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Director: Ryutaro Nakamura
Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka
Voice Cast: Ayako Kawasumi as
Mika Iwakura; Rei Igarashi as Miho Iwakura; Ryunosuke Ohbayashi as Yasuo
Iwakura; Yoko Asada as Alice Mizuki
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
When Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) became a massive cultural supernova,
including its 1997 theatrical alternative ending End of Evangelion, there were many attempts to ride its coat tails
in terms of more adult anime. There were many attempts at an "Evangelion
Killer", mecha shows which tried to follow varying from highly regarded
work like RahXephon (2002) to
failures like Brain Powrd (1998).
The other aspect about Evangelion is
that it almost became a giant flag held aloft for more unconventional and
experimental anime television series to appear even if it never had any direct
influence. Certainly though, between the controversies surrounding some of
Evangelion's content and that, in the last half, Hideaki Anno's known personal
and mental health issues were literally leading to episodes using line
drawings, the fact Envangelion actually succeeded rather than crashed and
burned would've allowed braver work to appear more easily if other production
companies wondered if there was now a market to start creating them. Certainly experimental
OVAs and theatrical films existed, but in terms of television series before Evangelion? A question to consider, mainly
due to the difficult in watching every show that came before and after Evangelion to plot out a history, especially
as under its shadow into the modern day, there's been many odd and bold
creative works in existence even in micro-series comedies that have appeared. One
of the earliest to appear immediately after Evangelion, which can be confirmed, was the cerebral sci-fi series Serial Experiments Lain, which still
has a warm reputation in the West to this day.
Lain's story is incredibly
relevant in the 2010s, amazingly prescient on issues we are coming to terms
with about the internet and the potential existential and sociological problems
with it, all in mind that whilst the internet is briefly references, this
exists in a world where it's been replaced with the Navi instead of computers
and its own form of the internet called the "Wired". Thankfully, this
means, regardless of visual details, there's no concern of this having dated
anyway since the technology already looked alien to any world and the ideas are
of greater concern. It helps, from this, the series never tried to create an
accurate vision of the future, instead looking at the fears and concerns of
this machinery even in terms of spirituality as we follow the titular Lain, a
teenage girl stuck in perpetual childishness at first and utterly computer
illiterate until she and the girls in her class start getting texts from a
classmate who had commit suicide previously. As she becomes obsessed with the Wired,
head screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka nosedives
as she does into a world of philosophy, a potential God on the Wired
communicating to her, and some sobering and accurate predictions on concerns we
are getting to twenty plus years later from Serial Experiments Lain.
Identity theft and the obscurity
the web allows? Lain finds there's an alternative version of herself online who
is much bolder and even evil. Data security and personal information being
compromised? Said version of Lain leads to Lain herself being accused as a
peeping tom at school. Secret online groups and computer hacking? The Knights
of Eastern Calculus, eerily similar to the semi-fictional organisation of
expert Lisp and Scheme hackers called the Knights of the Lambda Calculus, a hacking
group who will even lead people to being harmed or maimed by attacking any
technology, such as traffic light systems to blurring a children's tag game
with a shooter, who want to break the barrier between the "Real"
World and the digital one. Existentialism and post-humanism? The idea some
individuals want to evolve human beings to leave their bodies and becoming permanent
consciousnesses online. Hell, throw in conspiracy theories in general too,
though the only weird detail, which is weird and the only one which dates the
series to back when the nineties run of The
X-Files was, is where the hell the cameo by a literal green alien came from
in Konaka's mind.
Lain as a series does eventually become esoteric; at first, it
skims the waters of horror so much it feels like it's going to become a permanent
resident, with literal phantoms haunting Lain even in the day and the telephone
lines bleeding. It also emphasises how good the show was aesthetically. Now,
probably the biggest surprise for me returning was that, having always been
available on DVD through MVM, the
original version was incredibly muddy in hindsight to the point it added to the
mood, leaving the experience of seeing this thirteen episode series again on a
recent restoration looking like a brand new work. Its emphasised how even on a
television budget the production took its potential restrictions as an
advantage, boldness in its natural look contrasting heightened colour and
lighting choices. Of note too, more pertinent now in comparison to each other,
the character designer is Yoshitoshi ABe,
creator of the original dōjinshi of Haibane
Renmei, adapted into a 2002 anime which also feels like it's in the shadow
of Evangelion in terms of very
creative and utterly unique animated television, a very unconventional
afterlife parable with the same muted style and slow burn pace Serial Experiments Lain has1.
Again, as I've rightly remembered
for years, the first few episodes feel like sci-fi horror, the images of
humming electrical wires and the sense of desolate streets even in ordinary
busy Japanese streets evoking what Kiyoshi
Kurosawa would later go with for Pulse
(2001). Contrast this with the night time scenes, with heavy neon green
lighting, or the increasing influence of the computer technology through the
plot, even turning into an almost bio-mechanical entity in Lain's bedroom, the
floor wet in coolant, covering the entire room where once she still had plush
toys everywhere. The world of the Wired is just as distinct and strange,
metaphor and symbolically doing its best to perfectly imaging an internet chatroom by representing gossiping
avatars by being merely lips or eyes, or how in fear of others taking her
identity, the same figures have mannequin heads of Lain on their shoulders in a
darkened room in cyberspace. In knowledge that in this world, Lain herself
practically enters the Wired beyond symbolic meaning, these literal visitations
around unique environments are as much there to get to Chiaki J. Konaka's obsession with constantly breaking reality into
pieces in most of what he writes, he both notorious and distinct in how the
literal and the metaphorical are deliberately blurred in his work even for live
action films like Evil Dead Trap 2
(1991); even for a children's show like Princess Tutu (2002) about ballet and fairy tales, when it gets to
an inter-dimensional clockwork world where the "author" of the show
exists, you can tell which episode Konaka
was writing among other script writers when it's the one with the most meta
and unconventional philosophy even if the target demographic was kids first.
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Sound is also of importance, and not just for the inspired choice of a song by a British band on the opening credits, Bôa given a lasting cult reputation just from anime fans who had their song ] become an earworm, but on the emphasis too on sound design that crawls under the skin. It's completely comparable to Boogiepop Phantom (2000), another highly experimental show fromn this era, between them offering nuisance noise and electronic effects.
[Major Spoiler Warning]
As mentioned, this series is from
Konaka, an incredibly divisive
screenwriter who leads Lain to becoming difficult at points, early into the
series shattering reality when even a giant deity like Lain, to her own surprise,
appears up in the clouds for children to stare up to. Later episodes get into
even arguments about the existence of God, an entire episode on intermingling
real history of the internet and the likes of Project Xanadu with UFO conspiracy
and the introduction of "Deus", a figure (Eiri) formerly human who
has become a self proclaimed God of the Wired, and one episode (Infornography) whose first half if a
compilation of images from previous episodes, all to represent Lain downloading
an entire Navi system into her own brain, matched by a guitar riff you could
grow a mullet from. Probably the biggest factor, though, which might divide
viewers, is when Lain is shown not to merely by an ordinary character, who is
brought into these strange events, but is part of a character arch of a unique
one-off figure rediscovering her own abilities, a being (possibly through an
ESP experiment talked of halfway through) capable of going beyond the Wired to
actual God-like abilities. This is controversial as a plot point as, as shown
in the worst examples of modern franchise blockbusters in fact, it does limit
the connectability of the story from the viewer. I feel however that,
especially as the first few episodes feel random, the narrowing of the
narrative not only helps the show and but, as it focuses on specific
characters, the real virtue of the characterisation appears.
[Spoilers End]
Another thing I forgot, for all
its esoteric and eerie shenanigans, was how emotional the show eventually is.
Here I admit, for its entire cool atmosphere, and general sense of complete
strangeness, actually the real virtue turns out to be the bitter-sweet tale of
Lain trying to find happiness. Only close to Alice Mizuki, a school friend, her
isolation in the world and how attempt to grow on the Wired (literally) is
fraught with further isolation, here a tale which does anchor the entire series
with a greater meaning. All the philosophy is weighted ultimately by how as
much it connects to her too, evoked when rather than the usual opening before
the credits (a male voice over text) she opens the final episode talking
directly to us about whether she actually exists or not. All the eccentricities
are softened by how utterly emotional the show finally is within the final
scenes.
This means Serial Experiments Lain earns its pretensions. Chiaki J. Konaka is notorious for his clear hatred for conventional
linear storytelling, but there is so much about the dangers of the physical
world against the digital one which have become ever more salient. It also
makes sure the characters are of interest around Lain too. Her family, very
disconnected, are so for a reason and builds itself to one single scene of emotional
resonance; even two men in black, with cybernetic eyeglasses which stalk
outside her house, get personalities and enough humanity to why they are there
that their fate as everything turns pear shape is significant. That's
ultimately, upon returning to this show, why I still love Serial Experiments Lain.
I once, on the first viewing,
dismissed it with the same misguidedness I dismissed Boogiepop Phantom, another of these bold and innovative works from
under the shadow of Neon Genesis
Evangelion. Second time, many years later, it was the surreal and
unconventional tone, on the borderline to horror and sci-fi, completely
introspective and psychological, which won out. Now, this is in mind still but
the drama is all what's left at the end and actually touching in the end. Certainly
for me, when you start most series, you should hope for a progression where the
final episode is that you'd never expect it to end as from just the first
episode, said progression felt throughout natural or at least an escalation in
drama, emotional and/or spectracle. Certainly, with Lain this is as good as you could get with this natural
progression.
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1) It would be an utter
disservice not to mention producer Yasuyuki
Ueda, who helped put together this show knowing the risk. He produced Lain, Haibane Renmei (working with Yoshitoshi ABe a lot), and a lot of work
between the experimental to more adult, from Texhnolyze (2003) to
Hellsing Ultimate (2006), that have been pretty well regarded and even
successful.
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