I finally sat down to start writing the script for this video,
10:30 - 11:00 I watched Serial Experiments Lain again to capture clean footage from the 2010 Japanese Blu-ray re-release of the series. As I continued to write the script, I ended up watching Serial Experiments Lain again. This time with the English dub, which is surprisingly included on the 2010 Japanese Blu-ray re-release of the series. Funny thing, this Blu-ray collection features no subtitles or captions in either Japanese or English, which is pretty annoying but is actually par for the course for a lot of Japanese anime releases. Even now, most of the more popular late night anime series don't receive closed captioning,
11:00 - 11:30 neither when they air on Japanese television nor when they get released in overpriced Blu-ray sets. It’s downright insensitive. The pricing and the lack of consideration for the hearing impaired. The Lain Blu-ray set’s pretty affordable, though. As of this writing, you can get it for 9,590 yen which is about 60 US dollars, again at the current exchange rate at the time I’m writing this. It’s available on Amazon Japan, and I’m pretty sure they deliver it internationally, so you know, if you want a high-quality Blu-ray set and don’t mind the lack
11:30 - 12:00 of subtitles but the inclusion of the English dub, then you should look into it. It’s a better package than the Funimation Complete Series Classic DVD and Blu-ray combo set that I also own. Oh yeah, I watched the series again while I was editing this video too, just because, I don’t know, just because I wanted to watch it again. So I watched the series 5 times over the course of making this video, so yeah. But, all of this to say that I did my homework. And took a practically 6-week intensive course on everything Serial Experiments Lain
12:00 - 12:30 and related that I could get my hands on to bring you this video. So, I hope even the most hardcore of series fans learn at least one new thing during the length of this... retrospective. I don’t know. Whatever you want to call this. But now, let’s actually talk about Serial Experiments Lain, where it came from and who created it.
12:30 - 13:00 The creation of Serial Experiments Lain involves several key people, but the seed of the idea was an observation by producer Yasuyuki Ueda concerning the relationship between individuals and the faceless mass of humanity that surrounds us. There was no significance to focusing the story around the internet and technology. Ueda only saw these as tools that had become part of daily life,
13:00 - 13:30 so to tell a modern story, it made sense to use them. The members of the production team he eventually assembled also happened to be techno-obsessed freaks as well. So that helped. The 90s saw the rise of the commercial internet, and it changed the way people could interact with each other on a global scale. Even though sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were still quite a ways off--even Myspace wouldn’t come into existence until 5 years after the series
13:30 - 14:00 first premiered--the idea of social media was already proliferating in less centralized ways: message boards, chat rooms, peer to peer servers. In fact, the phrase “social media” was coined in 1994 by a developer named Darrel Berry as he was working on Matisse, a proto social media environment that was meant to combine VR with text-based communication, in much the same way that the Wired functions in Serial Experiments Lain, and in much the same way that many science fiction authors envisioned the internet to function some time in the near future.
14:00 - 14:30 Yet here we are, in the year 2025, still smacking our meat paws against keyboards and touch screens. But the ways in which the internet changed a persons’ perception of not only their own self but of others as well were the origins of what would become Lain, so Ueda wrote up a project document sometime in 1996. Looking through interviews both online and in those supplemental books that I mentioned earlier, it’s clear that Serial Experiments Lain was a hugely collaborative effort.
14:30 - 15:00 But who were these other weirdos involved in its creation? On the writing side of things, there was Chiaki Konaka, sometimes credited as Chiaki J. Konaka. The “J” comes from the biblical name “John,” a nod to his parents’ affiliation with the Christian church, though Konaka himself has stated he doesn’t identify as a Christian. Producer Yasuyuki Ueda stated in an interview for the magazine FRUiTS, in the October 1st, 1998 issue, that he and Konaka had crossed paths earlier on in their careers, and Konaka was a well known writer at the time.
15:00 - 15:30 As a scenario and scriptwriter, Konaka had previously worked on several Ultraman series in the 90s, including Ultraman Tiga, which I mentioned in my video Goichi Suda Syndrome, since there’s a lengthy reference to Ultraman Tiga in Moonlight Syndrome. Konaka would go on to write the original video animation, or OVA, series Armitage the Third. The movie adaptation, Armitage the Third: Poly-Matrix, was a staple of the Sci-Fi Channel’s Saturday Anime rotation in the late 90s. I rewatched Armitage the Third as part of my research for this video. It’d probably
15:30 - 16:00 been about 25 years since I’d last seen it, and I had fond, yet vague memories of it. Turns out, it’s not great. Its ideas and themes regarding the advancement of AI and robotic lifeforms are interesting. The art direction and visuals are fantastic. But the actual plot is pretty weak. I mean... Robots? Getting pregnant? In this economy? Also in 1995, Konaka wrote the live-action television series Alice 6, which was directed by his younger brother Kazuya Konaka.
16:00 - 16:30 It concerns six models who are hired by a mysterious crew to pose for a photo shoot in the forest. The crew vanish during the shoot and the girls find themselves pursued by a man in a white rabbit costume and each episode sees them falling through several dreamlike scenarios. The series was part of a trend in Japan in the 80s and 90s called “area code programming” wherein short series were created on shoe-string budgets for local networks. Alice 6 was shot on location in Shizuoka prefecture and aired only
16:30 - 17:00 on local Shizuoka channels and some other local networks in surrounding prefectures. For a long time, it was considered lost media, but shout out to Dozzyrok on YouTube who managed to dig it up and 11 of the 12 episodes have received an English fan translation. The last episode is just a bonus recap and cast interview segment, so I guess that’s why there’s no translation for it. Episode 11 is the end of the story. There’s a link to the playlist of the English subtitled episodes in this video description, if you want to check it out. It may or may not still be there depending on when you’re watching this.
17:00 - 17:30 I watched all 12 episodes of Alice 6 as part of my research for this video. Turns out, it’s not great. It’s low budget, nonsensical, and way too on the nose with its references to Lewis Carrol’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Just because I said it’s not great, though, doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. Get ready for many extended photo shoot montages set to C-tier mid-90s Japanese pop tracks. And one episode consists almost entirely of an amateurish magic show performed for a group of younger kids, and everybody looks like they didn’t rehearse
17:30 - 18:00 the scene and are just a goofing around during a school talent show or something. It’s actually really charming. Konaka also had some experience in video games, having written the visual novel/rock-paper-scissor style turn-based fighting game Alice in Cyberland released on December 20, 1996 for PlayStation 1.
18:00 - 18:30 I played Alice in Cyberland as part of my research for this video. Turns out, it’s not great. Its plot and world aren’t very interesting, and the combat system is frustratingly slow and boring. I don’t really have anything else to say about it. It’s not great, and I didn’t enjoy playing it. There’s also a 2-episode OVA series based on the game, but it didn’t involve Konaka, so I didn’t bother with it. One thing that’s interesting about Armitage the Third, Alice 6, and Alice in Cyberland
18:30 - 19:00 is that they all carry concepts that are reused frequently throughout Konaka’s work. Chiefly, the obsession with technology and how it affects our identity and sense of self, fragmenting us into different personas. There are also other superficial connections that Konaka himself points out in the footnotes of the first episode screenplay of Serial Experiments Lain in Scenario Experiments Lain. A version of the NAVI computer system that’s so prominently used in Lain was first introduced in Armitage the Third. I don’t know if any of the characters in Armitage ever actually utter the phrase NAVI,
19:00 - 19:30 but according to Konaka, he used that name for the devices in his screenplays. The name Arisu, the phonetic pronunciation of Alice in Japanese and one of Lain’s classmates in the TV series, appears to be a favorite of Konaka’s. You think there’s enough Alice in Wonderland references in his mid-90s work? According to another footnote from Scenario Experiments Lain, he first used the name, Arisu, in an episode he wrote for the 1994 live-action anthology horror series “Gakkou no Kaidan” or “School Ghost Stories.”
19:30 - 20:00 His episode was titled “Zekkyou High School” or “Screaming High School.” I did not watch this episode during my research, because I couldn’t find it. I found several of the films that spun off from this television series and an anime adaptation, but none of these involved Konaka, so I didn’t bother. I did manage to find a scan of the episode screenplay on what I can only assume is Konaka’s personal website, Konaka.com, that was last updated in 2010.
20:00 - 20:30 And yeah, you can tell this site was built in 1997 and just left that way. What a trip. There are screenplays for 2 more Gakkou no Kaidan episodes that Konaka wrote, as well as various other screenplays, including one he wrote for a The Big O audio drama CD. He even wrote a scenario for an Alice in Cyberland 2 game, which was never made. Part 2 of this scenario is subtitled “The 7th Protocol.” Those who’ve seen the Serial Experiments Lain anime will recognize this as the series’ main macguffin. And I refer to it as a macguffin, because that’s how Konaka himself describes it in
20:30 - 21:00 his footnote when the 7th protocol is introduced in the episode 8 screenplay. The names Juri, Chisa Yomoda, and Reika, other classmates in Serial Experiments Lain, were first used in the Alice 6 series. Arisu, Juri, and Reika were then used as the names of the three protagonists in the Alice in Cyberland PS1 game. After watching and reading some of the different incarnations of these characters, I can say that there are some similar traits that Konaka gives to each version,
21:00 - 21:30 but they’re not meant to be the same character or create any kind of metaverse between his works. Thank god. Instead, I think it’s simply that he likes using the same names over and over. Fair enough. For Lain’s artwork and design, Ueda found Yoshitoshi ABe who was a university student at the time. Ueda found his homepage while just browsing the internet one day, so the story goes, and contacted him to see if he’d be interested in becoming the lead artist on this new project Ueda was creating. ABe didn’t hesitate to take the job, even though he had hardly any experience drawing
21:30 - 22:00 manga at the time, let alone drawing the same character over and over again. And it goes without saying that he’d never worked on a game or TV series production before. It turned out to be a perfect fit though, and ABe not only designed almost all aspects of the visual presentation in Lain, from the characters to the machines and devices to the environments that the story would take place in, but also gave his own ideas for character arcs and story beats. Though a novice in every sense of the word, he became an integral part of the production team,
22:00 - 22:30 even taking on the role of key animator on several episodes. Serial Experiments Lain would launch ABe to a successful career throughout the early 2000s, where he would go on to create the series NieA_7, Haibane Renmei, and Texhnolyze. That last one would reunite him with writer Chiaki Konaka. All of these series were produced by Yasuyuki Ueda as well. Junji Nakahara was chosen as director for the Serial Experiments Lain game, having worked on a previous Pioneer LDC game, NOeL: Not Digital.
22:30 - 23:00 NOeL: Not Digital is another strange, Operating System based, mixed media product released for the PlayStation 1 in 1996. It had two sequels, NOeL: La Neige, which is French for “snow,”--and wouldn’t ya know it? the game takes place in winter--released on PlayStation 1 and NOeL 3 on Saturn with an enhanced port, NOel 3: Mission on the Line, released later on for the PlayStation 1 as well. The first two games, Not Digital and La Neige, are dating sims.
23:00 - 23:30 However, unlike most Japanese dating sims where you interact with your digital love interests in person (inside the game world anyway), in NOeL you make video calls to 3 girls that you met during summer break, with the hope of having one of them confess to you by the end of the year. So it’s like a long distance dating simulation. It’s a pretty complex game. By receiving messages and progressing through conversations with the girls, you learn their interests and their schedules. NOeL features an in-game clock that can be advanced at will, but you can’t go backwards in time.
23:30 - 24:00 You need to call at the girls at the right time of day, otherwise you’ll get their answering machines. They have their own busy personal lives, after all. Sometimes you need to wait for them to call you. While talking to them, keywords will scroll by and need to be caught in order to further different conversation branches. Since everything is happening in real time, you have to catch the topics and then click on them to advance the conversation at the right moment. Just like in an actual conversation with someone, if you bring up something she doesn’t want to talk about, broach a topic at the wrong time, or just don’t respond
24:00 - 24:30 with anything as she’s talking, she may get irritated and even hang up on you. Relive the highlights of your own miserable love life by messing up phone conversations and crying in shame after hanging up. It’s a strange, yet surprisingly engaging experience, once you get the hang of it. The game. Not, uh, not real life. You’ll never get the hang of that. Unfortunately, yet unsurprisingly, given the amount of dialogue and the unique interface, it’s never received a fan translation of any kind. NOeL 3 abandons the dating sim format and instead has you hacking different security cameras inside your school, which has been taken over by a group of techno-terrorists,
24:30 - 25:00 and you need to guide the other students to safety. Interesting note, Ryutaro Nakamura, director of the Serial Experiments Lain anime, directed the movie portions of NoEL 3. Anyway, Junji Nakahara is credited as the planner and gameplay director on the first game, and after messing around with this thing, it’s easy to see how the Serial Experiments Lain game came out the way it did. There are a few other key members of the creative team that were more heavily involved in the Serial Experiments Lain anime, so I’ll talk about them when I get around to talking about the series.
25:00 - 25:30 As I said earlier, Serial Experiments Lain was originally conceived as a video game. Yet even from the outset, the creators knew they were using the term “game” only loosely. Very, very loosely. What you see is what you get. There is nothing more to the Serial Experiments
25:30 - 26:00 Lain game beyond navigating this large Lain avatar up and down this cylinder of data and selecting nodes, hoping that they’ll open up and reveal something to you. Gameplay consists of pressing left or right to highlight different nodes, turning the cylinder, and ascending or descending to different levels to try to access more nodes. All the while, the only music track you’ll hear is the same, music box style tune, over and over and over. My God.
26:00 - 26:30 It’s maddening. This song starts out as an eerie backdrop and sets a particular mood, but very quickly wears out its welcome. It’s only about 2 minutes long, and because you’ll be popping in and out of the node screens, which have no music by the way, it always restarts when you come back to the main area. I thought about looping it in the background for the entire length of this video to simulate a play session, but I’m not that cruel.
26:30 - 27:00 No, really, I’m not. When you start a new game, the node Cou001 is highlighted. Selecting this node transitions to a screen with three keywords listed. There’s a Play button that’s currently highlighted in the bottom left corner, so selecting play begins a conversation between a woman and Lain. It appears to be their first meeting, and the woman tries to break the ice by offering Lain a beverage.
27:00 - 27:30 They discuss the qualities of Earl Grey tea, and that’s about it for this conversation. After the recording ends, you have a few choices. You can try selecting one of the other keywords. These will transport you to different connected nodes that could be on any level of the cylinder and concern similar topics of conversation. But these nodes may or may not be accessible to you at this time. In fact, a lot of them just throw an error, especially early on. Or you can exit the node and continue exploring the current level you’re on. After a node has been
27:30 - 28:00 completed it will turn gray, and this is how you keep track of your progress throughout the game. One thing to note, the PS1 version of the game had an autosave feature that would save after every completed node. The browser version does not, and you’ll need to manually save your progress from the menu. If you decide to try out the browser version of the game, don’t forget to save your progress often. In any case, the goal of gameplay is simple. Turn all the nodes gray. There are several other things you’re going to need to do to make that happen though.
28:00 - 28:30 As I mentioned near the beginning, there are different types of nodes, all denoted by different abbreviations and numbers. The Cou nodes are counseling recordings. The story of Serial Experiments Lain the game hinges on the monthly therapy sessions between Lain and her counselor, 27-year old Touko Yonera. Dia nodes are diagnosis recordings. These are Touko’s summaries of the counseling sessions, which reveal a colder and more clinical attitude toward Lain as a patient,
28:30 - 29:00 or client, as Touko calls her. And, I mean, I guess that’s only natural. The diagnosis recordings are meant to be sent to her supervisor, and this is her job, after all. But it’s interesting to hear the illusion of friendliness and camaraderie that Touko tries to project toward Lain in the counseling sessions shattered by these professional observations. There are also Tda nodes. These are Touko’s diary where we learn more about her personal life and her own feelings about Lain and her work. Naturally, the diary entries are more confessional and reveal another side to
29:00 - 29:30 Touko’s character. They also detail several subplots that aren’t related to Lain at all. Lain also begins keeping a diary at the behest of Touko. And these are labeled as Lda nodes. Lain’s diaries detail her home and school life, as well as reflect on some of the counseling sessions. Much like with Touko’s diary, there are entire subplots here that have no connection with the counseling. Then there are Dc or digital camera nodes. These are animated cinematics, produced by Triangle Staff, the same studio that would go on to produce the anime.
29:30 - 30:00 Here the character designs look slightly different. This is because they were created based off of ABe’s original designs by Hitoshi Haga, while the anime series character designs were handled by Takahiro Kishida. These animated sequences connect to some of the counseling and diary entries at times, but mostly end up telling a separate story that becomes important toward the very end of the game. Chiaka Konaka, who originally worked on the overall composition of the game’s story and
30:00 - 30:30 wrote the screenplay for the animated segments, moved on to writing the screenplays for the anime when the game entered full production. So the writing of all the dialogue in the game was done by Hideko Shimizu. And I have to say, with the game’s more intense focus on characters and conversation, Shimizu’s more naturalistic writing style works far better than Konaka’s minimalistic approach to dialogue. Conversations in the game are rich with nuance and character’s hiding their true intentions, especially in the conversations between Lain and Touko.
30:30 - 31:00 Hearing their talks and then hearing Touko’s diagnosis, then hearing her personal thoughts in her diary entries, then hearing Lain’s thoughts in her own diary, it weaves a complex web of a relationship. Far greater in depth than anything done in the anime. Though to be fair, the anime had different aims, and I think Konaka’s writing there is brilliant and fits what they were going for perfectly. Continuing on with the nodes, though, there are a few that don’t divulge more of the story, but are essential for making progress in the game. The first of these are the Sskn nodes, which stand for Saisei-kun. Saisei has several different
31:00 - 31:30 meanings in Japanese: “restoration, regeneration, reclamation, recall.” Any one of these translations could be a good fit for these nodes, because they’re upgrades, which allow Lain to access more nodes. Remember how some nodes wouldn’t open or would actively attack Lain? These upgrades allow you to bypass their locks and defense mechanisms. Along with that, there are GaTE nodes, which are Gate Passes. You’ll need to collect four of these to access the next cylinder.
31:30 - 32:00 That’s right. The current cylinder where the game starts is labelled as Site A, and there are 22 levels. There’s also a Site B, but you need to collect all 4 Gate Passes in order to access it. Site B contains a few more Sskn nodes and only has 13 levels. On the PS1 version of the game, Site A was on Disc 1 and Site B was on Disc 2. You swap between them by opening the menu and selecting “Change” once you’ve collected all 4 Gate passes. In the browser version, this swap happens automatically after a short loading screen.
32:00 - 32:30 There are also P2 nodes, each corresponding to a different body part of the Poly-tan doll, a 3D render that may or may not hold any significance to the overall story, but completing the doll unlocks more nodes, so collecting all of its parts is essential to completing the game. If all of this doesn’t already sound complicated enough, even after you’ve collected all of the upgrades, gate passes, and Polytan parts, certain nodes will not unlock. And not all of the nodes that do unlock are visible at first glance. Some only appear
32:30 - 33:00 after listening to other nodes, and the ones that then appear may not unlock right away. There are also bonus scenes that play if you stay idle on each level of the cylinders. Some of these will play conversations that you’ll gain access to later, but others will play more animated cutscenes outside of the Dc nodes that show different parts of the story that were hinted at in diary entries or just other bizarre moments.
33:00 - 33:30 And so, this is how the game goes, traversing the cylinders, attempting to open nodes, listening to conversations and diary entries, watching short movies, collecting upgrades, trying to move forward. The numbers on the nodes put them in chronological order, but not all of them are accessible in chronological order. Also, they are only in chronological order in relation to nodes of the same type. Yet the overall story is broken up between all of these different types of nodes.
33:30 - 34:00 What this means is, piecing together when certain events take place between the counseling sessions, diary entries, and movie clips is difficult as you’re playing through the game. This is intentional on the part of the creators. There’s a linear story here, but you’re not meant to experience it in a linear fashion. In fact, as we’ll see later, even attempting to cut up recorded footage of a playthrough and place all of the different types of nodes in the exact chronological order in which they all take place
34:00 - 34:30 proves to be a very difficult task, because there are intentional gaps in the narrative. There are a couple of different ways to tackle the game as well. You could attempt to move through the levels in order, backing out of node screens and scouring the cylinder for the next numerical node. Or you could use the keyword system and piece together the story through its themes in a more abstract way. The choice is yours. I’ll say this, though the characters and the narrative are interesting and engaging, playing through the game to try to piece the story together is a test of patience.
34:30 - 35:00 For every video I make, I take extensive notes while playing through games and capturing footage. Since I was playing through this game in a browser. This is what that process looked like. I’d access a node, write down its alphabetic and numerical code, and write a brief description of what the conversation or movie clip was about. This was work. It was like having a data entry job. And it only became more tedious as the playthrough wore on. Now, I knew I’d be making a video, so having all of these notes and timestamps and everything clearly labeled was essential. But even without all of this, actually playing Serial Experiments Lain can be pretty monotonous.
35:00 - 35:30 I’d recommend just going with the flow, trying to follow keywords, not worrying about what nodes unlock and which ones don’t, and just letting the narrative wash over you. Eventually, in Site B, on either levels 12 or 13, you’ll reach the final counseling, diagnosis, Dc, Touko’s diary, and Lain’s diary nodes. Each of these will trigger an ending cutscene. And by this point, you will not have been able to open all of the nodes, so you know where this is going: a 2nd playthrough.
35:30 - 36:00 After the ending cutscene plays, Lain will turn and face the screen and actually say the name that you input on the name entry screen when you started a new game, or authorized a new user. And here’s where entering my name as “ダンジョン” came back to bite me in the ass. She couldn’t say the name. I don’t know if this is a bug in the browser version or the same would have happened on the PS1 original, but I was stuck here. No matter how many times I reloaded, tried different ending nodes,
36:00 - 36:30 refreshed my browser, nothing worked. I thought this was it, and I wouldn’t be able to continue, or I’d have to start over. By this point, I’d played for about 9 hours, though, and having to start over would have been painful. So I started digging around the 3d.laingame site. On the options page, at the bottom of the screen was a dialogue box that contained the “save file” for the game. Scrolling to the bottom of this text, reveals the player name, which was still displayed as “ダンジョン”. Since Lain was having such a hard time saying this,
36:30 - 37:00 I decided to delete some characters until my name was just “ダ”. I then hit the load state button and reloaded the website, as per the instructions here. This time, after triggering the ending cutscene and arriving at the screen where Lain says the player’s name, she said it and the game advanced to a screen asking me whether or not I wanted to continue. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Hitting “end” will just bump you back to the authorize user or load data screen. Hitting “continue” will send Lain back to Site A where not only will you be able to
37:00 - 37:30 access more of the nodes you couldn’t on a first playthrough, but new nodes will also appear. There are even some new types of nodes that show up. The Tak, or talk, nodes. These are short audio clips that I’ll discuss more later on. During the 2nd playthrough, more of Touko’s diary becomes available, specifically entries that deal with events before the start of the game that are hinted at in the 1st playthrough. More of Lain’s diary entries also become available, but not all of them. There’s one that still won’t open.
37:30 - 38:00 There are also new Ekm, Ere, and Eda nodes that appear but don’t open. On this playthrough. That’s right. Once you’ve opened all of the nodes that you can during a 2nd playthrough, it’s time to trigger the last cutscene through one of the other ending nodes again. The cutscene does not change. Nor will it for the next 4 times you need to run through the game to unlock every single node. So technically, you need to go through seven playthroughs to see everything the game has to offer.
38:00 - 38:30 I’m using the term “playthrough” as loosely as the developers used the term “game” when designing this thing. Each time you view one of the ending nodes, more of the other nodes will unlock, with the final nodes being those talk nodes I mentioned earlier. And as I said they’re just Lain speaking a few lines that honestly don’t have any bearing on the story. In fact, during my fifth playthrough, I started to get the feeling that the game’s designers were mocking me for digging this deeply into things.
38:30 - 39:00 But there were still new nodes unlocking that revealed more of the overall story. Now, could you just hit continue after viewing the ending cutscene and head straight for the top of Site B to complete another ending node, and just do that 5 times in a row to have everything totally unlocked without scouring both Sites A and B each and every time? I don’t know. I didn’t try it. I don’t know if certain nodes need to be completed before viewing an ending again unlocks others.
39:00 - 39:30 If anyone has any clue about that, leave a comment. Being able to just bum rush the endings and then have everything open on one pass through both Sites would make things slightly, SLIGHTLY, less tedious, I suppose, but there are still a lot of nodes to go through. 687 in total. And I unlocked every single one of them. So now you know, basically, what the structure of this game is and how to complete it.
39:30 - 40:00 But what is our reward for doing this? What grand narrative does all of this menuing and data entry reveal? Well, we’ll get to that. First of all, most people experienced the TV series before the game, so I feel like it makes sense to talk about the events of the series before talking about the events of the game. I know there’s gonna be at least one smartass out there who comments that actually they played the game first, but you know what, just shut up and accept that you’re a freak. It’s ok. We don’t judge here.
40:00 - 40:30 As we’ve established, the creators of Serial Experiments Lain envisioned a multimedia project. And from the outset, they wanted to create something, for lack of a better word, experimental. And, uh, yeah, if you just watched the previous section of this video, it feels like they accomplished that.
40:30 - 41:00 This isn’t an uncommon practice for Japanese media companies. Manga series receive anime adaptations in hopes of selling more manga. TV series get video games. Video games get TV series. Profits cycle among these different products. So it wasn’t any sort of a crazy notion for them to consider the anime as a way to get people interested in buying their video game. This is confirmed in that same interview with producer Yasuyuki Udea in FRUiTS magazine that I referenced earlier.
41:00 - 41:30 It’s only in hindsight, knowing how popular and influential the TV series became, that you sort of wonder at the fact that it all kind of started out as, “Hey, let’s make this anime too, so people buy our video game.” Ueda gave Chiaki Konaka and the other main creative members of the anime staff a lot of freedom to create a story distinct from the game’s, merely using its elements as a springboard. This idea of a reiteration, another experiment,
41:30 - 42:00 if you will--is what inspired the final title of the franchise, “Serial Experiments Lain.” This is confirmed in the episode breakdown guide, Visual Experiments Lain. While Junji Nakahara directed the gameplay portion of the Serial Experiments Lain video game and Tetsuya Endo directed the animated movie portions, for the series, Ueda needed staff who were more experienced in anime production. He tapped veteran director Ryutaro Nakamura for that role and Takahiro Kishida for character design and layout art.
42:00 - 42:30 Endo’s interpretations of Yoshitoshi ABe’s original designs are a bit cutesier and are sort of jarring if you’re coming from the anime. I feel like Kishida’s designs are more faithful to ABe’s concept work. Kishida also played a large role in shaping some story elements and designs that give the TV series its unique personality. In fact, one of the series most iconic images was created by him. Lain in the bear suit pajamas. We’ll examine this more later. Junji Nakahara would go on to handle digital effects for the Lain TV series,
42:30 - 43:00 designing the NAVI’s Communication OS and the more advanced Copland OS, as well as crafting various other effects that the show employs throughout its episodes. Meanwhile, Ryutaro Nakamura’s unique directorial style and eye for shot composition and the pacing of scenes gave anime Lain a much different feel than game Lain. Nakamura would go on to direct several critically acclaimed, avant-gard anime series throughout the rest of the 90s and 2000s, such as Colorful, Kino’s Journey, and Ghost Hound.
43:00 - 43:30 In 2009, it was announced that Nakamura would reunite with ABe and Konaka to direct Despera, a proposed anime series set in the early 20th century during Japan’s Taisho era, about a young girl who can build various devices despite having no background in science or engineering. The series entered development hell in the early 2010s and was ultimately shelved in 2013 when Nakamura passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. It’s sad that we lost such a creative voice and visionary.
43:30 - 44:00 Both Konaka and ABe have made statements about reviving the series, but as of 2025, the only thing that exists is a book published by Konaka and ABe that has various artworks and short stories that were created while the series was in active production. We can only wonder at would could have been and hope that someday the series they envisioned sees the light of day. It definitely won’t be the same without Nakamura helming it, but still, the story that the book hints at looks really interesting. But back to Lain, it became evident from the production
44:00 - 44:30 of episode 1 that the series was going to be something special. When the cut of episode 1 was completed, before it aired, tapes of the episode were passed around to different animation studios in Japan who marveled at its artistry. Its landscapes of powerlines crisscrossing the sky, its main character draped in wires, its visions of monstrous PC hardware, this is imagery that permeates the collective unconscious of the internet even today. But it wasn’t just the visuals that floored all of these industry veterans back in 1998. It was the sound as well.
44:30 - 45:00 Sound director Youta Tsuruoka and sound designer and engineer Kouji Kasamatsu, along with music director Akira Takemoto created a lush soundscape that assaults, unnerves, plays tricks, and delivers emotional punches. In an interview in the back of Visual Experiments Lain, the three of them detail their approach to the sound design in the series. One of the more interesting revelations to come out of this interview was how they buried the dialogue in the overall mix.
45:00 - 45:30 Usually voices are placed up front, so they stand out and are easy to hear. In an attempt to give the series a more couched and claustrophobic feel, they placed the dialogue lower. The team was actively crafting the sounds of the series to create feelings of tension and unease. Distortion, layering, placing sound effects and music at different frequencies were all techniques they implemented with the help of director Nakamura, who if you’ve seen any of his other series, has a keen interest in sound design in his productions. The attention to detail is astounding.
45:30 - 46:00 Lain is a series best experienced with headphones to appreciate the richness of its audio, but even just watching it on a TV with only decent speakers, the effort put into the sound design still shines through. And the creators knew this, because they knew most of their audience would be viewing it on small CRTs at the time of its broadcast. Of course, you can’t talk about the sound without mentioning the iconic opening, which doesn’t begin with the opening song, but a white screen and the lines: "Present day, present time"
46:00 - 46:30 This is so iconic that I’m sure there are people out there who have seen this segment as a meme but didn’t even know where it came from. You don’t need to have seen Lain to know Lain. It’s only after this that the song “Duvet” by English alternative rock band Boa kicks in. Duvet is a haunting track, originally released on the band’s 1998 debut album, The Race of a Thousand Camels. And this whole album is fantastic by the way. Hard recommend Boa. They’re excellent.
46:30 - 47:00 The band didn’t really have any part in the song winding up as the opening for Lain. Ueda heard the track and wanted to use it, so the dealings went through legal departments for the most part. Lead singer Jasmine Rogers has answered numerous questions about Duvet’s inclusion in Lain, and all she can really say on behalf of the band is they were pretty excited to be part of an anime production, even in a tangential way. In fact, the resurgence of popularity of Lain and Duvet in the late 2010s and early 2020s is what led Boa to reunite after initially breaking up in 2005,
47:00 - 47:30 according to social media posts from the various band members. They released a new album, Whiplash, in 2024. I listened to it as part of my research for this video. No, I’m just kidding. Although I have listened to the album. It’s good. The ending music track “Tooi Sakebi,” “Far Cry” or “Distant Scream” was written by Reichi “CHABO” Nakaido, best known in Japan as the guitarist and vocalist for the band RC Succession, who were formed in 1968 and broke up in 1991.
47:30 - 48:00 They were hugely popular during the 70s and 80s. “Tooi Sakebi” is a powerful ending track featuring Nakaido’s slithering electric guitar lead and raspy vocals, backed by a forlorn acoustic progression with ghostly wobbly synthesized tones occasionally surfacing in the background. The rest of Lain’s background music is more in this rock-inflected styling, though there are some more techno-inspired tracks sprinkled in throughout. One of my favorite tracks is the bizarre, effects-drenched guitar noodling of “Mist
48:00 - 48:30 of Different Dimension,” which plays initially near the end of episode 1 and shows up near the end of several other episodes throughout the series. Unfortunately, I can’t play snippets of any of these tracks, because copyright, but the soundtracks are on YouTube, so you can easily find them. Lain the game featured one monotonous music track. Lain the anime features a rich palette of music that adds to the series mystifying atmosphere.
48:30 - 49:00 The episodes of Lain are called layers, possibly in reference to the Open Systems Intercommunication or OSI model’s layers of connection between devices and networks. Though they could also be referring more metaphorically to the layers of the narrative and characters throughout the series. The ambiguity is almost definitely intentional. Every episode has a similar introduction that portrays various shots of the streets of Shibuya. A voiceover usually accompanies these scenes.
49:00 - 49:30 The content of the voiceover is cryptic but related in some way to the storyline of each episode, and then we get the layer title screen. These are also pretty iconic. They use the “whisper” voice from the MacOS Speech Control Panel. In fact, there are many Apple and Macintosh references throughout the series, some blatant and others fairly obscure. But now, I think it’s time to dive into the story of Serial Experiments Lain the anime.
49:30 - 50:00 As I mentioned earlier in this video, I feel like it’s impossible to talk about the game’s story without first looking at the anime’s. I also just want to analyze the story of Lain, because I think it’ll be fun. If you’ve watched this channel before, you’ll know I spend pretty much the entire last half, sometimes even the last two-thirds of my videos’ runtimes analyzing the narrative in the games I cover. And it’s really just because I love storytelling and looking at the structure of stories and what makes them function. There’s also a lot of information about Lain
50:00 - 50:30 specifically that I found in the supplemental books and interviews I read that will be interesting to point out while examining the story. So even if you’re a Lain veteran, you may want to stick around through this next section of the video. There might be some tidbits even you never knew. But if you’ve never seen it and want to watch it on your own first, you can go to this time to skip to the next section of the video where I go over the game’s story in detail. If you’d rather avoid both of these spoiler-filled segments, you can skip to the pretty much spoiler free conclusion of the video where I talk about Lain’s legacy, a few events that have
50:30 - 51:00 happened recently related to Lain, as well as my final thoughts on everything Lain. I can’t make any promises that there might not be a couple spoilers in the conclusion, but I don’t talk about any major story beats or anything, just overall themes mostly. So, yeah, the choice is yours. Obviously, I’d prefer it if you just watched the whole video, you know, but, yeah, it’s up to you.
51:00 - 51:30 The first Layer, Weird, kicks off with the death of Chisa Yomoda, a 2nd-year junior high school student who jumps from the top of a building in the backstreets of Shibuya. This opening sequence does a lot of heavy-lifting, introducing the mood of the series, as well as several of its visual motifs and story themes.
51:30 - 52:00 The shallowness of modern city life, powerlines in the sky, splatters of red in shadows, on-screen text, background sounds warped and garbled. All of these elements will be further utilized and expanded on throughout the entirety of the series. Two of the most prominent visual elements throughout the series are the images of power lines and the “blood-spattered” shadows. The power lines are thoroughly explained in the episode 1 breakdown in Visual Experiments Lain. And there are really two sides to their prominence throughout the series.
52:00 - 52:30 On the one hand, they represent the border between the real world and the Wired. The physical lines that carry electrical impulses and information to and fro throughout the world. In fact, when the border between the real world and the Wired is shattered later on in the series, the power lines in Lain’s neighborhood break. The other reason for their inclusion is pretty simple actually. This is just what Japan looks like. The power wire section of Visual Experiments Lain details how in New York City throughout the 20th century, the power lines were mostly all buried underground.
52:30 - 53:00 This was due to a massive snowstorm that swept the city in the 1880s, causing huge infrastructural damage. Afterwards, the city started burying them to better prevent massive blackouts due to weather disasters. Many European cities also have their powerlines underground. In virtually all of Japan, though, both city and countryside, the powerlines remain above ground. The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this video. Though Tokyo did launch an initiative in the lead up to the 2020 Olympics to bury
53:00 - 53:30 many of the cities powerlines, but this took place only in the busiest tourist neighborhoods and areas surrounding the Olympic village. Point is, look around Tokyo, Kyoto, small towns and villages in the countryside, and you’ll still see these weblike lines. Now, the blood-spattered shadows are in fact not there in real life, and much has been made of their meaning in Serial Experiments Lain. And actually calling them “blood-spattered” isn’t technically correct. They don’t always
53:30 - 54:00 appear red. Sometimes there are blue, purple, and white splotches mixed in. The various supplemental materials make little mention of them. However, in a Q&A panel from American anime convention Otakon held in August 2000 with Yoshitoshi ABe and Yasuyuki Ueda. ABe explains that the splotchy shadows were director Nakamura’s idea and were meant to represent the Wired’s ever present influence in the real world, always there in the shadows. This may also explain why, a few scenes later, when there is a deliberate shot
54:00 - 54:30 of Lain’s shadow on the ground, it’s filled with a substance that looks like clear water. Lain hasn’t yet been corrupted by the Wired. At school, her classmates Alice and Reika are comforting Julie, and I’m just going to use the English pronunciations of Alice and Julie to make it easier on myself throughout the rest of this video. When they approach Lain, they mention Julie is upset because she’s received an email from Chisa Yomoda, even though she died a week earlier. The other girls hypothesize that someone is playing a cruel prank. Lain is unaware of any email, because she’s not really up on
54:30 - 55:00 all the gadgets and technology that the other kids her age are using. As the school day continues, Lain experiences a few visual hallucinations. Students outside turn to silhouettes and disappear, the writing on the classroom blackboard becomes blurry, and a smoky, ectoplasm-like substance leaks from her fingertips. Mental illness and Lain’s auditory and visual hallucinations actually play a central role in the story of the game, so we’ll examine this in more detail during the next section of the video.
55:00 - 55:30 But concerning the scene where Lain sees a smoke-like substance coming out of her fingers, both Konaka, in his footnote about the scene in Scenario Experiments Lain, and Ueda, in that Otakon Q&A panel, mention that these hallucinations are meant to firmly situate the show in Lain’s own perception of reality. And the inspiration for this scene, in particular, came from reports of actual schizophrenic patients who described similar hallucinations. All throughout these early scenes, text keeps appearing on screen, taken from the emails that Chisa supposedly sent to her classmates.
55:30 - 56:00 When I died? It hurt! Lol After school, Lain checks her own computer, or NAVI, as they’re referred to in the world of Lain. The name was inspired by Apple’s Knowledge Navigator, and as I mentioned earlier, was first used in Konaka’s screenplays for Armitage the Third. Lain’s NAVI is an older model for kids, pushed off to the side and seemingly forgotten on the desk in her bedroom. Unsurprisingly, Lain also has a message from Chisa who invites her to come to the Wired,
56:00 - 56:30 because she’s found god there. Lain’s home life seems fairly depressing. Everyone appears lost in their own world, as evidenced by their silent dinner where her older sister, Mika, excuses herself. Lain tries to tell her mother that she’s received an email from a girl who’s been dead for a week, but her mom doesn’t even acknowledge the comment. And now we come to the bear suit. Much has been made of this particular outfit. It doesn’t show up in the screenplay for episode 1 and was actually designed by anime character designer Takahiro Kishida.
56:30 - 57:00 It became a small point of contention between the creators. When Konaka and Ueda first saw the design they were resistant to including it, thinking it was, I don’t know, for lack of a better way of putting it, too weeby for the story they were trying to tell. Kishida found an ally in director Nakamura, who understood that the design represented a way for Lain to insulate herself from interactions with her family and to cut off interference from the outside world. After a bit of back and forth, Kishida and Ueda were ultimately convinced of the outfit’s purpose, and it found its way into the finished product.
57:00 - 57:30 Now, along with “Present day, present time,” the layer titles, the powerlines, and the splotchy shadows, it’s one of the series most iconic elements. Lain’s father returns home from work later in the evening and eagerly heads to his home office to install a new component he’s received in the mail. Her father, despite being distracted by his Neil Peart-style computer setup, seems to have more of a connection with Lain than her sister and mother. When Lain meekishly broaches the topic of upgrading her old NAVI, he sees it as a
57:30 - 58:00 sign that she’s growing up and encourages her to make new friends in the real world and the Wired. The next day, the train Lain takes to school has an emergency stop because of an accident. Outside, the powerlines drip with blood and Lain has visions of a girl her age being hit by the train. After experiencing another hallucination at school, where she sees the words “come to the wired” written on the chalkboard, she encounters Chisa or some manifestation of her on her walk home. The episode ends with the familiar phrase “To be continued.”
58:00 - 58:30 The red and blue B and E are another tangential Apple reference, this time to the BeOS, a now-defunct operating system created by Be Inc., whose founder Jean-Luis Guasse was a former Apple executive. This [__] runs deep. Layer 2, Girls, introduces the under-18 techno club Cyberia, popular hangout spot for the technologically obsessed youth in the series. Though the place doesn’t seem to serve alcohol, they do peddle narcotics,
58:30 - 59:00 such as Accela, a nanomachine like device that interacts with the electrical currents in users brains, speeding up synapses. While under the influence of Accela, the boy in the club sees Lain in an argument with other patrons, but she doesn’t seem like the quiet girl we were introduced to in the first episode. Or does she? This episode also introduces us to news segments and information leaks. Here, there’s a description of Accela and its effects. These short segments will become more prominent as the series goes on and are meant to further
59:00 - 59:30 illustrate the idea that the barriers between the real world and the Wired are breaking down. A flood of information is constantly upon us. We also see a man in black for the first time. Conspiracy theories and other fringe topics will creep into the story as well. The fact that the font and style of the Serial Experiments Lain logo mimics that of the popular 1990s American television series, The X-Files, was a deliberate choice on the part of the creators. At school, Alice, Julie, and Reika discuss how they saw a girl who looked just like
59:30 - 60:00 Lain at Cyberia the night before. Though they’re convinced this couldn’t have been the same person. They invite Lain to come to the club with them that evening, a plan that Lain isn’t too keen on. Later on, Lain encounters the ghost of the girl who was hit by the train near the end of the previous episode. There’s a lot made about this and other ghost encounters in Visual Experiments Lain. As the barrier between the real world and the Wired continues to deteriorate, traces of information left behind on the internet by people who have died start to appear in reality.
60:00 - 60:30 You could view it as more hallucinations or as Lain being more sensitive to these information leaks than others, for reasons that will be expanded on as the series continues. When Lain arrives home from school, she finds that her father has ordered her a brand new NAVI, the newest, top-of-the-line model released by Tachibana General Laboratories, in fact, we learn from the overzealous delivery man. Oh, and don’t mind the way mom and dad are just making out by the front door. That’s not weird at all. Lain’s father sets up her new NAVI and Lain authorizes herself as its user.
60:30 - 61:00 Before she can settle in and run it through its paces, she gets another message from Alice asking where she is, so Lain decides to head to Cyberia after all. Instead of a simple night out with the girls, they witness a shooting perpetrated by the kid who was dropping Accela in the beginning of the episode. When he notices Lain, he starts freaking out, ranting about how he doesn’t want anything to do with the real world and the wired merging. We get our first glimpse of Lain’s other persona here, a more forthright and self-assured version
61:00 - 61:30 of herself. She informs the boy that no matter where he goes, people are always connected. Rather than endure the prospect of, ugh, human interaction, he goes ahead and shoots himself. Layer 3, Psyche--the series uses the original Greek pronunciation for “psyche”--begins with Lain and her friends being questioned by police. Lain gets dropped off at home by a patrol car but finds the house empty. Her parents and her sister are nowhere to be found.
61:30 - 62:00 There’s clearly something strange going on with Lain’s family. The next day, her mother doesn’t have anything to say about the family’s absence the night before. On the way to school, she sees a black car parked in front of her house. She hears a voice talking directly to her on the train, telling her that she’s not alone. At school, the other girls talk excitedly about the events of the previous night. This scene reminds me of the beginning of Moonlight Syndrome where the girls in that game gossip matter-of-factly about a murder/suicide at a club that they all witnessed. We get another information dump about a special processor for the NAVI called Psyche.
62:00 - 62:30 And Lain gets another visit from Chisa, which compositionally is just a really creepy shot. I love this. At the end of the school day, Alice talks to Reika and Julie about how it’s strange that they can speak so detachedly about a disturbing event that they all witnessed first hand. The other girls think Alice is weird for looking at it that way, but the conversation quickly gets derailed when Lain pulls an envelope from her shoe locker. The girls suspect that it’s a love letter, but inside is a Psyche processor.
62:30 - 63:00 We hear a bunch of crosstalk about many different topics. Most of it is random, but one guy mentions an elite hacker group called the Knights, who will become important later. Another girl mentions being visited at night by a tiny gray being in a red and green-striped shirt that stands watching her from the doorway to her bedroom. This not only brings to mind alien abduction lore, that’s again so prevalent in The X-Files, but the red and green-striped shirt and the fact that the girl is visited at night in her bedroom is a reference to Freddy Kreuger, according to Konaka’s footnotes.
63:00 - 63:30 Interestingly, in the English dub, this line is voiced by a random voice actress, but in the Japanese version, the voice belongs to Alice. Konaka’s notes in the screenplay dictate that this line should be read by Alice’s voice actress. We’ll find out why much later. Back at home, Lain asks her father about the Psyche, but he remains mysteriously tight-lipped, so Lain heads to Cyberia to ask the delinquents hanging out there about it. The DJ, JJ, recognizes her and comments on the childishness
63:30 - 64:00 of her outfit and says she should organize another rave again sometime. Whoa. Taro, Masayuki, and MyuMyu are three elementary school students who regularly frequent Cyberia. They’re thoroughly impressed by the fact that Lain has a Psyche processor and tell her how to install it. Taro suspects that this Lain is the Lain who’s been making waves recently on the Wired. He asks for a date as payment for the information about the Psyche, but not with this timid Lain in front of them. He wants to go out with the more mature and self-assured Wired Lain.
64:00 - 64:30 A glare from Lain sets him in his place. We then see Mika walking home from school. She runs into two men in black wearing some rad eyewear, but when she asks who they are and threatens to call the cops on them, they tell her that would be useless, because they were never really there. Mika tries to tell her mom to call the police the next time they show up, but mom is typically aloof. Annoyed by the whole thing, Mika heads upstairs and finds Lain in her underwear, installing the new processor into her NAVI. Mika asks her what she’s doing, and Lain mentions
64:30 - 65:00 the warning the kids at the club gave her about avoiding static electricity. Lain suddenly looks up with an elated expression and excitedly says, “welcome home!” to her sister. This is one of the stranger moments in the series, and I don’t really know what to make of it other than it’s really creepy. In Layer 4, Religion, Mika attempts to talk to her parents about Lain’s strange behavior, but they brush it off. After Mika leaves the room though, the two of them say some ambiguous things to each other and engage in more affectionate touching.
65:00 - 65:30 I don’t know. Maybe this is just how moms and dads who actually love each other act. I wouldn’t know... Cut to a guy getting chased to his apartment door by a creepy little girl. That’s horrifying. What’s even more horrifying is finding out that that dude was supposed to be a high-school senior. Kids grew up fast in 1990s Japan. The girls at school mention that he jumped from the roof of his apartment building. Much to their surprise Lain’s already heard this rumor. They’re even more surprised when they learn that she’s also been modifying her new NAVI,
65:30 - 66:00 and they comment on how she’s changed recently. After school, the four hang out, but Lain runs off to continue working on her computer. A little girl who looks exactly like the girl from the night before bumps into Alice and drops her stuffed animal. The little dog was deliberately designed to look like Bikke, Lain’s stuffed animal from the video game and ABe’s one-shot manga, The Nightmare of Fabrication. I know I probably sound like a broken record, but more on that later. At Cyberia, Lain asks JJ about the game the kids are playing,
66:00 - 66:30 and he tells her about Phantoma. When he turns around, though, Lain’s not even there. After that, we see a boy wandering around some rooftops inside Phantoma, which turns out to be a VR dungeon-crawler. He mentions numerous times that he’s already logged out, so he doesn’t know why he’s still stuck in the game. He even smashes his handheld NAVI in an attempt to escape. The little girl from earlier sneaks up on him and he shoots her using a weapon from Phantoma. This ends up killing the girl in reality. More examples of the border between the real world and the Wired breaking down.
66:30 - 67:00 Lain receives a message from JJ telling her that Phantoma and a child’s hide-and-seek VR net game got linked up. There’s a strong indication that the Knights may have exploited holes in the two games’ connection protocol to make it happen. Lain’s dad interrupts her and tells her not to confuse the wired for the real world, but Lain basically says, “Shut up, dad” and tells him with her upgraded NAVI, she’ll soon be able to cross the border that separates the two. By the way, Lain’s cable management could use some work, don’t you think?
67:00 - 67:30 She notices red dots probing her room and from her window finds the men in black standing in the street below. Then, she uses her psychic powers to blow up one of their eye pieces. Where the hell did that come from? Layer 5, Distortion, has some of the most surreal imagery in the entire series. It also has one of the most confounding story beats at the very end of the episode. In the footnotes in Scenario Experiments Lain, Konaka reveals that he was suffering a high fever while writing this episode,
67:30 - 68:00 which may have influenced some of the strange sights and the disjointed nature of it. Maybe because of that, the finished version of the episode also differs quite a bit from the written screenplay, with several lines of dialogue and smaller scenes omitted and others shuffled around. I think the way it turned out in the end is better than how it was structured in the screenplay. It’s a bit too convoluted in its written form. Regardless, this is my favorite episode of the series, so here we go. Distortion begins with Lain speaking to the voice that she heard on the train
68:00 - 68:30 in episode 3. It talks about how mankind has reached the limit of its evolution, but its greatest achievement was the creation of the Wired. The voice also reveals that it is God. We then follow Mika as she walks through Shibuya and witnesses a traffic accident. Meanwhile, or, well, I guess “meanwhile” would imply that this is happening at the same time, but it’s unclear when these scenes are actually taking place, so I guess I’ll just say, “in the next scene.” Lain talks to a doll in her room, asking it to tell her a story that she hasn’t heard before,
68:30 - 69:00 but the doll says that there’s nothing that Lain doesn’t know, so it can’t tell her a story that doesn’t exist. It then mentions that for every event, there’s a prophecy that precedes it, which as we’ll come to learn is the thesis statement for this episode. We hear a news report that the traffic control system in Tokyo was hacked, which caused the accident that Mika witnessed. Back in Shibuya, Mika is handed a pack of tissues from a tout in the streets and runs into Taro who tries to pick her up, the little scamp. First Lain, now her older sister.
69:00 - 69:30 He ends up spilling his drink on her and runs away. Smooth. Mika pulls out one of the tissues from the pack she’s just been given to clean up her uniform, and finds that someone has written a note on the tissue in red. “The other side is overcrowded. The dead will have no place to go.” Mika then hears people making a fuss about something, and witnesses Lain in the middle of the scramble muttering to herself as cars whiz by. And Mika just brushes it off, like yeah, that’s my weird sister, playing in traffic again. But as she turns to walk away,
69:30 - 70:00 she sees Lain’s face projected on a large monitor overlooking the crossing. Back in Lain’s room, she’s now speaking to Darth Vader. Or actually, some kind of tribal mask that tells her the prophecy is being fulfilled. At school, the girls ask Lain about the hacking stunt that she pulled that may have been related to the traffic accident. Lain has no idea what they’re talking about, though. Alice, Reika, and Julie are then sitting in a fast food restaurant discussing an email they received referencing a prophecy and theorize that the Knights are behind it.
70:00 - 70:30 Back in Lain’s room, this time she’s talking to her mother, who’s floating in the air before her. In her mother’s ramblings, she mentions how the Wired may just be an upper layer of the real world. Lain asks if the person floating in front of her is her real mother, but she offers no answer and fades away. At dinner, Mika asks Lain if she was in Shibuya earlier that afternoon. Before she can get an answer, she’s blinded by the reflection in her drink and finds herself in the middle of Shibuya crossing as cars whiz by.
70:30 - 71:00 The camera pulls up and reveals that she’s trapped inside a strange symbol, which we’ll learn shortly is the mark of the Knights. Mika wakes up in the same fast food restaurant that Alice, Reika, and Julie were previously in. A bunch of other people are there now. Mika reaches for her coffee, and spills it across the table. The message “fulfill the prophecy” forms in the liquid. When she looks up, the restaurant is empty. She heads to a public restroom to try to get a grip on herself and the lights are turned out on her. In the darkness, she hears one of the stall doors creak open.
71:00 - 71:30 Inside, she finds nothing. The lights come back on, and the stall door closes behind her. The words “fulfill the prophecy” are written over and over in red on the back of the door. Back in Lain’s room, she now speaks to her father, floating before her in the same way her mother did. This conversation is about how another world may have been created with the advent of the Wired, and that there may be a god who exists there. He posits that the Wired god is already affecting the real world in the form of a prophecy. Visual Experiments Lain comments on these scenes in Lain’s room,
71:30 - 72:00 proposing the idea that they could be either corrupted memories from Lain’s past, further hallucinations, or they could be connected to an experiment dealing with latent psychic abilities in children that will be expanded on in the next episode. We already saw that Lain may have some level of psychic ability at the end of the previous episode. In any case, yeah, these scenes are ultimately left up to interpretation. Mika arrives home after a very difficult day to say the least and finds herself in her own house.
72:00 - 72:30 The original Mika disappears, but Lain can see the traces of her wavering at the front door before that essence also disappears. The only footnote Konaka offers up for this bizarre turn of events is that in hindsight he feels that this story beat occurs a bit too early in the narrative. Super helpful. Ueda, in the Otakon Q&A, says Mika became stuck in the Wired and her body only exists in the real world now as a sort of puppet.
72:30 - 73:00 There are some other scenes in episode 9 that we’ll need to look at before we really dive into what happened to Mika, so, say it with me now, we’ll come back to this later. In Layer 6, Kids, Lain’s PC has fully engulfed her room. There’s even water on the floor that’s leaked from her cooling system. The real question is, can it run Crysis? Lain’s having fun conversing with voices in the Wired who turn out to be members of the Knights. As she leaves for school the next day, she sees a young boy standing in the road with his arms outstretched starting up at the sky.
73:00 - 73:30 The girls feel like Lain is reverting back to her old, introverted ways, so they invite her out after school. As they wander the city, they see more kids gesturing toward the sky, and a heavenly vision of Lain appears from behind some clouds, before quickly disappearing. This incident is even reported on the news in the evening. Back home, Mika has become just a shell. Hi, Mika. And Lain heads into the Wired to figure out what the kids are up to. She’s accosted by a Cheshire Cat-like floating
73:30 - 74:00 mouth who’s impressed that Lain is able to project her full body into the Wired. Most users can only manage to create eyes, a nose, or a mouth, not full bodies. Lain pulls up information on Professor Hodgson, the child-killer scientist, and finds out that the old man is currently on his death bed in a hospital with his mind hooked up to the Wired. She finds him on a veranda overlooking a vast sunset, a scenic place where he waits quietly for his body to die. She asks him about something called Kids.
74:00 - 74:30 Turns out, Hodgeson was the head researcher of the Kensington Experiment, which was an attempt to harness children’s latent psi abilities. He hooked dozens of children up to outer receptors, peripherals capable of capturing psi energy. The outer receptors would then feed that energy into a large central device he dubbed Kids. However, the experiment went horribly wrong and all of the children were killed. Though Hodgeson destroyed the device afterwards, the schematics found their way onto the Wired,
74:30 - 75:00 and someone has updated it so that psi energy can be collected without the use of outer receptors. Before Lain can get anymore information out of Hodgeson, he goes off to die, but he comments that Lain is extremely powerful, a child blessed by the god of the Wired. Lain puts the pieces together and figures out that the Knights were the ones who found Hodgeson’s schematics and have altered the Kids device. The saintly image of herself in the sky was a cruel joke played on her by the Knights, using the children as projectors. She tries to confront the Knights on the Wired, but they’re silent now,
75:00 - 75:30 as opposed to the beginning of the episode when they were posing as her friends. The men in black show up again, and Lain runs outside to confront them, asking if they too are members of the Knights. Just then an explosion rocks her room. The men in black explain that a parasite bomb was planted in her cooling system and that the Knights were the ones who put it there. In Layer 7, Society, Lain is intent on tracking down the Knights and Mika’s just, you know, creepin’. Because Lain is now attempting to learn the identities of the Knights members,
75:30 - 76:00 we finally get introduced to some of them. There’s an elite businessman, a slobby otaku, and a bored housewife. It’s funny that her kid asks if he can go over and play face-to-face at a friend’s house, and she responds that he can just stay home and play with his friend on the Wired. We’re also introduced to Nezumi, Japanese for mouse, a weird dude walking around the city with a bunch of devices strapped to him. He wants to join the Knights. It doesn’t end well for him. The men in black show up to take Lain to meet their boss, who attempts to find out if the real world Lain and the Wired Lain are in fact the same person.
76:00 - 76:30 He prods her with questions about her mother and father’s birthdays, when they got married, how they met. Lain doesn’t know the answers and becomes increasingly flustered. Lain’s voice actresses’ performances, in both Japanese and English, are really good here. Finally, he asks when and where Lain herself was born. This pushes her over the edge, and Wired Lain appears. The bossman says it’s amazing that she can summon Wired Lain without the use of a device, but that he and his group are fighting to make sure that the real world and the Wired remain separated.
76:30 - 77:00 She’s sick of the old man’s ranting and goes to leave, but one of the men in black grabs her arm and gets reprimanded for it. I love that line read. So we learn this guy’s name is Karl. In fact, all of the Men in Black technically have names. Karl Haushofer, Lin Sui-Xi, and the bossman here is Kurosawa, only ever given a last name. In Layer 8, Rumors, Lain visits an adult site to speak with someone
77:00 - 77:30 and get more info about Tachibana General Laboratories. She noticed the name plate on the building that the men in black took her to. Good job being covert about that, guys. This is also the first mention of Internet Protocol version 7, the series central macguffin. Tachibana General Labs is rumored to be involved in several corporate sabotage activities in an attempt to gain exclusive control of IPv7. Currently, in the real world, we run on IPv6. There’s another creepy scene involving Lain’s parents. When Lain enters the kitchen,
77:30 - 78:00 they’re sitting next to each other in the dining room just staring at the table top. Lain gets a drink from the fridge and nervously tells them about someone who recently asked her if her parents are her real parents. She says that’s a funny thing to say, hoping that her parents will agree with her, trying to convince herself that the suggestion isn’t true. Her parents keep their backs to her. She finishes her drink and washes up the glass, and when she turns around, her mother and father have now turned around to look at her, their faces expressionless. The camera pulls back toward the ceiling and the scene just fades out, leaving no resolution.
78:00 - 78:30 I know this scene is here to make us wonder if what the men in black said is true and to show that Lain, despite probably already realizing the truth, wants to convince herself that these are her real parents, but I still can’t help wonder what would follow from this scene for these characters. Throughout the series, there are a lot of these fragmented, unresolved moments, like half-remembered memories or snippets from a dream. This is part of what lends Lain its surreal atmosphere. The imagery and
78:30 - 79:00 shot composition does a lot of the heavy lifting, but I feel like these more subtle elements are the ones that tie the whole mood of the series together. The next day at school, the girls confront Lain over a rumor that’s spread concerning Alice and a young, male teacher. Reika and Julie believe that Lain was the one who started the gossip, but Lain has no idea what they’re talking about. Alice decides that she wants to give Lain the benefit of the doubt. In class, Lain uses her pocket NAVI to try to figure out where the rumors originated. We get another scene of many voices gossiping on the Wired and hear once again about a
79:00 - 79:30 small being in a red and green-striped shirt that visits a girl in her bedroom. We heard this same rumor back in layer 3. Lain tries to cut through the chatter and hears the voice of God again. They have a lengthy conversation about the nature of God, whether God is an all-powerful being that creates or just an omnipresent existence. He then steers the conversation to the nature of Lain’s existence and tells her that her body is just a container for her higher consciousness that exists in the Wired.
79:30 - 80:00 He mockingly asks if she really believes the real Lain and the Wired Lain are one in the same. When Lain comes out of it, everyone in class is staring at her, and she gets a message saying that she’s a peeping tom. As she moves through the school, looking for Alice, everyone watches her. Alone and confused, Lain wonders what the Wired version of herself has been doing while she’s been living her normal life. Lain then has a vision of herself destroying the school, in a scene reminiscent of Carrie. Later that evening, we see Alice in her bedroom with the young,
80:00 - 80:30 male teacher and find out that this is a simulated encounter inside the Wired. Interesting to note, the dialogue between Alice and the teacher was cut from the broadcast version of this episode. The implications of their conversation were deemed inappropriate by Japanese censors at the time. It was restored for home video releases. Just as Alice is about to lose herself in the moment, so to speak, she spots Lain sitting on her bed, but this is not real world Lain or Wired Lain. This imp-like creature is yet another version of Lain,
80:30 - 81:00 referred to by the creators as Alphabet Lain. The reason for this strange nickname is lost a bit in translation, but when designing the different versions of Lain for the series, they were all given different names in the screenplays. Real world Lain is denoted by the use of kanji for her name. Wired Lain uses katakana, which are Japanese characters usually reserved to spell out loan words from other languages or onomatopoeic words, and are sometimes used just because they look cool. Then, there’s this demonic Lain, which uses English letters to spell out her name, hence the nickname, Alphabet Lain.
81:00 - 81:30 This designation was used in design documents as well as in the scripts to help voice actress Kaori Shimizu distinguish between the three versions of the character she was playing. She lends each Lain unique speech patterns and different vocal inflections to project these different personalities. I have to also say, Lain’s English voice actress, Bridget Hoffman, did an outstanding job portraying the many facets of Lain as well. In fact, Serial Experiments Lain’s English dub is probably one of
81:30 - 82:00 the best of its time. Right up there with the English dub of Cowboy Bebop. And Lain goes the extra mile, because they even tried to accurately reproduce a lot of the audio effects that were applied to the voices. I don’t think they quite achieved the same balance between dialogue and sound effects that the Japanese version has, but they did an incredible job. Especially considering the English version came out in 1999, a time when anime was just beginning to brush the mainstream in the US and when dubbing was done quickly and cheaply for the most part. In ABe’s artbook, An Omnipresence in Wired, and in Visual Experiments Lain,
82:00 - 82:30 there is a lot of attention paid to the eyes, the different facial expressions, and the body language that differentiate each version of Lain. Real Lain’s face is softer, eyes rounder, eyebrows raised, and her overall posture is more tense. Wired Lain has a harder expression with slightly furrowed brows. Her stance is more confident. Meanwhile, Alphabet Lain, has droopy eyes and a mischievous grin. She likes to slouch and her movements are looser.
82:30 - 83:00 I love the design of Alphabet Lain. She’s such a creep. As Alphabet Lain mocks Alice for playing with herself while fantasizing about a teacher, the Real Lain lies in bed in her own room, horrified. Wired Lain confronts Alphabet Lain and attempts to strangle her, but she feels that pain within herself. As Alphabet Lain explains, you can’t kill just one part of yourself. These scenes are our first real indication that Lain doesn’t just have some level of dissociative identity disorder but that her different personas
83:00 - 83:30 all exist at the same time and are operating independent of each other, another product of the deterioration between the real world and the Wired. This is further confirmed when Wired Lain discovers a room full of Lain duplicates, more versions of herself than what we’ve seen so far in the story. In fact, the creators also refer to the heavenly vision of Lain that the children produced with the help of the Knights in Layer 6, God Lain, as another version of her. And one more version of Lain appears in an upcoming episode. In another conversation with God, he explains that Lain is the same as he is,
83:30 - 84:00 a being that has always existed in the Wired. She is omnipresent and exists with everyone who has ever accessed the Wired. He also says that she’s done the right thing by bringing rumors about other people to light. Information on the Wired should be shared by all, shouldn’t it? Lain decides to find a way to scrub the memories of Alice’s rumor from the real world. And God just says, yeah, ok, give it a try. But with no sarcasm. He really wants to see if she can do it. In the next scene, Alice, Reika, and Julie rush to meet Lain at the school gates,
84:00 - 84:30 but Alphabet Lain steps forward to meet them. As the girls make plans to hang out after school and head to Cyberia in the evening, real world Lain protests that she is the actual Lain. After the girls walk off together, Alphabet Lain confronts real world Lain and confirms, yes, she is the real Lain. Which “she” she’s referring to isn’t made clear, reinforcing the idea that all Lains exist at all times. In front of her NAVI, with tears in her eyes, Lain asks her computer if this Lain,
84:30 - 85:00 sitting, right here, right now, is the real Lain. Layer 9, Protocol, is filled with information on conspiracy theories and various developments in computer networking throughout the 20th century. The X-Files influence is strong in this episode. Things kick off with a summary of the the Roswell incident where a supposed UFO crashed in the desert in New Mexico, after which Lain sees a little gray alien standing in her doorway.
85:00 - 85:30 More information leakage. All this information just leaking all over the place, like the water from Lain’s coolant system. Next, we get a discussion of the MJ12 document, materials that first surfaced in the 80s, believed to be agreements between several government agencies and top US officials, signed by President Truman, dealing with the recovery of alien spacecraft. Just as an aside, the MJ12 documents are largely believed to be a hoax, but researchers involved in such things are still divided on whether it was a
85:30 - 86:00 prank pulled by conspiracy nuts or part of a government sanctioned disinformation campaign. In the Wired, Lain argues with the weaker users, plebs who can only manage to conjure up an eye, an ear, or a nose for their online avatars. We then get an info dump about Vannever Bush, an American engineer and inventor who created MEMEX, a primitive form of information access using microfilm, anticipating the rise of multimedia and the internet. At Cyberia, JJ gives Lain an envelope that he says she left behind the last time she was there,
86:00 - 86:30 inside is a small computer board with the Knights symbol on it. Next, we learn about John C. Lilly and his sensory deprivation experiments. Through the combined use of isolation tanks and psychoactive narcotics, Lilly believed that he made contact with the lowest level of a cabal of extraterrestrial intelligence. Yeah? Really, dude? He detailed the hierarchy of this organization in his autobiography. The level that he made contact with through his journeys, so to speak,
86:30 - 87:00 were called the Earth Coincidence Control Office, or E.C.C.O., for short. Lilly then began experiments in an attempt to interact with dolphins, who use ultrasonic waves to communicate. And now you know where Ecco the Dolphin got his name. Lain confronts the kids in Cyberia and takes Taro up on his earlier offer for a date. And she invites him upstairs. She shows off her NAVI and then ambushes him, accusing him of being a member of the Knights. He admits that he’s a junior member, but they only give him
87:00 - 87:30 small tasks with no explanations as to the grander purpose of what he’s doing. During their conversation, Lain turns on the track that plays frequently in Cyberia, and accuses Taro of being complicit in manipulating the club-goers memories. There’s a cut to downstairs where Lain’s parents speak cryptically to each other about “it” almost being over. And Mika starts doing her best dial-up modem impression. And now, we can finally talk about what the hell happened to Mika. As we’re seeing more of these Knights references surfacing,
87:30 - 88:00 we can put together that Mika’s mind was trapped by the Knights in Layer 5. Taro was complicit in this, though, being a junior member, he may not have even known what the point of his actions were. He probably didn’t even know that Mika was Lain’s sister. The Knights forced Mika’s consciousness out of her body, creating just an empty shell that they could use to keep tabs on Lain. There are several scenes between episodes 6 and 9 of Mika looking in on Lain as she’s using her NAVI. This whole trap was only possible because of the flimsy border between the real world and the
88:00 - 88:30 Wired, and now Mika is just a communication device the Knights use to spy on Lain’s activities. Lain asks Taro what the board with the Knights symbol on it is, and he’s not 100% sure, but he believes that installing the chip would wipe Lain’s memories. She decides to let him go, and he gives her a goodnight kiss, because, as he explains it, he’s a guy after all and he has to. But he leaves behind his already been chewed gum in her mouth. Gross. We then learn about Ted Nelson, who proposed an electronic library
88:30 - 89:00 of stationary satellites that could be accessed anywhere by terminals on Earth. He dubbed this network, Xanadu, after the Mongolian capital that was said to house a library containing a record of all written cultures. Through his Xanadu concept, the idea of hypertext was conceived. Lain sits in front of her NAVI, sounding off commands as if she herself is just a computer terminal. She then sees a... flashback? Hallucination? We’re never given a clear indication here--of Lain’s introduction to her family.
89:00 - 89:30 Lain’s father takes her upstairs to her room, which is decked out in traditionally girly decor, and is nothing like the room that we saw in the first episode of the series, and especially not like the tangled mess of cables, wires, and liquid coolant leakage that her current room is. As Lain and her father stand in the doorway, in this vision, Lain, in the present, turns to face them and says that this a lie. Whether she’s referring to the fact that her family is a fake or that this vision is false, is unclear.
89:30 - 90:00 We still have a couple more educational presentations to get through before this episode ends. The next one is on the Schumann Resonance, the 8hz frequency that is latently given off by Earth’s magnetic fields. Douglas Rushcoff proposes that when the population of all human beings on Earth reaches the number of neurons in the brain, 86 billion give or take, and when all humans are then connected to each other and begin to resonate at the same 8hz frequency, then the Earth itself will awaken to consciousness. This last part concerning Douglas Rushcoff and the
90:00 - 90:30 Earth’s consciousness is a complete fabrication on the part of Konaka’s, only meant to tie these real world conspiracy theories together with the world of Lain. He was most likely referencing real life-media theorist and writer, Douglas Rushkoff, with a “k.” The real-life Rushkoff has never proposed any sort of theory like the one just explained. Though, he did write a 1994 book titled Cyberia, which is where the name of the night club in the series comes from. Finally, into full on fiction, we learn about Masami Eiri, chief researcher at Tachibana General Labs,
90:30 - 91:00 who believed that all humans could be connected to the Wired without the need for devices. Eiri put the Schumann resonance into code and without the knowledge of his superiors, inserted that code into the 7th generation internet protocol. When this was found out, he was fired from his position and found dead on the Yamanote line train tracks one week later. Outside, Eiri appears before Lain, and his design shows off the result of his gruesome demise, his body taped together where he would have been run over by the train,
91:00 - 91:30 which is a really cool touch on the part of Abe. In Layer 10, Love, Lain speaks to Eiri. He is the god, or Deus, as the screenplay refers to him, who has been speaking to Lain all this time. Eiri takes over Lain’s body and starting explaining things. Meanwhile, Lain is in Eiri’s body asking questions. A really bizarre way of introducing a character, but also a way to illustrate Eiri’s notion that bodies have no meaning in this world anymore. Eiri talks about the compressed information that he put into his
91:30 - 92:00 Schuman resonance code which he then inserted into the 7th gen protocol. This compressed information contained his own memories so that he could exist in the Wired forever, and so he now exists in the real world perpetually as well, since the two have merged. He also reveals that the Knights were operating under his orders, probably unknowingly. There’s then a vision of Lain in school, but her desk is missing and no one seems to notice her, further reinforcing Eiri’s claim that Lain no longer needs a body.
92:00 - 92:30 Back at home, no one seems to be around, but it turns out Lain’s dad is still there. He calls her Lain-san now, denoting a distance and unfamiliarity between them. He says their work is finished and that Lain is free to become anything she wants. He confesses that he wasn’t given permission to say goodbye, but he’s come to love her. He also says that he’s jealous of her existence. Another interesting point about this scene is that instead of being denoted as “Yasuo” in the script, which is Lain’s father’s name by the way, he’s instead referred to only as “Otoko” or man, robbing him of his identity.
92:30 - 93:00 You have to wonder, if Lain’s family was in fact fake, who gave them their orders to play house? In the Otakon Q&A panel from 2000, that question was asked. Ueda responded, “as to who they are and who they work for, it’s left up in the air for you to decide, but they’re basically there to collect information and report to somebody else in the background.” Lain finds herself in a strange cityscape with traces overlaid on the sky above, electrical current flowing through them.
93:00 - 93:30 Voices tell her that the Knights of Eastern Calculus, the full name of the Knights organization, and badass name by the way, is descended from the Knights Templar, the military arm of the Christian church that operated between the 12th and 14th centuries. The Knights of Eastern Calculus is a reference to the Knights of Lamda Calculus, a semi-fictional group of hackers that are basically an in-joke that may have originated in computer labs at MIT. Computer nerds make the most elaborate in jokes. Lain says that Eiri has only become a god because he has worshippers to follow him,
93:30 - 94:00 so she decides to track down the identity of the Knights. Lain succeeds in her endeavor, and their names leak all over the Wired. The men in black and their associates are now hunting them down all over the world and silencing them. The men in black then visit Lain, but say that she’s safe and Eiri’s thoughts will be scrubbed from protocol 7. This scrubbing will also eliminate the rogue code that Eiri implemented, reestablishing the border between the real world and the Wired. Karl also says that he loves Lain.
94:00 - 94:30 This seems weird at first, but there’s a battle of beliefs that’s about to take place, and remember, Eiri believes a god needs worshippers in order to exist. Lain confronts Eiri and tells him that all his believers are gone. Eiri counters that he still has one believer. Lain. He explains that he created Lain in the Wired and that the real world Lain is only a homunculus. She had a fake family, fake friends, her whole life was a lie. Lain says that Eiri is lying, and it’s hard to tell if what he’s saying is the truth or if he’s only trying to keep Lain as a believer so he can continue existing.
94:30 - 95:00 Layer 11, Infornography, ya like that?, begins with this jazz fusion freak out recap that takes up the first half of the episode, which is an interesting concept for a recap segment. The guitar solo here is performed by Reichi “CHABO” Nakaido, performer of the series’ ending theme. The title of the guitar solo is “Wind of Space and Time,” but it’s overlaid on a jazz track in the episode, which adds a suitably chaotic feel to the proceedings.
95:00 - 95:30 There are some more Apple references, and a couple scenes that weren’t actually shown in the series but were alluded to, the most prominent being Lain’s walk home with Chisa that Chisa mentioned in her email to Lain in episode 1. The live-action shot of the city at one point shows a time stamp that was planned to line up with the exact time that this moment would air on the TV Tokyo broadcast of the episode. The message that scrolls at the bottom of the screen says that Tachibana General Labs has successfully mapped the human genome. After over 8 minutes of this, we find out that the recap was
95:30 - 96:00 actually Lain attempting to load an emulator of her NAVI into her brain. More practically, we learn from the supplemental materials that Konaka originally wrote a 12-episode outline for the series, but 13 episodes were ordered when they went into production, so they needed to kill some time. Impressively, the screenplay for episode 11 lays out a lot of the major scenes that were meant to be shown here and in what order they were meant to appear. Neat. Eiri warns Lain that ingesting too much information will cause
96:00 - 96:30 her to overflow. Lain warns Eiri not to talk about her as if she’s a machine, but Eiri says that Lain isn’t hardware, but software, an executable program with a body, meant to break down the border between the real world and the Wired. Lain then starts seeing the dead, or at least their information, which is still present in the Wired. Chisa and the boy who shot himself in the club at the end of episode 2 tell her that she was the one who called them to the Wired, basically telling them to kill themselves in the real world so they could exist forever in the form of information.
96:30 - 97:00 This is never revealed, but my guess is it was Alphabet Lain who contacted them and relayed this message. In the next scene, we finally get the payoff about the being in the red and green-striped shirt that kept visiting the girl in her bedroom. The girl was Alice and the being was Lain. Or Grein, as the creators dubbed this version of her, a portmanteau of gray and Lain. The alien Lain tells Alice that it wasn’t her who leaked the rumors. Not her, but another version of her, again most likely the demonic Alphabet Lain.
97:00 - 97:30 But then again, it could have been a Lain that we never actually see in the series. Who knows? Alien Lain promises that she’ll make it so the rumors never happened. Lain has already destroyed the border between the real world and the Wired, so now she can go anywhere without the need for a device. “Grein” is my second favorite Lain after Alphabet Lain. There’s an interesting note about her in Visual Experiments Lain, where it says that she can’t get inside the room, she can only stand at the door frame. Konaka’s footnote about Grein’s appearance in the screenplay also notes that she never tries to come through the door.
97:30 - 98:00 This version of Lain could be meant to represent her feelings as an outsider, an alien, who can’t enter into other people’s lives. Either way, the way the notes are worded in Scenario and Visual Experiments are incredibly creepy. And the whole scene itself, though sort of funny at first glance, is incredibly creepy. The next day at school, it turns out the rumors about Alice and the teacher have been erased from everyone’s memory. Well, everyone’s except for Alice’s. In fact, Lain didn’t just erase everyone’s memories,
98:00 - 98:30 she erased the actual events from ever occurring. Alice then realizes that her visit from alien Lain wasn’t just a hallucination or dream. Layer 12, Landscape, the penultimate episode, begins with Lain explaining that people only have substance in the memories of other people. That’s why there are so many versions of her, they each represent an image of how anyone she’s ever interacted with, in the real world or the Wired, perceived her. Which is an interesting thing to think about, the you that other people perceive,
98:30 - 99:00 and whether or not that projection measures up to the you that you perceive yourself to be. An idea that will be further expanded on in the story of Lain the game. Lain uses her god-like powers to manipulate news broadcasts and includes a special message for everyone. Let’s all love Lain! In the screenplay, when the announcer says Lain over and over again, Lain’s name is written in the different styles, perhaps implying to love all versions of Lain.
99:00 - 99:30 This could be Lain’s way of trying to turn herself into a god to combat Eiri’s influence over the Wired or, you know, since the real and the Wired have merged, just the world in general. Eiri explains that bodies stop humans from evolving, that the information that has accumulated within us through the generations reaches an end point. In the beginning, all humans were connected in the primordial soup of life, so he’s merely brought things back to that original state by connecting all humans. In a dark parking garage, the men in black discuss whether or not Eiri was
99:30 - 100:00 actually the one behind the orders to wipe out the Knights members, and whether he was actually behind Tachibana’s machinations as well. Kurosawa shows up and tells them to run to a place that has no powerlines or satellite coverage, which of course doesn’t exist. It seems that Kurosawa is now playing along with the idea of connecting the real world and the Wired, whereas before, in episode 7, he said he was fighting against that. I feel like this whole scene is meant to be convoluted and to intentionally detract you from who is double crossing who and who anyone is actually working for.
100:00 - 100:30 Lin Sui-Xi then starts convulsing and dies. When Karl checks on him, he sees an image of Lain inside one of his eyes. Through his super cool cyberpunk visor, he sees something approaching him through the parking garage, and were left with his screams echoing in the darkness. Alice visits Lain’s home, which is trashed, and encounters Mika on the stairs, who’s been abandoned by the Knights since they’re all dead now. Mika then she disappears. In Lain’s room, Alice finds Lain buried under a blanket of cables and wires. Alice asks her what
100:30 - 101:00 all the devices are for, and Lain says, nothing, she’s just been watching stuff. “Hey, everyone. This is ManlyBadassHero.” Alice then asks Lain why she erased everyone’s memories except for hers. She thinks Lain is doing this to punish her, but that wasn’t Lain’s intention. Lain reveals that Alice is the only one she’s cared about. Lain’s reconnected all the other people in the world, but left Alice separate. When Lain explains that she’s only a program meant to break down the
101:00 - 101:30 border between the real world and the Wired, Alice protests and tries to show Lain that she’s real flesh and blood, a warm body with a heartbeat. Eiri interrupts and tells Lain that Alice is only saying this because she’s afraid of losing her body. Eiri says he’ll need to debug Lain and reaches out to her. His hand appears, which freaks out Alice. Lain refuses to go with him though, and tells Eiri he’s not a god. All he did was remove devices and input the code into the protocol, but he couldn’t have done any of that without all of the work done by other people leading up to the creation of the Wired,
101:30 - 102:00 which is the reason we went through all of those information dumps in episode 9. Lain accuses Eiri of not actually being a god at all. He didn’t create anything. He’s just the mind of a dead man trapped in the Wired. In frustration, he tries to manifest a body for himself in an attempt to actually exist. Lain continues, saying that the Wired isn’t an upper layer of the real world. The world existed before the Wired, therefore the foretelling of its connection only came
102:00 - 102:30 into existence after the Wired was created, so it’s not some prophecy or word of god. Furthermore, by attempting to create a body for himself, Eiri has proven that humans do need bodies, contradicting his own dogma. So like any petulant wannabe god, he tries to crush Lain and Alice with his slimy primordial limbs. The final episode, Layer 13, Ego, picks up directly where the previous left off. With Lain’s declaration that Eiri does in fact need a body to exist, he disappears.
102:30 - 103:00 Alice wrestles free from Lain and slaps her, causing her to bleed. I think this is meant as proof that even though Lain may have been created as some program, she does still need a body to exist. Or it could be that she was a normal human all along. There are a lot of ways to interpret this tiny moment. Alice is clearly traumatized, and Lain, upset over how much pain she’s caused her, decides to reset the entire world. We see shots from earlier episodes, but Lain doesn’t exist in any of them. There’s a scene with Lain’s mother, father, and Mika eating breakfast together. Lain’s
103:00 - 103:30 father looks toward the empty fourth chair at their dining room table, and seems to remember something, but ultimately brushes it off. The girls meet in front of the school gates and make plans to go to Cyberia. Alice opens her NAVI to contact somebody about their plans. The girls wonder who Alice wants to tell, and mistake it for Chisa, who’s still alive. We know, of course, that Alice was thinking of contacting Lain. Alice declares that what isn’t remembered, never happened. If you aren’t remembered, you never actually existed.
103:30 - 104:00 We see that all of the other characters are living normal lives now, and others who have died are still alive. Lain appears in Taro’s NAVI briefly. Coupled with Alice’s half-remembrance, these scenes show that there are still fragments of Lain that exist throughout the world, even though no one remembers her. I like that the men in black are utility workers. And that Eiri is still alive as a disgruntled salary man. In the Wired, Lain speaks with Alphabet Lain, according to the screenplay. Alphabet Lain says that Lain has proven that the Wired is not an upper layer
104:00 - 104:30 of the real world, but a network that merely passes information through it. Lain now exists as an omnipresence in Wired, and Alphabet Lain tries to convince her to become god and start things over the way they were in the beginning of the series. Lain resists, causing Alphabet Lain to cease existing. Before disappearing completely, she asks Lain what she actually is. Lain doesn't know, but then she hears the voice of her father, and sees him looking down on her. She’s back in the bear suit, sitting at a table with him. He tells her that she doesn’t need to wear the bear suit ever again.
104:30 - 105:00 An indication that she doesn’t need something to insulate herself anymore. But as Konaka notes in the screenplay, this line was also meant as a bit of an in-joke for the creators, referencing the conflict the bear suit caused within the production staff, with Konaka writing that since this is the end of the series, Lain will literally never have to wear the bear suit again. At the end of this scene, Lain’s father mentions that next time they meet they can enjoy tea and madeleine cakes together. This entire scene was actually scripted differently. In Scenario Experiments Lain,
105:00 - 105:30 Lain and her father do share tea and madeleines. Konaka explains in his footnote that he wanted Lain to experience the raw act of eating, something human, which would then cause her to break down with emotion. He says he still thinks the way the scene ended up in the series was done beautifully, but he wishes that his original idea could have made it into the final cut. In the city, in the future, Alice, now 22 years old, walks with her fiancee. She spots Lain on a pedestrian bridge and runs to meet her. She feels she knows Lain from somewhere, but Lain only says “nice to meet you,”
105:30 - 106:00 so Alice is convinced that they don’t know each other after all. And so Lain remains to watch over this version of the world. Konaka’s final footnote says that it’s hard for him to look subjectively at the series, even after so much time away from it. He says that he loves Alice, and he loves Lain, maybe echoing Lain’s father’s sentiments from episode 10. What started out for both of them as work, an assignment, became something much more.
106:00 - 106:30 There’s a lot more to cover as far as analysis of the TV series goes, but I’ll save that for after we discuss the story of the game and start making connections between these two works. Lauded for its visual and technical achievements, revered for its mature themes, psychological storytelling, and daring questioning of our modern world, Serial Experiments Lain, the television series, was a massive success. While it may not have been quite as popular as some other breakout 90s series,
106:30 - 107:00 such as Neon Genesis Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop, it still had an impact on anime culture both in its native Japan and abroad. Much of what it has to say about technology and how human’s use it is still relevant today. The physical form of the hardware and the barrier to entry based on technical skill may be outdated, but the degrading effects on communication and the draining effects it has on our mental states, on our perception of reality, are just as much issues now as they were back then.
107:00 - 107:30 Even more so, really. It’s a prescient meditation on modern issues, a dark observation on human nature. Yet, in the end, there is light. Hope that we will overcome, persevere, and continue on. And now, for the complete opposite of that.
107:30 - 108:00 The Serial Experiments Lain TV series introduces us to the idea of seemingly infinite versions of Lain, presenting several throughout its run and hinting at countless others, inviting us to wonder what Lains we haven’t seen. And so, we’re introduced to a few other Lains in Serial Experiments Lain the video game. This version of Lain is in her last year of elementary school, two years younger than the Lain we saw in the anime.
108:00 - 108:30 We’re also introduced to a different family, just a mom and dad, no older sister, several different friends, and Lain’s counselor, Touko, as well as several characters related to Touko. I’ve already talked about the structure of the game, so for this section of the video, I’m going to attempt to talk about the story in semi-orderly fashion. There are basically 4 concurrent storylines running through the game. Touko and Lain’s counselling sessions, Touko’s personal life, Lain’s personal life, and another more difficult to easily categorize overarching event that leads to the game’s ending.
108:30 - 109:00 As mentioned in the gameplay portion of the video, all of the nodes containing these story moments are scattered throughout the two cylinders that you traverse, and many nodes are unlocked on separate playthroughs, jumping back and forth through time, creating a kaleidoscopic view of the story and characters. Before we get into it, I’d just like to give a warning that the story here is much, much darker and more depressing than the anime’s storyline. We were already dealing with some heavy subject matter there, but the game goes a
109:00 - 109:30 lot harder in some of its story moments, so just a heads up, disturbing content ahead. If you would prefer not to have the story of the game spoiled and want to experience it on your own, you can skip to this time to jump to the conclusion of this video. On a first playthrough, the story begins with Lain and Touko’s counseling sessions as well as Touko’s diagnosis reports and diary entries from that time.
109:30 - 110:00 Early on, Touko’s diary is mainly concerned with her boyfriend, Takeshi, and her work life. It mentions that both she and Takeshi work at the same research institute and that they both studied overseas in America before returning to Japan to begin this job. On a 2nd playthrough, Touko’s earlier diary entries unlock, which detail her student days spent studying in America and dating Takeshi. This is chronologically where the story begins, about a year before the main events of the game. They follow Touko through her return to Japan, and expound upon the differences
110:00 - 110:30 between American and Japanese work culture, as well as her growing frustration with the workplace bullying she experiences as a result of studying and working overseas. These elements actually hit pretty close to home for me. As a foreigner who has lived and worked in Japan for over a decade, I’ve not really been the target of workplace bullying and power harassment, though I’ve spoken to Japanese friends and former coworkers who have detailed their own struggles with this unfortunately highly common practice in Japanese work settings.
110:30 - 111:00 A lot of what Touko describes here, the passive aggressive comments, the refusal to allow her to actually work on anything significant or within her skill range, the treating of her as an outsider because she spent time overseas and has developed a more Western attitude towards things. These are unfortunately all stories that I’ve heard first-hand in real life, even among Japanese friends who haven’t spent time overseas. The senpai-kohai hierarchy of Japanese employee relationships seems to normalize this bullying
111:00 - 111:30 practice. It’s especially common among older generations of Japanese workers, but is still inherent in young professionals as well. I’m not going to attempt to make any kind of cultural critique here, because, like I said, I don’t have much experience with it myself, but I just wanted to point out that a lot of what Touko describes reminded me of conversations with friends, and the writing here is shockingly real. Touko’s supervisor, Dr Takashima, refuses to give her any responsibilities beyond just acting as his personal secretary, even after Touko has passed all of her
111:30 - 112:00 certification tests required in Japan for her to start seeing patients as a counselor. He also makes unwanted sexual advances toward her, of course, I say with weariness. Eventually, after several months of grunt work, Touko is assigned her first patient, Lain Iwakura. Touko describes Lain as a cute, 12-year old girl suffering from auditory and visual hallucinations and who feels psychologically unstable. This is where the counseling sessions between Touko and Lain enter into the story.
112:00 - 112:30 In her diagnosis reports, Touko describes Lain’s family life and upbringing as normal with no history of mental illness. However, Lain’s mother informs Touko that Lain suffers from frequent night terrors. She hears garbled voices and is suddenly awakened and forced to watch a video. Nothing more is said about what kind of video or why. Other examples of Lain’s hallucinations include her playing in the park and suddenly finding herself alone when before she thought there were other kids around. Later on, when Lain begins to open up to Touko about her condition,
112:30 - 113:00 she also says she feels like someone is touching her when no one is there. She describes it as if there’s another her, touching her body, trying to rip her apart. And these sensations don’t just occur while she’s sleeping either. She feels them while she’s awake and even while at school, talking with friends. This is incredibly unnerving, especially when you stop to consider that Lain is just a 12-year old girl experiencing these things. We also learn that the voices Lain hears come from the power lines.
113:00 - 113:30 Touko notes Lain’s asymmetric hairstyle, and learns that it isn't just a quirky choice. The long forelock is meant to protect her from these hallucinations or stimuli actually entering her head. Doesn’t seem to be doing its job. As their counselling sessions continue, Lain gradually begins to open up to Touko more. Their relationship is an interesting thing to see develop, especially through the different lenses of the counselling sessions, the diagnosis reports, Touko’s diary, and eventually Lain’s own diary.
113:30 - 114:00 In a similar way to how the series presents different versions of Lain, the game does the same thing, but with a slightly more down-to-earth approach. The Lain we see in the counselling sessions is different to the Lain we see in her school and home life that’s described in her diary. When Lain eventually starts to take an interest in computers and begins spending more time online, we see a different version of her there as well. This extends to Touko, too. I’ve already touched upon this a bit, but the Touko in the counselling sessions is different from the Touko
114:00 - 114:30 in the diagnosis reports is different from the Touko in her diary entries. The fragmentation of the two central characters here is a complex one, and their character developments throughout the story actually run inverse to one another. As Lain gains more skill and knowledge in the world of the Wired, she becomes more confident and more in control. She starts to become more interested in Touko’s work and asks questions about psychiatry and mental illness during their sessions. At first, Touko feels that learning more about the process of counselling and therapy will help Lain
114:30 - 115:00 overcome her issues, but as Lain’s proddings start to become more personal and Lain starts revealing that she knows information she shouldn’t, about not only Touko’s diagnosis reports, but Touko’s personal life as well, Touko becomes understandably suspicious. She grows to fear and almost hate Lain. She begins losing control, and her grip on reality and her sense of self starts to deteriorate. While all of this is going on there are several subplots in both Touko’s and Lain’s personal lives.
115:00 - 115:30 We’ve already touched upon Touko’s relationship with her longtime boyfriend, Takeshi. Their relationship starts to fall apart, and he becomes increasing distant as the story continues, until it’s eventually revealed that he’s gotten engaged to somebody else. There is no formal breakup that occurs, just over the course of the months while Touko is counseling Lain, she sees less and less of him. Leading up to this, Touko reveals an obsessive side to her personality. She doesn’t really see what’s happening in front of her, concerning Takeshi’s behavior and attitude, and continues to fantasize about her and Takeshi’s future together,
115:30 - 116:00 so the news of his engagement hits her devastatingly hard. Coupled with her frustrations with her supervisor, who she wishes would just die, and her paranoia about Lain, the stress starts to tear her down. She meets a new guy in the office, a representative named Yoshida from a third-party medical supply vendor. He’s peddling some sort of relaxation device called an RML. I thought it was revealed in one of Touko’s diary entries what RML stands for, but after looking through my notes and scrubbing through footage, I can’t find it, so it’s just RML.
116:00 - 116:30 After meeting Yoshida, she immediately starts fantasizing about a romantic relationship with him, and comes right out and says she hopes it will make Takeshi jealous. Because of this, she decides to test out the RML for him. It doesn't exactly make her feel relaxed. It starts to affect her mentally. She begins getting headaches and feels that the machine is actually making her more exhausted. She decides to stop using the RML for a while, but Yoshida urges her to continue. In order to please him, she does.
116:30 - 117:00 During this time, we find out that Dr. Takashima has died. He committed suicide in the lab. Touko isn’t too broken up about it. As she continues to use the RML, it becomes difficult for her to distinguish between her dreams and reality. Finally, she does stop using it and finds out that Yoshida was using her the whole time just to have a test subject for the experimental RML device. Of course. Before we go any further with Touko’s diary entries, we should go back to Lain’s though,
117:00 - 117:30 because things start to become more entangled from here on out. Lain’s diary entries talk about her life at school, and mention a friend, Kyoko. She touches upon being bulled at school, and admits she’s jealous of Kyoko, because Kyoko’s just a normal girl, unlike herself. Lain’s friendship with Kyoko is further detailed in Ekm nodes that unlock during a third playthrough. There are only six of them, and they show a fairly normal friendship between the two. As Lain’s diary entries continue, sometimes she feels like she’s getting better, sometimes worse.
117:30 - 118:00 Sometimes she feels that she’s drifting apart from Kyoko after Kyoko begins hanging out with another girl from school. But then Lain feels accepted again when Kyoko and the new girl come to her house to visit her while she’s out sick from school. Sometimes Lain wants to go to school, sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she feels like she’s cured. Sometimes she feels like she’s losing control again. There are many inconsistent and contradictory feelings and events detailed throughout Lain’s early entries, and all I can say about this is, welcome to the world of a preteen.
118:00 - 118:30 Lain’s diary entries are incredibly well written and feel authentic. I’m pretty sure everyone watching has gone through these conflicting feelings as a teenager. Confident one day, uncertain the next. Socially accepted on a Monday, an outcast by Friday. Dialogue writer Hideko Shimizu really nailed this constantly fluctuating turmoil, and it’s incredibly fascinating to experience these shifts through Lain’s point of view. Maybe you can begin to see why I suffered through Serial Experiments Lain’s actual
118:30 - 119:00 gameplay. It was the characters and the story that kept pulling me along. Another interesting thing to note about Lain’s diary entries is that she doesn’t tell Touko about most of the anxiety she goes through in her personal life in their sessions. Even when Lain is suffering, worried about a rift in a friendship or experiences something that well and truly upsets her and seems to be the end of her world, in the beginning of the next counseling session, Touko will ask Lain how she’s doing and Lain will say, “Fine.”
119:00 - 119:30 I’m just impressed by the multifaceted nature of these characters, and the level of complexity in the writing from a video game released in 1998. Lain describes becoming more and more interested in computers. She studies programming from books at the local library. She mentions that this is only to pass the time until she enters junior high school. After that, she’ll be too busy with school and friends and won’t have all this free time to devote to computers. Also within these entries Lain talks about the worsening relationship between her parents. Much like the anime series, Lain has a better connection to her father than her mother. He
119:30 - 120:00 even stays home from work to talk with her on some days when she doesn’t go to school. One day, he leaves on a business trip to America for 2 months, and this is where the cracks in her semi-normal life start to appear. She decides to try out an online game, sort of similar to the hide-and-seek game that the children were playing in the TV series, however in this iteration of the game, the goal is to kill the other player when they’re found. Lain isn’t a fan of this concept and fills out a developer survey asking
120:00 - 120:30 for her thoughts about the game, where she answers honestly that she didn’t like it. Shortly after that, she receives an email with a photo of a dead infant. She suspects that this is somehow connected to her critique of the game. And you know, based on real life examples, not really a huge leap of logic there. She speaks to friends online about what happened and meets a user named Rabbit, who teaches her how to trace information to find the identity of the sender. After only a day, Lain manages to track the person down and doxes them. However,
120:30 - 121:00 she also finds that her own diary entries have been copied and shared as well. She wants further revenge and consults Rabbit, who says to leave it to him and forget about it, so she gets suspicious that the original prankster and Rabbit somehow know each other. Lain’s online escapades get swept aside for a bit when she enters junior high school. She makes a new friend, Misato, another quiet girl who is often absent from school. Misato turns out to have many talents, such as playing the violin and painting.
121:00 - 121:30 She also seems to be popular with the boys, because as Lain says, she’s cute, but, at least according to Lain, Misato doesn’t seem to have any interest in them. Lain and Misato end up joining the art club at school together, and overall, things seem to be going well for her. She even mentions that she hasn’t had any hallucinations for a while. She also says that she’s not planning on logging onto the Wired for the time being. She’s busy with school and a new friend and doesn’t have a need for it anymore. During this time, Lain’s father returns home from his business trip,
121:30 - 122:00 and he’s brought Lain a present, a stuffed dog that she names Bikke. We’ll learn more about Bikke later on. Lain spends time with her family and practices art. One day, Misato even comes over for dinner. Lain’s dad drives her home, and they meet her mother at the door and chat for a bit. These details may seem superfluous right now, but they’ll become important soon. For the upcoming cultural festival at school, the students from the art club need to submit paintings. Misato submits an oil painting of a pegasus that impresses everyone. Lain admits she feels a bit envious of Misato’s
122:00 - 122:30 skills and thinks to herself that her only skill is with computers. She wants to exchange emails with Misato and show her the friends she made on the Wired, hoping this will impress her. But it turns out that Misato isn’t a fan of computers. These events cause Lain to start going back onto the Wired where she decides to join a news group that has an art thread. At the cultural festival, everyone loves Misato’s artwork so much that the art teacher decides to submit it to a prefectural art exhibition.
122:30 - 123:00 Lain posts a photo of Misato’s painting in the art thread she’s now active in, but other users say that Misato’s work is plagiarism. Lain doesn’t believe it, but rumors spread around the school that Misato copied her painting, and she stops showing up. It turns out an incredibly similar piece was submitted by a young Japanese artist to an American art magazine, where it won a prize and was published in said magazine. Lain still isn’t convinced that Misato could have plagiarized her work, so she starts digging into the matter on the Wired. After contacting the art magazine, Lain discovers that Misato’s initial sketch
123:00 - 123:30 for her painting was done 2 months before the work in the magazine was published. She doesn’t get a chance to celebrate this win though, because she finds out that Misato is transferring schools. The other kids say that she’s too embarrassed to come back after it was found out that she was a plagiarist. Lain knows the truth, but no one will listen to her. “Why do people spread rumors without knowing what they’re talking about? Don’t they care about who they might be hurting?” One of the most interesting things about this entire Misato saga is that
123:30 - 124:00 most of it isn’t revealed until a 2nd playthrough. On your first time through, when you get to these diary entries, you’ll see a few referencing Misato and Lain’s friendship and then they just jump straight to her having moved away. Of course, you can see through the numbering that you’re missing several entries, but you don’t really know what’s going on until after you’ve finished the game once. There may be a very important reason for that. Around the time all of this is going on, Touko decides to interview some of Lain’s friends from school. She chooses Kyoko, her on again off again friend from elementary school and Kaori,
124:00 - 124:30 a girl who Lain has never mentioned in her diaries. Touko makes up a story that she’s Lain’s home tutor and is worried about her to get the girls to talk and not reveal that Lain is receiving counseling. Kaori seems more interested in getting Touko to tutor her and only has some basic observations about Lain to offer. Kyoko talks about how she and Lain used to be friends but drifted apart near the end of elementary school and now hardly ever talk. Kyoko drops a bombshell when Touko asks about Misato, though.
124:30 - 125:00 There is no girl in their class by that name. During a later counseling session, Touko confronts Lain about Misato. Touko tells her that she spoke to one of Lain’s classmates who said there’s no girl named Misato in their class. Lain insists that Misato exists, but that she moved away. Touko asks if Lain can give her any proof of Misato’s existence, which is a weird request, and Lain says that she has her memories of her. Then the conversation turns a bit philosophical with Lain questioning
125:00 - 125:30 why you need a body to exist, and Touko abruptly ends the session. The next month, Touko apologizes for getting angry and admits that it was wrong to go behind Lain’s back and ask her friends about her. Yeah, you think? I wonder how many ethical rules and regulations Touko broke by doing that. Lain wants to know who Touko talked to. When she says Kyoko and Kaori, Lain reveals that she knows Kyoko but doesn’t know who Kaori is. Touko suspects Lain is playing with her. Kind of mocking her for saying that Misato didn’t exist in the previous counseling session.
125:30 - 126:00 This whole thing is really interesting and furthers Lain’s ideas about memory and existence, but couldn’t Touko have just asked Lain’s parents about Misato? Lain said in her diary that Misato came over for dinner and Lain’s dad even drove Misato home and spoke with her mom one evening. Seems like that would be an easy way of finding out if Lain was making Misato up or not. As we’ll come to find out, though, by this point in the story, Touko may not be in her right mind. Back to Lain’s diaries for a minute though,
126:00 - 126:30 after Misato’s exit, she throws herself back into the Wired. Her mother and father’s relationship is also at its worst. Lain describes a huge fight her parents had where her father hit her mother. Lain blames herself for all of these things happening. During this time, something happens to Lain while she’s at school. She went to school in the morning, but wakes up in her bedroom in the evening having no memory of how she got there. She’s also begun experiencing hallucinations again. Stronger than ever. What actually happened is revealed in several Dc nodes.
126:30 - 127:00 Lain went to the school bathroom, shattered the mirror with a broom, and cut herself with the broken glass. Most likely passing out and hitting her head as well, to explain the head bandage. Lain’s father hasn’t been home for a while and Lain’s mother, worried about Lain’s mental state has requested a leave of absence from school, so Lain spends all of her time at home on her computer. She doesn’t really want to use the computer all day. In fact, it makes her feel sick to do so, but her father gave it to her, so she feels she can be closer to him by using it. Lain starts to wonder if she’s even her mother and father’s
127:00 - 127:30 child. She comments that she doesn’t really look like her mother at all. One day she finds out that Rabbit, the guy on the Wired who taught her how to trace information, has died. It feels to her that everyone she gets close to in any way leaves her. Then, the news comes that her parents have gotten a divorce. Lain’s father goes to live on his own, leaving just Lain and her mother in the house. Again, another momentous and psychologically damaging moment that Lain makes no mention of to Touko in the counseling sessions.
127:30 - 128:00 And I guess Lain’s mom doesn’t mention it to Touko either. It’s just never brought up between the two of them, which is pretty strange. This is also when Lain decides to hack into Touko’s research and winds up stumbling upon Touko’s diary. There are already hints that Lain was looking into Touko’s personal life. Early on in the story, she found out when Touko’s birthday was, without Touko ever mentioning it. But now Lain’s managed to crack the diary and observes that Touko is just another human being, concerned about petty things, mostly about men.
128:00 - 128:30 The whole hacking and spying on Touko thing occupies Lain for a bit, but then her diary entries start to focus more on her father not being around. She reveals that she’s downloaded some AI software to replicate voices and images and attempts to construct her father in the program. This starts out weird, but even Lain admits that it’s goofy and just something that makes her feel a little less lonely. It very quickly spirals out of control. Lain gets heavily invested in machine learning, having her AI dad go out onto the net to research and grow. The AI even begins to recognize shapes through the screen.
128:30 - 129:00 She builds a 3D model of her father and implements the AI into that. “I’m breathing dad’s life into the computer dad gave me.” One day, she shows the model of her father that she’s created to her mother, and her mom leaves the room horrified. Naturally. Lain then begins corresponding with MIT robotics students and, yeah, you know where this is going. She even starts to look into how to grow artificial organs. Interestingly, one of the only references to protocol 7 is among these entries.
129:00 - 129:30 This is a concept that’s more thoroughly developed in the TV series, but it’s neat to see it mentioned here too. A deeply disturbing diary entry arrives after Lain has built a torso and arms for her robot dad, and I’ll just let Lain tell you about it.
129:30 - 130:00 There have been a few mentions earlier of kids at school discussing sexual topics
130:00 - 130:30 and Lain stumbling across adult sites. By this point she’s also read Touko’s diary, and Touko has mentioned sexual encounters with her boyfriend Takeshi. Lain always gets embarrassed talking about this stuff, but she also shows curiosity. She even mentions Touko at the end of this robot dad encounter, saying that there’s something wrong with her and she has no business criticizing Touko. As Lain continues building robot dad, she decides there’s not enough space
130:30 - 131:00 in her room and somehow purchases a derelict factory and has construction work done on it, posing online as a buyer and never meeting anyone in person. I’m guessing she used the AI model of her dad to do the transactions through video calls. She mentions that the developer was a bit suspicious about never meeting the client in person, but this never becomes an issue, and Lain moves robot dad to the new factory where she continues her work. In the Dc nodes, an event occurs that isn’t directly mentioned in any of the diary entries. Lain has been in contact with someone online who can get her parts for her
131:00 - 131:30 project. She wants an actuator motor, so she meets with the guy at a shopping mall. On her way to the meeting, we see a distorted scene of Lain walking through a crowd. Near the beginning of the game, Touko mentions Lain’s visual acuity in one of her diagnosis reports. Apparently, she has better than perfect vision, and at one point Lain talks about how she can see purple in the sky. I guess this scene is supposed to show us how Lain views the world with her better-than-fighter-pilot
131:30 - 132:00 vision. Lain’s exceptional eyesight could also be another clue that she’s not a normal human. She catches a glimpse of a junior high school girl kissing an older man in the crowd. In the food court of the shopping mall, during her meeting with her contact, she sees the same girl and man having some sort of argument and then...
132:00 - 132:30 Again, this scene is never commented on anywhere else in the game,
132:30 - 133:00 but Lain picking up that gun will become important later. Back to her diary entries, Lain is having trouble working on the lower body of robot dad. Ugh. And he doesn’t have a head. Ugh. She puts an artificial head on him temporarily. At one point, he starts to move on his own, and Lain wonders if he’s trying to see her. She also wonders if this dad is really her dad, the one that loves her more than anyone else.
133:00 - 133:30 After this, Lain discovers that someone has tried to access robot dad through the Wired. She starts having hallucinations again and mentions seeing another version of herself. “She’s in elementary school. But she’s different from the person I was then. She had conviction in her eyes. Was the me that I was then me?” During her next counseling session with Touko, she gets the feeling that Touko is frightened of her. This diary entry corresponds with Counseling nodes 046 and 047. In this session, Lain asks Touko
133:30 - 134:00 specifically about her lover, who at this point in the story could be either Takeshi or Yoshida. Either way, Touko gets suspicious and asks Lain if she’s really Lain. If you remember from Touko’s diary entries, she’s losing grip on reality, so her unprofessionalism here could be contributed to that. There’s also a subtle reversal thats been happening in the counseling sessions ever since Lain read Touko’s diary. This comes to a head during this session, where Touko snaps back, saying that the counseling is for Lain not for her.
134:00 - 134:30 She says Lain is the proper, reserved, sad girl without much self-confidence. But Lain says that she doesn’t think that sounds like her at all, as distortion creeps into the audio. Over the next few sessions, the timings of which are hard to place, the roles have completely reversed. Lain is now acting as Touko’s counselor. She also mentions that she and Touko are connected, a word that holds a lot of weight in this series.
134:30 - 135:00 The breakdown of Touko’s self is further confirmed in her later diary entries where she speaks about suffering from visual and auditory hallucinations. She mentions at one point that she’s beginning to feel like Lain. Afterwards, Lain hacks in to the research center again. This time, she finds some files that she wasn’t able to access before. Touko discovers that Lain has been looking at her files and suspects that she’s read everything, including her own diary entries. This is also around the time when she discovers that Yoshida betrayed
135:00 - 135:30 her and was just using her as a guinea pig for the RML device. A few more of Lain’s diary entries reveal that her mother has disappeared. She contacts the police, but after seeing empty liquor bottles scattered around the house, they assume her mother is just out on a bender, and the police do nothing. What they do best. Lain is completely alone in the house now and starts receiving silent phone calls, but she can hear some sort of noise on the other end of the line. It’s never really explained what this is, but it could be the information from the Wired leaking into the real world.
135:30 - 136:00 And I think I’ve managed to line up all of the various story threads now, so it’s time to talk about the ending. In Touko’s diary, when she figures out that Yoshida was using her, we hear a bunch of static creep in. Touko says that she will no longer treat Lain and accuses Lain of killing Dr. Takashima, but then she says something really interesting. “I had nothing to do with it. The police said it wasn’t me. They think it was a suicide.” This isn’t exactly a confession, but afterwards, Touko does beg Lain to help her and calls her a good girl, perhaps trying to placate her,
136:00 - 136:30 because she knows Lain knows the truth behind Takashima’s death? This is left up to interpretation. Though, Takashima’s suicide does come at a very opportune time when Touko is extremely stressed out, losing grip on reality, and fed up with his treatment of her. Touko spends the next few diary entries begging Lain to leave her be, so let’s check in on what Lain has actually been up to. Lain wakes up one morning with a gun in her hands, having no recollection of how she got it.
136:30 - 137:00 We know from the earlier scene at the mall that she picked it up after the murder/suicide that occurred there. She decides to place it inside of robot dad for safe keeping. While she’s there, robot dad hugs her, and she wonders if he can hear her footsteps approach and knows who she is. She feels that something has gone wrong with his development. Ya think? Lain decides to make a copy of herself and put it on the Wired using the same machine learning software that she used to create her father. After a few days spent in development, Lain has a conversation with her new self on the Wired. There’s also this brilliant line,
137:00 - 137:30 which I don’t know, I just think it’s one of the best in the entire game: “She’s the same as me, so she’s predictable” So now a Wired version of Lain has come into existence. A Lain who is combing through data and learning about not only Lain, but Touko as well and everything related to their interactions. Sounds a lot like exactly what we’re doing while playing the game, doesn’t it? So yes. If you haven’t already guessed, we are the Lain that Lain has just created.
137:30 - 138:00 Or rather, we’ve been guiding this Wired Lain through all the nodes attempting to access information and learn more. By this time, Touko has completely taken on the role of the patient in the counseling sessions, and Touko’s loss of identity is pretty much confirmed in the diagnosis reports, which now have Touko and Lain’s voices overlapping each other.
138:00 - 138:30 In her final diary entry, Touko resigns herself to the loss of her body and her impending connection to Lain. Now, these final bits of the story, I found really difficult to fit into an exact timeline, so I’ll just refer to the Dc nodes.
138:30 - 139:00 One night in the lab, Touko is going through her files when Lain appears in the room with her. Touko mentions that Lain appeared in a laboratory two years ago, and that all information about her was entered into a database. However, Touko says the final update is from a date two years in the future. Touko also asks Lain why there isn’t any data about Lain prior to three years ago. She comes to her own conclusion that Lain was born in her current state at that time. Lain says all of that doesn’t matter, that she wants to connect with the entire world.
139:00 - 139:30 What in the--, like, I don’t know.
139:30 - 140:00 My guess is that Wired Lain has now completely taken over, possibly even killed or merged completely with the real world Lain and has manipulated the data about herself. The entry from two years in the future could also be a demonstration of Lain’s omnipresence. Could omnipresence extend beyond time as well?
140:00 - 140:30 If anyone has any thoughts about this whole scene, leave a comment. There are a couple reasons why this scene is hard to place. For one, Touko is acting very differently from the way she acts in the final counseling sessions and her last few diary entries. The other reason comes from what’s written in Lain’s diary and what happens in the subsequent Dc nodes. Through her digging, Lain finds a piece of information that says her mother and father are actually together. We don’t ever see where Lain learned this, but she suspects that Touko knew the truth and was hiding it from her.
140:30 - 141:00 Could possibly be the reason why she killed her instead of merging with her, as Touko suspected would happen, in the previously described scene. Lain then goes to the abandoned factory and destroys robot dad and all of her equipment. In her diary, she says that she killed her father, and her mother is next. The next entry skips ahead one year. Lain is talking about taking her final walk. She sees her mother out in the city, but her mother doesn’t recognize her, which she isn’t particularly bothered by. But I guess this means that she didn’t kill her mother after she destroyed robot dad.
141:00 - 141:30 In the Dc nodes, we see Lain walking through the city, carrying a plastic bag. On a bridge, she encounters the other version of herself. Lain says that it’s over, but the other Lain says that for her, it’s just beginning.
141:30 - 142:00 Do I have a sad existence? I guess people think so. I don’t mind that much. I don’t need a backup. That would be useless. The me on the Net also had a sad existence. That’s why I killed her. Hey, did that hurt?
142:00 - 142:30 In Lain’s last diary entries, she comments on dying and feeling fear because of her genes. She says she doesn’t need those kinds of genes. This is a small world that seems large only to parasites. All the while the beep, like that of a heart rate monitor, plays in the background. Lain then has a contradictory conversation with herself, talking about where she will go from here, and whether or not she’ll need a body. Finally, she asks what she’ll need to survive on the Wired.
142:30 - 143:00 The answer: Existence and will. The rest is just data. This echoes Lain’s final words to Touko in their last counselling session. Touko says that she can’t understand her sense of self from moment to moment. Lain replies, “The judgement you have exactly at that moment is you. The rest is just data.” As mentioned in the gameplay session, you can only watch each of the final nodes:
143:00 - 143:30 Lain’s dairy, Touko’s diary, Digital camera, Diagnosis, and Counseling, once per playthrough. Each of them will trigger the same ending cutscene, an abridged recap of all of the animated segments throughout the game. Then you’ll see Lain, who will turn and speak whatever name you entered on the name entry screen. If you’re lucky! And the process will start again if you select “Continue.” On a fourth and fifth playthrough, another new type of node will appear: Eda nodes. These nodes consist mostly of interrogations of the man Lain
143:30 - 144:00 met with in the shopping mall. His name is Makino. He’s asked about what he witnessed in the mall as well as his connection to Lain. As these interrogations continue, it becomes clear that the interrogator isn’t connected to the police, but one of the shadowy groups interested in Lain, possibly Tachibana General Labs, possibly someone else. In the last interrogation, Makino tells about how he hasn’t been able to sleep and only feels at ease when looking at a computer. He shows off his scars from cutting himself and asks for a psychiatrist.
144:00 - 144:30 Some kind of struggle ensues, and in the end, the interrogator calls for a cleaner instead. And a cup of coffee. The last Eda node is a press conference from the director of the research institute answering questions about the two suicides that have taken place on the premises. The death of Dr. Takashima and the death of Touko. There are several, let’s just say, insensitive remarks about the mentally ill in this long speech. I can’t really tell if these are intentional or a product of the time the game was released, but I
144:30 - 145:00 winced at a few descriptions and explanations of mental illness that were given here. But with all these nodes revealed, the story is concluded. These finish unlocking on a 6th playthrough. The only thing left after that are all of the talk nodes, but the only bearing they have on the story is that you’ll eventually start hearing Touko’s voice instead of Lain’s. And certain lines will be repeated by both Lain and Touko.
145:00 - 145:30 Touko may have died in the real world and lost her body, but she continues to exist in the Wired, connected to Lain. But even after all of this, there’s one more piece to this puzzle that we’re missing. There are a total of 58 numbered Dc nodes in Serial Experiments Lain, but only 55 are unlockable through gameplay. Two of the missing nodes are on the game disc, but can only be accessed by dumping the game files. These are Dc1001, which is just an establishing shot of some powerlines,
145:30 - 146:00 and Dc1058 which shows the aftermath of Lain’s suicide. Dc1029, however, is completely missing. So, where is it? Well, inside Yoshitoshi ABe’s An Omnipresence in Wired is a 19-page manga titled “The Nightmare of Fabrication.” DC1029
146:00 - 146:30 The story takes place entirely in Lain’s room. She wants to talk to someone, but running through the list of all the people she knows, she figures no one else wants to talk to her. When she thinks about Misato, she tries to convince herself that her friend wasn’t an illusion. She remembers buying pastels with her, remembers the smell of them,
146:30 - 147:00 but right now, she can’t find the paint set anywhere in her home. These pastels were actually mentioned in one of Lain’s diary entries where she talks about her mother not liking the smell of them. Lda071, if you’re wondering. She also can’t recall when she bought them, or when she got her head injury, which occurred after she passed out from cutting herself in the school bathroom. She comes to the conclusion that her memories aren’t connected, and if they aren’t connected to anyone, then she’ll disappear. While thinking about this, she’s cut off the bell that was around Bikke’s neck,
147:00 - 147:30 the stuffed animal that her father brought home for her as a gift from his business trip. She builds a robotic device to place inside Bikke, repeating all the while that this won’t hurt as she cuts open the stuffed animal and puts the device in. After she’s finished, Bikke makes weak barking sounds. Lain, overjoyed, vows to program him to walk, then install an AI so they can talk together. Then she’ll make her father, and her friends, and a mother who won’t get mad at her. She’ll be able to talk to all of them and they won’t be able to hurt her. In this way,
147:30 - 148:00 she’ll be able to connect to everyone again. Her moment of triumph is short lived, though. Bikke weakly utters Lain’s name before exploding into pieces. As Lain grieves over the loss of her stuffed dog, a voice calls out to her and tells her that things that are broken can be replaced, the dead can be brought back to life. The voice belongs to Masami Eiri, the godlike figure from the anime who wrote his consciousness into the 7th protocol. He gives Lain a replacement Bikke and says from now on this one is
148:00 - 148:30 the original. They can dispose of the broken one and because no one knows that she killed the original, that means that it never happened. Lain protests, saying that she knows what she’s done and a replacement isn’t the same as having the original brought back. Eiri tells Lain that she can just rewrite her own memories, then that will make it real. He also says that Lain has already done this many times before. Lain then says that she’s had Bikke since she was born, which we know is a lie, because she received the toy from her father recently.
148:30 - 149:00 However, maybe there is some truth to this, considering Lain and Touko’s conversation at the research institute, where Touko claims that Lain only came into existence just a few years ago. Eiri suggests this in his next line when he says maybe Lain wasn’t born as long ago as she thinks. He asks where all the people who have any memory of her have gone. Lain still resists all of this and says that her memories are real. Eiri tells her that a memory is just a record, where thoughts and reality separate is just a thin border that can be overcome.
149:00 - 149:30 Even if Lain forgets this conversation, deep down she’ll know that this is the truth. And that he and she will continue to exist. Lain then wakes up in her room and finds Bikke unchanged, sitting on her desk. However, on the floor next to her foot is the bell that she cut from Bikke’s neck. This Bikke still has a bell around its neck. In the end, she buries the bell in the backyard. If no one knows about it, then it never happened. She’s rewriting her memories, burying her nightmare, that way it never happened.
149:30 - 150:00 This possibly explains why, even after this traumatizing event, she still went on to try to build a replacement for her father. The Nightmare of Fabrication offers several key connections between the story of the game and the story of the anime series. The most obvious is the appearance of Masami Eiri, looking exactly the same as he does in the anime. But we actually hear Eiri’s voice in the game. Aside from all of the nodes that I’ve already exhaustively discussed. There are some extra scenes that play when you stay idle in each level of the two cylinders throughout the game.
150:00 - 150:30 Some of these play pieces of conversations that you’ll hear in other nodes. Some of them show scenes that are mentioned in diary entries, such as a construction accident that Lain mentions witnessing in Lda107. But there are a few where a mysterious man is speaking, saying that he knows about Lain and that he has to die in order for them to meet. Eiri’s talk of Lain having reset her own memories many times before this and being able
150:30 - 151:00 to shape reality in her own image, also speaks to several key plot points in the anime series. But the question is, is a god created or has it always existed, eternally, outside of time? Does it continue to exist when there’s no one around to believe in it? Does anything exist if there’s no one around to remember or believe in it? These are questions that the TV series tangoes with, and I think they’re important questions to consider when trying to figure out the connections between the game and the anime.
151:00 - 151:30 One of the biggest things I noticed from reading so many comments from and interviews with the creators of Lain is that they’re reticent to explain many of the stories greater mysteries. This is because, as Ueda hints at in the Otakon interview, and the writers of Visual
151:30 - 152:00 Experiments Lain hint at in several of the blurbs in the episode breakdowns, they wanted people watching to come to their own conclusions. To quote Ueda from that wonderful Otakon Q&A panel, “when we made this, we had certain goals and certain things we wanted to express, but everyone has their own opinion, their own reality--if you were--that they posses... “Just because I think a certain way, or I want this certain thing to be understood, that doesn't mean that I don't think you should get something else out of it.”
152:00 - 152:30 One of the biggest reasons I had for making this video was to find out what the direct connections were between the story of Serial Experiments Lain the anime and Serial Experiments Lain the game. In an interview with Animerica magazine in Vol. 7, No. 9, Ueda had this to say about the relationship between Lain the anime and Lain the game: “The approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products. “In the game, users can interactively access the fragments of Lain’s memory.
152:30 - 153:00 Then users can actually feel the Lain who exists inside the Web. “In the TV animation, people can understand Lain by following the story. In the end, I wanted people to understand Lain, the girl. Ultimately, I want them to love her… “The game’s basic viewpoint is the record of Lain when she was little. In the animation, we didn’t specifically say that Lain in the game and Lain in the anime are the same person, but the creative staff assumed the two are one and the same person, and Lain’s memory
153:00 - 153:30 in the game had a big influence on the anime.” The story of the game covers Lain’s last year of elementary school and first year of junior high school. In the TV series, she’s in her 2nd year of junior high. So if we follow the chronology of events, based on the two stories actually being connected, then after game Lain dies, she is replaced by a new version of Lain. After all, if Eiri is to be believed, Lain’s body is just a homunculus, a storage unit housing the executable program that is Lain, so it’s easy enough to just replace her body and start over.
153:30 - 154:00 There were even mentions of creating artificial organs in Lain’s diary when she talks about creating a new father. That level of sophisticated bio-technology exists in the world of Lain. So nothing is actually lost, and Lain has even gone ahead and created a Wired version of herself that continues on as well. Also, because there are many versions of Lain existing at the same time--an infinite number of them, if another scene from episode 8 is to be taken at face value--this version of Lain
154:00 - 154:30 has no recollection of past events that other versions of Lain have experienced. In fact, we know this to be true, because Lain has no recollection of Alphabet Lain spreading rumors about Alice in the TV series. Or if she does, they’re buried somewhere deep in her psyche, in the same way that the Lain in The Nightmare of Fabrication buried the truth about Bikke. If something or someone isn’t remembered by anyone, then it’s as if it never existed.
154:30 - 155:00 So things could just be on a linear timeline. But there’s another way to look at things if we take into account Lain’s ability to reset the world. If, as Eiri suggests in The Nightmare of Fabrication, she already has that ability before the start of the series, and has reset the world before, then it stands to reason that she reset things sometime between the events of the game and the events of the anime. So the events of the game happened in a previous version of reality. This could be the reason for having a different family dynamic in the
155:00 - 155:30 series. Game Lain doesn’t have a sister, but anime Lain does. We actually don’t know if game mother and father are the same as series mother and father, because we never see or hear them in the game, which is really interesting. We know that Lain also has the ability to make it so events never happened, like when she erases the events that make up the rumors surrounding Alice and the teacher. So, Lain could have erased the events of the game from ever happening as well. This brings up an interesting question, though, and one that The Nightmare of Fabrication and the TV series tackle over and over again:
155:30 - 156:00 If something is forgotten, does that mean that it never actually happened? Even when Lain erases herself at the end of the series, there are still traces of her in the world, in Alice’s memory, on Taro’s NAVI. Hell, she’s even still hanging around at the very end. So it seems that the TV series is saying just because no one remembers something, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. There are even more subtle traces in the TV series, like Lain being given the gun by the boy from Cyberia, calling back to the gun Lain used at the end of the video game.
156:00 - 156:30 That deleted world leaves behind remnants. There’s also the possibility that the game and the anime could just be alternate tellings of the story of Lain, completely separate from each other. A riff on the same themes, using the same main character, since Lain is the only character who crosses over between the two stories. This theory is supported by the fact that Ueda wanted to create a story that could be viewed through different media projects. That may be a boring idea, but there aren’t any details that don’t support this theory either.
156:30 - 157:00 Personally, I feel like it’s all of the above and more. The creators are inviting you to make connections and think about things in your own way. I prefer the ambiguity of it all. It’s fun to fall down rabbit holes and discuss, theorize, analyze all of the little details. If there were solid answers, it would take away from the mystique that is Lain. This is a franchise built around mythologizing and at times deifying its main character. Omnipresence and infinity are concepts that human beings can
157:00 - 157:30 only grasp theoretically. Pondering them opens up a void of thought, because it’s something we can never actually experience and understand completely. And I love the mystery inherent in that. I love that Lain tackles these questions and forces us to ponder what it really means to be all of these things. Or to be none of these things, just another node, connected to another and another in a long chain, inside this perception we call reality.
157:30 - 158:00 By attempting to piece together the story of Serial Experiments Lain the game in chronological fashion, I think I realize now why the creators structured that story the way they did. Several events and plot threads occur at the same time, and in some cases, may not actually be happening at all, depending on how you look at it.
158:00 - 158:30 There are also quite a few ‘aha’ moments that arise from hearing certain bits of information, and not knowing what’s going on, only to later unlock a new node and hear something that makes it all fit into place among the larger narrative. It creates an interesting tension. With each node that you gain access to, you’re slowly uncovering more pieces to this gigantic jigsaw puzzle of a story. And despite a few scenes that are difficult to fit into a linear timeline, much of the story does end up coming together in the end. On a more conceptual level, the fragmented structure mirrors the
158:30 - 159:00 fragmented nature of its two main characters. Like the anime series, the game deals with multiple versions of each, just in a different way. In the anime, we see physical manifestations of Lain’s different personas. In the game, we see interactions, diary entries, and professional reports that show the different masks that the characters wear depending on who they’re dealing with and how they want to be viewed. It’s some of the deepest characterization I think I’ve ever seen (or rather, heard) in a video game.
159:00 - 159:30 And it’s the biggest factor that kept propelling me to continue playing the game. The gameplay itself, if you can call it that, wears out its welcome well before the end of the first playthrough, but I needed to keep going, because I needed to see what parts of the story I was missing, what parts of these characters I was missing. Is this a satisfying tale that can be taken on its own and appreciated? I don’t think so. You don’t need to play Serial Experiments Lain to watch Serial Experiments Lain, but I do think you need to have watched Serial Experiments Lain to play and appreciate Serial Experiments Lain.
159:30 - 160:00 As a piece of the larger work that is Serial Experiments Lain, and as another lens to view the world and story and characters of Lain in the TV series through, the game is worthwhile, but only for the most die hard and patient fans. You really need to know what you’re getting into. It’s slow-paced, at times exhausting and tedious, and it won’t offer a grand illumination of the mysteries in the anime series. It will give you several more perspectives through which to view that story though,
160:00 - 160:30 and will give you much more to ponder just by looking at its story on its own. It was made as an experiment in gameplay and interactive media and spawned an anime that was also just meant to be an experiment, but that ended up becoming the beating heart of the whole thing. Or maybe the central processing unit of the whole thing, to stay within the parlance of Lain. Even over 25 years after the broadcast of this quirky 13-episode anime series
160:30 - 161:00 and the release of its companion video game, Lain is just as popular as ever. Living in memes, appearing on the covers of indie electronic albums, and acting as the subject for wacky interactive experiments with technology and the internet. In 2013, Wired Sound For Wired People was launched, an interactive visual and sound experiment developed on neocities by a user named fauux. It’s still online today, and you can check it out. Definitely need to give a flashing lights and epilepsy warning though. The imagery can get pretty intense.
161:00 - 161:30 It’s a creepy little experience where you click through various web pages with simple animations and collages of music and sound effects. There’s a link in the description below, if you want to explore for yourself. In the fall of 2023 through the spring of 2024, an AI chat service called AILain allowed users to have conversations with Lain. It was constructed using samples of Kaori Shimizu’s voice. The service has since been shut down, but in their coverage CONTINUE Motion Graphics magazine writer Gumi Ishibayashi called
161:30 - 162:00 it an evolution of the video call conversations seen in the 1996 PS1 game, NoEL: Not Digital. So it all comes full circle. In mid-2024 VRChat worked with the Anique Museum based in Tokyo to host a digital art museum dedicated to Lain called the Weird Exhibition. Due to popular demand they reopened it between November 29 and January 19, 2025. Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to attend this exhibit, but I did read about it
162:00 - 162:30 in Volume 85 of CONTINUE Motion Graphics, where they devoted an article to covering the event. Shout out to one of my Patron’s, HighFoodcourt, for providing footage from the Weird Exhibition and for giving me links to the document and Q&A from the event. You can find a link to his full walkthrough of Weird Exhibition in the description below. It’s really awesome, check it out if you’re interested. I mean, it was exactly what it sounds like, a virtual museum where you could view artwork and concept art as well as walk around virtual recreations of some of the settings of the anime, like the street in Lain’s neighborhood and her bedroom.
162:30 - 163:00 There was also a Q&A with Ueda, Abe, and storyboard artist Takuya Sato, as well as questions culled from a Reddit AMA that I combed through. In the museum though, there is an interesting document, titled “Project Lain,” stamped top secret, and dated January 2, 1998. The document, featuring several blacked out lines, details the Lain software project, and development of a new lifeform. There are several references to characters in the video game, such as Lain’s friend Kyoko, and counselor, Touko.
163:00 - 163:30 It also references diary entries, monitoring from the age of 11 to 13, as well as the placement of this Lain lifeform in the care of a fake family for observation. Near the end, there seems to be some reference to Lain being installed in Touko and her body being thrown away, but much of this line is blacked out. In the Q&A, Ueda confirmed that this was an actual design document that he had written during Lain’s pre-production. The blacked out lines and top-secret stamp were added when it was decided it would be placed in the museum.
163:30 - 164:00 There is an uncensored version of this document floating around that you can probably find on your own if you’re resourceful enough. I’ve seen it and read it, but I’m not going to show it. The creators have said that it was a mistake that it was ever shown in the first place, and if you’ve been paying attention to my analysis, you don’t really need to see what’s under those blacked out portions to put the pieces together. Although, you will need to be able to read Japanese. Also, the team’s whole deal was creating something that people could analyze for themselves.
164:00 - 164:30 As Ueda said at that one Otakon all those years ago, just because he thought a certain way, doesn't mean that you shouldn’t get something else out of it. As you can see, Lain’s legacy continues to endure. It’s never going to be popular enough to sell McDonald’s hamburgers.
164:30 - 165:00 But the series lives on through fan creativity, weird art installations, and internet memes. And the creators couldn’t be happier about that. In the interview with Yasuyuki Ueda and Yoshitoshi ABe in volume 85 of CONTINUE Motion Graphics, the two creators both agree that this is the most fitting legacy for Lain. Lain embodies the culture of the terminally online, the always connected. We’ve traded in
165:00 - 165:30 our wires, for the most part, but we’re still metaphorically draped in them. You could argue that the world we live in has already had its borders between the Wired and the real broken. Rumors and speculation make their way through social media and become truth. Everything that seemed in 1998 to be only fiction, a story we told ourselves was a dystopia, has become reality. Our world is a Nightmare of Fabrication. Good night, everybody.
165:30 - 166:00 No, but, yeah. I wish I was joking. After plumbing the depths of this series, living in it, and obsessively thinking and writing about it for the 2 months that it took to make this video, the origins of Lain and the connections between the game and the series have been slightly more elucidated, but I can still safely say that a lot about Lain is just as much a mystery to me as when I started. And you know what? I’m glad. By unlocking so many tidbits of knowledge about its creation, its references, and its legacy, I’ve only come to appreciate it more.
166:00 - 166:30 The truth is, there is no conclusion here. There’s so much more to think about and unpack, so many details to mull over, different angles to look at, and lenses to peer through. I’m probably going to watch Serial Experiments Lain again before I finish editing this video. And I’ll most likely watch it countless more times in the future. It remains as vital and as real as ever. Lain is omnipresent. And you don’t need to have seen Lain to know Lain.
166:30 - 167:00 And that’s it for Serial Experiments Lain. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, there’s a like and a subscribe button. There’s a comment box. You can share it with friends. Share it with strangers. Spread the word. I think it goes without saying, but this video was the most extensive and obsessively researched that I’ve ever done. Just the research phase of the video took about 2 weeks, and then I played the game and played some other games that I talked about in this video, and some that I didn’t. But yeah, then writing the script took about 2 and a half weeks,
167:00 - 167:30 and I was rewatching the anime and reviewing the game footage, and yeah, editing took a long time. But anyway, I wouldn’t have been able to spend the time doing all of that research if it weren’t for the Dungeon Dwellers. They support me monthly on Patreon and through YouTube memberships, and if you’d like to become one of them you can click the Patreon link in the description below or click the join button on this video page to become a YouTube Member. All supporters get their names in the videos, they get to watch the videos ad free a few days before they’re made public on YouTube, they get exclusive updates from me,
167:30 - 168:00 they get to vote in occasional polls on what games I cover next, and they also get access to the Dungeon Dwellers Archive, which is a playlist of bonus videos exclusive to supporters. If you support with $5 a month or more, you also get your name read out loud at the end of videos like these Dungeon Architects:
168:00 - 168:30 As well as these Dungeon Connoisseurs:
168:30 - 169:00 Thank you all for your support, and thank you, once again, for watching.
169:00 - 169:30 The next video shouldn’t take as long to make as this one did, so look forward to that.
169:30 - 170:00 I’m not gonna say what it is yet, because I’m still deciding what exactly it will be,
170:00 - 170:30 but I have a couple ideas, and they’re not going to require as much work as this one.
170:30 - 171:00 So yeah, sorry this one took so long, but hopefully the wait was worth it.
171:00 - 171:30 And, so, yeah, Serial Experiments Lain. Check it out. Dungeon Chill. Out.