Lain20th

Time for the conclusion of serial experiments lain.

Layer 13: Ego begins with blue static and Lain saying she’s confused again. Well, so are we. Rather than a voice-over we start with a recap of the last part of Layer 12. Alice doesn’t handle it so well, and we’re then shown a screen with the message, “ALL RESET” and on a second line, “Return.” Rewind!

The next few scenes show us what the different characters are up to now, after Lain presumably fixed things by undoing everything Eiri had done. Everyone is living, well, not quite happily ever after, but better. Only a couple people seem to notice that Lain isn’t there. Lain, however, is not happy. She has a conversation with a double about omnipotence and omnipresence. When Lain gets fed up with that, the image of her father appears in the sky, and they have some tea in the clouds.

We’re coming into the home stretch of serial experiments lain. In Layer 12: Landscape, the voice-over returns. “Oh, okay… So that’s how it works. I had no idea the world was this simple. I always thought the world was such a big and scary place, but once you figure it all out, it’s all so easy.” A second voice adds, “See? I told you it would be.” The episode proper opens at school, with Alice gloomily watching Lain gossip with Julie and Reika. Lain sends Alice a message saying she should just rewrite bad memories. A static-covered image of Lain takes up the screen and apparently addresses the audience directly. “People only have substance in the memories of others. That’s why there were all kinds of me’s. There weren’t a lot of me’s, I was just inside all sorts of people, that’s all.”

On to more serial experiments lain. In Layer 11: Infornography, the opening changes a bit. The title screen is made of up screens from the previous episode, and the voice-over is still missing from the cityscape. Instead, we see Lain being tied up in cables. Much of the episode is essentially a recap, going through the events of the series so far in a fast edited series of clips of previous episodes and a handful of other phrases flashing on the screen, but with the largest portion, especially near the end, focusing on Alice. Eiri then appears and tells Lain that she is, essentially, software, though Lain doesn’t like him talking about her as if she’s a machine. She then appears in the street and sees Chisa and the Cyberia shooter, who have a brief discussion about dying, and Lain finds herself holding the shooter’s gun with him telling her how to shoot herself (she doesn’t).

Back to serial experiments lain. Layer 10: Love starts with our cityscape, but no voice-over this time. Lain and Eiri have a conversation in which they speak in each other’s voices, and Eiri explains how he put his consciousness into Protocol 7. Given his power he’s arguably a god, but to truly be a god he also needs worshippers, so he made himself a cult - the Knights. At school, Lain’s desk is gone and everyone is oblivious to her presence. As she starts to wonder if maybe she doesn’t need a body after all, Alice, or rather someone speaking through Alice, confirms this. Lain goes home, but the house is eerily empty and unkempt. Her room is messy, but none of her computer equipment is there. Mr. Iwakura appears in the doorway, says his work is done because Lain must have figured things out by now, that he loved her, assures her she’s not alone because of the type of being she is and everyone she can connect to in the Wired, and leaves.

Another week, another episode of serial experiments lain. Layer 09: Protocol’s voice-over says, “If you want to be free of suffering, you should believe in God. Whether or not you believe in Him, God is always by your side.” Much of the rest of the episode consists of infodumps about topics such as Roswell, important figures in computer history, and concepts and inventions like Memex and hypertext. An alien in a striped sweater appears on Lain’s doorway. In Cyberia, JJ hands Lain an envelope that he says she dropped, but she doesn’t remember it and it’s stamped with the Knights’ logo. Lain has a “date” with Taro where she questions him about the processor from the envelope. Taro steals a kiss as he leaves.

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.