Serial Experiments Lain...
Lately, I decided to revisit Serial Experiments Lain...
Way back in the misty dawn of time, I purchased Serial Experiments Lain on subtitled VHS. Well, actually half on VHS and half on DVD.
In Serial Experiments Lain we follow the actions of our heroine, Lain, as she comes to grips with technology and an increasingly connected world and her role in this hyper-connected world. The series is moody and atmospheric for the first half and then as shadowy forces start to make themselves known, the series takes on more of a surreal and dark vibe. As events spiral out of control, the series grows very dark in the latter episodes. The ending is a bit strange, but, still satisfying.
Although Lain spends a lot of the series in a night gown, there are no naughty bits and not really any fan service. There is quite a bit of bloodshed in the series, but, the series is by no means, gory. Serial Experiments Lain is more mood than actual substance and I'll be the first to admit that the series is not for everyone, but, I enjoyed the series. That being said, you will need to suspend disbelief quite a bit in the latter half of the series. I gave Serial Experiments Lain a 4 out of 5. I ended up replacing my VHS tapes with DVDs.
I picked up three Serial Experiments Lain CDs. The Serial Experiments Lain soundtrack CD has 13 tracks and I liked 3 tracks for a total of 23% which works out to a rating of 2 out of 4. The Serial Experiments Lain Cyberia Mix CD has 12 tracks and I liked 5 tracks for a total of 41.6% which works out to a rating of 2 out of 4. The Serial Experiments Lain Bootleg CD has 45 tracks and I liked 15 tracks for a total of 33.3% which works out to a rating of 2 out of 4.
My two favorite tracks come from the Cyberia Mix CD, Professed Intention and Real Intention and duvet Cyberia ReMix. Of note, the Cyberia Mix CD came with sticker set and full page artwork. The songs on the Cyberia Mix CD are "inspired" by music from the series with a Techno/Dance Club flair.
According to Wikipedia...Volume 1
Navi
We're all Connected... There is a world around us, a world of people, tactile sensation and culture. There is a wired world, inside the computer, of images, personalities, virtual experiences, and a culture all of its own. The day after a classmate commits suicide, lain, a thirteen year-old girl, discovers how closely the two worlds are linked when she receives an e-mail from the dead girl: I just abandoned my body. I still live here... Has the line between the real world and the wired world begun to blur?
Volume 2
Knights
Who are you really? Lain delves deeper into the Wired World and is confronted by the men in dark suits. They know something about the Knights and the rash of kids who seem to be committing suicide, yet they ask Lain, 'Are those people who you live with really your parents? Are you Lain of the Wired?'
Volume 3
Deus
There are rumors that Lain is stealing people's secrets and spreading them in the wired. Her friends, including Arisu, start to leave Lain. Lain finds that her other self in the wired is the one revealing these secrets. Which is the real me? Even her parents leave Lain, telling her that they were not her real parents. Lonely Lain then encounters Masami Eiri, who calls himself God in the Wired...
Volume 4
Reset
Who am I? The question is asked over and over again throughout the noise. Lain destroys her own creator and loses her best friend, now Lain must decide what to do - should she delete herself from everyone's memory! If she does, the real world should remain exactly the same, but if no one remembers her, did Lain ever really exist?
Lain contains extensive references to Apple computers, as the brand was used at the time by most of the creative staff, such as writers, producers, and the graphical team. As an example, the title at the beginning of each episode is announced by the Apple computer speech synthesis program PlainTalk, using the voice "Whisper"... Tachibana Industries, the company that creates the NAVI computers, is a reference to Apple computers: "tachibana" means "Mandarin orange" in Japanese. NAVI is the abbreviation of Knowledge Navigator, and the HandiNAVI is based on the Apple Newton, one of the world's first PDAs. The NAVIs are seen to run "Copland OS Enterprise" (this reference to Copland was an initiative of Konaka, a declared Apple fan), and Lain's and Alice's NAVIs closely resembles the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh and the iMac respectively. The HandiNAVI programming language, as seen on the seventh episode, is a dialect of Lisp. Notice that the Newton also used a Lisp dialect (NewtonScript)...
Although Lain spends a lot of the series in a night gown, there are no naughty bits and not really any fan service. There is quite a bit of bloodshed in the series, but, the series is by no means, gory. Serial Experiments Lain is more mood than actual substance and I'll be the first to admit that the series is not for everyone, but, I enjoyed the series. That being said, you will need to suspend disbelief quite a bit in the latter half of the series. I gave Serial Experiments Lain a 4 out of 5. I ended up replacing my VHS tapes with DVDs.
I picked up three Serial Experiments Lain CDs. The Serial Experiments Lain soundtrack CD has 13 tracks and I liked 3 tracks for a total of 23% which works out to a rating of 2 out of 4. The Serial Experiments Lain Cyberia Mix CD has 12 tracks and I liked 5 tracks for a total of 41.6% which works out to a rating of 2 out of 4. The Serial Experiments Lain Bootleg CD has 45 tracks and I liked 15 tracks for a total of 33.3% which works out to a rating of 2 out of 4.
My two favorite tracks come from the Cyberia Mix CD, Professed Intention and Real Intention and duvet Cyberia ReMix. Of note, the Cyberia Mix CD came with sticker set and full page artwork. The songs on the Cyberia Mix CD are "inspired" by music from the series with a Techno/Dance Club flair.
