Film and Animation

Ready for more serial experiments lain? Our friend the voice-over says in Layer 08: Rumors, “Do you want to be hurt, too? Do you want your heart to feel like it’s being scraped with a rasp? If you do, don’t look away, whatever you do.” Lain meets with Taro in a computer game world where he’s killing other player characters, telling Lain that nobody knows what’s fun or why. Lain speaks to an artist making models of scantily-clad women, and they speculate on Tachibana’s R&D efforts and whether they’d do anything illegal. In particular, he mentions how Protocol 6 (essentially, IPv6 in our real world) is “reaching its throughput limit,” and that whoever can control Protocol 7 can control “the economy of the Wired,” and that there are constant sabotage efforts against it.

As we return to serial experiments lain, the voice-over for Layer 07: Society tells us, “Just between you and me, let me tell you what’s happening, what’s beginning to take place in our society without you ever even being vaguely conscious of it.” In this episode, we’re introduced to Nezumi and his rad portable computer, as well as a few of the Knights. Alice talks to Lain on the school rooftop, again about her social withdrawal. The MIBs take Lain to a Tachibana General Laboratories office; they have a discussion about the Wired and he questions Lain about her identity.

Time for another episode of serial experiments lain. The voice-over for Layer 06: Kids tells us, “If people can connect to one another, even the smallest of voices will grow loud. If people can connect to one another, even their lives will grow longer. So…” The episode proper begins with Mr. Iwakura watching Lain stare blankly into a monitor, but we then switch to Lain’s point-of-view in the Wired, where she’s having a nice chat with the Knights, though only her side of the conversation is audible. At school, Alice expresses concern that Lain is regressing to her old self, so they hang out after class. A few times in the episode we see children looking up to the sky with arms outstretched, and at one point see a figure of Lain in the sky.

Buckle up, because this is where serial experiments lain starts to get weird. Layer 05: Distortion’s voice-over says, “If you can hear it, then it’s speaking to you. If you can see it, it’s yours to have.” The first part is true enough. The episode proper begins with the disembodied voice of Eiri Masami lamenting that mankind can no longer evolve, and tells Lain that he’s “God.” Lain speaks to a series of apparitions of a doll, a mask, her mother, and her father, each of whom speculates on prophecy and the nature of the Wired. At school, Lain’s friends ask about a hack she apparently did of the city’s traffic system, but Lain has no memory of it. Mika keeps seeing the message “Fulfill the prophecy” and is replaced by a double at the end of the episode.

Time for more serial experiments lain. In Layer 04: Religion the cityscape voice-over tells us, “I don’t need parents. Humans are connected to no one, nobody at all.” Mika, Mr. Iwakura, and Alice and friends all note in this episode that Lain has changed, as she’s both livelier and more obsessed with the Wired. Lain’s classmates discuss another apparent suicide, which we learn is connected to a game called Phantoma. The MIBs show up again, but this time Lain notices them and scares them off by destroying the shorter man’s lens, seemingly telepathically. There is also another sequence of speculation on the Knights and various rumours from the Wired.

Ready for more serial experiments lain? In Layer 03: Psyche the beginning voice-over tells us “There’s a girl named Lain. You may have heard of her. She’s on the Wired.” The episode proper begins at a police station, where an officer is questioning Lain about the incident at Cyberia. He tells her that no one at her house has answered the phone, and sh isn’t sure why. When she does get home, no one is there and it seems almost too neat, like a hotel room. Alice apologises to Lain, and the next day at school the girls are talking oddly lightly about what had happened, which Alice later points out as rather strange, considering that a man killed himself right in front of them.

Let’s continue to the next episode of serial experiments lain. Layer 02: Girls begins with another invitation from a voice-over on the Tokyo cityscape, “What is it you’re so afraid of? Why don’t you take a chance some time?” We’re then introduced to the Cyberia night club, where we see a guy buying and taking a drug called Accela, about which we get our first infodump later in the episode, as well as our first glimpse of Lain of the Wired. Alice and her friends see this alternate Lain and ask the real-world Lain if it was her, but she has no idea what they’re talking about. Alice, friendly girl that she is, invites Lain to join them at Cyberia that night, which takes some prodding. We also see one of the men in black for the first time. Lain’s new Navi is delivered, and she asks her father to set it up right away. At Cyberia, the Accela addict shoots up the place, but Lain confronts him and he kills himself.

In Tokyo, Japan, at the present day and present time, a middle school student commits suicide by jumping off a building. Soon after, her classmates receive an e-mail from someone claiming to be her.

“I didn’t die,” she tells them. “I’ve merely abandoned the flesh…. Do you understand? It’s okay if you can’t right now. You will all understand soon. Everyone will. God is here.”

So begins serial experiments lain, which debuted on Japanese television on this day in 1998. I first saw the anime back in 2004 and have rewatched it many times since then; every time I revisit lain I fear that I’ll start noticing more shortcomings, that the novelty of this strange series will wear off, that it’ll be overshadowed by something else – yet, that’s never happened. I gave it another viewing to prepare for its twentieth anniversary, and I still admire it.

Those who care about spoilers should note that I’ll be discussing the endings and several plot points of both Your Name and 5 Centimetres per Second. I generally don’t care about spoilers, but will say that Your Name is more enjoyable if you don’t know whether it has a happy ending or not (and remember, Shinkai Makoto isn’t afraid of downers) or the twist partway through. If you just want a recommendation, both are worth watching, 5cm especially.

After watching The Hobbit, I thought it would be worth watching some more of Rankin/Bass’s films, and initially planned on moving on to The Return of the King next (on my own schedule, which some would call extremely slow but which I prefer to think of as simply a stately pace). At a friend’s insistence, though, I skipped ahead a bit and watched The Last Unicorn, their adaptation of Peter Beagle’s novel of the same title from 1982. Since a couple of people have expressed interest in hearing about it, I figured I’d go ahead and share a few brief thoughts on the movie here.