Serial Experiments Lain
| Fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Serial Experiments Lain (シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン) |
| Abbreviation(s): | |
| Creator: | |
| Date(s): | July 6, 1998 – September 28, 1998 (anime); November 26, 1998 (video game) |
| Medium: | Anime, Video Game |
| Country of Origin: | Japan |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Serial Experiments Lain is a science-fiction anime directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura, with character design by Yoshitoshi ABe, screenplay written by Chiaki J. Konaka, and produced by Yasuyuki Ueda.
The series focuses on Lain Iwakura, an adolescent middle school girl living in suburban Japan, and her introduction to the Wired, a global communications network which is similar to the Internet. Lain lives with her middle-class family, which consists of her inexpressive older sister Mika, her emotionally distant mother, and her computer-obsessed father; while Lain herself is somewhat awkward, introverted, and socially isolated from most of her school peers. But the status-quo of her life becomes upturned by a series of bizarre incidents that start to take place after she learns that girls from her school have received an e-mail from a dead student, Chisa Yomoda, and she pulls out her old computer in order to check for the same message. Lain finds Chisa telling her that she is not dead, but has merely "abandoned her physical body and flesh" and is alive deep within the virtual reality-world of the Wired itself, where she has found a God. From this point, Lain is caught up in a series of cryptic and surreal events that see her delving deeper into the mystery of the network in a narrative that explores themes of consciousness, perception, and the nature of reality.
On November 26, 1998, Pioneer LDC released a video game with the same name as the anime for the PlayStation. It was designed by Konaka and Yasuyuki, and made to be a "network simulator" in which the player would navigate to explore Lain's story. The creators themselves did not call it a game, but "Psycho-Stretch-Ware", and it has been described as being a kind of graphic novel: the gameplay is limited to unlocking pieces of information, and then reading/viewing/listening to them, with little or no puzzle needed to unlock the next bit of info. Lain distances itself even more from classical games by the random order in which information is collected. The aim of the authors was to let the player get the feeling that there are myriads of information that they would have to sort through, and that they would have to do with less than what exists to understand. A guidebook to the game called Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide (ISBN 4-07-310083-1) was released the same month by MediaWorks.
Fanworks
Fanart
- Teddybear pixel-art gif by orange-magik on Deviantart, Feb 24 2016
- Serial Experiments Lain by SatoshiD on Deviantart, Aug 27 2017
- We Are All Connected by drawkill on Deviantart, Nov 8 2019
Fanfiction
- Unidirectional by Alara Rogers: Lain decides whether or not to give a kitten advice based on her experiences in the Wired.
Fanvids
- A Total Waste of 6 min 35 sec AMV by Xstylus - Winner Anime Expo Music Video Contest 2002 for Comedy/Parody - possibly the first AMV at AX to be "boo-ed" into winning
Zines
It seems that sometime in 2014, a few members of LainChan, a Serial Experiments Lain fansite, decided to make a zine based around the series and the themes, topics, and ideas it presents. On April 20th, 2015, the first issue was published, and they've been going on strong so far since then, with the fifth issue still in production. The archive for the zines-which have been simply entitled Lain Zine-can be viewed here