Serial Experiments Lain

シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン

06/07/1998 8.1 0 R

Synopsis

Lain Iwakura, an awkward and introverted fourteen-year-old, is one of the many girls from her school to receive a disturbing email from her classmate Chisa Yomoda, who recently committed suicide. Lain, who has neither the desire nor the experience to handle basic technology, opens the email and is led straight into the Wired, a virtual world of communication networks similar to the internet. Lain's life is turned upside down as she encounters cryptic mysteries one after another. Strange men called the Men in Black begin to appear wherever she goes, asking her questions and knowing more about her than she knows about herself. With the boundaries between reality and cyberspace rapidly blurring, Lain is plunged into surreal and bizarre events where identity, consciousness, and perception take on new meanings. Written by Chiaki J. Konaka, Serial Experiments Lain is a psychological avant-garde mystery series that follows Lain as she makes crucial choices affecting both the real world and the Wired, closing one world and opening another.

Background

Serial Experiments Lain won the Excellence Prize in the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival. It has been subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds such as the Asian Horror Encyclopedia and The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation by the American Philosophical Society.