27 Years Ago, This 90%-Rated Anime Turned the Cyberpunk Sci-Fi Genre on Its Head
This is a unique attempt to understand and explain the phenomenon of the Internet and the digital world that draws viewers into its hopeless and unsettling atmosphere.
Serial Experiments Lain is a mystery anime with a dark cyberpunk atmosphere. Considered by many to be a masterpiece of the genre, the series immerses the viewer in a dizzying world of mystery, intrigue, and disturbing questions about the nature of reality.
Such a strange work risked being misunderstood. Fortunately, this did not happen. Lane became famous and loved all over the world, and the title itself, along with the legendary Evangelion, became a standard of philosophical and psychological anime.
What Is Serial Experiments Lain About?
The story begins with a tragic event – the suicide of one of the students. Afterwards, her classmates start receiving strange messages from the deceased friend, inviting them to join her in a new virtual world she calls The Wired.
The quiet and withdrawn Lain Iwakura also receives such a message. Despite her dislike of computers, she decides to explore this mysterious network, and from that moment on, her life changes dramatically.
Serial Experiments Lain Is a Philosophical Attempt to Explain the Digital World
The cult work was released in 1998, when the Internet was already advancing in leaps and bounds, but at the same time it was a new, still poorly understood and somewhat mysterious phenomenon.
In fact, Serial Experiments Lain is a unique attempt to understand the philosophy of the Internet space, the global network, the border between the digital and material worlds.
Even Almost 30 Years Later, the Title Is Still Relevant
Experiments Lain has a plot that slowly evolves, but it is more about ideas and concepts. These big ideas revolve around concepts like the collective unconscious and how the Internet can be a reflection of that notion.
Despite the fact that the anime was made in 1998, the omnipresence of the Internet and the power of The Wired is eerily accurate, especially in relation to our modern reality. In the anime, The Wired is treated almost as a world unto itself, one that parallels the real one.
Serial Experiments Lain Is an Unsettling and Uncomfortable Work
Serial Experiments Lain was written by Chiaki Konaka, a visionary who played a pivotal role in shaping Japanese horror throughout the 1990s. Without his influence, the genre might have taken an entirely different path.
The series also stands out with its unsettling arsenal – an enigmatic, psychedelic narrative, a deeply subjective perspective, and an overwhelming sense of urban delirium. Gradually yet relentlessly, it pulls the viewer into a world eerily similar to our own, yet distorted in subtle ways, cultivating an inescapable atmosphere of unease.
