Introduction

Full disclosure: I'm writing this review this BEFORE I go do a deep dive into youtube to see if anyone can break down the deeper meaning of what I just watched. If anything good turns up from those efforts, I'll add it to the review.

Serial Experiments Lain was not on my radar. At all. I only started watching it because a friend kinda pushed me into it. You can't expect people to watch your recommendations if you're not willing to return the favor. That's just fair.

I ended up watching dubbed, and, without having heard the original Japanese, I think dubbed is unquestionably the way to go this time around.

With no prior knowledge, I had basically expectations going in. I got the sense it was about computers and more specifically the internet from a brief skim of a synopsis. I thought it was maybe a cautionary tale for the computer age like what Mazes and Monsters was for Dungeons and Dragons. (It was not that)

What it's like to watch Serial Experiments Lain

(Because this show needs a special section so you know what it asks of you before you get into it)

The first thing I noticed about Lain is how deafiningly quiet it is. There's disturbingly little in the way of a soundtrack (unless you want count the electric hum of power lines and computer monitors), and it's not an action packed series either. 90% of this series is the writing. You have to be paying attention, and whether it's because of the ADD era we live in or the qualities of the show itself, for me it was not be easy to make that commitment.

Serial Experiments Lain is not second screen viewing. It demands your full attention. And to that end, the dub helps. It's well made, and seems faithful. The show is so taxing to watch and and being able to offload the burden of your concentration to two senses instead of just one is an essential advantage.

Story

It feels... unhelpful to try and explain the story. Lain is an ordinary girl. She goes to school. She's awkward with her classmates. Two things seem to happen to set off the plot:

1. A classmate commits suicide and then starts emailing all the girls in her class
2. She starts getting into computers, and especially "The Wired" (aka, the super internet of the world)

What happens from there... it doesn't really follow naturally, but these are the the first weird thing that seems to happen in the show (although not necesarrily the story) and the inciting incident of the main character respectively.

In terms of theming, it's less about "are computers and the internet good or bad" and more about "what does it mean philosophically for a the human race when the internet Wired is giving us nigh infinite knkowledge, nigh infinite control, and nigh infinite presence around the world for its most masterful users.

It doesn't feel like questions of morality and public health are being raised so much as speculation on the nature of huanity and its futre as we continue to develop and welcome new technology into our lives. It seems like it might be very... Newtype-ish.

...maybe. I just don't know. It's a difficult show. I watched the whole thing, but I suspect it'll take at least two viewings (probably more) and a lot of homework to truly grok what it's trying to say.

Characters

It's hard to talk about characters. Even with Lain herself, I'm not 100% on what her deal is or how to describe her personality. Outwardly she presents as a meek girl, withdrawn and awkward among her friends, but the show is quick to hint that there is more going on with her than there appears. The show is also very slow in showing the audience even a hint of the depths of her character beneath the surface she presents to the wider world.

Outside of Lain, I could spotlight a number of other recurring characters (her friends at school, her family, the denizens of the net, a shadowy government agency, the "Knights", God), but for all of them there is simultaneously too much and not enough to say, and very likely spoilers.

Lain is the most important as she serves as the window into the world, but that window is distorted and muddied. All the audience can do look through it as hard as they can and pick up as much as they can.

In Conclusion

I could list off 100 weird things that happened in the show (many of which are never addressed iirc), but that would serve little. I can't guarantee a satisfying experience for anybody, and so I wouldn't want to spoil anything more than I already have. Watch at your own peril.

And for the record, not that it matters with all the baggage the series has (and how little they attempt to show interesting or action packed visuals), but it looks really good for it's age. Not in terms of being a work of animation art like the OVAs of the 80s, but just that this 1998 series looks like a series from the early aught's.