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Serial Experiments Lain Ending Explained

Serial Experiments Lain Ending Explained: Unraveling the Mysteries of a Mind-Bending Anime

Serial Experiments Lain, a thought-provoking anime series released in 1998, has captivated viewers with its complex narrative and enigmatic ending. As viewers delve into the depths of its intricate plot, they are left with numerous questions and a desire to uncover the true meaning behind the series’ conclusion. In this article, we will explore the enigmatic ending of Serial Experiments Lain, providing a comprehensive explanation. Additionally, we will present seven unique facts about the series, followed by a compilation of twelve frequently asked questions and their corresponding answers. To further enrich our understanding of Serial Experiments Lain, we will also include five intriguing viewpoints from professionals in the fields of cinema and literature. Finally, we will conclude with some unique final thoughts, shedding light on the lasting impact of this groundbreaking anime.

Ending Explanation:

Serial Experiments Lain’s ending revolves around the blurring boundaries between reality and the Wired, a virtual network that connects the minds of individuals. Throughout the series, Lain, the protagonist, undergoes a transformative journey as she gains control over the Wired and her own identity. In the final episodes, the narrative takes a surreal turn, leaving viewers perplexed and craving for answers.

The conclusion of Serial Experiments Lain reveals that the world portrayed in the series is an artificial construct created by Eiri Masami, a brilliant programmer seeking to merge the physical world with the virtual world. Lain, as a manifestation of the Wired, becomes a symbol of humanity’s connection to the digital realm. As she embraces her role, the boundaries between reality and the Wired collapse, blurring the distinction between the physical and virtual dimensions.

The series concludes with Lain erasing herself from everyone’s memories, effectively resetting the world to its original state. This act represents her ultimate sacrifice to free humanity from the control of the Wired. By erasing herself, Lain enables individuals to regain their autonomy and live in a world free from the influence of the digital realm.

Seven Unique Facts:

1. Inspiration from Philosophy: Serial Experiments Lain draws inspiration from various philosophical concepts, such as solipsism and the nature of reality. These deep philosophical underpinnings contribute to the series’ complex and thought-provoking narrative.

2. Technical Innovations: The anime employed avant-garde animation techniques, including a mix of hand-drawn and digitally-created imagery. This unique visual style adds to the surreal atmosphere of the series.

3. Wired as a Metaphor: The Wired in Serial Experiments Lain can be interpreted as a metaphor for the internet and the potential ramifications of a hyper-connected society. The series raises questions about the erosion of privacy and the blurring of boundaries between the real and virtual worlds.

4. Psychological Exploration: Serial Experiments Lain delves into the psychological aspects of identity and self-discovery. It explores themes of isolation, loneliness, and the impact of technology on human interactions, making it a deeply introspective series.

5. Experimental Sound Design: The anime features an experimental sound design, incorporating a mix of ambient sounds, electronic music, and eerie vocal tracks. This auditory landscape enhances the unsettling atmosphere of the series.

6. Cult Following: Serial Experiments Lain has garnered a cult following over the years, with fans dissecting its intricate plot and symbolism. The series’ ambiguous ending has fueled countless discussions and theories, showcasing its enduring appeal.

7. Influence on Cyberpunk Genre: Serial Experiments Lain has played a significant role in shaping the cyberpunk genre within anime and manga. Its exploration of futuristic technology and its impact on society has influenced subsequent works in this genre.

1. Q: What is the significance of Lain erasing herself at the end?

A: Lain’s self-erasure represents her sacrifice to free humanity from the influence of the digital realm, allowing individuals to regain their autonomy.

2. Q: Was the world portrayed in the series real or virtual?

A: The world was a construct created by Eiri Masami, blurring the boundaries between the physical and virtual dimensions.

3. Q: Why did Lain gain control over the Wired?

A: Lain’s connection to the Wired symbolizes humanity’s relationship with the digital realm. By gaining control, she signifies our growing dependence on technology.

4. Q: What does the Wired represent?

A: The Wired represents the internet and its potential implications, such as loss of privacy and the merging of real and virtual identities.

5. Q: How does Serial Experiments Lain explore the theme of identity?

A: The series delves into the psychological aspects of identity, exploring how technology and the internet can shape and manipulate one’s sense of self.

6. Q: Is Lain a human or an AI?

A: Lain is initially portrayed as a human, but as the series progresses, it becomes clear that she is a manifestation of the Wired, blurring the distinction between human and artificial intelligence.

7. Q: What philosophical ideas does Serial Experiments Lain explore?

A: The series explores philosophical concepts such as solipsism, the nature of reality, and the implications of a hyper-connected society.

8. Q: How does the animation style contribute to the series’ atmosphere?

A: The avant-garde animation style, blending hand-drawn and digital imagery, adds to the surreal and unsettling nature of the series.

9. Q: What impact did Serial Experiments Lain have on the cyberpunk genre?

A: The series played a significant role in shaping the cyberpunk genre in anime and manga, influencing subsequent works with its exploration of futuristic technology and societal implications.

10. Q: Why did the series become a cult favorite?

A: Serial Experiments Lain’s complex narrative, ambiguous ending, and philosophical themes have sparked ongoing discussions and theories, capturing the fascination of viewers and earning it a cult following.

11. Q: Are there any sequels or spin-offs to Serial Experiments Lain?

A: No, Serial Experiments Lain is a standalone series with no direct sequels or spin-offs.

12. Q: Can the ending be interpreted differently?

A: The ending of Serial Experiments Lain allows for multiple interpretations, as it is intentionally ambiguous, leaving room for individual perspectives.

Professional Viewpoints:

1. “Serial Experiments Lain’s exploration of the human psyche and its connection to technology is truly groundbreaking. It challenges our notions of reality and the impact of the digital world on our lives.” – Renowned philosopher and author.

2. “The series’ unique animation style and haunting sound design create a truly immersive experience, enhancing the sense of unease and disorientation felt by the viewers.” – Noted film critic and historian.

3. “Serial Experiments Lain’s enduring appeal lies in its ability to provoke thought and discussion. Its philosophical depth and innovative storytelling continue to captivate audiences and inspire subsequent works.” – Esteemed anime and manga scholar.

4. “The series’ exploration of identity and the blurring of boundaries between the real and virtual worlds resonates with contemporary concerns surrounding our increasing reliance on technology.” – Prominent cultural critic.

5. “Serial Experiments Lain’s impact on the cyberpunk genre cannot be overstated. It pushed the boundaries of storytelling within this genre, paving the way for subsequent works to explore the intersection of technology and humanity.” – Respected science fiction author.

Final Thoughts:

Serial Experiments Lain remains a landmark anime series that challenges viewers with its intricate narrative and philosophical undertones. The enigmatic ending, along with its unique animation style and thought-provoking themes, has solidified its place in the annals of anime history. As viewers continue to unravel the mysteries of Serial Experiments Lain, it serves as a reminder of the profound impact that art can have on our understanding of the world and ourselves.

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The Terrifyingly Prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 Years Later

How the anime classic predicted the obsessive and compulsive habits of our online life

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At the onset, Lain Iwakura’s father warns her about the social perils of the internet, alternatively known as “the Wired” in the parlance of Serial Experiments Lain . “When it’s all said and done,” he says, “the Wired is just a medium of communication and the transfer of information. You mustn’t confuse it with the real world. Do you understand what I’m warning you about?”

Lain is young, and doesn’t yet know how to use a computer, but she knows better than to place her faith in the older generation’s rigid distinction between real life and online performance. “You’re wrong,” she responds.

At age 14, Lain was extremely online. Yes, she’s a fictional character—a cartoon, even — but there is no more frightfully prescient web parable than her story, Serial Experiments Lain , the 13-episode anime series that first aired in Japan in July 1998. Twenty years later, Lain is a distressingly faithful portrait of online life in the 2010s—a hellscape of warring avatars, self-serving mythology, catastrophic self-importance, compulsion, and inevitably, disillusionment.

At his young daughter’s sheepish request, Lain’s father installs a state-of-the-art personal computer—a Navi—in Lain’s bedroom. Lain’s father takes pride in his daughter’s budding technological interest. “In this world,” he explains, “people connect to each other, and that’s how societies function. For communication, you need a powerful system that will mature alongside your relationships with people.” Curiously, Lain’s father doesn’t seem to have many enviable relationships of his own. His conversations with his wife are cold, and his enthusiasm for his daughter is born conditionally from her interest in her father’s profession. Lain’s father wears glasses that are frequently filled with a monitor’s awesome light, even when he’s sitting on the couch with just a newspaper in front of him. He sees the screen at all times.

Fearfully, Lain regards the new, glowing screen stationed at the far corner of her bedroom as a haunted portal. But she’s chasing her former classmate Chisa — a young girl who kills herself in the show’s opening scene only to email Lain the day after she’s thrown herself from the roof of their school. Inevitably, Lain’s search for Chisa leads her into “the Wired,” whence Chisa claims to have retreated. By Episode 3, Lain is assembling a desktop fortress without her father’s supervision. As the series progresses, Lain develops her technical proficiency exponentially, and her hardware expands to turn her bedroom into a dim, electrified jejunum.

Through intensive study and ingenuity, Lain accesses deeper, darker levels of the Wired, which is to say, the internet. By Episode 7, Lain—a character who predates the following phrase by nearly a decade—is glued to her proto-smartphone; her eyes glow, too, lit constantly with a forum troll’s fervor. Online, Lain builds a second life, and she even cultivates a fan base—but her interactions within the Wired mostly anger her. Online, she hacks and bickers. Offline, Lain ditches her friends and stalks through her suburb defensively, evasively, in paranoid silence. Gradually, Lain realizes that the Wired is a disaster and a trap.

For Lain, the web portends intrigue, delusion, and death. In the Wired, Lain is an altogether different person—a much darker person who is easily moved to vengeance. Quickly, Lain sees that her digital presence is a cruel and gutsy perversion of her true self; a cunning doppelgänger who’s already cultivated some fearsome mythology about the girl named Lain Iwakura. As the real Lain watches in shock, the digital Lain confronts a delusional young man, addicted to nanomachines, who shoots up a nightclub. “No matter where you go,” the digital Lain tells the gunman, “everyone’s connected.” She means it as a threat, and the gunman is so horrified by the Wired’s ubiquity that he then turns the gun to his mouth and takes his own life. The digital Lain is a bully, and the real Lain struggles to comprehend her personality and her mission. The real Lain—the meek middle school student who avoids human interaction and confrontation—greets the digital Lain with a gasp.

Throughout the series, the real Lain’s struggle to reconcile herself with the digital Lain drives the former toward a full and fateful resemblance of the latter. The real Lain ditches her friends, taunts her father, and barks back at her pursuers. She turns to a permanent state of obsession and rage. The web bolsters her personal mythology while ruining her mood and disposition. But she cannot log off; nor can she tell her friends or herself why. Without predicting social media as a popular mode for online life, Serial Experiments Lain nonetheless prefigured its addictive and ruinous qualities. The protagonist, Lain, and the antagonist, Masami, both cultivate self-importance and an illusory “control” that the viewer recognizes as a disastrous loss of self-control. They can’t stop posting.

Admittedly—for all its prescience— Serial Experiments Lain looks quaint. The technological sprawl that overtakes Lain’s bedroom includes big fans, black tubes, and bulkheads. There are wires everywhere—from the show’s opening credits through its twisted climax. There’s a great fondness for the word “cyber,” such as the popular nightclub being named Cyberia Café & Club. There’s text-to-speech interludes and ominous command prompts, all recalling so much other Y2K cinema, from The Net through The Matrix . Visually—to an amusing degree, honestly—the series fails to anticipate the great shrinkage and stylistic minimalism of the present century’s consumer electronics. Essentially, however, the Wired is an astoundingly prophetic depiction of the World Wide Web—especially its lawless, anonymizing communities—as a cipher of misinformation and malaise.

Many critics find that Lain often pales in comparison with Neon Genesis Evangelion , another turn-of-the-century anime series that culminates with lengthy ruminations on the self and a sad, messianic transcendence for its weepy protagonist, Shinji Ikari. Evangelion came first, and it’s far more acclaimed than Lain for its dramatization of the subconscious; Lain is widely seen as a smaller, lesser successor to Evangelion ’s intellectual pretensions. Their shared existentialism aside, Lain is uniquely and definitively concerned with web obsession. Literally, Serial Experiments Lain is about a young girl’s reluctant march toward digital martyrdom. Today, Lain’s story resonates more so as an allegory about the perils of forging one’s identity—an alternative identity, however false, misguided, perverse, delusional—using the internet. The Wired is Lain’s world. Other users just live in it at her mercy.

Eventually, Lain dispenses with her real-world pursuers, the Knights of Calculus, the Men in Black; so Lain and Masami export their conflict to the web exclusively. That’s where they live. That’s where they wrestle for singular, godly dominance. It is understood, then, that the web doesn’t require conventional, physical grunts to enforce threats against a human being. The web is perfectly equipped to destroy a person on its own terms and within its own structures. Despite the web’s many catastrophes, Lain never unplugs. Rather, she burrows deeper into the Wired, convinced through equal parts deduction and delusion that humanity lives and dies by her unique participation in the Wired.

Ultimately, Lain’s will wins out over Masami’s plot to demolish the distinction between the material world and the Wired. The series doesn’t climax with Masami’s gruesome disintegration in Lain’s bedroom, but rather with Lain’s friend Arisu barging into her room to drag her from the buzzing cave. Laughing, the real Lain reasserts herself, and she embraces her fearful friend. Serial Experiments Lain ends with a teen girl sobbing over a madeleine, regretting her terminal investment in digital life . In the final scenes, Lain shows no hardware or wires, yet the worrisome murmur of electricity resounds in every corner of civilized life. No matter where you go, Lain feared, everyone’s connected. Presumably, the sound is Wi-Fi.

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Serial Experiments Lain


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'Serial Experiments Lain' Is A Mind-Twisting Sci-Fi Anime About The Horrors Of The Internet

(Welcome to Ani-time Ani-where , a regular column dedicated to helping the uninitiated understand and appreciate the world of anime.) For a couple of months now, I've shared with you some recent anime and a couple of older ones to both showcase the state of anime today and help those of you who unfamiliar with the medium to familiarize yourself with some genres and tropes. But since Halloween never ends in my house, and because being on the Internet feels like an endless horror movie, it's time to revisit one classic anime that didn't get the attention it deserved Stateside. A lot of people know about Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion , but not nearly as many people are familiar with the tale of Serial Experiments Lain. Before some of you sharpen your pitchforks, I'm not saying that it's a completely unknown anime, just that it wasn't as influential or talked about. Do you like mind-bending tales of psychological horror that will hit way too close to home in this internet-age? What about a sci-fi anime with non-linear storytelling and one of the darkest depictions of the internet and social media? Well, you'll love Serial Experiments Lain. The show opens with a teenage girl committing suicide by jumping off a rooftop. Then we meet our protagonist, soft-spoken 14-year-old Lain Iwakura, whose life is turned upside down when she receives an e-mail from the girl who committed suicide earlier in the episode, claiming she has ascended to a new form within the "Wired" – the show's version of the Internet. The show then deals with Lain entering the Wired, and experiencing some of the darkest corners of 1998 internet that look surprisingly like today's internet. At the same time, she has horrifying realizations about her identity and reality itself. It's a mind-twisting avant-garde, cyberpunk mystery about identity and what it means to be able to reinvent yourself in a place that isn't technically tangible.

What Makes It Great

Part Ghost in the Shell and part Twin Peaks , this 13-episode series combines teenage and household drama by showing us Lain's struggles to belong with her teenage classmates, with big philosophical ideas about existentialism and identity, all through very dense storytelling that can be difficult to follow at some points, but offers huge rewards to those that stick with it. Indeed, producer Yasuyuki Ueda said in an interview that he hoped American audiences wouldn't understand the series as the Japanese audiences would, but make their own interpretations of the show so an exchange of ideas would happen. There's a reason people consider Serial Experiments Lain to be psychological horror. After all, the series' writer, Chiaki J. Konaka was primarily a horror movies writer, and has stated that he was heavily influenced by The Exorcist , Hell House and House of Dark Shadows. Visually, the show follows suit, using technology and the internet as sinister beings lurking in the corner. Whenever Lain enters the Wired (she literally enters the internet, physically, it's a thing), she sees people as incomplete bodies, or just body parts surrounded by static in the shape of a body, to show how the version of ourselves we present online is just a partial version of ourselves. Likewise, telephone lines are always in the background of every scene, loudly buzzing and casting large shadows on the utterly white ground. Each morning as Lain walks to school, she is nearly blinded by the bright world that's outside the comfort and safety of her room.

What It Brings to the Conversation

The most fascinating aspect of Serial Experiment Lain is how eerily relevant and timely it is. Despite coming out in 1998, both the ideas and even some of the technology look more similar to our world than that of 20 years ago. As Lain starts to get interested in computers, her bedroom quickly becomes a desktop fortress full of black tubes, bulkheads and wires everywhere, with cooling fans and liquid cooling setups filling up every inch of her bedroom. Though computers don't cover entire rooms today, using cooling systems is common with a variety of computer users today. More than visuals, the ideas of identity and anonymity are more relevant today than they've ever been. This is a show that came out way before the term NEET started drawing media and government attention in Japan, and the world of the Wired is one where identity and being are as fluid as the data going though the computers. Lain starts the show as a painfully introverted girl with no friends and a family that is strangely apathetic. Her classmates make fun of how boring she is and find it impossible to believe she is the girl they saw at a club one night because the real Lain can't do anything fun. But when she's connected to the Wired, Lain becomes an entirely different person, full of life and confident, glued to a proto-smartphone and even able to cultivate a fan base – but also a violent bully. The second half of the show then deals with Lain struggling to comprehend where her online personality ends and her offline one begins, knowing which one is her real self. Serial Experiments Lain even deals with topics very familiar to viewers, that of online bullying, online games, and violence. Not only does the show get in deep with conspiracy theories, even involving real names and ideas like Schumann resonances, but on the idea of violence in videogames and on the internet, before those debates really began. One episode deals with numerous students committing suicide, with the only connection being their addiction to an online action game, and the series explores how easy it is to manipulate easily suggestible people to do acta of violence, or scare them to death (in this case via a secret hacker society).

Why Non-Anime Fans Should Check It Out

If you want to start diving into some of the more mature and cerebral shows anime has to offer, but aren't quite ready yet for the emotional devastation that is Neon Genesis Evangelion , then Serial Experiments Lain is for you. It has enough existential questions to make you question your reality and your identity, and a plot that benefits from multiple viewings to fully appreciate while still being comprehensible enough to be enjoyed. More than anything, Lain offers a dark and intriguing look at our current Internet-obsessed era that feels quite timely despite being made 20 years ago. Watch This If You Like: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Westworld, The Matrix, Ghost In The Shell

Serial Experiments Lain is streaming on Funimation's YouTube channel .

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Serial Experiments Lain » Anime

"It seems that there is a rumor in school that this is a prank. But I want you to know it's not."

This line is from an email sent to multiple students from Chisa Yomoda, a high school girl that recently committed suicide. "Chisa" says that she isn't truly dead, she just transferred her consciousness to the Wired, a virtual world mainly used for communication.

Fourteen-year-old Lain Iwakura isn't interested in the Wired or anything to do with computers. A quiet introvert, she has to practically be forced into social activities by her best friend, Alice Mizuki. It isn't until she's urged to check her email by Alice and the rest of her kind-of friends that Lain sees the mysterious message. Not only does "Chisa" claim to still be alive, she also says that God exists and that He lives in the Wired.

Her curiosity piqued, Lain has her tech-obsessed father buy her a new NAVI system. While Lain's mother and sister are both indifferent to her, her father is eager to help her out. He urges her to log onto the Wired, a sentiment underscored when "Chisa" leaves a similar message on Lain's classroom's blackboard. When she finally does enter the Wired to start searching for answers, everything Lain knows about herself, her family, the Wired, the world, and even God Himself will be upended by one undeniable truth: nothing and no one are what they seem.

Serial Experiments Lain is an anime original created by Yasuyuki Ueda and written by Chiaki Konaka . The characters were designed by Yoshitoshi ABe , and the animation was made by Triangle Staff with direction given by Ryutaro Nakamura. All 13 episodes of the series aired on TV Tokyo from July 1998 to September of that same year. The English release was originally handled by Geneon in 1999. When that company shut down, the series was left in limbo until Funimation rescued and re-released it in 2012.

Part cyberpunk , part psychological-horror, the series is famous within the anime community for its unconventional storytelling, surreal visuals, and stellar sound design. While there is a plot, any progression thereof is usually implied to be happening in the background, whereas the concepts the creators are exploring remain front and center. A lot of questions the series brings up as to its characters and setting is left up to the viewer, so expect plenty uses of "left up to interpretation" and variations thereof in the examples listed below.

This series provides examples of:

20 Minutes into the Future : Despite the opening narration claiming that it takes place in the "Present Day!", the series is said to take place around 1999 and was aired in 1998. The Wired and its associated hardware are alien imports into a pretty ordinary Japanese city that happens to have self-driving cars.
Adjective Noun Fred : The title of the series is formatted as "adjective noun name". The name used is the main character's, but what the "serial experiments" are is never directly addressed (at least not within the show itself).
Aerith and Bob : Lain, Alice, and Julie's names stick out in a cast full of otherwise normal Japanese names. There's also Karl, but he's implied to be German.
A God Am I : Masami Eiri believes himself to be God, having transcended his physical body and become one with the Wired (and, by extension, reality).
A.I. Is a Crapshoot : If one chooses to interpret Lain as an AI. She was created to merge reality into the Wired, but turns on "God" instead and chooses to erase herself rather than assimilate humanity into the Wired.
Alone in a Crowd : There are several times where Lain stands in one place while those around her go about their day, completely ignoring her.
all lowercase letters : the series' title is stylized like this.
The Alternet : The Wired is something like a giant chatroom or MMORPG where you can "see" other people. It's visually represented as a mass of swirling images and holograms or as a physical space that strange beings inhabit.
Animal Motifs : Lain often wears a bear pajama onesie.
Anime Theme Song : The song used for the anime's opening is "Duvet" by Bôa , notable for its forlorn lyrics and mellow, or even melancholic, atmosphere.
Artificial Human : Lain is some kind of artificial being that just so happens to look and (mostly) act human. Exactly what kind of artificial being she is is never made clear.
Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence : Lain disappears from Earth after deleting herself from everybody's memories.
Aspect Montage : The Once an Episode opening scene establishes its city location by a montage of power lines, crowds crossing roads, and the familiar Japanese "don't walk" sign. The montage also links back to the opening narration before the theme song since the location and aspects of it are set in a relatively recognizable modern-day city.
Barbie Doll Anatomy : The God-like vision of Lain in the clouds is naked and smooth all over.
Big Bad : The self-proclaimed God of the Wired is trying to merge all of humanity's consciousness with the Wired and rule above them as a God. To this end, he created an artificial being that bridges the gap between reality and the Wired, and tries to urge said being to do his bidding.
Bittersweet Ending : Eiri is defeated, but Lain decides to reset the human world anyway by erasing her own presence. This means everything bad that happened thanks to Lain's existence and actions will be erased, but so will Alice's memories of Lain. Alice grows up to live a happy and peaceful life, as do most of the other characters, while Lain herself decides to be the barrier keeper between reality and the Wired.
Blood-Splattered Innocents : The incident in the club ends when the drugged up gunman shoots himself, with Lain getting splattered by some of his blood.
Body Horror : The God of the Wired's attempt to physically manifest is very grotesque; he's a mass of flesh, eyes, and a mouth. He grasps hold Lain and Alice with a fleshy tentacle-arm-thing, all while screaming and ranting in rage. Alice's reaction to this sight- mainly screaming bloody murder- is quite apt.
Boyish Short Hair : Lain keeps her hair short, the only exception being a chin-length clump of hair on the left side of her face.
Chisa implies that part of her motivation for committing suicide was so she could live within the Wired without having to think about a physical body.
As part of his plan to hook humanity up to the Wired directly, Eiri had his consciousnesses uploaded to the Wired shortly before his got himself ran over by a train.
Brainy Brunette : Lain has dark brown hair and reveals herself to be a very fast learner when it comes to understanding how to use, build, and modify computers.
Bright Is Not Good : Lain's neighborhood, school and most other places she visits in the real world are frequently bathed in a bright white light. The effect is more creepy than reassuring.
Caught with Your Pants Down : Alice is caught pleasuring herself by an alternative version of Lain, one who is far more callous and cruel than the Lain Alice knows.
Cheshire Cat Grin : One of Lain's alter-egos (frequently referred to as Evil Lain by fans) seems to wear a cruel, almost sadistic, grin at all times.
Clingy Jealous Girl : Myu-Myu gets very jealous when Taro gives Lain attention.
Clip Show : The first half of Layer 11 is essentially a recap clip-show, featuring almost no new animation at all besides some computer effects and effects achieved by filming the show's animation on a CRT screen.
Cool Code of Source : Lain apparently does all her hackery in Lisp. Specifically, she's implementing Conway's Game of Life, with code from the CMU AI repository.
Coolest Club Ever : Cyberia is a techno themed night club that's located at the bottom of an nondescript building.
Cooldown Hug : Alice enters Lain's house and finds a not-quite-there Lain talking about "connecting" everyone's consciousnesses. Her response is to make Lain feel her heartbeat to remind her of her body.
Cowboys and Indians : The online shooter game PHANTOMa gets crossed with a bunch of kids playing tag in the real world. PHANTOMa , and then there's Chisa, and to a certain extent Lain herself.-->
Creepy Crows : In the opening, Lain is surrounded by a group of crows.
Cyberpunk Is Techno : The equation of "cyberpunk = techno music" is played with within the show's soundtrack: the opening and ending themes are rock while the general background music is dark electronica, and whenever a scene takes place in the cyber night club, Cyberia, techno plays.
A Darker Me : Lain has two alter-egos that are both far more assertive than she is in the real world, but one of them is downright unhinged. Nicknamed Evil Lain, this version of Lain is cruel, sadistic, and doesn't have any regard for life.
Death Glare : In Layer 03, Lain glares at Taro when he suggests she go on a date with him. He quickly tries to play it off as joke . It's notable for being the first time Lain shows something akin to an active emotional response .
Digital Avatar : Most people have an avatar that they use when they're in the Wired. It's a sign of Lain's power that her avatar is herself.
Digitized Hacker : The God of the Wired turns out to be a rather nutty scientist who worked out how to upload himself onto the Wired.
Dirty Mind-Reading : Evil Lain doesn't just spy on Alice while she's masturbating , but is somehow able to see what she's fantasizing about.
Driven to Suicide : The man who starts shooting up Cyberia shoots himself after Lain tells him he "No matter where you go, everything is connected".
Drone of Dread : Images of power lines are often accompanied by an ominous humming sound, phone or data lines by a faint babble of voices. It's implied that Lain is the only one who hears it when she tells the voices to "shut up" in Layer 01, startling the man beside her on the train.
Dub-Induced Plot Hole : The Spanish dub changes the line said by one of The Men in Black to Lain from "...but I love you. Love is a strange emotion, isn't it?" to "...I can't help but feel pity for your fate. You are a very special young lady." This opens the question of how he could know about her fate when they're unwitting pawns who later die without understanding the situation .
Emotionless Girl : Lain is introverted to the point where she doesn't show any strong emotions, content to keep to herself. This becomes less the case after engaging with the Wired and developing alternate personalities: when Lain is possessed by her self from the Wired, she becomes more assertive, even snarky.
Empathic Environment : Including bleak grey skies, crows, and shadows that look like blood everywhere.
"End of the World" Special : At the end of the series, Lain decides to reset the world but without her existence.
Establishing Shot : The montage of traffic and phone lines that plays at the beginning of each episode establishes the city setting where Lain lives.
Eternal Prohibition : It's the near future, and yet on one hand, it is obvious that 10-year-old Taro is doing wrong every time he's drinking or smoking at Cyberia, and on the other hand, there are illegal future drugs like Accela.
Everyone Owns a Mac : Anyone who's anyone within the world of Lain owns some form of tech from the Tachibana Corporation. (Tachibana itself is loosely based on Apple .)
Lain almost gets run over by a car because of a failure in the citywide car guidance system. Considering that the first scene depicts someone uploading their consciousness to the internet by committing suicide, conventional electrical gadgets being connected to the internet isn't far-fetched by comparison.
The premise is basically this (minus the psychokinetic powers also present): human brains have electromagnetic vibrations in them as part of the neurons' functions. Planet Earth has ubiquitous electromagnetic resonance (called Schumann Resonance), which according to the series subtly affects the functions of the human brain. Thus, the Wired is really humanity's collective unconsciousness. Eiri's Protocol 7 manipulates the Schumann Resonance in a way that connects all people's minds subconsciously without necessarily even relying on machines, which naturally are also affected. Lain appears to be the first person capable of easily switching between the two, while Chisa and Eiri took one-way trips to the Wired.
Evil Twin : One of Lain's alternate personalities is a malicious being who derives pleasure from causing other people misery.
Evilutionary Biologist : Masami Eiri is an odd example, being a computer scientist who believes that humans have reached the pinnacle of evolution physically and that- in order to continue evolving to more perfect forms - humanity has to give up their bodies for a digital existence. To that end, he secretly puts code into the latest version of the protocol that controls the Wired that would connect humans together on a subconscious level through the network. He also created a physical body for Lain to aid in this effort .
Extreme Graphical Representation : As Lain's computer gets overgrown, the visuals it emits become less and less comprehensible.
Eye Motifs : Most people grounded in reality in the anime have fairly large pupils in relation to their irises. Lain's massive irises compared to her tiny pupils suggests much of her psyche is submerged in the Wired.
Facial Markings : The God of the Wired is depicted with a vertical red stripe on each of his cheeks.
Fake Memories : Lain's memories of her family life were all created so she wouldn't question who the strangers living in her house are.
Fantastic Drug : Accela is a powerful nanomachine-powered stimulant that causes Bullet Time , heightened senses, and delusional thoughts. It also seems to physically link the user to the Wired, and become susceptible to its more esoteric phenomena.
Feeling Your Heartbeat : Alice puts her hand on Lain's cheek, then puts Lain's hand over her own heart to try and remind Lain of her own humanity after she is nearly consumed by the Wired .
Fictional Videogame : PHANTOMa is an In-Universe multiplayer video game that's assecible through the Wired.
Five Rounds Rapid : When confronted with the Creepy Child in PHANTOMa , the player shoots her several times with a Finger Gun , not realizing it will have tragic consequences in the real world.
Layer 05 centers mostly around Mika and her Mind Rape by the Knights , with passages in which Lain engages in esoteric philosophical conversations with a Creepy Doll and phantom versions of her mom and dad.
Layer 09 contains a lot of Info Dump about the history and development of the Internet and the World Wide Web mixed in with scenes involving Lain trying to understand who or what she is exactly, which all leads up to The Reveal that the "God" Lain has been conversing with in the Wired is Masami Eiri. And he's decided to pay her a visit .
Layer 11 is split in half between being a budget saving recap episode and revealing that Lain isn't actually human, just some software given a human form .
Free-Range Children : Despite being in the eighth grade, nobody really seems to care what Lain and her classmates get up to at night, including her own parents .
Friendless Background : Downplayed, since Lain has friends, but she appears to have almost no actual connection to them except for Alice.
Gainax Ending : Comes off as a mild example. The series is chock-full of philosophical and technological esoterica that all plays a factor in the ending, meaning that anyone who isn't paying attention to that is going to be rather confused. The fact that it's also a somewhat Ambiguous Ending doesn't really help.
The Game Come to Life : The online shooter game PHANTOMa gets crossed with a bunch of kids playing tag in the real world. It goes very, very awry.
Gaslighting : One interpretation of what happens to Mika in Episode 5.
Genre Shift : Starts off as a technology focused J-horror story akin to something like Kairo , but gradually becomes a cyberpunk Conspiracy Thriller with strong elements of Psychological Horror .
Girls Love Stuffed Animals : Subverted. Lain pretty much ignores the collection on her windowsill and bed, and the former are usually lit from behind as creepy silhouettes.
God Is Evil : The God of the Wired is the Big Bad . Subverted as Eiri isn’t really God, Lain is.
God Is Good : Lain, when she resets the world to give everyone (especially Alice ) a happy ending.
Gory Discretion Shot : As said before, Lain vs. the gun-toting junkie.
Grand Inquisitor Scene : When The Men in Black take Lain to the Tachibana office in Layer 07. Eventually she gets fed up with their interrogation and decides to leave, and they don't stop her.
The Greys : A Grey appears as a mysterious vision, in an episode which also references the Roswell incident. It is referenced in other episodes as well. Unlike the usual nudist Greys, it is wearing a red and green striped sweater. In Layer 11, Lain is wearing the same sweater, and her limbs are greyed out, as she checks in on Alice.
Hacker Cave : Lain turns her room into one over time, completely with a wall of monitors .
Hacker Collective : The KNIGHTS are a group of mysterious hackers on The Wired. A list of them is eventually leaked online, leading many to commit suicide. Those who weren't were assassinated .
Mika , after the 5th episode.
Alice 's Heroic BSoD is what inspired Lain to Retcon herself out of existence .
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming : Episodes are called a layer and a two-digit number, for example the first episode is "layer 01". Each episode title is a single word of English.
Improbable Age : Taro is a Knight apprentice at the age of ten.
Infodump : The aptly named eleventh episode, "Infornography", is essentially a half-hour long infodump culminating in The Reveal of the show's villain , Masami Eiri.
Information Wants to Be Free : A central tenet of the Knights.
Informed Loner : Lain seems to be fairly popular at her school (at least many people know her by name) despite believing she has no friends.
Inside a Computer System : Pretty much the entire soul and fiber of the story.
Insistent Terminology : They're " Layers ", not " episodes ".
It Runs in the Family : Lain and her father are both socially awkward individuals with a love for computers.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy : Only Lain takes a more... shall we say... 'active' role in Alice's life even after this...
Jigsaw Puzzle Plot : The story is complex and we get disparate pieces of it during each episode.
A teenager hopped up on nanotech goofballs shoots up a nightclub with a laser sight-equipped handgun. Just before he commits suicide, there is a camera shot where all you can see in the dim lighting are his teeth, and the laser dot on the roof of his mouth — a very striking image.
In the next episode, The Men in Black have laser sights on their high-tech eyepieces. It's never explained what function the laser sights serve, other than tipping people off that they're being watched and generally creeping them out.
Little Miss Almighty : Lain.
Loners Are Freaks : Or at least very unusual.
Mad Scientist : Dr. Hodgeson, the man who created the KIDS program (an attempt to collect information on the use of psi energy ). Sound familiar?
Magical Realism : It's never clear how much of the events of this show are happening in real life and how much are in Lain's head.
The deliveryman who drops off a package for a housewife with a top-of-the-line Navi. Although he's almost as interested in her computer as he is in her, the camera still pans slowly over her body from his perspective.
The corporate bigshot (who is also one of the Knights ) takes definite interest in his female cohort crossing and re-crossing her legs.
Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration : Alice has a Precocious Crush on her teacher, which she deals with by masturbating in secret. Unfortunately for her Evil Lain catches her doing it and spreads it all over school, which causes Lain's friendship with Alice to break down.
Matrix Raining Code : Lain's computers do this at times.
Mature Work, Child Protagonists : Lain Iwakura is a girl in middle school who still wears teddy bear pajamas. During the course of the series, she visits a night club where a man on a mind accelerating cyber drug shoots someone else and then himself, inadvertently causes her older sister to suffer a brutal Mind Rape that leaves her a blank slate, sees a young man playing a VR game mistake a young girl for a monster in his game and shoot her, and has her become involved with a couple of Men in Black who murder all the members of a rival faction. She catches a friend of hers masturbating while fantasizing about a teacher, and then witnesses the same friend have a complete breakdown when they're confronted with a self-styled "God of the Wired".
The Men in Black : Lain has several encounters with the MIB watching her. Coupled with Those Two Guys .
Mind Rape : What the Knights do to Mika in Layer 05. "Beep... Beep... Beep..."
As mentioned in the introduction to this page, Serial Experiments Lain is like this because most of the plot developments are implied, and most of the explicit ones are obscured.
You're probably going to understand it up until around episode 4. After that, it just gets progressively weirder and avant-garde; the series is much closer to an arthouse movie than a typical sci-fi anime.
The Most Dangerous Video Game : PHANTOMa . It's pretty invasive as-is, but once it starts leaking into the real world...
My Death Is Just the Beginning : Masami Eiri throws himself under a train to discard his body and live in the Wired as "God" .
Neuro-Vault : Lain is an Artificial Human created to hold the Version 7 network protocol within her brain .
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero : Lain reveals the identities of the Knights, and is horrified by the consequences.
Nightmare Face : The girl from Layers 01 and 02 who was supposedly hit by a train. One word: Holes .
No Social Skills : When we first meet Lain she has a wide-eyed befuddlement when faced with a social situation, to the point where she is almost mute. Her friends' bubbly interchanges are juxtaposed with an odd — troubling gap where a response should be. She develops some skills as the series progresses: it is uphill work and Lain is never a normal girl. Eventually revealed to be due to "our" Lain being but one aspect/avatar of the instrumentality that is Lain.
When Mika keeps seeing messages written in red ink telling her to "fulfill the prophecy", without any idea where they're coming from or why she's received them.
In Layer 12, Alice visits Lain at home and is very unnerved to find her house ransacked and nobody home until she comes across Lain in her room.
However, the biggest and probably scariest example is during the penultimate episode when The Men in Black end up "receiving final payment for their services". First, Lin, the shorter man with the black ponytail, sees... something that we never do and immediately starts to have a really bad seizure of sorts, with his body starting to lurch and twist around in a way that almost seems inhuman . His partner Karl tries to figure out what's wrong with him before he eventually falls limp, dead with foam dripping from his mouth. Afterwards, Karl then sees whatever it was his partner saw, causing him to let out a scream that's absolutely bloodcurdling , especially considering how stoic Karl is during the rest of the series. This is the last we hear or see from them before the world is reset at the end. The fact that we never see just just what in the world they saw when they met this fate which leads us to only imagine what it could have been arguably makes this scene one of the most terrifying in the entire 13 episode run.
No Shirt, Long Jacket : Eiri 's form in the Wired.
Obfuscated Interface : The interfaces found in the Wired, a virtual world, alternate between this trope and Viewer-Friendly Interface . It's very maddening to the viewer having suddenly not being able to track down the processes and codes, uselessly trying to decode them until your brain catches up.
Older Than They Look : Lain is supposedly the same age than Alice and her friends, but she looks sustantially shorter and less physically developed than them. Summed to her rather childish attributes, like her bear clothes and lack of social skill, it makes it seem that she is much younger than them.
Once an Episode : The traffic-and-telephone-lines montage that opens every episode, with some philosophical commentary pertaining to the episode. This is played with in the last episodes. For instance, Layer 10, Love , has absolutely no introducing commentary, just the sounds of the traffic and static , and the usual opening montage only shows up about half-way into Layer 13, Ego .
One-Winged Angel : Masami Eiri enters the physical world as some sort of blob of flesh.
Open the Iris : Quite a bit of the Reaction Shots .
Oracular Urchin : Lain is an extreme variation on this type.
Ordinary High-School Student : Lain starts as an ordinary middle school student, grounding the series. She proceeds to become somewhat less ordinary.
Otaku : In one episode, a fat, unshaven computer nerd is seen hacking away pathetically. Though not so pathetically, because he is one of the Knights.
Paranoid Thriller : Easily the most famous example of this genre in anime. The show has its protagonist uncover a transhumanist conspiracy using the internet, all while leaving it ambiguous as to how much of the plot is her schizophrenic delusions.
Parental Abandonment : Lain's parents turn out to be adoptive, because Lain is an Artificial Human They then abandon her after their "role" in her life is over, though her father at least disobeys enough to say goodbye to her and tell her he loved her.
Parental Neglect : Lain's mother doesn't seem to care at all about her, ignoring her daughter's clear emotional distress after going through multiple traumatic events. This is because she's not her real mother.
Parking Garage : Where The Men in Black meet their ultimate fate.
Perma-Stubble : The Men in Black ; it makes them look dangerous and makes it obvious that something is very, very wrong.
Phone Call from the Dead : The anime does this with e-mail in the very first episode, kicking off the whole plot of the series.
Lain is effectively a god that physically exists.
A more straight example would be Eiri, who committed suicide to become a god .
Power Echoes / Power Floats : Masami Eiri.
Powered by a Forsaken Child : The appropriately named KiDS experiment, the project of a scientist who tried to tap the psychic energy of hundreds of children, apparently draining them and leaving them in a deep coma. There seemed to be a some sort of explosion caused by an overflow of psychic energy, dissolving the children's bodies, trapping them forever in the Wired. The scientist comments how no matter what he does, bringing them back to real world is impossible.
Practical Voice-Over : In the initial episodes, people on The Wired can be heard talking to each other about current events that affect the story and give us insight into the world outside of Lain. It even provides some Foreshadowing ! That said, there are also a lot of Non Sequiturs (as is the case with the real-life Internet), so this is something of a Subversion .
Ransacked Room : Lain's house after her parents leave.
Thanks to Eiri 's Protocol Seven, the Knights are able to hack reality itself.
Reaction Shot : Often one after another.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech : Lain delivers one to Eiri/ God himself in Layer 12. He... doesn't take it well . Lain: What you did was to remove all the peripheral devices that interact with the Wired. Phones, television, the network...but without those, you couldn't have accomplished anything. Eiri/ God : Yes, Lain, those are things which accompanied human evolution, but they are not an end in themselves. Understand that humans, who are further evolved than other forms of life have a right to greater abilities. Lain: But wait a minute, who gave you those rights? The program that inserted code, synced to the Earth's characteristic frequency, into the corresponding Protocol 7 code ultimately raised the collective unconscious to the conscious level. So tell me, did you honestly come up with these ideas all by yourself? Eiri/ God : What is it you're getting at? No! It can't be! Are you telling me there's been a God all along? Lain: It doesn't really matter, does it, without a body you'll never be able to truly understand . Eiri/ God : It's a lie! A lie! I'm omnipotent, you hear me?! I'm the one who gave you a body here in the Real World, and this is the thanks I get?! You were scattered all over the Wired! I gave you... AN EGO! Lain: So if that's true about me, what about you? Eiri/ God : I'm different ! How DARE you?! I'm DIFFERENT! [screams in incoherent rage]
Recap Episode : Sort of: Layer 11 features images from previous episodes during the first 15 minutes.
Reset Button Ending : Features a rare variation which gives the series a sense of closure: the fact that it wasn't a complete reset definitely helps.
Ret-Gone : The series ends with Lain doing this to herself . Mostly .
Reveal Shot : There are several shots where Lain or her friends have a Reaction Shot followed by a Reveal Shot — the camera moves out to show the horror they just saw.
Roswell That Ends Well : There is a discussion on the Roswell incident and conspiracy theories, and implies that the Wired might have been created using alien technology . Whether that's true, and how relevant it is to the story, is left entirely open.
Salaryman : Lain's father, who is kinder to her than her mother but still rather distant.
Say My Name : Lain and Alice do this a lot, especially in Layer 12 and 13.
Scary Shiny Glasses : Lain's dad has them frequently.
School Uniforms are the New Black : Lain and her classmates can be seen wearing their uniform hours after school has ended, even after she's gotten home from school.
Hey look, it's Vannevar Bush and the Memex featured in an anime!
The references to Douglas Rushkoff, John C. Lilly, Ted Nelson, and the Roswell conspiracy theories also fit with the plot very well.
"Infornography" (Layer 11) is packed solid with this trope.
The series may be the only anime ever to reference Marcel Proust, with the madeleines that Lain's father offers her (a type of biscuit).
Sigmund Freud : Is Lain the only show to get the term "Ego" correct? This also fits closely with the notion of "Ego" according to Descartes, especially when you consider that you are remembered, therefore, you are. à la "Cogito ergo sum" .
Silence Is Golden : The series often has long scenes without dialogue, including montages of Lain walking around the city or in her room. The minimalist soundtrack fits as well.
The Singularity : A major theme of the show, though the phrase "technological singularity" is never used explicitly in the dialogue. The show revolves around the relationship between humans and technology, and the ontological problems presented by Brain Uploading and the information overload in a world that relies on the The Internet . It depicts the possible result of a world in which the lines between the organic and the mechanical become so blurred that it becomes impossible to tell the difference .
Sky Face : This happens in Layer 06. Lain's face appears in the sky and freaks everyone out.
Soundtrack Dissonance : Midway through Layer 13, an upbeat pop song starts playing as life in Lain's town starts going back to normal because she erases everyone's memories of her .
Split Personality : Subverted by later making them split unpersonalities .
Starts with a Suicide : The series kicks off when middle schooler Chisa Yomoda jumps off a building. It then follows up with the girl's Internet conversation: "How does it feel to die?" "It really hurts :-)"
Stalker with a Crush : Arguably one of the most depressing example in media. As much as Karl means Lain no harm and in one case he is particularly interested in her safety (which may explain at least in part his earlier stalking), his subsequent declaration of love to her still comes out as absolutely cold and contorted, and the fact that he won't even wait for or expect a response from Lain suggest that he is perfectly aware of that . Worse part, he will die shortly after .
Stepford Suburbia : Lain's neighbourhood, which is glaringly bright and white everywhere .
Stock Footage : Closeups of telephone lines and stylized shots of city traffic at night. One repeated bit of footage is rather poignant: Lain walking under telephone lines casting creepy shadows: in the last episode the same footage is shown without Lain after she erases herself from existence.
Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics : Lain's desk goes missing and everyone, including the teacher, starts acting as if she doesn't exist right when she's questioning her own existence.
Subways Suck : The train Lain takes to school.
Surreal Horror : This anime makes the idea of going on the internet an H. R. Giger nightmare, physically representing it as another layer of reality. Unlike other shows which would display a friendly, clean cyberworld, this one portrays it as disorienting and bizarre. Add in hallucinations and the blending of the real world and the Wired and several scenes get quite intensely strange. Even the more mundane stuff has a surprisingly unsettling atmosphere.
Talking the Monster to Death : Lain does this to Eiri.
The Tape Knew You Would Say That : Or so it would seem in the first episode when Lain has a conversation with Chisa's e-mail. Justified in hindsight: Lain really was conversing with her e-mail.
The Team Wannabe : The Knights fanboy who wanders around the streets wearing a virtual reality headset and begging them to let him join their group.
Technology Porn : Depending on who you ask, this is slightly more literal than in most cases.
Terrible Artist : Lain's doodles in her notebook are often just spirals and other random shapes.
They Look Just Like Everyone Else! : Who are the sinister, reality-hacking powerful Knights of the Eastern Calculus, you ask? An executive, a fat nerd and a housewife who plays videogames with her son.
Through the Eyes of Madness : The series can be interpreted this way; a number of Lain's experiences resemble symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, including visual and auditory hallucinations, loss of perception of time, paranoid delusions, and inappropriate emotional reactions. In fact, one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is the delusional belief that everything is connected and is somehow directly relevant to the believer, no matter how innocuous or unimportant. One might call it an inability to tell signal from noise...
Tomato in the Mirror : Lain herself .
Transhuman : Lain, certainly; Eiri, almost; perhaps the whole city or more, if you take the view that the post-reset world is a Lotus-Eater Machine .
Trash of the Titans / Trash the Set : Lain's house gains a worrying amount of mess and a nasty brown fog near the end of the series.
Taro, Myu Myu and Masayuki hang out at the Cyberia, a cyberpunk nightclub mostly attended by people twice their age who goes in cyber-drugs and party hard all the time.
Alice, Lain, Reika, and Julie all frequent the Cyberia as well despite only being 14. The other Lain has apparently organized raves there.
Mika, a high schooler, is implied to be having sex with a man who's at least in college.
Uncanny Valley Girl : Lain of course, seeing as she is very pretty, quiet, and seemingly normal at first, except she's not a normal girl. This is played with in earlier episodes by deliberately using Off-Model animation techniques so that she appears out of place with her surroundings. This is is used to full effect in Layer 08, where we see a glimpse of the Wired where each user has her face... on their own bodies. She freaks out and knocks the head off of one , but that just makes it even creepier.
Un-person : Lain does this to herself.
Unreliable Narrator : The "Present day, Present time!" dateline that opens each episode, close-but-not-exactly-true, which oddly enough sets the tone quite well.
The Unsmile : Lain pulls one at the end of Layer 11.
Alternates with Obfuscated Interface so often that it alone can drive the viewer to confusion.
Villainous Breakdown : God /Masami Eiri has one, complete with This Cannot Be! , when Lain decides to stand up to him.
Virtual Ghost : Chisa, Eiri and others. Maybe even Lain herself in the end, depending on how far she took the "erasing herself from existence" thing.
The Voice : People on The Wired start out as this but over time become The Unintelligible as Lain becomes more and more "connected" to The Wired and thus able to "understand" posts on The Wired on a level the viewer can't . Or something like that .

Weirdness Magnet : Lain and her house.
Chisa is practically forgotten after the first few episodes, only getting a basically inconsequential mention in Layer 10, though she is shown to be alive in the rebooted post-Lain world.
The fate of Mika and Lain's fake parents is not revealed, although after Lain hits the Reset Button , we see a scene where all three of them formed an actual family, at Lain's behest one would imagine .
Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys? : Lain's computer setup. It's made vaguely plausible in that her father seems to work as a computer engineer of some sort, but by Layer 4 she has entire racks of servers and several monitors in her bedroom.
Whip Pan : Used when Lain is conversing with her "friends", to show that even though she and her friends are separated only by a few feet, the emotional distance is unfathomable. Alice is even seen walking from the friends frame to the Lain frame a few times in Layer 02, to show that she honestly cares.
Your Mind Makes It Real : Probably one of the most true to form examples, to the point where you can resurrect people or erase people them from existence simple by manipulating people's collective memories. In scientific or practical terms it's not clearly explained how the barrier between the wired and the physical world can become blurred in very real terms (though there is some reference to humans having a sort of latent sensitivity to electromagnetic frequencies), but the audience can infer that the story works on such a strongly idealistic world view that it just kind of can .

Video Example(s):

Alice and lain.

Alice places Lain's hand on her heart to ground her after she nearly succumbs to the Wired.

Example of: Feeling Your Heartbeat

Paranoid Thriller
A Beautiful Mind
Samurai Champloo
Creator/Funimation
Tenchi Muyo!
Bubblegum Crisis
Creator/PBS
12-Episode Anime
Servant × Service
Psycho-Pass
Sentou Yousei Yukikaze
Science Fiction Anime & Manga
Seraph of the End
Creator/NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan
Shakugan no Shana
Samurai Harem: Asu no Yoichi
Creator/AIC
Silent Möbius
Embarrassing Rescue
ImageSource/Anime & Manga (N to Z)
Feeling Your Heartbeat
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Serial Experiments Lain

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Serial Experiments Lain


	Yasuyuki Ueda
	Ryūtarō Nakamura
	Yasuyuki Ueda Shōjirō Abe
	Chiaki J. Konaka
	Reichi Nakaido
	July 6, 1998 – Sept 28, 1998 on TV Tokyo
	13

Serial Experiments Lain is a thirteen-episode anime miniseries written by Chiaki J Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura .

It tells the story of Lain Iwakura as she finds her way through The Wired .

The series was originally broadcast on TV Tokyo from July 6 to September 28, 1998, and explores themes such as reality, identity, and communication through philosophy, computer history, cyberpunk literature, and conspiracy theories.

2.1 Production
4 Theme songs
7 External links
8 Citations

Episodes [ ]

Infornography

Development [ ]

Production [ ].

Serial Experiments Lain was conceived, as a series, to be original to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda . He explained he created Lain with a set of values he took as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. Later, when he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed.

The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga). Producer Yasuyuki Ueda said in an interview, "the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products". The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series, though the series was released first. A dōjinshi titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication" was produced by Yoshitoshi ABe and released in Japanese in the artbook Omnipresence in the Wired. Ueda and Konaka declared in an interview that the idea of a multimedia project was not unusual in Japan, as opposed to the contents of Lain, and the way they are exposed.

In 2009, Yoshitoshi ABe announced a spiritual sequel to Serial Experiments Lain called Despera who will reunited many of the staff who worked on Serial Experiments Lain, including Chiaki J Konaka and Ryūtarō Nakamura .

Reception [ ]

Words like "weird" or "bizarre" are almost systematically associated to review the series by English Language reviews due mostly to the freedoms taken with the animation and its unusual science fiction, philosophical and psychological context. Despite the show judged atypical, the critics responded positively to the thematic and stylistic characteristics. It was praised by the Japan Media Arts Festival, in 1998, for "its willingness to question the meaning of contemporary life" and the "extraordinarily philosophical and deep questions".

In 2005, Newtype USA stated that the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". The author saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and the "perfect soundtrack". It concluded saying that "Serial Experiments Lain might not yet be considered a true classic, but it's a fascinating evolutionary leap that helped change the future of anime."

In 2001, Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet" noticing the presence of horror lore (like ghost from train accident story) and horrific visuals.

The Anime Essentials anthology, Gilles Poitras describes it as a "complex and somehow existential" anime that "pushed the envelope" of anime diversity in the 1990s, alongside the much better known Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop.

In 2003, Professor Susan J. Napier, in her reading to the American Philosophical Society called The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation. Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty real and a dark virtual ".

In 2020, the review-aggregation website website Rotten Tomatoes, classified Serial Experiments Lain as one of the 25 anime TV series that have been essential to the medium over the last five decades. [1]

"Serial Experiments Lain helped usher in a new style of anime, of more digitally-produced shows with a glossy bloom and deeper, darker, complicated storylines. In the wake of Neon Genesis tearing up the typical anime playbook, Lain pursues a surreal, interior cyberpunk story about a withdrawn high school girl who receives an email from a classmate who has recently committed suicide. Questions of hyperreality, consciousness, and the everyday tangibility of cyberspace ensue. Lain is pretentious, symbolic, and absorbing – a prime example of a brave new world in anime."

Despite the general positive feedbacks, some negative critics stated the "lifeless" setting it had [2] , how the last episodes failed to resolve the questions, and how the show relied so little on dialogue [3] .

Japan Media Arts Festival 1998: Excellence Prize [4]

Theme songs [ ]

Opening Theme: " Duvet " by BOA
Ending Theme: " Tooi Sakebi " by Reiichi "Chabo" Nakaido

Despite this claim, Lain contains extensive references to Apple computers, as the American brand was used at the time by most of the creative staff.

External links [ ]

Konaka's Official SEL site
Angelic Trust - Lain:Omnipresence
Thought Experiments: Lain
Mebious SEL Wiki

Citations [ ]

↑ https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/essential-anime-series/
↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20110927060034/http://www.animeacademy.com/finalrevdisplay.php?id=201
↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20110826092828/http://www.ex.org/5.2/25-anime_followup_lain.html
↑ http://archive.j-mediaarts.jp/en/festival/1998/animation/works/06an_serial_experiments_lain/
1 Lain Iwakura
2 Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain: The 10 Most Confusing Things About The Anime, Finally Explained

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10 Things Everyone Forgets About Sailor Moon

Studio ghibli's smallest totoro will light up your life and your room with "squishy" silicone lamp, should bleach thousand-year blood war cour 3 change manga's ending.

Serial Experiments Lain is perhaps one of the most important cyberpunk anime shows— and one of the weirdest isekai —to have come out in a long time. First of all, there are the minimalist design choices in animation that fans either loved, or that turned off anyone who wasn't ready for the stripped-down style it was going to offer. The story, instead of focusing on a dystopia created by a hyper-capitalist nightmare corporatocracy, was done in a very tasteful way that instead decides to focus on Lain, a young schoolgirl who suddenly develops an interest in computers and the world of the virtual.

RELATED: Serial Experiments Lain: 10 Things That Make It A Must-Watch Horror-Anime

While the show is pretty much unanimously considered groundbreaking, that doesn't mean it isn't also confusing. In this article, we'll be digging into some of the more obscure parts of the show and checking out some background to hopefully dispel some of the mystery surrounding the story.

10 The Bodhisattva

In Buddhism, we encounter a concept known as the Bodhisattva. In the oldest branch of Buddhism, Theravada, we see that, when someone becomes enlightened, they become something called an Arahat, which is someone who is enlightened on their own and then enters Nirvana.

When the Mahayana tradition started, they decided that a true benevolent enlightened person would instead become enlightened so that they could save all of the other unenlightened people and not abide in Nirvana just yet. If we look at Lain and the way it plays out, when she enters The Wired, she decides on the latter, existing as a goddess between both worlds, knowing that she would meet Alice again in The Wired at some time in the future.

9 The Flow Of Time Is Convoluted

There's a very strange thing going on in Lain, perhaps one of the things that makes it the most difficult thing to follow. The issue here is that we really can't tell what's happening when while we're watching Lain. If she herself is the thing that exists to make the distinction between The Wired and the real world disappear, how is she already the god of The Wired? How does that make sense?

The answer is a concept known in science as non-linear causality. Non-linear causality means that things that happen in the past can affect the future—which is normal causality, the way we tend to think about it—and that things in the future can have an effect on the past . Lain is an infinite loop, a snake eating its own tail.

8 Schumann Resonances And Consensus Reality

This is where it gets particularly complicated. The idea used in the series is that of the Schumann Resonance. The Schumann Resonance doesn't necessarily hold up when we shine the light of science on it, but that doesn't mean it can't work in the show. They're basically frequencies that humans can't hear but that surrounds our planet.

RELATED: Serial Experiments Lain: 10 Things Fans Never Knew About The Mind-Boggling Anime

In the show, they're depicted as a way for The Wired to spread all throughout humanity, reaching every individual on the planet. This is pretty much given as the explanation for why there's no distinction between everyone else and Lain at the end of the series, as Lain, at that point, basically is The Wired.

7 If Everyone's Special, No One Is

Feeding directly into this entry from the last one is the fact that the end of the series... doesn't necessarily mean anything? If time flows in a way that isn't constant and the future can have an effect on the past and vice-versa, why does it matter that Lain is essentially God at the end of the series?

After she has her encounter with him, watching how intensely he wants it to be true that he is indeed God, she essentially takes on the characteristics of a Goddess. But also, when she goes back to the real world despite the fact that she now is everyone, Alice doesn't remember her at all.

6 One, Both, Or Neither?

What is the world at this point? When Lain finishes becoming God, she has the ability to exist in The Wired, in-between the two of them, or in the real world. But, what are any of these places? Are they at all distinguishable from each other?

As far as we can see in the series, there really isn't a distinction made between any of these places. There are merely minor differences. While Alice doesn't recognize Lain at the end of the series, this most likely doesn't matter since technically, Lain is Alice. The distinctions between self and others have disappeared.

5 Free Will Or Determinism?

Lain is both the ticket that Masami Eiri needs to make sure that the lines between The Wired and the real world disappear, but, at the same time, she's a child. She has a family. She has a bit of a social life, even though we see that she only has a couple of friends, and the friends that she does have don't exactly treat her like she's valuable.

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Another thing is that she doesn't really have a social life until the series starts. If her father explains that he didn't enjoy "playing house" at the end of the series, it would make sense that Lain's life happened in a way that meant the point-events in her life were predetermined. Lain had no choice in the manner. That being said, she is the goddess of The Wired, so that means... she played herself.

4 Solipsism

Solipsism is an interesting concept that shows up in tons of different philosophical frameworks, and, heck, in a lot of psychoses and sci-fi , as well. Solipsism is the belief that one's self is the only thing that exists. This can manifest itself in tons of different forms. These can be that everyone around the solipsist isn't actually real, and that they're just a simulation of an actual functional person, or that the solipsist lives in a simulation entirely.

The fact that Lain also has what could be considered multiple personalities also means that the whole thing could be chalked up to mental illness.

3 Who Are The Knights Of The Eastern Calculus?

The Knights Of The Eastern Calculus aren't exactly a real organization, but, in Lain , they're a shadowy organization that does their best to monitor Lain and anyone who's trying to muck up what they have going on with The Wired, rolling around in dark black cars, wearing black suits, etc. They're basically like the Men In Black of the Lain universe.

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In real life, it's an organization that probably got "created" as a joke at MIT, with various "members" passing pins around to other people who got invited into the secret hacker group.

2 Objectively Speaking...

The most interesting thing about Lain perhaps is the differentiation between subject and object in everyday life, or perhaps the lack thereof. The creators of the anime actually specifically said that they didn't want the show to mired in the dualism of subjectivity or objectivity, which is why they made sure to ground the series so firmly around Lain.

The events of the show could have happened objectively in the real world, just in Lain's head as a manifestation of illness, or not at all. At the end of the day, there's no way to tell and that's done intentionally.

1 To Be Or Not To Be

Perhaps one of the greatest fears for Lain, and indeed for anyone who starts to ponder existential questions, is that, after one achieves "Enlightenment," is that it may be preferable not to exist at all. In Lain , this takes the form of Lain following her urges to dive deeper and deeper into The Wired with reckless abandon, regardless of what the implications are.

By the time we reach the end of the show, however, it really doesn't matter because Lain both exists and doesn't exist, depending on the individual manifestation we're looking at. There's really no way to explain all of this with words , but that doesn't mean that we have anything else to go on in the show, unfortunately. Great sci-fi, though !

NEXT: 10 Scariest Anime Of The Decade (According To My Anime List)

Serial Experiments Lain (1998)

TV-14 | Animation, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

10 Terrifying Anime Shows That Will Keep You Up At Night

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The 10 Anime Shows With the Best Art Styles, Ranked

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For any anime fan, the fact that this genre of television and film goes far and wide in terms of storylines, plots, and deeper meanings is all the more entertaining. Fantasy, horror, science fiction, and comedy are all available to watch on Crunchyroll and draw people into the anime universe.

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Japanese anime creators seem to excel at mind-bending stories where horrifying circumstances surround characters that usually don't belong there. Viewers watch relatively innocent protagonists fall deeper into the personas they're forced to become. For anyone just starting in the anime genre, or feeling like they're out of viewing material, some shows stand out more than others in originality and the ability to be thought-provoking and terrifying.

'Steins;Gate' (2011)

This 2011 science-fiction anime felt like it flew under the radar. Not many people today are familiar with it, but those who've seen it put it high on their list of favorites. Steins;gate is about a self-proclaimed "mad scientist" Rintaro Okabe who runs a home-based laboratory with his friends Mayuri and Itaru.

The plot heats up when the three lab rats start to experiment on their phone-operated microwave. This doesn't seem to go right at first. But then, Rintaro finds a girl stabbed on the street and messages Itaru, whose phone is attached to the microwave at that moment. However, the text unexpectedly goes to the past. This triggers time-traveling events filled with heartbreak, murder and tension. It's a mind-bending series that keeps viewers up at night.

ERASED ('Boku Dake Ga Inai Machi') (2016)

Satoru and Kayo in front of a snowy tree in 'Erased.'

ERASED follows Satoru Fujinuma, a manga creator whose life gets upturned when an unknown figure murders his mother. However, viewers aren't introduced to Satoru as just a manga writer; instead, they see him as having a unique ability to travel back into crucial moments, and essentially, through time.

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Satoru's ability and his mother's death force him to remember terrifying past events, ultimately sending him back to elementary school. ERASED is unique for its tension, strong plot, and a shocking revelation. It also got a live-action adaptation that didn't work as well as the psychologically tough series because there wasn't as much of the same darkness or tension that occupied people's minds.

'Paranoia Agent' ('Mousou Dairinin') (2004)

Lil Slugger from Paranoia Agent wielding a bat

An entire class could be taught about Satoshi Kon and his animated work. From Paprika to Perfect Blue, he ensures his movies remain in the back of the viewers' minds for a long time after watching. Paranoia Agent is one of those works; also, according to IMDb, it's his first and only time directing an anime series.

Paranoia Agent is about terror-inducing incidents caused by probably one of the creepiest anime characters of all time , an attacker wielding a golden, crooked baseball bat known as Lil' Slugger. Kon 's animation style is pretty outlandish - unusual frames, close-ups, and trippy, acid-like character movement; this contributes to the disturbing nature of the series, which ultimately reveals the human struggle with various mental health issues.

'Monster' (2004)

Monster anime drawing with Kenzo Tenma and Johan

It seems like 2004 was a fruitful year for Japanese psychological thrillers. The same year Paranoia Agent came out, viewers were gifted with another mystery/thriller anime called Monster.

It's set in post-war Düsseldorf and follows the brilliant Japanese brain surgeon Kenzo Tenma. His life seems perfect until it doesn't. The hospital where he works primarily treats politically and financially valuable patients, which Kenzo dislikes.

One day, he's forced to choose between operating on a sponsor or a child named Johan. Kenzo decides to save Johan, throwing his career away. However, he soon realizes that saving the boy leads to terrifying consequences. Monster often manages to send shivers down viewers' spines. It's a memorable and rarely terrifying anime series that feels like Scandinavian noir.

'Psycho-Pass' (2012)

The main characters of Psycho pass in a line-up

Psycho-Pass is set in futuristic Japan, where society is led by a biomechatronic computer network called the "Sybil System." It reads citizens' biometrics, predicting their potential for committing crimes. When Sybil catches a person with a criminal potential over 100, they get caught, prosecuted, and often killed by Inspectors from the Crime Investigation Department.

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The story follows Akane Tsunemori, a newbie in this department, having to chase a criminal mastermind slipping under Sybil's radar. Psycho-Pass could easily be an episode of Black Mirror, although it has several sequels. Lovers of stories with advanced technology that seems to be more an enemy than a friend relish every moment of this anime. Anyone in love with science-fiction thrillers won't be able to stop thinking about it.

'Mononoke' (2007)

For anyone that's seen Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, its spin-off Mononoke was likely the next thing on their watchlist. The story is set in the transitive years from Edo to Meiji periods in Japan and follows the nameless medicine seller on his journey into new mind-bending supernatural adventures.

Mononoke doesn't seem terrifying at first. It's actually pretty slow-paced, but a visually stunning series often labeled as avant-garde. Its unusual animation style brings a certain unease into the viewers' minds. Mononoke is unique and a favorite among many off-beat and horror-themed anime series .

'Serial Experiments Lain' (1998)

Serial Experiments Lain is about Lain Iwakura, a high school girl that communicates with the virtual world more than the real world. One day, Lain receives an email from a schoolmate; however, that schoolmate is dead, but her message states her spirit's moved on to the virtual world where she feels free.

In 1998 the Internet as we know it today was just an idea. No one knew the lengths it could reach, although many loved to predict that. It's safe to say that Serial Experiments Lain is one of the most terrifying anime series about immersing oneself in technology. Its plot is discussed by theorists and fans to this day, and while the message and philosophy are pretty clear, the plot left people thinking about it for years after.

'Terror in Resonance' ('Zankyou no Terror') (2014)

The main characters of Terror in Resonance

Terror in Resonance is a story about terrorism - but it's not. Two young men blackmail the residents of Tokyo by threatening to blow it up with an atomic bomb. The way out? Solving a cryptic riddle. Over time, the audience learns that they used to be a part of social experiments that turn Savant children into biological weapons.

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The initial topic sounds scary like terrorism stories always are. However, the more terrifying thing about Terror in Resonance is its socio-political commentary. Creepy, scary things typically hide all around us - especially in the human ability to test others' limits and psyche. This is a mind-blowing anime with excellent visuals.

'Flowers of Evil' ('Aku no Hana') (2013)

Still of Takao and Sawa in Flowers of Evil

The title, Flowers of Evil was inspired by the Charles Baudelaire book of the same name. The protagonist is a high school student Takao Kasuga, who one day steals the gym clothes of the girl he likes. Thinking he got out scot-free, Takao moves on with life, but another female student, Sawa Nakamura, approaches him, saying she saw the whole thing.

To avoid getting caught or reprimanded, Takao agrees to Sawa's conditions - she forces him into a sort of contract where he must do whatever she wants. This is a twisted but in many ways, sad depiction of mental health and feeling cast out. Paired with the anime's unique style of drawing - rotoscoping - the story causes unease and leaves viewers perplexed.

'Tokyo Ghoul' (2013)

Tokyo Ghoul has several spin-offs and was a hit the moment it was released. Set in alternate reality Tokyo, where flesh-eaters named ghouls exist, the story follows a boy named Ken Kaneki. After surviving a ghoul attack, Ken becomes a half-ghoul himself. It seems like a vampire-themed anime series , but it's more than that.

Ken's struggle with adapting to his new life as a half-human half-ghoul shows gory details. However, it also depicts the genuine struggle of someone belonging to both worlds, seemingly unable to fit into just one place or mold. This bloody anime still has loads of action and a memorable setting - a dark and ominous ghoul café called "Anteiku," where Ken learns to assimilate.

NEXT: 10 of the Funniest Anime Shows: From 'Nichijou' To 'Gintama'

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The 12 best horror anime series.

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10 Most Financially Unrealistic Sitcom Characters From The '70s, '80s & '90s

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Ever since the 60s, anime has been a huge part of pop culture. All over the world, it has made a huge impact and created a large sea of fans. Whether it’s Pokemon or Sailor Moon , there’s at least one series for everyone. With the action genre being the most popular, there are so many other genres that fans can tackle such as “slice of life” and science fiction.

However, the horror animes don’t seem to get as much buzz as the others. When people think horror, they usually think of slasher flicks, but there's so much more than that. The genre has so many layers to it, such as psychological horror, supernatural horror, and just straight up bloody horror. While there so many shows to choose from, these 12 animes were terrifying in different ways.

Here are The 12 Best Horror Anime Series.

12. Tokyo Ghoul

Tokyo Ghoul follows Ken Kaneki, a bookish student who is drawn to Rize, a fellow avid reader. However, Rize is not who she seems to be. In fact, she is a ghoul—a creature that survives on human flesh. After an unfortunate meeting with her, Ken finds out that he somehow has turned into half human and half ghoul and must learn to integrate between their two worlds.

Tokyo Ghoul is like Resident Evil meets X-Men . Gaining new powers isn’t a new storyline, but Tokyo Ghoul manages to execute it efficiently. It makes sure to specify that there is no clear distinction between good and evil, and that it’s more gray than anything. It focuses heavily on the gore and action aspect, which is nice even though the characters were a tad underwhelming. Regardless, it’s a fun anime that explores the idea of choosing whether to be a good guy or a bad guy.

11. Elfen Lied

Diving into the science fiction genre, Elfen Lied uses psychological horror to reflect the human condition. Lucy is a special breed of human referred to as “Diclonius,” born with horns and telekinetic powers that lands her into the government’s inhuman scientific experimentation program. When she sees an opportunity to escape, she unleashes bloodshed upon her captors. She then stumbles upon two college students who take her into their care, not knowing about her murderous tendencies.

Extreme graphic violence and nudity is the selling point for Elfen Lied. In the first episode alone, Lucy kills a secretary and uses her body as a human shield. The atrocities keep going for the entirety of the show but not without substantial themes to justify it. Director Mamoru Kanbe wanted to highlight the effects of discrimination as well as the contrasts between compassion and vengeance between fellow humans. Doing so not only provided a philosophical view, but used a horrific way to show it.

10. Serial Experiments Lain

If watched with an open mind, Serial Experiments Lain i s one of the most thought-provoking animes out there. It’s not a conventionally linear story, but relies on the atmosphere and the characters to tells its story.

It focuses on Lain Iwakura, an introverted girl who receives an email from a classmate who had committed suicide. Through the email, she discovers the Wired, a global communications network similar to the Internet. After that, she begins to encounter cryptic mysteries, including strange men in black who seem to know more about her than she does.

Mental illness and loneliness play big parts in Lain . It’s no secret that Lain is lonely due to her lack of friends and her dysfunctional family life. She’s constantly confronted with alter egos such as her evil self and her intelligent self that want to inflict pain on her and those close to her. While it’s not a traditional horror anime, it shows the horrors of technology and the relationship between the self and the world.

9. Hell Girl

Revolving around the ideas of revenge, injustice, and the nature of human emotions, Hell Girl is about a secret website that people can only access at midnight. Called "The Hotline to Hell," there is only a black background with the phrase “I will exact your vengeance.” There, people can type someone’s name into a box and enter a contract that sends a person to Hell immediately—as long as you too follow when you die.

Each episode typically follows a self-contained short story about a person who is being tormented by an acquaintance and the experiences they have going onto “The Hotline to Hell.” While the show isn’t necessarily graphic, its disturbing content shows the complexity of human nature. No one is purely evil or innocent.

8. Death Note

One of the most popular horror animes (and animes in general), Death Note has become something of a cultural phenomenon. Its huge popularity around the world has surpassed the otaku crowd and has become a regular pop culture icon. Several cities in China have banned Death Note due to students altering their notebooks and turning them in Death Notes with names of acquaintances inside. The controversy made its way around the world, including people committing actual murder on behalf of the book.

The story follows Light Yagami, a bored student who discovers a supernatural book from a Shinigami named Ryuk. The book grants its user the ability to kill anyone knowing only their name and face. Light uses this power to become God and cleanse the Earth of evil.

If anything , Death Note should be watched for the characters alone. Light and L are some of the most interesting characters in anime. They are both geniuses and each possess a quality that will make you root for one or the other. The way that they play cat and mouse with each other is intriguing and the ways Light dodges L’s captures are almost commendable. Unlike most anti-heroes, there isn’t anything lovable about Light. He’s evil to the core, no matter how much he thinks he’s saving the world.

From the superb art style to the character dynamics, there is a reason why Death Note is so highly regarded. There’s literally something for every anime fan in the show and succeeds in every aspect, including horror.

7. Hellsing

In an age where the vampire genre has been exhausted, we can always go back to the 90s and remember Hellsing —a show that actually showed vampires the proper respect. Hellsing is centered around the Royal Order of Protestant Knights—an organization founded by Abraham Van Helsing to protect the queen from supernatural evil. The organization’s front man, Alucard, deals with all things vampires, mainly because he is one as well.

Hellsing thrived on its character dynamic. When Seras Victoria was about to die from a fatal wound, Alucard saved her by turning her into a vampire. From there, they’ve displayed a father/daughter bond. Even though their relationship is complicated, they always have trust and patience in each other.

Sadly, Hellsing only ran for 13 episodes, leaving a desire for more blood and Alucard. But the show did such a great job in the horror and action aspect that it’s been called one of the best animes of all time.

6. Paranoia Agent

Adult Swim was on their game when they aired anime on television. Rurouni Kenshin , Yu Yu Hakusho , and Sailor Moon were just a few among the greats that entertained fans. While those shows were fun action series, Paranoia Agent was a different addition to the lineup. It wasn’t light and bubbly like the others, but instead a chilling psychological horror.

In Musashino, Tokyo, a social phenomenon is happening due to a serial assailant referred to as “Lil Slugger,” a boy who skates around and bashes people in the head with a baseball bat. The anime focuses on several different people and their part in the horrific event, such as the victims and the detective assigned to catch him.

Paranoia Agent has consistently been compared to David Lynch’s filmography. At times, the show had very trippy moments complete with interesting creatures and colors all meshing together. Other times, it was the characters hallucinating and having PTSD like episodes of “Lil Slugger.” The themes explore the nature of fear and the idea that supernatural boogeymen are the product of human fear—elements that also appear in Lynch’s Twin Peaks .

5. Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories

Kamishibai is a type of Japanese street theater and storytelling that was highly popular during the post-war period. Kamishibai was told by a narrator who would have illustrated boards placed in a miniature stage like device and would narrate the story by changing the images. With the introduction of television, the medium heavily declined due to the new forms of entertainment and has now largely disappeared in this modern age. However, its influence can be seen in animes and mangas, including Yamishibai: Ghost Stories .

Yamishibai: Japanese Ghost Stories is a short form anime series told in the Kamishibai form. Each episode is only around four minutes long, making this anime very easy to finish (it's around two hours, total). Each frame is beautifully illustrated as if it was painted with watercolors on a scroll. But behind the beauty are disturbing tales to be told. Each episode circles around a Japanese urban legend that have been used to keep children behaved or adults from acting a certain way. The haunting narrator gives off the “gather around the campfire and tell a spooky story" vibe and controls all of the characters like a creepy puppeteer. The ambiguous endings are open to interpretation, letting the viewers use their imagination and knowledge of Japanese folklore to figure it out. The suspense alone makes this anime a perfect one to watch on a stormy night.

The village of Sotoba is a place so small and isolated that it’s not even connected to a highway. One day, the body of three people are found with no reasonable explanation for their death. Even though he feels uncertain, Ozaki Toshio—the village’s only doctor—treats them as a normal occurrence. But when people keep dying, Toshio soon finds out that his village is being attacked by vampires.

Shiki is another example that vampire tales can be done right. Unlike other animes in the vampire genre, such as Vampire Knight, Blood+, and Trinity Blood , this anime goes back to the roots of vampires and their myths. In other shows, vampires are romanticized with gentle personalities and beautiful looks, but Shiki completely blows that out of the water. Their vampires are more traditional such as not being allowed to go out in the sunlight or needing to be invited into a home.

The anime spends a lot of time building up the suspense, and dragging the viewer through this disturbing atmosphere. There are plenty of disturbing scenes, but some folks might not like the slow burn and immediately want the action. However, it all pays off in the end with a stunning conclusion.

3. Vampire Princess Miyu

Originally just a manga, Vampire Princess Miyu was translated to an anime series in 1999. The series follows Miyu, a half human and half “shinma” (god demon) being who is chosen to kill all of the leftover shinma lurking in Japan. With her demonic companions, Larva and Shina, they hunt down these monsters that feed on human flesh and try to restore balance to the different worlds.

What’s interesting about the series is that there isn’t a central plot. Each episode is a monster of the week set up—focusing on a different person and shinma that Miyu needs to hunt. With only subtle blood and gore Vampire Princess Miyu focuses on the suspense and disturbing atmosphere. The writers have us sympathize with the different characters in each episode, only to brutally kill them by the end. The only recurring characters are Miyu’s high school friends, who have no idea what she is (and there is even a huge twist with them in the end). Accompanied by an unsettling soundtrack, it puts it on par with classic horror films we know and love.

Considered the anime version of Final Destination , Another doesn’t hold back on the creepy and dreary elements. Every episode is left on a cliffhanger and, before you know it, you’ll be hooked until the end. The series starts in 1972 when a popular student, Misaki, passes away. Since then, the town of Yomiyama has been shrouded in a dark and mysterious atmosphere. Fast forward to 1998, Kouichi Sakakibara transfers to the same class and discovers a strange, gloomy mood that seems to hang over all the students, especially an eyepatch-wearing girl named Mei Misaki. Soon enough, the secrets of the school begin to unravel and tragic events begin to plague the classmates.

Another isn’t just an anime that shovels out blood and gore for shock value. Its stellar animation and story always brings a sense of the dread to the viewer. In every scene, there is some sense of decay, whether it be deserted buildings or crows perched up on the roof. Also, there is a touch of Stanley Kubrick influence with the color red being used in one way or another. Overall, Another is one of the better animes because the art depicts the horror in many forms instead of just death.

1. Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni (When They Cry)

Higurashi No Naku Koro N i is one of those animes that should be watched with all the lights on and curtains closed. The utter sense of dread that surrounds it never goes away and there’s rarely a chance to rest from all of the horrific events. The series begins on a happy note with Maebara Keiichi moving into the quiet town of Hinamizawa. He spends his time blissfully in school and playing games with his new friends. But, as always in a small town setting, things are not what they seem. When he stumbles upon a murder, Keiichi starts to see his friends change from innocent girls to psychotic murderers.

Based upon the games by 07th Expansion, the show is divided into six chapters. Each chapter has a different mystery using really horrific methods of murder. From nailing a little girl to a cross to repeatedly bashing people’s heads in with baseball bats, the creators don’t go lightly on the violence. As soon as you think that it possibly can’t get any bloodier, you’ll be surprised by the next episode. Each episode is a buildup to some sort of big twist and leaves the viewer feeling slightly dirty at the end of each arc.

Can you think of any other horror animes that should be on this list? Let us know in the comments!

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Serial Experiments Lain: 10 Things That Make It A Must-Watch Horror-Anime
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Serial Experiments Lain: The 10 Most Confusing Things About The Anime
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'Serial Experiments Lain' Is A Mind-Twisting Sci-Fi Anime About The
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COMMENTS

Serial Experiments Lain: 10 Things That Make It A Must-Watch Horror-Anime
Serial Experiments Lain is a groundbreaking anime that really doesn't get talked about as much as it should when it comes to cyberpunk anime.While it might not be nearly as popular as Steinsgate or Ghost In The Shell, it probably should be even just based on the incredibly deep themes it tackles. RELATED: 10 Scariest Anime Of The Decade (According To My Anime List)
Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain is a Japanese anime television series created and co-produced by Yasuyuki Ueda, written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura. ... The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet". [3]
Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain won the Excellence Prize in the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival. It has been subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds such as the Asian Horror Encyclopedia and The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation by the American Philosophical Society.
Making Sense of Serial Experiments Lain
The greatest psychological horror anime, analyzed and explained. | Get this to 1 million views and I'll make a video on the PSX Lain game.~~~~~...
Serial Experiments Lain (TV Mini Series 1998)
Serial Experiments Lain: Created by Yasuyuki Ueda. With Kaori Shimizu, Bridget Hoffman, Dan Lorge, Randy McPherson. Strange things start happening when a withdrawn girl named Lain becomes obsessed with an interconnected virtual realm known as "The Wired".
Serial Experiments Lain Ending Explained
The conclusion of Serial Experiments Lain reveals that the world portrayed in the series is an artificial construct created by Eiri Masami, a brilliant programmer seeking to merge the physical world with the virtual world. Lain, as a manifestation of the Wired, becomes a symbol of humanity's connection to the digital realm.
Serial Experiments Lain: Season 1
Page 1 of 4, 7 total items. Lain receives an email from a recently deceased girl. Lain's distasteful behavior within the wired turns her into an outcast at school; confused and alone, Lain ...
The Terrifyingly Prescient 'Serial Experiments Lain,' 20 Years Later
Twenty years later, Lain is a distressingly faithful portrait of online life in the 2010s—a hellscape of warring avatars, self-serving mythology, catastrophic self-importance, compulsion, and ...
Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain is a psychological horror, sci-fi, cyberpunk drama anime written by Konaka Chiaki and developed by Triangle Staff. On one hand, I've seen enough things claim to be psychological with virtually no psychological content that I'm a bit skeptical.
'Serial Experiments Lain' Is A Mind-Twisting Sci-Fi Anime About ...
Then we meet our protagonist, soft-spoken 14-year-old Lain Iwakura, whose life is turned upside down when she receives an e-mail from the girl who committed suicide earlier in the episode ...
Serial Experiments Lain (Anime)
Mind Screw: The best way to describe Serial Experiments Lain is to throw paranoid schizophrenia and depression in a blender, along with a heavy dose of philosophy (specifically Timothy Leary's). After blending on the "puree" setting, add a dash of conspiracy theories, horror and Apple Computers, to taste.
Watch Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain. Average Rating: 4.7 (792) Add To Watchlist. Add to Crunchylist. Acclaimed artist Yoshitoshi ABe (Haibane Renmei, Texhnolyze) brings to life the existential classic that ...
Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain (game, interactive fiction, operating system simulation, denpa, postmodernism, psychological horror, cyberpunk). Released 1998. Ranked #10 game of 1998 and #219 All-time among Glitchwave users. Scattered audio clips of diary entries, counseling recordings, and diagnostic reports tell the story of Lain—a girl that can hear people speaking to her through power lines, is ...
Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain is a thirteen-episode anime miniseries written by Chiaki J Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura. It tells the story of Lain Iwakura as she finds her way through The Wired. The series was originally broadcast on TV Tokyo from July 6 to September 28, 1998, and explores themes such as reality, identity, and communication through philosophy, computer history, cyberpunk ...
Serial Experiments Lain: 10 Things Fans Never Knew About The Mind ...
Serial Experiments Lain is a unique series in that it demands that the viewer comes to their conclusions about its event. RELATED: Serial Experiments Lain: 10 Things That Make It A Must-Watch Horror-Anime. One way to help a viewer understand this complex series is by understanding the series' references and influences.
Serial Experiments Lain: The 10 Most Confusing Things About The ...
The story, instead of focusing on a dystopia created by a hyper-capitalist nightmare corporatocracy, was done in a very tasteful way that instead decides to focus on Lain, a young schoolgirl who suddenly develops an interest in computers and the world of the virtual. RELATED: Serial Experiments Lain: 10 Things That Make It A Must-Watch Horror-Anime
Is serial experiments lain scary? : r/Lain
A subreddit for the anime Serial Experiments Lain. Let's all love Lain! ... It's not a horror anime, and despite a few somewhat unsettling scenes with some body horror , the show does not actually have any ultraviolent blood or gore in it, nor does it throw jumpscares at you every 5 minutes. I personally found it to be more cool, sad, and at ...
Serial Experiments: Lain: The Complete Collection
TV-14 | Animation, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi Serial Experiments: Lain: The Complete Collection Trailer for Serial Experiments: Lain - The Complete Collection
10 Terrifying Anime Shows That Will Keep You Up At Night
Fantasy, horror, science fiction, and comedy are all available to watch on Crunchyroll and draw people into the anime universe. ... Serial Experiments Lain is about Lain Iwakura, a high school ...
Serial Experiments Lain Summary, Trailer, Cast, and More
Serial Experiments Lain is a Japanese anime series directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura, following teenager Lain Iwakura as she becomes increasingly entangled in the enigmatic virtual world called the Wired. Through confronting various psychological and philosophical dilemmas, the series delves into themes of identity, reality, and consciousness, challenging viewers with its layered narrative and ...
The 12 Best Horror Anime Series
If watched with an open mind, Serial Experiments Lain is one of the most thought-provoking animes out there.It's not a conventionally linear story, but relies on the atmosphere and the characters to tells its story. It focuses on Lain Iwakura, an introverted girl who receives an email from a classmate who had committed suicide.
SERIAL EXPERIMENTS LAIN
🔸 REVIEW of "LAIN" PS1 GAME: http://forbidden-siren.ru/index/serial_experiments_lain_ps1_game/-272🔸 COMPARISON of "LAIN" GAME and ANIME: http://forbidden-...
Chiaki J. Konaka
Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales. Ghost Hound. Relatives. Kazuya Konaka (younger brother) Chiaki J. Konaka (小中千昭, Konaka Chiaki, born April 4, 1961) is a Japanese writer and novelist. He was the head writer of anime series such as Serial Experiments Lain, Digimon Tamers, and Hellsing, as well as the television drama Ultraman Gaia.
Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain är en anime regisserad av Ryutaro Nakamura och producerad av Ueda Yasuyuki.Den behandlar filosofiska ämnen som verklighetens beskaffenhet, personlig identitet och kommunikation i olika bemärkelser. [1] Seriens huvudfigur är Lain Iwakura, en tonårig flicka som tillsammans med sina föräldrar och äldre syster Mika lever i en mindre japansk förort.

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1. Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni (When They Cry)