Why Serial Experiments Lain is the Best Anime Ever

January 27, 2023

Here's my much detailed breakdown for the mind-bending show ahead of its time—

To me, Lain was already what she is at the start of the show—she was never human, she just took human form. And the Wired is not the internet, and Lain is not AI.

Lain is the collective consciousness of all mankind. She's all of us. The Wired is a higher dimensional/mental/spiritual plane manifesting in physical space, through which the collective consciousness can press itself into physical space as a human girl, to live with us.

The consequence of her pressing herself into the world was the creation of the Wired—a kind of infinite possibility space where human collective consciousness manifests its will—which she manifested in physical space through. Masami Eiri, who comprehended what it was and what she was (I'm not quite clear on whether Eiri made her take human form or if she was doing that herself... I'd have to rewatch it... but either way), used her to take control of the Wired, and with it, what power it was able to manifest in physical space as well—which got stronger the more Lain integrated herself into the physical world, and ascended the physical world accordingly into the Wired, and the more humankind connected to the Wired, which was actually two sides of the same process of mass ascension.

This is why Lain had to abandon physical form—because there was no way to maintain it and integrate fully into human existence without fully unifying human consciousness and merging the Wired with the real world. If all mankind had accepted ascension, this would have been fine... but Arisu didn't.

It's not clear what would have happened if Lain had completed the process while Arisu rejected it—either a forced integration (for how that's experienced by the individual human, see Evangelion), or a cutting off of Arisu from Lain and the rest of mankind as the collective ascended into the Wired.

Either way, she couldn't do that to Arisu. So she undid the entire process, reversing the creation of the Wired entirely and all its consequences. After this, we see her back in the "higher" realm, speaking to her "father"—God. (Not proselytizing my own beliefs, that's what the show is depicting.) She's crying because she has to leave, and he seems to understand her, saying something to the effect of "You love them, right?"

But Lain is the collective consciousness of all mankind. She is always here and has always been here. She can see us any time and we can see her any time, and always could. She never needed to exist in physical space for that.

Reflected in the end of the show, with the final scene depicting Lain expressing just that—"I'll be with you forever," or from the dub which I prefer (for this line at least), "I promise you I'll always be right here. I'm right next to you—forever."

Lain is a show about esoteric spirituality—it just managed to also say a lot about society and technology at the same time by using a technological aesthetic.

And so I give it a 9/10.

Certainly a one-time watch for me. But something that will stick with me for the longest time.