| Serial Experiments Lain | |
 First North American DVD cover, featuring Lain Iwakura | |
| Genre | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Yasuyuki Ueda[a] |
| Anime television series | |
| Directed by | Ryūtarō Nakamura |
| Produced by |
|
| Written by | Chiaki J. Konaka |
| Music by | Reichi Nakaido |
| Studio | Triangle Staff |
| Licensed by | |
| Original network | TXN (TV Tokyo) |
| English network | |
| Original run | July 6, 1998 – September 28, 1998 |
| Episodes | 13 |
| Video game | |
| Serial Experiments Lain | |
| Developer | Pioneer LDC |
| Publisher | Pioneer LDC |
| Platform | PlayStation |
| Released | November 26, 1998 |
| Manga | |
| The Nightmare of Fabrication | |
| Written by | Yoshitoshi Abe |
| Published | May 1999 |
| Video game | |
| Signal | |
| Developer | Team MJM |
| Platform | Windows,macOS |
| Released | May 19, 2025 |
 Anime and manga portal | |
Serial Experiments Lain is a Japaneseanime television series created and co-produced byYasuyuki Ueda, written byChiaki J. Konaka and directed byRyūtarō Nakamura. Animated byTriangle Staff and featuring original character designs byYoshitoshi Abe, the series was broadcast for 13 episodes onTV Tokyo andits affiliates from July to September 1998. It follows Lain Iwakura, an adolescent girl in suburban Japan, and her relation to the Wired, a globalcommunications network similar to theinternet.
Lain features surreal andavant-garde imagery and explores philosophical topics such asreality,identity, andcommunication.[6] The series incorporates creative influences fromcomputer history,cyberpunk, andconspiracy theories. Critics and fans have praisedLain for its originality, visuals, atmosphere, themes, and its dark depiction of a world fraught with paranoia, social alienation, and reliance ontechnology considered insightful of 21st century life. It received the Excellence Prize at theJapan Media Arts Festival in 1998.
Lain Iwakura is a socially isolated middle school student living inSetagaya City, Tokyo, with her emotionally detached family—her distant mother Miho, computer-obsessed father Yasuo, and disengaged older sister Mika. Her quiet existence is disrupted when students at her school receive emails from Chisa Yomoda, a classmate who had recently committed suicide. To Lain's confusion, Chisa claims she is not truly dead but has instead abandoned her physical form to exist within the Wired, a vast virtual realm similar to theInternet. Chisa declares she has found "God" there, drawing Lain into a surreal investigation of the Wired's nature and its growing influence over reality.
The Wired is portrayed as an emergent digital plane, originating from telecommunications technology and expanding through the Internet andcyberspace. It is theorized that theSchumann resonances, a natural property of Earth'smagnetic field, could enable direct subconscious communication between humans and machines, erasing the distinction between the virtual and the real. Masami Eiri, a former project director at Tachibana General Laboratories, exploited this possibility by embedding his own code into Protocol Seven, a next-generation Internet protocol. After transferring his consciousness into the Wired and discarding his physical body, he proclaims himself its deity. He identifies Lain as the key to merging both worlds, attempting to persuade her through manipulation, coercion, and promises of transcendence.
A group known as the Knights of the Eastern Calculus, inspired by theKnights of the Lambda Calculus, operates as hackers who worship Masami and seek to dismantle the boundary between the Wired and reality. Their actions induce psychological breakdowns in those unable to reconcile the two realms. Meanwhile, Tachibana General Laboratories opposes them, striving to maintain the separation. Lain, however, exhibits an innate connection to the Wired, experiencing distortions in her perception—visions of a woman struck by a train, phantom whispers, and spectral messages urging her deeper into the network.
Lain's home life remains cold and disconnected. Though Yasuo provides her with advanced computer equipment, her family shows little genuine care. Her interactions with classmates Alice, Julie, and Reika further highlight her alienation, particularly after an incident at Cyberia, a nightclub where a drug called Accela induces violent psychosis in users. There, Lain unnervingly stares down an assailant, who calls her a "scattered God's..." before killing himself. Later, she receives a mysterious Psyche chip, rumored to enhance her computer's capabilities, which she installs despite Yasuo's vague warnings about conflating the Wired with reality.
As the boundary between worlds weakens, disturbing events escalate. A popular virtual game,Phantoma, is manipulated by the Knights to trap players in a distorted reality, leading to real-world violence. One player, convinced his actions have no consequences, murders a girl before realizing too late that the effects were tangible. Lain witnesses this through her computer, horrified yet increasingly aware of her own role in the unfolding crisis.
In the end, Lain resets reality, erasing all memory of herself and restoring the division between worlds. Everyone's lives improve, but Lain is left alone, grappling with her identity as an artificial consciousness. Though forgotten, she finds solace in observing others' happiness, particularly Alice, who moves on with her life. Lain is now capable ofexisting anywhere across both realms.
Serial Experiments Lain was conceived, as a series, to be original to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producerYasuyuki Ueda.[10]
Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement he had made in anAnimerica interview where he claimed thatLain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted afterWorld War II".[11][9][12][13] He later explained in numerous interviews that he createdLain with a set of values he viewed 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. When Ueda discovered that the American audience held most of the same views on the series as the Japanese did, he was disappointed.[13]
TheLain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga). 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. Adōjinshi titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication" was produced by Yoshitoshi Abe and released in Japanese in the artbookAn Omnipresence in 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 ofLain, and the way they are exposed.[14]
The authors were asked in interviews if they had been influenced byNeon Genesis Evangelion, in the themes and graphic design. This was strictly denied by writerChiaki J. Konaka in an interview, arguing that he had not even seenEvangelion until he finished the fourth episode ofLain. Being primarily a horror movie writer, his stated influences areGodard (especially for using typography on screen),The Exorcist,Hell House, andDan Curtis'sHouse of Dark Shadows. Alice's name, like the names of her two friends Julie and Reika, came from a previous production from Konaka,Alice in Cyberland [ja], which in turn was largely influenced byAlice in Wonderland. As the series developed, Konaka was "surprised" by how close Alice's character became to the originalWonderland character.[15]
Vannevar Bush (andmemex),John C. Lilly,Timothy Leary and hiseight-circuit model of consciousness,Ted Nelson andProject Xanadu are cited as precursors to the Wired.[14]Douglas Rushkoff and his bookCyberia were originally to be cited as such,[9] and inSerial Experiments: Lain, Cyberia became the name of a nightclub populated with hackers and techno-punk teenagers. Likewise, the series'deus ex machina lies in the conjunction of theSchumann resonances andJung'scollective unconscious (the authors chose this term overKabbalah andAkashic Record).[16]Majestic 12 and theRoswell UFO incident are used as examples of how a hoax might still affect history, even after having been exposed as such, by creating sub-cultures.[16] This links again to Vannevar Bush, the alleged "brains" of MJ12.
Two of the literary references inLain are quoted through Lain's father: he first logs onto a website with the password "Think Bule Count One Tow" [sic] ("Think Blue, Count Two" is anInstrumentality of Man story featuring virtual persons projected as real ones in people's minds);[17] and his saying that "madeleines would be good with the tea" in the last episode makesLain "one of the only cartoons ever to allude to Proust".[18][19]
Yoshitoshi Abe confesses to have never read manga as a child, as it was "off-limits" in his household.[20] His major influences are "nature and everything around him".[9] Specifically speaking about Lain's character, Abe was inspired byKenji Tsuruta,Akihiro Yamada,Range Murata andYukinobu Hoshino.[12] In a broader view, he has been influenced in his style and technique by Japanese artists Kyosuke Chinai and Toshio Tabuchi.[9]
The character design of Lain was not Abe's sole responsibility. Her distinctive left forelock for instance was a demand from Yasuyuki Ueda. The goal was to produce asymmetry to reflect Lain's unstable and disconcerting nature.[21] It was designed as a mystical symbol, as it is supposed to prevent voices and spirits from being heard by the left ear.[12] The bear pajamas she wears were a demand fromcharacter animation director Takahiro Kishida. Though bears are a trademark of the Konaka brothers, Chiaki Konaka first opposed the idea.[15] Director Nakamura then explained how the bear motif could be used as a shield for confrontations with her family. It is a key element of the design of the shy "real world" Lain (see "mental illness" underThemes).[15] When she first goes to the Cyberianightclub, she wears a bear hat for similar reasons.[21] Retrospectively, Konaka said that Lain's pajamas became a major factor in drawing fans ofmoe characterization to the series, and remarked that "such items may also be important when making anime".[15]
Abe's original design was generally more complicated than what finally appeared on screen. As an example, the X-shaped hair clip was to be an interlocking pattern of gold links. The links would open with a snap, or rotate around an axis until the moment the " X " became a " = ". This was not used as there is no scene where Lain takes her hair clip off.[22]
Serial Experiments Lain is not a conventionally linear story, being described as "an alternative anime, with modern themes and realization".[23] Themes range from theological to psychological and are dealt with in a number of ways: from classical dialogue to image-only introspection, passing by direct interrogation of imaginary characters.
Communication, in its wider sense, is one of the main themes of the series,[24] not only as opposed to loneliness, but also as a subject in itself. Writer Konaka said he wanted to directly "communicate human feelings". Director Nakamura wanted to show the audience — and particularly viewers between 14 and 15—"the multidimensional wavelength of theexistential self: the relationship between self and the world".[14]
Loneliness, if only as representing a lack of communication, is recurrent throughLain.[25] Lain herself (according to Anime Jump) is "almost painfully introverted with no friends to speak of at school, a snotty, condescending sister, a strangely apathetic mother, and a father who seems to want to care but is just too damn busy to give her much of his time".[26] Friendships turn on the first rumor;[25][27] and the only insert song of the series is namedKodoku no shigunaru, literally "signal of loneliness".[28]
Mental illness, especiallydissociative identity disorder, is a significant theme inLain:[22] the main character is constantly confronted with alter-egos, to the point where writer Chiaki Konaka and Lain's voice actress Kaori Shimizu had to agree on subdividing the character's dialogues between three differentorthographs.[22] The three names designate distinct "versions" of Lain: the real-world, "childish" Lain has a shy attitude and bear pajamas. The "advanced" Lain, her Wired personality, is bold and questioning. Finally, the "evil" Lain is sly and devious, and does everything she can to harm Lain or the ones close to her.[15] As a writing convention, the authors spelled their respective names inkanji,katakana, andLatin characters (see picture).[29]
Reality never has the pretense of objectivity inLain.[30] Acceptations of the term are battling throughout the series, such as the "natural" reality, defined through normal dialogue between individuals; the material reality; and the tyrannic reality, enforced by one person onto the minds of others.[25] A key debate to all interpretations of the series is to decide whether matter flows from thought, or the opposite.[25][31] The production staff carefully avoided "the so-called God's Eye Viewpoint" to make clear the "limited field of vision" of the world ofLain.[30]
Theology plays its part in the development of the story too.Lain has been viewed as a questioning of the possibility of an infinite spirit in a finite body.[32] From self-realization as a goddess todeicide,[18] religion (the title of a layer) is an inherent part ofLain's background.[32]
Lain contains extensive references toApple computers, as the brand was used at the time by most of the creative staff, such as writers, producers, and the graphical team.[15] As an example, the title at the beginning of each episode is announced by the Apple computerspeech synthesis programPlainTalk, using the voice"Whisper", e.g.say -v Whisper "Weird: Layer zero one". Tachibana Industries, the company that creates the NAVI computers, is a reference to Apple computers: thetachibana orange is a Japanese variety of mandarin orange. NAVI is the abbreviation ofKnowledge Navigator, and the HandiNAVI is based on theApple Newton, one of the world's firstPDAs. The NAVIs are seen to run "Copland OS Enterprise" (this reference toCopland was an initiative ofKonaka, a declared Apple fan),[15] and Lain's and Alice's NAVIs closely resembles theTwentieth Anniversary Macintosh and theiMac G3 respectively. The HandiNAVI programming language, as seen on the seventh episode, is a dialect ofLisp; the Newton also used a Lisp dialect (NewtonScript). The program being typed by Lain can be found in theCMUAI repository;[33] it is a simple implementation ofConway's Game of Life inCommon Lisp.
During a series of disconnected images, an iMac and theThink Different advertising slogan appears for a short time, while theWhisper voice says it.[34] This was an unsolicited insertion from the graphic team, also Mac-enthusiasts.[15] Other subtle allusions can be found: "Close the world, Open the nExt" is the slogan for theSerial Experiments Lain video game.NeXT was the company that producedNeXTSTEP, which later evolved intoMac OS X after Apple bought NeXT. Another example is "To Be Continued." at the end of episodes 1–12, with a blue "B" and a red "e" on "Be"; this matches the original logo ofBe Inc., a company founded by ex-Apple employees and NeXT's main competitor in its time.[35]
Serial Experiments Lain was first aired onTV Tokyo andits affiliates on July 6, 1998, and concluded on September 28, 1998, with the thirteenth and final episode. The series consists of 13 episodes (referred to in the series as "Layers") of 24 minutes each, except for the sixth episode,Kids (23 minutes 14 seconds). In Japan, the episodes were released onLD,VHS, andDVD with a total of five volumes. A DVD compilation named "Serial Experiments Lain DVD-BOX Яesurrection" was released along with a promo DVD called "LPR-309" in 2000.[36] As this box set is now discontinued, a rerelease was made in 2005 called "Serial Experiments Lain TV-BOX". A 4-volume DVD box set was released in the US by Pioneer/Geneon. A Blu-ray release of the anime was made in December 2009 called "Serial Experiments Lain Blu-ray Box| RESTORE".[37][38][39][40]
The anime series was licensed in North America byPioneer Entertainment (later Geneon USA) onVHS andDVD in 1999.[41] In December 2002,TechTV announced thatSerial Experiments Lain would air on the channel as part of its Anime Unleashed programming block,[42] with the series making its debut on January 21, 2003.[43] The original home releases went out-of-print in December 2007 when Geneon closed its USA division.[41] AtAnime Expo 2010, North American distributorFunimation announced that it had obtained the license to the series and re-released it in 2012.[44] The anime series returned to US television on October 15, 2012, on theFunimation Channel.[45]
| No. | Title | Directed by | Original release date | U.S. air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Weird" | Ryūtarō Nakamura | July 6, 1998 (1998-07-06) | January 21, 2003[43] | |
A high school girl commits suicide by jumping off a rooftop late at night. A week later, students are getting emails from the girl, namedChisa Yomoda, which claim that she only gave up her body, but is actually still alive inside the virtual world (known as the Wired), saying that there is a God that exists there. After getting one of these emails, introverted fourteen-year-oldLain Iwakura becomes more interested in computers and asks her techie father,Yasuo Iwakura, for a new NAVI computer system. At school, the blackboard writes a subliminal message, inviting her to come to the Wired, revealed to be written by Chisa herself. | |||||
| 2 | "Girls" | Ryūtarō Nakamura | July 13, 1998 (1998-07-13) | January 22, 2003[46] | |
At Cyberia, a techno club, a man buys a nanomachine drug called Accela.Alice Mizuki, along with her friendsJulie Kato andReika Yamamoto, tell Lain that they saw her during their visit to Cyberia, but with a far more vigorous personality. Lain has her father set up her NAVI computer system at home and later joins Alice at Cyberia that night to prove she was not there before. She becomes involved with a shooting in the club by the same man under the influence of Accela. She eerily tells the man that everyone is connected in the Wired no matter where they are. The traumatized man promptly shoots himself. | |||||
| 3 | "Psyche" | Jōhei Matsuura | July 20, 1998 (1998-07-20) | January 23, 2003[47] | |
The following day, Lain is scolded by her cold mother,Miho Iwakura, for waking up late. Lain believes that she is being spied on when she sees a black car parked near her house. She also hears a voice calling out to her when she enters the train, telling her that she is not alone. She is anonymously sent a mysterious computer chip and goes to seeTaro, with his friendsMyu-Myu andMasayuki, at Cyberia. He recalls seeing Lain on the Wired, noting her Wired personality being the complete opposite of her introverted real world personality.Mika Iwakura, Lain's older sister, sees Lain in her room, not acting herself as she starts to modify and upgrade her NAVI computer system. | |||||
| 4 | "Religion" | Akihiko Nishiyama | July 27, 1998 (1998-07-27) | January 24, 2003[48] | |
Rumors are flying around school and on the Wired in regards to numerous senior students of various high schools committing suicide, with each of the deceased being addicted to the online action game known asPhantoma. Interested, Lain investigates and learns that the game was glitched with a tag game for kids, in which a little girl scares the students to their deaths. The deaths were most likely caused by the elite secretive hacker group known as the Knights of the Eastern Calculus. That night, she sees theMen in Black, who had been spying on her earlier. When she tells them to go away, a sound wave penetrates through her window, causing the two to fall back and drive away in their car. | |||||
| 5 | "Distortion" | Masahiko Murata | August 3, 1998 (1998-08-03) | January 25, 2003[49] | |
Amidst the events surrounding Tokyo having its traffic information transmission system hacked to cause deliberate accidents, Lain experiences a series of hallucinations that teach her the nature of the Wired in relation to the real world, by means of inanimate objects in her room and eventually her parents. In the meantime, Mika is driven to terror from the Knights repeatedly communicating in unusual ways for her to "fulfill the prophecy." | |||||
| 6 | "Kids" | Ryūtarō Nakamura | August 10, 1998 (1998-08-10) | January 25, 2003[50] | |
At night, when Yasuo checks on Lain, he sees a dramatic change in her room arrangement and the upgrades on her NAVI computer system, which worries him. As Lain hangs out with Alice, along with Julie and Reika, in the district, she notices that children are looking up into the sky and raising their arms, only to realize that they are looking at an image of herself that appears in the sky. Lain searches for the reason behind the strange happenings and finds Professor Hodgeson, the creator of KIDS, an experiment that started fifteen years ago that tried to gatherpsi energy from children and store it, though the result of the project destroyed the children. Now it seems that the Knights have gotten hold of the project's schematics. When the Men in Black return, Lain goes outside to see them. The coolant system in her room bursts, leading the Men in Black to confirm that the Knights planted a parasite bomb there. | |||||
| 7 | "Society" | Jōhei Matsuura | August 17, 1998 (1998-08-17) | January 25, 2003[51] | |
As Lain gets more and more involved in the Wired world, both at home and at school, Alice starts to worry about her closing up again. It is reported that the Knights cracked the firewall of the information control center of the Wired. As the activity of the Knights begins to surface, the network is in search for Lain. The Men in Black ask Lain to follow them to an office in the Tachibana General Laboratories, where theOffice Worker in charge of the Men in Black, after her help of fixing his computer, shows Lain a projection of herself in the Wired taking out a deranged man who begged to join the Knights. After the Office Worker deduces that Lain in the real world and in the Wired are one and the same, he questions her about her origins. However, she breaks down not able to provide any answers, then switches from her usual timid persona to that of her serious persona from the Wired before shoving her way out of the room. | |||||
| 8 | "Rumors" | Shigeru Ueda | August 24, 1998 (1998-08-24) | January 25, 2003[52] | |
Lain's family has been acting weird lately, much to her surprise. Upon further investigation, Lain disbelieves that she is omnipresent in the Wired, while she is merely a body, more or less a projection of herself, in the real world. A rumor is spread in the Wired about Alice having sexual fantasies about a male teacher, and a second one says that Lain has spread the first. To cope with the distress of rejection, Lain acts directly on reality for the first time, finding out that she can "delete" the event of the rumors. A lookalike duplicate of herself with its own distinct personality starts appearing more frequently, which leads her to question her own existence. | |||||
| 9 | "Protocol" | Akihiko Nishiyama | August 31, 1998 (1998-08-31) | February 1, 2003[53] | |
Throughout the episode, background information is being shown from "archives". Information regarding theRoswell UFO incident, theMajestic 12, which was formed by PresidentHarry S. Truman, engineerVannevar Bush, who developed what is calledmemex, physicianJohn C. Lilly, who conducted experiments withdolphin communication, pioneerTed Nelson, who foundedProject Xanadu, and theSchumann resonances are all mentioned, explaining how the human consciousness can be communicated through a network without the use of a device. It is also noted that a man namedMasami Eiri has suddenly committed suicide. During that time, Lain gets a computer microchip from J.J., the disc jockey from Cyberia. She then asks Taro on a "date" and takes him to her home, where she asks him about the microchip. After becoming frightened, he admits it is a computer code made to disrupt human memory, and it was made by the Knights. Although he defends them, he admits not knowing much about them. He later kisses Lain before leaving. | |||||
| 10 | "Love" | Masahiko Murata | September 7, 1998 (1998-09-07) | February 1, 2003[54] | |
As both are seen to have switched bodies, Eiri introduces himself to Lain as the creator of Protocol Seven, saying that Lain no longer needs to have a body in order to be alive. As she, back in her own body, comes home, Yasuo says his farewell after realizing that she knows the truth behind her existence. Eiri is considered the God of the Wired because he explained that he is worshiped by the Knights. Knowing this, Lain deals with the Knights once and for all byleaking a list of all of its members onto the Wired, leaving a trail of murder by the Men in Black and suicide in its wake. Even with the Knights gone, Eiri still claims he is the God of the Wired, since he says that the real Lain exists in the Wired, not the real world. | |||||
| 11 | "Infornography" | Jōhei Matsuura | September 14, 1998 (1998-09-14) | February 1, 2003[55] | |
Lain lies exhausted in her room, and wakes up to find herself all wrapped in electrical cords. After a really long and complicated memory flashback, seen throughout the series, Eiri appears in her room and congratulates her, for having succeeded in downloading her NAVI into her own brain to see and hear all that is happening. However, he warns her about her "hardware capacity," and that she is merely asentient andautonomous software computer program with a physical body in the form of a teenage human girl. Lain later appears to Alice in her room to make things right with her again concerning the false rumors. Lain declares that anything is possible now, as devices are no longer needed anymore to enter the Wired freely. The next day, nobody seems to remember the rumored incidents and Lain smiles at Alice's complicity. | |||||
| 12 | "Landscape" | Ryūtarō Nakamura | September 21, 1998 (1998-09-21) | February 1, 2003[56] | |
Lain witnesses the frontier between the physical and the Wired worlds finally beginning to collapse. The Men in Black are approached by their Officer Worker, who gives them a final "payment" for their services, telling them to leave town away from any power lines or satellite coverage. After he leaves, both Men in Black suffer death from an image of Lain etched in their retinas. Alice enters Lain's eerie house and goes inside her room. Lain explains that she is actually a computerized program designed to destroy the barrier between the two worlds. Lain is still affixed on the fact that humans no longer need a physical body to stay alive, but Alice shows that her heartbeat proves otherwise. Suddenly, Eiri, first unseen to Alice, appears behind Lain, assuming that she needs to be "debugged". Lain argues that Eiri was just an "acting god", for she is the true Goddess of the Wired. Eiri retaliates by transforming into a monstrous form to attain the vastly limitless power and strength that she possesses, but Lain manages to crush Eiri with her electrical equipment, wiping him out for good. | |||||
| 13 | "Ego" | Ryūtarō Nakamura | September 28, 1998 (1998-09-28) | February 8, 2003[57] | |
Lain's attempts to protect her from Eiri's attack result in traumatizing Alice, Lain's only true friend. In order to fix this, Lain decides to do a "factory reset" on her life, deleting herself from everyone's memory. Distraught from doing so, Lain is determined to discover her true form and identity and takes radical action. She is confronted by her separate bolder self of the Wired, who reminds her that the Wired is not an upper layer of the real world. Her bolder Wired self then assures her that she is the true Goddess of the Wired, saying she is an omnipotent and omnipresent virtual being that can go and be anywhere desired and merely watch the real world from afar. After causing her bolder self to disappear, Lain sees her father. Alice, now older with a spouse, spots Lain standing on an overpass, having some "déjà vu" about Lain but not recognizing who she is. Alice says goodbye and that she may run into Lain again someday. Lain asserts that this is true, since she is everywhere at once. | |||||
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Serial Experiments Lain was first broadcast inTokyo at 1:15 a.m.JST. The word "weird" appears almost ubiquitously in English language reviews of the series,[26][58][59][60][61] or the alternatives "bizarre",[62] and "atypical",[63] due mostly to the freedoms taken with the animation and its unusual science fiction themes, and due to its philosophical and psychological context. Critics responded positively to these thematic and stylistic characteristics, and it was awarded an Excellence Prize by the 1998Japan Media Arts Festival for "its willingness to question the meaning of contemporary life" and the "extraordinarily philosophical and deep questions" it asks.[64]
According to Christian Nutt fromNewtype USA, the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". Nutt saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and the "perfect soundtrack" in his 2005 review of series, 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."[65]Anime Jump gave it 4.5/5,[26] and Anime on DVD gave it A+ on all criteria for volume 1 and 2, and a mix of A and A+ for volume 3 and 4.[59]Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. TheAsian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet".[3] It notes that the red spots present in all the shadows look like blood pools (see picture). It notes the death of a girl in a train accident is "a source of much ghost lore in the twentieth century", more so in Tokyo.
TheAnime Essentials anthology byGilles 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 contemporariesNeon Genesis Evangelion andCowboy Bebop.[66] ProfessorSusan J. Napier, in her 2003 reading to theAmerican Philosophical Society calledThe Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation (published 2005), comparedSerial Experiments Lain toGhost in the Shell andHayao Miyazaki'sSpirited Away.[67] According to her, the main characters of the two other works cross barriers; they can cross back to our world, but Lain cannot. Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty 'real' and a dark 'virtual'".[68] Mike Toole ofAnime News Network namedSerial Experiments Lain as one of the most important anime of the 1990s.[69]
Despite the positive feedback the television series had received, Anime Academy gave the series a 75%, partly due to the "lifeless" setting it had.[70] Michael Poirier ofEX magazine stated that the last three episodes fail to resolve the questions in other DVD volumes.[71] Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network noted that the English dub was decent, but that the show relied so little on dialogue that it hardly mattered.[72]
The firstoriginal soundtrack,Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack, features music byReichi Nakaido: the ending theme and part of the television series' score, alongside other songs inspired by the series. The second,Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack: Cyberia Mix, featureselectronica songs inspired by the television series, including a remix of the opening theme "Duvet" by DJ Wasei. The third,lain BOOTLEG, consists of the ambient score of the series across forty-five tracks.BOOTLEG also contains a second mixed-mode data and audio disc, containing a clock program and a game, as well as an extended version of the first disc – nearly double the length – across 57 tracks in 128 kbit/sMP3 format, and sound effects from the series inWAV format. Because the wordbootleg appears in its title, it is easily confused with the Sonmaycounterfeit edition of itself, which only contains the first disc in an edited format. All three soundtrack albums were released byPioneer Records.
The series' opening theme, "Duvet", was written and performed in English by the British rock bandBôa. The band released the song as a single and as part of theEPTall Snake, which features both an acoustic version and DJ Wasei's remix fromCyberia Mix.
On November 26, 1998, Pioneer LDC released a video game with the same name as the anime for thePlayStation.[73] 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.[15] The creators themselves did not call it a game, but "Psycho-Stretch-Ware",[15] and it has been described as being a kind ofvisual 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.[74] Lain distances itself even more from classical games by therandom order in which information is collected.[15] The aim of the authors was to let the player get the feeling that there are myriads of informations that they would have to sort through, and that they would have to do with less than what exists to understand.[15] As with the anime, the creative team's main goal was to let the player "feel" Lain, and "to understand her problems, and to love her".[14] A guidebook to the game calledSerial Experiments Lain Official Guide (ISBN 4-07-310083-1) was released the same month byMediaWorks.[75]
In March 2025, Team MJM announcedSignal, an official occult-themed role-playing game derivative of theSerial Experiments Lain series. The game was released on May 19, 2025, and becameWindows andmacOS viaSteam anditch.io services, with a limited CD-ROM edition also planned.[76][77]
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