Serial Experiments Lain
Lain_hacker_small.jpg
Serial Experiments Lain is an anime series about a adolescent girl in suburban Japan named Lain Iwakura, and her introduction to the Wired, an international computer network. The original idea of the series was produced by production 2nd, the story was written by Chiaki J. Konaka, and the original character design was done by Yoshitoshi ABe. Lain is produced in English in North America by Geneon and in Singapore by Odex.
Serial Experiments Lain raises questions about God, the collective unconscious, the Internet, and many other themes common in cyberpunk literature. Fans of the series generally believe it is a good example of anime as literature, inviting and rewarding close critical analysis.
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Plot
The series begins with the suicide of Chisa Yomoda. Lain Iwakura is one of Chisa's classmates who receives a posthumous email from Chisa explaining that she has abandoned her flesh and is still alive in the Wired (a large computer network with striking similarities to the Internet). Lain begins to tentatively explore the Wired and the series follows her transition from normal schoolgirl to omnipresent being on the Internet and collective unconsciousness.
Publications and other media
The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across several forms of media (anime, video game, manga). Producer Yasuyuki Ueda said in an interview in Animerica (Vol. 7 No. 9), "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, though the anime was released first.
The series ran for 13 episodes of one half hour each, between July 6 and September 28, 1998, on TV Tokyo. A Playstation game of the same name was released on November 26, 1998.
There are several artbooks available:
- Omnipresence In The Wired - hardbound, is 128 pages in 96 colors with Japanese text. It features a chapter for each layer (episode) and concept sketches. It also features a short color manga titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication". [1] It was published in 1998 by Triangle Staff/SR-12W/Pioneer LDC. (ISBN 4-789713431)
- Visual Experiments Lain - paperback, is 80 full-color pages with Japanese text. It has details on the creation, design, and storyline of the series. It was published in 1998 by Triangle Staff/Pioneer LDC. (ISBN 4-789713423)
- Scenario Experiments Lain - paperback, 335 pages. By chiaki j. konaka. (Uncapitalised in original.) Collected scripts with notes and small excerpted storyboards. (ISBN 4-7897-1320-2)
- Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide - paperback. A guide to the PlayStation game.
Several soundtracks were released:
- "Duvet" opening song - Written by the band Bôa as their first single.
- Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack - The first OST featuring music by Nakaido "Chabo" Reichi. It features the opening and closing theme songs and a number of tracks inspired by the television series.
- Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack: Cyberia Mix - A second OST featuring a number of electronica songs inspired by the television series, including a remix of the opening theme song.
- lain BOOTLEG - 2 CD, Soundtrack, 45+ tracks, limited edition. Contains ambient music from the series and a mixed-mode data and audio CD with a clock program and a game. Released by Pioneer Records (Item# ASIN: B00005FXU7). It is ironically, often confused with the Sonmay bootleg of itself, which is 1 CD, 45 tracks, some with shorter lengths than the original.
Serial Experiments Lain was released for Playstation on November 26 1998 by Pioneer LDC. The game has no classification and some argue that it isn't a game at all. Throughout the game, with the assistance of Lain, you unlock pieces of Lain's therapy sessions and journals to discover what happened to her. The gameplay consists of travelling through layers of an operating system collecting audio, video and text files along with pieces of a teddy bear and other objects to assist in your search. The game follows a different series of events than the animated series. It is multimedia intense, entirely in Japanese and very difficult to understand without knowledge of the language.
LainOS, an open source operating system project, was created as an homage to the operating system of Lain's Navi in the series.
References made by the series
- The 1945 paper As We May Think by Vannevar Bush
- 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness by Timothy Leary
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Apple Computer
- BeOS
- Douglas Engelbart
- ELF band
- The Illuminati
- The Knights of the Lambda Calculus
- John C. Lilly
- Majestic 12
- Project Xanadu
- Douglas Rushkoff and his book Cyberia
- Simulated reality
- Schumann resonance
See also
- Artificial intelligence
- Anti-realism
- Delusion
- Dreaming
- Hallucination
- Illusion
- Infornography
- Solipsism
External link
- thought experiments lain - A fansite containing images, information, and interviews