10:04 I don't agree with this part. She isn't particularly demanding going into the series; just look at her room at the start. It's just a mattress laying on the floor with some stuffed animals and a children's computer. She's not a girl who wants much, right up until she finds something she's passionate about, so of course her dad would want to indulge her. Her peers at school were even making fun of her because she wasn't engaging with the Wired to the level that they were. There's very little that makes her smile, which is more of a catastrophe from within than something that makes her "kind of a shitty person." She offers very little for other people because what is she supposed to do? She's a gloomy middle school girl who has a hard time reading her own desires, let alone fulfilling the desires of others. She COULD go places with her peers as a way of showing that he cares, an invite which is consumed by her brand new obsession with the Wired, but wanting to interact with a new toy doesn't make someone a bad person. When she DOES rewrite things to negate her responsibilities, the thing that she regrets is hurting Alice, so it's not like she's just being selfish there, either. The case is better made with Taro, though even then, Taro makes it clear that he WANTS the relationship to be business, as one of his first statements is that information isn't free, then he makes it more or less clear what he could want from her, before she goes on to actually do the things he asks for. The very best case of her giving little is probably with Professor Hodgeson, where he might've died after Lain's little interrogation. She was sort of on the war path by then, and she didn't really really didn't hold anything over on him aside from just having her company, but she did exhaust the obviously very frail old man. In any case, her overall anhedonia is at the basis of why she might be seen as a bad person in her interactions. She doesn't go out of her way to do favors, though in life, most people only do favors in proportion to how many people they have well-forged relationships with, of which Lain has very few. She hasn't really bonded with many people, and it keeps her apathetic to the wishes of others, wishes that haven't been made clear to her in the first place. She gives little but has little to give, if only because she's just a child. She takes for the sake of the very very few things in life that give her joy. She even says in that talk with her father at the very end, that she loves them all, and she says it through tears. She just never knew how to express it. That doesn't inspire me to call her a shitty person. Instead, I would call her a tragedy.
yeah, I can accept "shitty person" as an objective assessment, ie, a person who's not able to connect with others is objectively missing out on much of what it means to be human, and will as a result fail to properly play emotional patty-cake with 'the others' . "Everyone's Connected" I don't accept it as a moral judgement, "shitty person" implies she's consciously choosing to be shitty, whereas she's actually simply stuck in an isolation loop, not learning to connect because she missed the first rung on that ladder prior to the start of the series, probably through no fault of her own, but even if it were 'her fault' she's a child and it's her Parents, who are "present but not present" to see that and try to help... but who are themselves likely also victims of the same situation. Lain's initial attraction to the Wired is because she hopes that this is a way to "catch up" and break out of that loop, a surrogate community to stand-in for her dysfunctional parentage. Only to be dramatically disappointed. Finally, Reset offers a chance at starting over, now with a little more experience. As for how it was perceived in the time, I have to admit I first saw it when it was new, hard to believe how old it is now ;-) Good video Tony Funk, but analysis of the series should include the very important soundtrack the OST and the cyberia version. The first words out of the series set the tone in media res... "...and you don't seem to understand" - I've wondered if that theme was written specifically for the show or it was just a lucky find, because the lyrics fit perfectly imo Can you tackle Haibane Renmei perhaps? Would be curious what you make of that :-)
The reason she deletes herself from history, is that the world would just inherently be better without her. Because her power is so big, humans would fight over it. Did you forget about the knights? the men in black? Taro and the other kids at the club? The guy affected by the wired drugs shooting up at the club? The other guy that shot a kid through the wires? None of that was Lain's direct mistakes like hurting Alice, yet are consequences of her mere existance. Had she defeated/resolved them like she did with Masami, someone else would come up to take control over protocol 7. Who's to say another legion of knights wouldn't rise up and try to break Alice's mind as they did with Mika? Who's to say this wouldn't happen again and againt ad infinitum? Lain's decision was ultimately for the best, and one of the most selfless actions in anime history, straight up. She is NOT a shitty person. Or a person, period.
I disagree that Lain is being described as an explicitly bad or manipulative person. Maybe emotionally distant? But one of the core themes of Lain is mental health (this is more clear if you play the game that was produced alongside and released around the same time as the anime). There's of course the dissociative disorders and schizophrenia that she's explicitly shown to have, but I've always interpreted Lain's responses as pretty typical of someone who's autistic. Being unsure or unable to communicate or understand the feelings of others, leading to a confused "deer in the headlights" kind of interaction with others a lot of the time. It's stuff I'm familiar with because I am also literally like that with my family. It's not a lack of emotions or emotional connection, it's just a difference in processing and displaying and understanding those emotions. Maybe the creators thought of this as a negative characterization of Lain (reflecting japanese cultural values of the time), but I think that interpretation is too flat and too ignorantly cruel for this story, which is otherwise very empathetic but very brutally honest about mental health.
@SpringteapRepanjolion her parents literally are just there to slowly manipulate and neglect her so shed get closer to the wired, her sister calls her a creep when she was standing in moving traffic, her friends treat her like shit, the knights say nice things to her so they could plant a fucking bomb in her cpu, and from her own perspective alice can't tell the difference between her and the jeering persona she hates so much. its literally no fucking wonder she acts even slightly not "normal"
mental health was definitely something the creators were extremely sympathetic towards. the ps1 lain game, which was the only other thing to come out of the multi-media lain project, shows only lain and her therapist's interactions for a majority of the runtime. her mental health definitely isnt seen as a personal fallacy in the creator's eyes. i hope youre doing better.
Very unpopular take but Lain is probably one of the most understandable and realistic teenagers I've ever seen in fiction. Even just comparing her to Evangelion characters, I have to say that I knew a lot more people who behaved similarly to her than is the case for Shinji Ikari or Asuka Soryu. Generally speaking - from the perspective of a dude who didn't interact particularly much with girls my age when I was a teenager - I find all of the girls from Serial Experiments Lain to be highly believable teenage girls. They all just act so real. And to get back to Lain herself, I can for certain say that I've gone through phases during my own teenage years in which I acted a lot like her due to dissociating with reality and whatnot. It's not a bad person trait, it's moreso a sign of being unwell.
I think it was just commentary on how something “fake” becomes “real” when people remember it. Think about it, there is no reason we should think of aliens as looking like this -> 👽 , but since people talked about it so much/remembered it, it’s now become the universal symbol for aliens. If people remember you, you exist.
You see, Lain was originally a phantom of stories, birthed in the wired. Eiri says something to the effect of “cast in the role of all the wired’s fairy-tales”. In the wired, this proto-Lain has power because her image is in so many people’s minds. This collective idea of what Lain is was copied into an artificial body by Eiri. In a similar vein, the little green alien was brought into people’s minds by the roswell incident and increased talk on the wired of the little green man intruding on people’s rooms. The exposition voice in that episode says “conjecture has become fact, and rumour has become history”. Regardless of whether there was or wasn’t an alien there, it still managed to make its way into the collective consciousness as a being that invades rooms. So when Lain, lacking the power to alter reality at this point, wanted to enter Alice’s room, she borrowed the power of a being similar to the proto-Lain. One of the two agents also says it never mattered whether or not Eiri had a body, because reality within the wired is entirely subjective to the perception of the collective consciousness. There is no causality in the wired.
@@chilbiyito >nazi you mean someone who stops lying? yes, you do. the actual actual behind all the curtains layers, when the chips are all down and can't be downer... the difference between a "good person" and a "bigot" is lies. In no conceivable reality is ritualistic cirkumzision ever a good and healthy deed. But only when you grasp this fully and don't pretend it to be good anymore, you slide into bigot territory. This can be applied to the vast amounts of talking points, but especially anything marxist, or its nom de plums like woke or progressiveness. It's full of BS that only works if peole don't go against it for the fear of punishment. And that's true too. Virtually noone is ever 'offended' at the 'offensive things' that are being censored and banned. They're afraid of getting into troubles by the sociopaths behind those movements, the ones we should regard as 'the good guys'.
"Feeling like you are incompatible with the world around you" seems very relateable to me. Like I can't begin to properly comprehend human ideas or customs. A lot if things in everyday life just seems absurd to me. Sometimes everything just seems so tiresome. Sometimes I feel like I wasn't supposed to exist at all. The only way for me to function in here is through bonds with other people. Because only happiness of those around me gives me real strength.
I don’t know if the story is meant to be interpreted from the perspective of “lain as an individual human”, as opposed to “lain as a program in a body that exists contemporaneously with the program still on the wired”. In this second perspective, she doesn’t have dissociative identity disorder, rather she’s in the process of developing a personality from nothing. Happiness, grief, anger, as the Lain of the real world experiences these emotions and makes mistakes, she grows as a person and gains responsibilities, it’s a textbook coming-of-age story in this regard. The story definitely poses the wired as a bad thing, but while Eiri has power as an explicit motive, this real-world Lain doesn’t have a motive initially. She’s just existing, before she begins to investigate Chisa out of concern for a classmate, then Phantoma when she hears about it at school, which leads to the collective psyche experiments and eventually the knights. She isn’t an explicitly moral character until the very end of her story, but she’s hardly anti-moral like Eiri.
You should play the lain video game. It's more about mental illness than the internet. But the same people made it, and thiught of lain that same way - and that's what leads me to disagree with your interpretation. I think lain is supposed to be good, in some way - she's meant to represent the world at large getting introduced to the internet, and getting to grips with it, and eventually getting ruined by it.
pov: you're watching somebody who doesn't understand severely depressed teenage girls or emotionally absent mothers try to understand Lain Iwakura. he is failing fantastically
"Just a medium of communication" Ah how the times change. Many parents would beg for the cyberspace to become real just so they could actually keep their kids off of it ;DDDD
I see lain being emboldened by the wire. I know that when my positive social connections helped my find places to relate and RESOURCES OTHERWISE NOT AVAILABLE for my mental health, I became more bold and confident. Suddenly, I wasn't just that dissociative girl who was probably going to kill herself. In the eyes of others, seeing that I had found legs to stand on, I was now, in their opinion, too proud. Too bold. Too willing to point things out. But I wasn't. The juxtaposition with what I was, which was the stepping stool to everyone around me, to what I revealed of my inner world (which was so very little) was such a shock to them. You don't need the internet to be a trash human being. In fact, a lot of the people around Lain, could be outright seen pushing Lain to engage with the wire. Literally everyone around her brought her there. One way or another. It was their obsession and bullying which started her on that path. The people in her life were not her friends. Saying they are doesn't make it true. Your video is essentially blaming an innocent at the will and wind of others, aaaaalllll others because of how delicate and lonely she was. In the real world she had no way of truly affecting her world. Chisa is someone I would imagine would have very much talked to lain as an equal. Chisa, is not very aesthetic in the way you see the other kids. I think it's kind of missing the forest for the trees from a rather hard bias to not see what is being DONE TO lain. It is in my opinion, obvious that we are following lain following chisa into the wired. There's a difference between chisa and lain. I believe from the very beginning of the anime, lain has a desire to live that cannot be fettered. Even with he misery around her. The inescapable reality of not just her home life, but the rest of her life including the wired. I have no doubt that if lain had never been pushed to the wired and the wired wasn't what it was, that lain may have just ended up a quiet broken woman like her mother. Also, how the fuck are you going to blame lain for having the goodies she has? She barely gets to have anything and then her nerd ass father with the the fucking, what, 9 monitor setup starts shoving the tech into her space. Pleased with the direction she was taking. Lain never avoided responsibility. If anything, I think she craved it. To be anything truly, to anyone else, truly. But as her self. Not as how others want her to be. The very fact that people try to tell her what they want her to be, anywhere and everywhere shows me how my own reality made my dissociation worse. The internet is not "evil". The internet is power. Power which was put into the hands of every single human being not already brought to their knees in a destitute reality of their own made completely of the sidewalk. What a lot of people don't have is ethics. A will to do what is seemingly antithetical to their own petty gains. Especially children born into an economic bubble raking in the minds of a new generation of consumers. Lain never needed the wired to be isolated. The wire never isolated Lain. The other children isolated her. Alice was not herself, a great friend either. She tried. But, she wasn't willing to do what lain needed. There is other subtext between the 2 of them that would take me on another rant. So I won't. But in the end Lain wanted to be truly "selfish" just once. What that was, was making a move that may have proved irresponsible. But it was ethical. Alice was her one almost true friend. So she gave Alice what she knew she could. Lain left that other world behind. The petty, self involved, low minded folk whom live simple lives which don't amount to much more than a turn in a cog so god money can continue their eternal reign. When I hit the truly crucial turning point in my life, I made the best choice of my life and left everything and everyone behind. I came to discover horrible things which had been perpetrated against me back then. All with my compliance through anhedonia, dissociation, and depression. But I have never been happier. I love my life. In my opinion, so does lain. Lain is the apocalypse of the old world. The light in the darkness of the new, for those caught in the nothing. Lets all love Lain
I sat through this video trying to find the words to say just about what you've said. I still don't have the words to correctly comment as both I'm still processing SEL and words are hard. But the entire argument to this video you brought is very cut and dry easy to understand to the extent I can't believe this isn't how more people see this as. In the scene where the knights were staring into her room and she eventually shattered the one knights glasses, I believe the reason she broke them was not because they were investigating necessarily, because she might of known they needed to and she needed to let them, but small guy McGee was probably looking for some Lain Mane lol. I think she was to an extent quite open but society wanted in too much. I hope you get to further prosper in both happiness and in resilience, the points you've made are smart and humble, I apologize for my lack of concrete words. Lets all love Lain!
I think this is quite a good take, but not a perfect one. For one you talk about Lain as a person, not a construct of the Wired itself. Remember, her parents and sister are nothing more than fake constructs provided by the agency, so them being discussed as "real" parents is kind of moot and maybe not exactly accurate. Lain herself as well being judged by the confines of a real person may also be a bit wrong, because again, she isn't a person. She's more of a sentient computer program given life. I don't think she's bad OR good, she's just Lain, that's that.
Great question! Mika is seen behaving as a regular older teenager at the beginning of the series, making fun of Lain by talking about her imaginary friend and whatnot. The reason we don't see much of her at the end of the series, is probably because Mika wasn't close to Lain, in fact the only character who was close to her was Arisu so the focus was always on their relationship, while Mika's narrative use was more aimed at her becoming failed collateral damage by Knights. If you think about it, Knights attacked her by separating her consciousness from her body as a way to hurt Lain but Lain was mostly unaware of this just stating that she felt Mika was acting weird. This adds more credence to the idea that Lain legitimately did not care about her family because even Knights' attack went mostly unnoticed.
Wonderful video. I watched this show for the first time a few months ago and while I overall enjoyed it, I was often confused about certain parts so this helped me to understand it better. Thank you! Edit: grammar
@@fishintheocean-i4g Hmmm this is an interesting take. I haven't really seen any thematic similarities between them but I'd be interested in knowing why you feel this way!
I will say interesting video but I definitely do not agree with "she's a shitty person" or "she doesn't care for the people around her" as a strong thesis to base an entire theory on. I urge in any future analysis to try not to moralize these things like this unless you have personal experience dealing with mental disorders that cause you to communicate in ways that may seem "blunt" or alien to others, especially if the basis of an argument is a disorder that distorts ones reality and ability to connect. To mark this as a product of Lain's selfishness just seems like it speaks to a poor understanding or something that was not dug any further beyond a cursory article glance at symptoms. If we're going to truly look at it from a lens like this, and ignore the more lore relevant points that perhaps makes this conversation moot, this is a thirteen year girl in 90s Japan with a household that doesn't seem that warm to begin with. An environment where the mother seems uninterested in anything involving her daughters, a father who only manages to enable an addiction without directly bothering to step in, and an older teenage sister who has had to put up with the exact same environment and understandably has focused her attention on her own life events. It is rather weird to point at the thirteen year old girl experiencing disassociation, say it should be handled with the same moral weight as a mother checked out with her child, and not take these things to account. Note that outside of this, the only other source of companionship is a bunch of teenage girls her age who dragged her to a night club they had no business being in, which she witnessed someone take their own life in front of her. This taking into account of the cult operating within the city and just generally how mental health is kind of brushed under the rug in the society of 90s Japan especially, the paranoia fueled by the bubble burst, occultism fascination, and fears of the 00s Apocalypse...there are so many things to take into account and explore properly that doesn't rely on quantify inferring that a freshly teenage character with no real healthy connections to speak of, with no real societal support, is shitty for being as checked out as she is. I personally believe this may not even be a factor to consider when analyzing this series, but I just wanted to express my frustration with this angle. Lain is absolutely not perfect, hence why there is a separate version of her she is directly in conflict with in the show itself. It has no need for this level of subtext to show she is flawed, especially if it runs into the issue of demonizing her mental state and illness overall. Is it possible all of these circumstances are just made up in her head? I guess, but I would call that bad storytelling and there's not tangibly there for me to consider that outside of the standard stereotypes and assumptions of stories placing importance of how mental health affects one's reality. I believe Serial Experiments:Lain is too strong of a story in execution and writing to cheapen itself like that by making everything that matters a massive delusion. Sorry if this came off as too aggressive, its just a bit frustrating when topics like this are handled in such a simplified way, as I have and continue to have personal experience in this illness. Please keep this in mind going forward.
What you're saying is that Lain reseting the world (Partially) represents the success of the main antagonist? And what do you mean by "Bad character"? Baddly written or morally bad?
These are great questions!!!! I made this video intentionally ambiguous so that people could relate their own lives and compare them to Lain's actions to determine in what ways she was being irresponsible. And no, Eiri Masami doesn't win because Lain resets the world, but rather that Lain mirrors him for choosing to absolve her actions by undoing her existence in the real world. If you think about it, all Eiri ever wanted was an escapist future where he'd become a god and escape the realities of his life. Lain became a godlike figure to similarly escape the consequences of her actions. Ultimately my argument isn't that she's evil, but that she lacks moral accountability for not facing her mistakes and dealing with the repercussions of her actions by instead wiping the slate clean and removing herself from her loved one's lives.
@@tonyfunk An interesting argument i've heard is that she ultimately is not a human, and thus that justifies her desicion of leaving her life and ultimately choosing her role as a deity.
A satisfying video essay on the themes of Lain, no that I agreed with everyone, but it compelled me in ways that many haven't. The context of era and culture was something that I hadn't thought about much, how disconnected the idea of the modern day internet was at that place and time. Thanks for making this :))
It's funny I come across this video after watching another one explaining the cultural reason why JRPGs often have you fighting God. Entertainment media in the 90s bucking back against Western influence was a wild time. I wonder if there are any recent shows that are more than escapism. All I see in the charts these days are isekais and shounen style shows...
i actually was thinking on watch that video after this one lol (at least i think it's the same one, i don't think there are more videos talking about that)
Great analisys, I re whatched lain recently and the parallels between lain and evangelion are evident, and i hope if you guys re watche you will see. And when see that laind was realised just a few years after evangelion thats makes more sense.
The Japanese producer was right about the internet and computers. We don't need them. Every information can be found in books.... We just can' talk about it with everyone from everywhere everytime.
Cap Lain is everywhere and anywhere she’s not bad, she’s Lain and Lain is Lain and Lets all love Lain (Lain is never bad) Neon Genesis is well um overrated asf (coming from a fan of both) is just over talk and just well you know.
Escapism is only bad when you have to go back to the real world and are a less competent person because of escapism. Escapism should be our final goal, human instrumentality and protocol 7 are bot good things in my eyes. Heaven is a form of escapism but it is for some reason considered a good thing. Instead of hoping for a heaven we should create our own.
The "Nah bro haha she's just like me haha I'm literally lain XD" and "Lain is a god" are terrible things to take away from the show. I really enjoyed your video. Not many bring up the series like this.
So what exaclty is the message when she simply chooses not to accept the responsability of living as a human and dealing with the consequences of her actions? For me it would've made for a much better ending and message if she had understood that living with a real body is better despite the bad things, imo this was the conclusion where the anime was arriving since the last episodes and culminating in episode 12. She felt Alice's heartbeat and realized that she was also alive, and then she defeat Eiri, which from what I gathered represented that escapist mentality. It felt like she had finally reached the conclusion that she deserves to live and she matters as an a person, but then in episode 13 the anime took a path that kinda means suicide? The idea that everyone's lives would be much better without her. It doesn't make any sense to me, since Alice's gesture and the death of Eiri had just suggested the idea that being alive is indeed better.
he wasn't wrong. 'policorre' is just marxism, and in fact, poor Japan is infested with ashkenazim from the west, and their own mixes... and on the topic of Jews, people just tune out of fear even though everyone wants out, but everyone also thinks everyone else will come for them. But they won't. But until its fought off, the decay continues.
10:04 I don't agree with this part. She isn't particularly demanding going into the series; just look at her room at the start. It's just a mattress laying on the floor with some stuffed animals and a children's computer. She's not a girl who wants much, right up until she finds something she's passionate about, so of course her dad would want to indulge her. Her peers at school were even making fun of her because she wasn't engaging with the Wired to the level that they were. There's very little that makes her smile, which is more of a catastrophe from within than something that makes her "kind of a shitty person."
She offers very little for other people because what is she supposed to do? She's a gloomy middle school girl who has a hard time reading her own desires, let alone fulfilling the desires of others. She COULD go places with her peers as a way of showing that he cares, an invite which is consumed by her brand new obsession with the Wired, but wanting to interact with a new toy doesn't make someone a bad person. When she DOES rewrite things to negate her responsibilities, the thing that she regrets is hurting Alice, so it's not like she's just being selfish there, either. The case is better made with Taro, though even then, Taro makes it clear that he WANTS the relationship to be business, as one of his first statements is that information isn't free, then he makes it more or less clear what he could want from her, before she goes on to actually do the things he asks for. The very best case of her giving little is probably with Professor Hodgeson, where he might've died after Lain's little interrogation. She was sort of on the war path by then, and she didn't really really didn't hold anything over on him aside from just having her company, but she did exhaust the obviously very frail old man.
In any case, her overall anhedonia is at the basis of why she might be seen as a bad person in her interactions. She doesn't go out of her way to do favors, though in life, most people only do favors in proportion to how many people they have well-forged relationships with, of which Lain has very few. She hasn't really bonded with many people, and it keeps her apathetic to the wishes of others, wishes that haven't been made clear to her in the first place. She gives little but has little to give, if only because she's just a child. She takes for the sake of the very very few things in life that give her joy. She even says in that talk with her father at the very end, that she loves them all, and she says it through tears. She just never knew how to express it. That doesn't inspire me to call her a shitty person. Instead, I would call her a tragedy.
yeah, I can accept "shitty person" as an objective assessment, ie, a person who's not able to connect with others is objectively missing out on much of what it means to be human, and will as a result fail to properly play emotional patty-cake with 'the others' . "Everyone's Connected" I don't accept it as a moral judgement, "shitty person" implies she's consciously choosing to be shitty, whereas she's actually simply stuck in an isolation loop, not learning to connect because she missed the first rung on that ladder prior to the start of the series, probably through no fault of her own, but even if it were 'her fault' she's a child and it's her Parents, who are "present but not present" to see that and try to help... but who are themselves likely also victims of the same situation. Lain's initial attraction to the Wired is because she hopes that this is a way to "catch up" and break out of that loop, a surrogate community to stand-in for her dysfunctional parentage. Only to be dramatically disappointed. Finally, Reset offers a chance at starting over, now with a little more experience.
As for how it was perceived in the time, I have to admit I first saw it when it was new, hard to believe how old it is now ;-)
Good video Tony Funk, but analysis of the series should include the very important soundtrack the OST and the cyberia version. The first words out of the series set the tone in media res... "...and you don't seem to understand" - I've wondered if that theme was written specifically for the show or it was just a lucky find, because the lyrics fit perfectly imo
Can you tackle Haibane Renmei perhaps? Would be curious what you make of that :-)
@@daruekellerI mean, she literally, is not a person. Her fate was decided since she was born. I see it as a tragedy.
u need a job, way too much free time(not reading allat)
@@leigh4889 bruh 😭
@@leigh4889 Well, a good amount of reading is needed for most decent jobs, so good luck when you try to get one ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The reason she deletes herself from history, is that the world would just inherently be better without her. Because her power is so big, humans would fight over it. Did you forget about the knights? the men in black? Taro and the other kids at the club? The guy affected by the wired drugs shooting up at the club? The other guy that shot a kid through the wires? None of that was Lain's direct mistakes like hurting Alice, yet are consequences of her mere existance. Had she defeated/resolved them like she did with Masami, someone else would come up to take control over protocol 7. Who's to say another legion of knights wouldn't rise up and try to break Alice's mind as they did with Mika? Who's to say this wouldn't happen again and againt ad infinitum?
Lain's decision was ultimately for the best, and one of the most selfless actions in anime history, straight up. She is NOT a shitty person. Or a person, period.
I disagree that Lain is being described as an explicitly bad or manipulative person. Maybe emotionally distant? But one of the core themes of Lain is mental health (this is more clear if you play the game that was produced alongside and released around the same time as the anime). There's of course the dissociative disorders and schizophrenia that she's explicitly shown to have, but I've always interpreted Lain's responses as pretty typical of someone who's autistic. Being unsure or unable to communicate or understand the feelings of others, leading to a confused "deer in the headlights" kind of interaction with others a lot of the time. It's stuff I'm familiar with because I am also literally like that with my family. It's not a lack of emotions or emotional connection, it's just a difference in processing and displaying and understanding those emotions. Maybe the creators thought of this as a negative characterization of Lain (reflecting japanese cultural values of the time), but I think that interpretation is too flat and too ignorantly cruel for this story, which is otherwise very empathetic but very brutally honest about mental health.
Let's all love Lain!
So is lain cold?
@SpringteapRepanjolion her parents literally are just there to slowly manipulate and neglect her so shed get closer to the wired, her sister calls her a creep when she was standing in moving traffic, her friends treat her like shit, the knights say nice things to her so they could plant a fucking bomb in her cpu, and from her own perspective alice can't tell the difference between her and the jeering persona she hates so much. its literally no fucking wonder she acts even slightly not "normal"
mental health was definitely something the creators were extremely sympathetic towards. the ps1 lain game, which was the only other thing to come out of the multi-media lain project, shows only lain and her therapist's interactions for a majority of the runtime. her mental health definitely isnt seen as a personal fallacy in the creator's eyes. i hope youre doing better.
Very unpopular take but Lain is probably one of the most understandable and realistic teenagers I've ever seen in fiction. Even just comparing her to Evangelion characters, I have to say that I knew a lot more people who behaved similarly to her than is the case for Shinji Ikari or Asuka Soryu. Generally speaking - from the perspective of a dude who didn't interact particularly much with girls my age when I was a teenager - I find all of the girls from Serial Experiments Lain to be highly believable teenage girls. They all just act so real. And to get back to Lain herself, I can for certain say that I've gone through phases during my own teenage years in which I acted a lot like her due to dissociating with reality and whatnot. It's not a bad person trait, it's moreso a sign of being unwell.
But why did she have that alien's body in that one scene?
I think it was just commentary on how something “fake” becomes “real” when people remember it. Think about it, there is no reason we should think of aliens as looking like this -> 👽 , but since people talked about it so much/remembered it, it’s now become the universal symbol for aliens. If people remember you, you exist.
You see, Lain was originally a phantom of stories, birthed in the wired. Eiri says something to the effect of “cast in the role of all the wired’s fairy-tales”. In the wired, this proto-Lain has power because her image is in so many people’s minds. This collective idea of what Lain is was copied into an artificial body by Eiri. In a similar vein, the little green alien was brought into people’s minds by the roswell incident and increased talk on the wired of the little green man intruding on people’s rooms. The exposition voice in that episode says “conjecture has become fact, and rumour has become history”. Regardless of whether there was or wasn’t an alien there, it still managed to make its way into the collective consciousness as a being that invades rooms. So when Lain, lacking the power to alter reality at this point, wanted to enter Alice’s room, she borrowed the power of a being similar to the proto-Lain.
One of the two agents also says it never mattered whether or not Eiri had a body, because reality within the wired is entirely subjective to the perception of the collective consciousness. There is no causality in the wired.
@@Scroganreminds me of that ai Microsoft did on Twitter and everyone turned it into a nazi lmao
@@chilbiyito >nazi
you mean someone who stops lying?
yes, you do.
the actual actual behind all the curtains layers, when the chips are all down and can't be downer...
the difference between a "good person" and a "bigot" is lies.
In no conceivable reality is ritualistic cirkumzision ever a good and healthy deed.
But only when you grasp this fully and don't pretend it to be good anymore, you slide into bigot territory.
This can be applied to the vast amounts of talking points, but especially anything marxist, or its nom de plums like woke or progressiveness.
It's full of BS that only works if peole don't go against it for the fear of punishment.
And that's true too. Virtually noone is ever 'offended' at the 'offensive things' that are being censored and banned.
They're afraid of getting into troubles by the sociopaths behind those movements, the ones we should regard as 'the good guys'.
Lain is not bad. Lain is Lain. Let's all love Lain ♡
In my opinion, she's autistic.
lain is bad
Seriously, how would you expect a child that never gets any emotional investment from their parents to be emotionally stable and always present?
shes just ballin
@@dero4378 she's just faded
Ok but consider this, she is my daughter now and needs a hug because she's gone through a lot and could really use it
"Feeling like you are incompatible with the world around you" seems very relateable to me. Like I can't begin to properly comprehend human ideas or customs. A lot if things in everyday life just seems absurd to me. Sometimes everything just seems so tiresome. Sometimes I feel like I wasn't supposed to exist at all. The only way for me to function in here is through bonds with other people. Because only happiness of those around me gives me real strength.
I have DID and DID is not good alter (angel) VS evil alter (devil).
It is way more complex than that...
But it was an interesting review.
Good job.
"third impact- i mean protocol seven"
I don’t know if the story is meant to be interpreted from the perspective of “lain as an individual human”, as opposed to “lain as a program in a body that exists contemporaneously with the program still on the wired”. In this second perspective, she doesn’t have dissociative identity disorder, rather she’s in the process of developing a personality from nothing. Happiness, grief, anger, as the Lain of the real world experiences these emotions and makes mistakes, she grows as a person and gains responsibilities, it’s a textbook coming-of-age story in this regard.
The story definitely poses the wired as a bad thing, but while Eiri has power as an explicit motive, this real-world Lain doesn’t have a motive initially. She’s just existing, before she begins to investigate Chisa out of concern for a classmate, then Phantoma when she hears about it at school, which leads to the collective psyche experiments and eventually the knights. She isn’t an explicitly moral character until the very end of her story, but she’s hardly anti-moral like Eiri.
You should play the lain video game. It's more about mental illness than the internet. But the same people made it, and thiught of lain that same way - and that's what leads me to disagree with your interpretation. I think lain is supposed to be good, in some way - she's meant to represent the world at large getting introduced to the internet, and getting to grips with it, and eventually getting ruined by it.
pov: you're watching somebody who doesn't understand severely depressed teenage girls or emotionally absent mothers try to understand Lain Iwakura. he is failing fantastically
Lol what
huh
Who cares if she is good or not, as long as she is ballin and faded.
Good funny 6:53 video
I can shorten this vid to a single sentence. "SEL says 'internet bad'"
"The wired is just a means of communication"
"You're wrong"
What a chad.
"Just a medium of communication" Ah how the times change. Many parents would beg for the cyberspace to become real just so they could actually keep their kids off of it ;DDDD
Right???
wdym am confused
@@Josh0639 i think he means that parents would want cyberspace to be real so to have a reason to be antagonized.
I see lain being emboldened by the wire. I know that when my positive social connections helped my find places to relate and RESOURCES OTHERWISE NOT AVAILABLE for my mental health, I became more bold and confident. Suddenly, I wasn't just that dissociative girl who was probably going to kill herself. In the eyes of others, seeing that I had found legs to stand on, I was now, in their opinion, too proud. Too bold. Too willing to point things out. But I wasn't. The juxtaposition with what I was, which was the stepping stool to everyone around me, to what I revealed of my inner world (which was so very little) was such a shock to them. You don't need the internet to be a trash human being.
In fact, a lot of the people around Lain, could be outright seen pushing Lain to engage with the wire. Literally everyone around her brought her there. One way or another. It was their obsession and bullying which started her on that path. The people in her life were not her friends. Saying they are doesn't make it true.
Your video is essentially blaming an innocent at the will and wind of others, aaaaalllll others because of how delicate and lonely she was. In the real world she had no way of truly affecting her world. Chisa is someone I would imagine would have very much talked to lain as an equal. Chisa, is not very aesthetic in the way you see the other kids. I think it's kind of missing the forest for the trees from a rather hard bias to not see what is being DONE TO lain. It is in my opinion, obvious that we are following lain following chisa into the wired.
There's a difference between chisa and lain. I believe from the very beginning of the anime, lain has a desire to live that cannot be fettered. Even with he misery around her. The inescapable reality of not just her home life, but the rest of her life including the wired. I have no doubt that if lain had never been pushed to the wired and the wired wasn't what it was, that lain may have just ended up a quiet broken woman like her mother.
Also, how the fuck are you going to blame lain for having the goodies she has? She barely gets to have anything and then her nerd ass father with the the fucking, what, 9 monitor setup starts shoving the tech into her space. Pleased with the direction she was taking. Lain never avoided responsibility. If anything, I think she craved it. To be anything truly, to anyone else, truly. But as her self. Not as how others want her to be. The very fact that people try to tell her what they want her to be, anywhere and everywhere shows me how my own reality made my dissociation worse.
The internet is not "evil". The internet is power. Power which was put into the hands of every single human being not already brought to their knees in a destitute reality of their own made completely of the sidewalk. What a lot of people don't have is ethics. A will to do what is seemingly antithetical to their own petty gains. Especially children born into an economic bubble raking in the minds of a new generation of consumers.
Lain never needed the wired to be isolated.
The wire never isolated Lain.
The other children isolated her.
Alice was not herself, a great friend either.
She tried. But, she wasn't willing to do what lain needed.
There is other subtext between the 2 of them that would take me on another rant. So I won't.
But in the end Lain wanted to be truly "selfish" just once.
What that was, was making a move that may have proved irresponsible.
But it was ethical.
Alice was her one almost true friend.
So she gave Alice what she knew she could.
Lain left that other world behind. The petty, self involved, low minded folk whom live simple lives which don't amount to much more than a turn in a cog so god money can continue their eternal reign.
When I hit the truly crucial turning point in my life, I made the best choice of my life and left everything and everyone behind. I came to discover horrible things which had been perpetrated against me back then. All with my compliance through anhedonia, dissociation, and depression. But I have never been happier. I love my life. In my opinion, so does lain.
Lain is the apocalypse of the old world. The light in the darkness of the new, for those caught in the nothing.
Lets all love Lain
I sat through this video trying to find the words to say just about what you've said.
I still don't have the words to correctly comment as both I'm still processing SEL and words are hard.
But the entire argument to this video you brought is very cut and dry easy to understand to the extent I can't believe this isn't how more people see this as.
In the scene where the knights were staring into her room and she eventually shattered the one knights glasses, I believe the reason she broke them was not because they were investigating necessarily, because she might of known they needed to and she needed to let them, but small guy McGee was probably looking for some Lain Mane lol.
I think she was to an extent quite open but society wanted in too much.
I hope you get to further prosper in both happiness and in resilience, the points you've made are smart and humble, I apologize for my lack of concrete words.
Lets all love Lain!
I think this is quite a good take, but not a perfect one. For one you talk about Lain as a person, not a construct of the Wired itself. Remember, her parents and sister are nothing more than fake constructs provided by the agency, so them being discussed as "real" parents is kind of moot and maybe not exactly accurate. Lain herself as well being judged by the confines of a real person may also be a bit wrong, because again, she isn't a person. She's more of a sentient computer program given life. I don't think she's bad OR good, she's just Lain, that's that.
Lain is everywhere.
But what about her sister? What she represents and why we barely see her after the word resets as if she gets forgotten
Great question! Mika is seen behaving as a regular older teenager at the beginning of the series, making fun of Lain by talking about her imaginary friend and whatnot. The reason we don't see much of her at the end of the series, is probably because Mika wasn't close to Lain, in fact the only character who was close to her was Arisu so the focus was always on their relationship, while Mika's narrative use was more aimed at her becoming failed collateral damage by Knights. If you think about it, Knights attacked her by separating her consciousness from her body as a way to hurt Lain but Lain was mostly unaware of this just stating that she felt Mika was acting weird. This adds more credence to the idea that Lain legitimately did not care about her family because even Knights' attack went mostly unnoticed.
@@tonyfunk sad :( she showed care for lain later in the show before they fried her brain
@@MrSoso1050 I agree, they really did her dirty. :(
Dude, she's literally in middle school 💀
Wonderful video. I watched this show for the first time a few months ago and while I overall enjoyed it, I was often confused about certain parts so this helped me to understand it better. Thank you! Edit: grammar
Glad you found it helpful!
In a nutshell Lain is a rehash to another anime that did it a lot better, Akira
@@fishintheocean-i4g Hmmm this is an interesting take. I haven't really seen any thematic similarities between them but I'd be interested in knowing why you feel this way!
@@fishintheocean-i4gI think Lain is still a pretty good show. Akira is good, but not as good.
@@ricochet8104 blasphemy!
I will say interesting video but I definitely do not agree with "she's a shitty person" or "she doesn't care for the people around her" as a strong thesis to base an entire theory on. I urge in any future analysis to try not to moralize these things like this unless you have personal experience dealing with mental disorders that cause you to communicate in ways that may seem "blunt" or alien to others, especially if the basis of an argument is a disorder that distorts ones reality and ability to connect. To mark this as a product of Lain's selfishness just seems like it speaks to a poor understanding or something that was not dug any further beyond a cursory article glance at symptoms.
If we're going to truly look at it from a lens like this, and ignore the more lore relevant points that perhaps makes this conversation moot, this is a thirteen year girl in 90s Japan with a household that doesn't seem that warm to begin with. An environment where the mother seems uninterested in anything involving her daughters, a father who only manages to enable an addiction without directly bothering to step in, and an older teenage sister who has had to put up with the exact same environment and understandably has focused her attention on her own life events. It is rather weird to point at the thirteen year old girl experiencing disassociation, say it should be handled with the same moral weight as a mother checked out with her child, and not take these things to account. Note that outside of this, the only other source of companionship is a bunch of teenage girls her age who dragged her to a night club they had no business being in, which she witnessed someone take their own life in front of her. This taking into account of the cult operating within the city and just generally how mental health is kind of brushed under the rug in the society of 90s Japan especially, the paranoia fueled by the bubble burst, occultism fascination, and fears of the 00s Apocalypse...there are so many things to take into account and explore properly that doesn't rely on quantify inferring that a freshly teenage character with no real healthy connections to speak of, with no real societal support, is shitty for being as checked out as she is.
I personally believe this may not even be a factor to consider when analyzing this series, but I just wanted to express my frustration with this angle. Lain is absolutely not perfect, hence why there is a separate version of her she is directly in conflict with in the show itself. It has no need for this level of subtext to show she is flawed, especially if it runs into the issue of demonizing her mental state and illness overall. Is it possible all of these circumstances are just made up in her head? I guess, but I would call that bad storytelling and there's not tangibly there for me to consider that outside of the standard stereotypes and assumptions of stories placing importance of how mental health affects one's reality. I believe Serial Experiments:Lain is too strong of a story in execution and writing to cheapen itself like that by making everything that matters a massive delusion.
Sorry if this came off as too aggressive, its just a bit frustrating when topics like this are handled in such a simplified way, as I have and continue to have personal experience in this illness. Please keep this in mind going forward.
What you're saying is that Lain reseting the world (Partially) represents the success of the main antagonist?
And what do you mean by "Bad character"? Baddly written or morally bad?
These are great questions!!!!
I made this video intentionally ambiguous so that people could relate their own lives and compare them to Lain's actions to determine in what ways she was being irresponsible.
And no, Eiri Masami doesn't win because Lain resets the world, but rather that Lain mirrors him for choosing to absolve her actions by undoing her existence in the real world. If you think about it, all Eiri ever wanted was an escapist future where he'd become a god and escape the realities of his life. Lain became a godlike figure to similarly escape the consequences of her actions.
Ultimately my argument isn't that she's evil, but that she lacks moral accountability for not facing her mistakes and dealing with the repercussions of her actions by instead wiping the slate clean and removing herself from her loved one's lives.
@@tonyfunk An interesting argument i've heard is that she ultimately is not a human, and thus that justifies her desicion of leaving her life and ultimately choosing her role as a deity.
@@tonyfunk so is lain cold?,or not
So basically Lain was a warning of a world subservient to the internet... and the warning was ignored...
POV: some weird mofo is calling you an awfull person for being sociophobic
A satisfying video essay on the themes of Lain, no that I agreed with everyone, but it compelled me in ways that many haven't. The context of era and culture was something that I hadn't thought about much, how disconnected the idea of the modern day internet was at that place and time. Thanks for making this :))
Third impact. ROFL Yes, that's precisely the vibe I got..
Just say Alice my God 😭😭😭
It's funny I come across this video after watching another one explaining the cultural reason why JRPGs often have you fighting God. Entertainment media in the 90s bucking back against Western influence was a wild time. I wonder if there are any recent shows that are more than escapism. All I see in the charts these days are isekais and shounen style shows...
i actually was thinking on watch that video after this one lol (at least i think it's the same one, i don't think there are more videos talking about that)
@@MLie_L Probably, it's a long but good video!
Real world is not like Arisu, that's why we need escapism
@@superioropinion7116 What is Arisu? And why do JRPGs have you fighting God?
Shounen shows can go beyond just escapism though.
You apocalypse still is improperly used as it simply mean "revealing".
7:57 how did he wrap himself, inncluding his own arms, with tape?
Great analisys, I re whatched lain recently and the parallels between lain and evangelion are evident, and i hope if you guys re watche you will see. And when see that laind was realised just a few years after evangelion thats makes more sense.
Welcome to the Wired.
The Japanese producer was right about the internet and computers. We don't need them. Every information can be found in books.... We just can' talk about it with everyone from everywhere everytime.
if you say so
I still love her tho
And you don't seem to understand
In the ps1 game lain is diagnosed with DID
The end of the world and the birth of protocol 7
she's just ballin
lain is not bad. lain is our goddess. lets all love lain!!
but shes litterally me
Awesome job
Cap Lain is everywhere and anywhere she’s not bad, she’s Lain and Lain is Lain and Lets all love Lain (Lain is never bad) Neon Genesis is well um overrated asf (coming from a fan of both) is just over talk and just well you know.
Amazing video.
Thank you!!!
This was helpful review
I really wished they continued the anime in a like a spin off series from different perspectives
DUDE THATS A GREAT IDEA
Ehh no...its good in that way they didn't
Let's all love Lain.
Escapism is only bad when you have to go back to the real world and are a less competent person because of escapism. Escapism should be our final goal, human instrumentality and protocol 7 are bot good things in my eyes. Heaven is a form of escapism but it is for some reason considered a good thing. Instead of hoping for a heaven we should create our own.
Found Gendo Ikari himself holy shit
I've never come across this explanation before, it makes sense.
Thank you!!!
информативно, спасибо
Пожалуйста!
Good video
The "Nah bro haha she's just like me haha I'm literally lain XD" and "Lain is a god" are terrible things to take away from the show.
I really enjoyed your video. Not many bring up the series like this.
So what exaclty is the message when she simply chooses not to accept the responsability of living as a human and dealing with the consequences of her actions? For me it would've made for a much better ending and message if she had understood that living with a real body is better despite the bad things, imo this was the conclusion where the anime was arriving since the last episodes and culminating in episode 12. She felt Alice's heartbeat and realized that she was also alive, and then she defeat Eiri, which from what I gathered represented that escapist mentality. It felt like she had finally reached the conclusion that she deserves to live and she matters as an a person, but then in episode 13 the anime took a path that kinda means suicide? The idea that everyone's lives would be much better without her. It doesn't make any sense to me, since Alice's gesture and the death of Eiri had just suggested the idea that being alive is indeed better.
Delete your video
she is also narcissistic
he wasn't wrong. 'policorre' is just marxism, and in fact, poor Japan is infested with ashkenazim from the west, and their own mixes... and on the topic of Jews, people just tune out of fear even though everyone wants out, but everyone also thinks everyone else will come for them.
But they won't. But until its fought off, the decay continues.
the fuck are you talking about lmao