Summary
- Serial Experiments Lain accurately predicted the impact of technology on our daily lives, exploring the blurring lines between the real world and virtual reality.
- The anime delves into the concept of identity in a virtual sphere, where the protagonist is torn between her real self and her persona in the digital world.
- Serial Experiments Lain’s non-linear narrative structure and disorienting imagery effectively reflect the overwhelming nature of the virtual world and its impact on reality.
Serial Experiments Lain is a 13-episode anime that predicted the impact of technology on the real world long before it took over every aspect of our lives. Released in 1998, when the advent of the internet was still in its early stages and tech devices, such as computers and cellphones, were only starting to pop up, the anime already had a clear vision of the dark truth behind letting the real world gain access to a brand new, virtual reality.
The anime is centered around Lain, a lonely teenage girl who’s drawn into the Wired, a mysterious digital world, after the suicide of a girl in her class. As the lines between the Wired and Lain’s lonesome reality begin to blur, the girl is drawn into a web of conspiracies, deaths, and unreliable memories.
Serial Experiments Lain Predicted the Impact of Technology on Our Daily Lives
Though it was released in 1998, Serial Experiments Lain can feel like a portrait of modern times (as if it predicted the future): wherever these characters go, they carry their strange technological devices with them. At home, the sound of the TV can be heard in every corner. In their rooms lies a taunting new world where they can be whoever they are, with their computers acting as portals. Yet the question that the anime offers right from the start is: what if you didn’t need any of these things to connect with the much more attractive world? In the anime, a chilling conspiracy aims at blending the virtual dimension into the real world, creating a single, interconnected realm.
It’s difficult to make out what’s real and what’s not in Serial Experiments Lain, and disorientation permeates every moment of the anime. Remarkably, though, it never gets tiring: the mind-bending animation perfectly sets the mood of this surrealist tale, with dreamlike urban scenarios and visuals that are as hypnotic as they are disturbing.
Serial Experiments Lain perfectly delves into the concept of the double in a virtual sphere. Viewers get to follow Lain transcending from the physical realm to the virtual world, which takes nearly spiritual proportions here, with even a God to be worshiped in the depths of its digital layers. Lain is constantly troubled by the fear of losing her real self, though the characters she meets along the way are constantly reminding her of the brilliant persona she acquires when logged into the Wired. In real life, Lain is lonely and awkward; in the virtual world, she’s someone to be looked up to. Yet somehow, she seems to be the only person that worships her tangible life despite the darkness that envelops it.
Using Technology to Tackle Philosophical Dilemmas
A super realistic anime, Serial Experiments Lain effectively examines humanity’s growing obsession with being seen, and Lain stands as an anomaly in this decaying world. As time passes, technology increasingly enables anyone to take the stage of the internet, regardless of where they’re at or the language they speak. Serial Experiments Lain revolves around a concept that envisions every person on Earth connected by a single neural network. What seems like a mind-boggling sci-fi concept is merely a reflection of the tech age: in the world we live in now, this concept feels pretty much like an ongoing prophecy.
Whether one likes it or not, every person on Earth is available at all times. Every little piece of information about everyone is available everywhere, and the constant pressure to be part of a whole keeps every user from turning back. It’s nearly impossible to feel alive when not connected — the fear of missing out is palpable. So little in the real world is observed when everyone is constantly looking down at their phones. On the other hand, not a single detail goes unnoticed on the internet.
It’s a sad truth, but in the case of Serial Experiments Lain, it takes catastrophic proportions. The anime defends that what isn’t remembered has never happened. Ironically enough, this concept is a double-edged sword: the internet alters the truth of the world on a daily basis. With this constant flow of information, whether true or false, reality loses its meaning, and each user loses a bit of themselves. Erasure can be both salvation and doom: disconnecting is extracting oneself from existence itself.
It’s Best to Take Notes While Watching Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain embraces a non-linear narrative structure in order to faithfully illustrate a world where everything is happening at the same time. This approach is particularly interesting because it puts the viewers in Lain’s shoes, though there’s a prevailing feeling that she knows something that the audience does not. The disorientation takes over every inch of the screen, alongside blurred faces, hallucinations, and memories intertwined. In this convoluted array of unsettling imagery, the suspense is present even though the viewer doesn’t know exactly what to fear.
The anime’s unconventional structure offers no easy answers, and, in some cases, none at all. Its contemplative nature effectively translates confusing states of mind into one of the most creative, yet strange depictions of what the human subconscious looks like. In that sense, Serial Experiments Lain embraces its puzzling web of ideas as a practical allegory to the information overflow of the virtual world — an allegory way ahead of its time, given it applies both to the anime’s fictional virtual world and our own. Buy Serial Experiments Lain on AppleTV
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