Friday, May 20, 2005

Serial Experiments Lain rant
I wrote this for some forum and I think it turned out pretty good, so I'll post it here too. However, if you haven't seen the show you probably shouldn't read this, that is if you don't want the show ruined of cource.

"Serial Experiments Lain" is about a time when technology becomes so commonplace that it encompasses our entire lives through a new form of media known as "the wired." "The wired" can basically be thought of as a much more advanced form of the Internet, which people can actually project an image of themselves into. (How good of an image depends on the user level and their software) However, "the wired" actually feels a bit too real for some, and the border between the "real world" and the "wired world" starts to become warped and difficult to see.

In the middle of all of this is a young high school girl named Lain Iwakura. Lain never cared much for computers or technology, (quoting the Lain herself from the first ep., "I'm not really up, on all that stuff.") however, one day, Lain gets an email from a friend who recently committed suicide named Chisa Yamoda, asking Lain to "come to the wired as soon as possible." So with her interest heightened, Lain asks her father for a computer and the story follows from there. Lain's friends from school bring her along to a club named "Cyberia" in the second episode to try and help lain (a very shy/lonely girl in their eyes) to open up. Lain's friends did accomplish that goal but not in the same way they were thinking. At Cyberia Lain meets three hackers that always seem to be sitting at cyberia and a mysterious DJ named JJ. These are the physical characters who help Lain on her travels through the wired in addition to some people she meets in the wired. So anyway as we enter into the middle of the series, we are introduced to several things such as the knights, the KIDS experiment, and of course Masami Eiri. However, I'm getting sick of summarizing, you should have seen the series anyway, so on to the fun stuff, symbolism and things of that nature.

The symbolism of Lain's bear suit and the plush toys on her window: Well this one hard to catch because even the most casual viewer can notice that after a few episodes in we see the bear suit less and less until it completely disappears until the last episode. That is because the bear suit represents Lain's humanity and connection to this world. In the first episode when Lain's Navi was just collecting dust; if she wasn't in her school uniform it was the bear suit, since Lain had not yet immersed herself in the wired yet, she was still firmly grounded into her humanity and connection to the real world. As the episodes went on, and Lain lost her humanity, and even began to wonder if she was hardware or software the bear suit completely disappeared. Until the last episode when Lain finally accepts who she is: a god of the wired that can still watch over the physical world in the shadows. In her conversation with her "father" at the end, Lain is once again wearing the bear suit because as the "father" points out: "you love them (humanity)."

As for the navi computers, I'm sure Mecha can elaborate on this with his knowledge of computers, but basically the navis are just wigged out MACs. Furthermore there's quite a few references to MACs in general too, for instance, the repeated colors of blue in red, and the "think different", "close the world, open the next", it's all derived from the glory days of the MACs.

All right, now for some show clarification, staring with the Iwakura family. If it wasn't already obvious from their cold attitude toward lain and a commonly empty house, Lain's "family" is not her family but actors put in place to help Lain feel as though she is part of humanity before she took her role in the wired. Its thought that Lain is actually a life form created by protocol 7 and/or Masami Eiri, and that Lain is somewhat of a Jesus figure, sent to live on Earth for a while to better understand the humanity that she watches over as god of the wired. Therefore, Masami Eiri is the false or acting god, a placeholder for lain until she was ready if you will, and sent back to Earth after his task was complete. Ok yes, back to the Iwakura family. The sister (mika) mysteriously went insane in the middle of the series, but why? Well the Knights of course! What did the Knights want with Mika? Well they thought she had a close relationship with lain, (obviously false) and not wanting Mika to interfere with Lain, they use the "KIDS technology" on her and reduce her to what she was for the second half of the series. If that’s not enough though here's some evidence that the Knights were behind it: 1) the Knights symbol appears around Mika when her soul is captured in Shibuya Square. 2) In the Kids ep, Prof. Hodgeson explains to lain that the use of the KIDS technology trapped the experimental children's souls in the Wired. 3) Mika arrives home and sees another version of herself. The "just arrived Mika" at the door dissolves into an energy mass that is Mika's soul. Her physical shell body remains. 4) The prophecy is "Hell is full of the dead, and the dead shall wander." Mika has executed the prophecy, i.e. her soulless body walks aimlessly around the house. {Note: the 4 proofs were borrowed from "the serial experiments Lain cyberia cafe page"}

Well there's a ton more that I haven't talked about, but that's all I'm going to write for now, I’ll add some stuff later, probably.

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