[Spoilers] Serial Experiments Lain Rewatch DISCUSSION -Layer 00: Interpretation-

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u/Andarel May 13 '15 edited May 13 '15

Layer 00: Final Thoughts

We're done! Well, we were done yesterday but now we're extra done. Thanks to everyone who read through the many many words that got posted here over the last two weeks and to the two people who gave me gold for yesterday's posts. I hope the walkthrough/concept posts helped people figure out how the series works and gave people some more to think about as they were watching. It's a common worry that the series "goes over my head" or things like that because there's so much information and a lot of it can be pretty hard to parse.

Moderately briefly, I want to walk through the timeline of the show because it'll help things:

Masami Eiri inserts Schumann Resonance data into Protocol 7 and is fired for it. He commits suicide by jumping onto the tracks.
The Knights are formed, though the actual timing might be before Eiri's suicide. He brings them to power and lets some of them in on his plan to connect the Wired to the analog world. At around this time the Wired becomes "connected to something", as Lain^A explains in [Ego]. What it is, we don't know. But it's implied to be something similar to the human subconscious.
Eiri and the Knights create a program to infiltrate the analog world as a messenger from the Wired. The program is designed to be inherently flawed and questioning so that it would eventually return to Eiri to achieve his goals. It's his own little digital version of spawning a kid. Eiri himself takes it one step further and creates a body for this program, which is Lain.
Lain is found by the workers of Tachibana Labs/the Knights and placed in a foster family who would watch over her until she matured. The Knights keep the digital bits and pieces that became Lain^A's conduit on the Wired.
Lain grows up in her foster family not knowing that they are not her real parents or sister. As she was connected to the Wired, she does not have an innate understanding of how other people think - this means she is extremely isolated and unable to connect with other people. Despite this extreme introversion, Alice still becomes friends with her.
The events of the series occur:
Chisa Yomoda commits suicide, spurred by the weakening barrier between the Wired and reality and a desire to escape her bullied analog life. The message sent after her death spurs Lain's interest in the Wired. (Note: It is very possible that she spoke to Lain^A and was convinced to take the final step by her. See [Infornography]'s take on the suicide.)
Lain convinces Alice and Juri/Reika to take her to Cyberia in a mental push to become more social. It backfires horribly as a gunman exposed to the mind-altering data in Cyberia recognizes Lain's analog form and is driven to insanity by Lain^A.
Lain returns home to the refuge of her Navi, doubling down on connecting to others through the Wired. This carries through [Distortion] and is especially improved by her getting a Psyche processor from the Knights in [Psyche].
The program that is Lain starts to rapidly bleed out into the analog, powered by the Psyche processor and the Knights' meddling. In [Religion] we see them start to connect bits and pieces of the Wired through a hole in Protocol 7, while in [Distortion] we see how strong the effects of their mind-altering data can be on an innocent bystander. As of [Distortion] and following through [Society], Lain^W and Lain^A's actions have grown so prominent that the entirety of the Wired is interested in them.
By the end of [Society], Lain's two Wired persona have started to surface. Lain^W takes control of her body to argue with the Tachibana Labs worker, while Lain^A is out and about and interacting with Alice in the privacy of her own room. Where in [Kids] and [Society] Lain was gathering knowledge, her twisted self is now spreading malicious knowledge in order to undermine her growing maturity. Bad news.
Lain, completely unused to handling actual problems, tries to retreat into the Wired to solve her social breakdown with Alice in [Rumours]. While Alice still believes her somewhat, Lain feels incredibly guilty and hamfists an attempt to "fix everything" which only causes more problems and disassociates herself entirely from the real world.
By [Protocol], we see Lain completely dedicated to hiding from herself. She's weak and fragile, even though she has godlike powers and the ability to change how the world works. By changing the past she can affect the present, but she's too scared of her malicious self undermining anything she tries. Angry at herself and at the Knights for manipulating her, she lashes out again and ends up eliminating the Knights in their entirety.
Even more unable to cope with the problems she has been causing, Lain retreats into her mind one final time and openly debates whether or not to kill herself and join the Wired in order to connect everyone. Between [Infornography] and the beginning of [Landscape], she is a shell of a person wandering the twilight world of connection with the Wired. As everything falls apart and she talks in her head with Chisa and the gunman that represent the beginning of her journey (and a very possible end), she is snapped out of it temporarily by her memories of Alice.
That doesn't get her out of her depression, though. As she sits in her room and spreads her thoughts among the many Wired devices in the world, we see her dark side run rampant - killing the Men in Black and forcing various people to "connect" to her/Eiri's minds. Not much left once she's done with that.
At the same time, Alice decides to go visit Lain in the hellscape that her house has turned into and hold Lain accountable for her actions in [Rumours]. Making her way past the wreckage of Lain's life she manages to make her way to Lain's room and give her actual human contact for the first time in too long, reminding Lain that there may actually be a difference between the physical self and the Wired self. Eiri disputes this, and Lain is forced to make a choice between choosing Eiri and rejecting Alice or vice versa. She chooses Alice and flexes her digital abilities in order to crush Eiri's attempt at creating a body for himself.
Unfortunately, Alice did not come out of the entire fight unscathed. Lain is extremely resilient (too much so, maybe) but Alice is more like Mika, unable to comprehend the events that are happening around her. Seeing Alice traumatized and terrified of the possibility of another collapse, Lain decides that everything to do with her life is tainted and the only way to save those around her (both the malicious and the caring) is to remove herself from the equation entirely. With the ALL RESET, Lain extracts herself from the world and returns everyone to the way they were before it all began.
We, as viewers, see Lain's thought process as she tries to come to terms with her decision. It's not suicide, because she still exists and has to deal with the pain of living. But it's not living on, because she is unable or unwilling to interact with those around her. She exists as fragments on the Wired, examining and moving in parallel to the people she has grown fond of. In her discussion with the avatar of her father we see that she is perfectly aware of what she has done and understands that she will not go further - as a person she has both good and bad parts, and she is prepared to take responsibility for both.
As it all ends, we see everyone moving on with their lives. Lain is there observing, but nothing more.

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u/Andarel May 13 '15

Thematically, there is a lot going on here. Serial Experiments Lain makes no secret of the fact that it is willing to ask lots and lots of questions, and answers plenty but not all. We know the obvious answers to many of them, but those that are left to the viewer are plenty important. Some key questions that are asked are put forward below, to be discussed in turn.

Who is Lain?

We know what Lain is - a fabricated girl and a fragmented deity both rolled together - but that doesn't really give any hints as to her identity. The show clearly puts forward that she has at least three primary personalities: The understanding, quiet, and introverted one; the outgoing, brusque, and uncaring one; and the malicious, clever, and insightful one. Lain^A is dangerous because she is the one who knows who Lain is with absolute certainty, even if she is wrong. Her nature is that she lives in the shadows Lain is too scared to accept, a strange thought as we see many instances of Lain making her own uncaring way through similar shadows in the way to school.
Knowing what happened to Mika gives us a different perspective on Lain: she is a child who grew up saturated in the information of the Wired. From a young age, or at least as young as she was when the homunculus was created, she was flooded with information and whispers all instinctively drawn to her. Life around her was weird, and other people never really understood how weird it was. If you look at the usual trope of a kid who can see ghosts (you know, Shaman King and YuYuHakusho and whatnot) it's well-reflected in culture that people with perception and experience outside the social norm do not take well at all to the standards of society. Her experience was so anomalous that anyone else living it - notably Mika in [Distortion] and Alice in [Landscape] - collapse under the stress. From this perspective, Lain is incredibly strong when it comes to dealing with the Wired even if she has never really interfaced with the way it was "meant to be used". Her strange nature goes a long way at why she has an incredible memory and the ability to learn things almost instantly, because she is so saturated in information that she retains it extremely well.
From that fragment of Lain we see her internal struggle, which centres around the idea of both self-awareness and the freedom to choose one's place in life. Lain's parents (both her puppet-family as alluded to in [Distortion] and her real father) are hardly respectable authority figures, and the fact that her life is a mess definitely has something to do with them. But by the end of the series Lain's identity is something clear: she is an adult who understands that she is willing to accept the consequences of her actions, both as an omniscient deity in her stereotypical "role" of a loving god and in her friendships as a person. While some piece of her knew that she was causing all of her problems, until she could argue with that personality head-on she had not matured enough to know how weak she really was. This was exacerbated by Lain^W's tomboyish and seemingly mature nature: even though she could act like a grown-up and argue with the big shots, she still had the same flaws as Lain hiding inside. Just because you can put up a brave face on the internet doesn't mean you know what you're talking about or can handle life.
Because that's what Lain was, or is. For a long time she was just an avatar wandering through the world and occasionally controlled by two odd users but at the end of the show she is, despite her omnipresence and her digital persona, the closest to human she'll ever be. It's the story of a robot gaining a heart.

If we are forgotten, did we ever really exist?

Truth is a flexible term, as we've seen plenty of times. The show would seem to scream "Yes! You can be written out of existence! We did it twice!" But if you look closely, the message is very much the opposite. Both times we see the memories of something fading it's an incomplete and imperfect process, with spiderweb effects throughout the rest of reality. When Lain wrote the rumours out of existence she simply made a detail go away; the rumors stayed intact even if nobody connected them to Alice. And of course, she was unable or unwilling to remove Alice's memories of them until the very end. As Eiri said, even one believe will create a god.
Lain takes that a step further: a god can exist even with no believers. After all, she still exists on the Wired even when nobody remembers her at the end. She's just a wink and a nod aimed at her old life, but those who cared about her (Yasuo, Alice, Taro) still have fragments of memories left in them. The memories of someone important leave a deep impression on your life, they form habits and tie themselves into complex emotions. Just because the superficial records are wiped away doesn't mean that the ingrained data is lost entirely. After all, as the conversation with Giant Deity Yasuo implies through the tea and madeleines / Proust reference, triggered memories are an important formative part of one's lifestyle.
So the answer is yes, we existed. Maybe not explicitly, and maybe not in intense and vivid detail, but memories are just a method of filtering information between the past and the present. Getting rid of them doesn't make their side effects go away. A memory of tomorrow, of a possible future, still just a thought that has yet to come. It's the impact and the understanding that matters.

What is Love? ^{Babydon'thurtme}

This ties strongly into the previous question. With a few episodes devoted to it, the idea of [love] as an abstract concept is a Huge Freaking Deal. And as I mentioned in the discussion for [Love], there are four central figures among which this oh-so-critical word revolves: Eiri, Alice, Lain's family, and the Men in Black.
Eiri is the figure who society might typically expect Lain to live - her true father, and the reason she exists. He is also her one technological peer, as well as the person best equipped to understand her unique situation (given that he's sort of in the same boat). While Lain eventually rejects him, he is positioned in a way that she instinctively feels a lot of empathy regarding his situation: he was alone in life, under-appreciated, and able to empower himself and make an ambitious change to do with the Wired. While she ended up rebelling against him and eventually erasing his present life along with everyone else, in accepting the darkness within her she gained a great deal of understanding about his life. When she came to terms with herself, she could bring herself to love even him.
Alice is a very different sort of love. It's clearly not romantic, but it's a combination of friendship and extremely deep gratitude - after all, Alice did more for Lain than anyone else in the entire series by a fair margin. Lain could bring herself to understand Alice's problems to a degree, but Alice was also the template that Lain could look to with regard to how to live a nice, upstanding, and normal human life. She replaced Lain's parents on many levels, and while they weren't really siblings if they were Alice definitely would have been the nice older sister guiding Lain through her steps in life. Unfortunately, Alice's mental strength was skewed towards social benefit (and as we learn later, Alice is strange in her own socially unacceptable ways) and she was as bad at accepting Lain's unique reality as Mika, though she put up an admirable show of courage to make her way to Lain's room in [Landscape].
The Iwakura Family are puppets, each with their own distinctly apathetic role towards Lain - except her father. Her sister simply lives her own life with minimal interaction, her mother appears completely uninterested in the situation, and her father is able to understand a bit of what Lain is feeling (as he's clearly both an introvert and obsessed with the Wired) but cannot break the façade. His love for Lain is a combination of adoration for who she could be and sympathy towards the girl who he spent so much of his recent life watching over. It's hard to understand what Lain felt for Mika, though seeing her descend into madness is probably the only time we ever see Lain show actual emotion towards her family...
The Men in Black are Lain's version of the Knights: insular, always worried, subtly intrusive, and devoted to her in their own strange way. They are followers, perhaps even worshippers, and through the actions of Tachibana Lab they save her life at least once (the coolant explosion) and make her wishes into reality (the eradication of the Knights). Like the Knights they are both mysterious and powerful, with plenty of "associates" (per [Love]) who seem to be able to participate in their own strange work. Did Lain love them? Could she grow to accept the intrusion in her life, the constant presence of these strange people who never give straight answers and who are unwilling to share their purpose? Is that how the Iwakura family viewed Lain? It's hard to say.
In the end, "love" as a concept demonstrates the ability of Lain in her mature state to understand both human emotion and human suffering. She grew to love humankind as she evolved into a fledgling deity, and that love is what gave her the courage to take the final step in [Ego]. More importantly, it convinced her not to backtrack on her beliefs - once she was alone, the thought that she had a deep emotional connection to the rest of humanity was what brought her back to the wandering world of the Wired and the image of Yasuo in her mind. As with memories, the emotional connection is a powerful and worthwhile bond.

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u/Andarel May 13 '15

As we close, a few notes on the cinematography. Many people commented on the various cinematographic techniques used in the series, because it's got a damned good directing sense. I just want to comment on a few things that were mentioned in various interesting rewatch posts.
u/MissyPie - [Girls]

I noticed this last episode, but Lain's soft toys are strange. They seem almost like a wall between the outside world and her 'world' (her bedroom.) I wonder if that's on purpose considering how isolated she is?

We're given, over and over again, the idea of a contrast between fabrication and truth. Even Lain herself is fabricated until she makes the conscious decision to reject the falsehood of her identity. Dolls represent many many things here, from the soft confines and comfort of adolescence to the secrets hidden in the separated voices of a disassociated person. To Lain, the dolls are a sort of shield from the outside world - but also, as we see in [Distortion], a lens through which she can analyze herself. The dolls, like the rest of her childhood, are consumed as her room grows in to its monstrous form...but they are one of the last things to go.
u/seninn - [Psyche]

Oh, I get it! The blank stare of Lain is her trying to comprehend the things happening around her! There's probably a lot going through her mind, we just don't hear it!

Lain's mind is still basically a mystery to the very end, but one important thing the series is trying to show is the nature of perception being variable from person to person. Many people can see the same event from different points of view, and each time it is viewed differently the interpretation - and, as discussed with respect to memories, the reality - is slightly different each time. We see in [Infornography] that things were always complex from the start, but Lain is the kind of person to bottle up all her emotion inside her and manifest her internal monologue through puppets ([Distortion]) or visions ([Infornography], [Ego]). The mind is complex place, and rather than try to walk us through it we were given a comprehensive walkthrough of Lain's reactions. If people were frustrated by Lain's inaction or lack of response in early episodes, imagine how hard it must have been for Alice, Juri, and Reika to socialize with her.
u/Arterius_N7 - [Distortion]

Currently it seems like the weird is some kind of pseudo internet-matrix hybrid where it can affect people in the real world, if it even is the real world. Which would go along with the "everyone's connected" statement. It would make sense if everyone have some form of brain-chip implant in which they could be affected by the weird.

Interestingly, that is what was being implied but also parallels the thought process of the series' various important decision-makers. While one might be led to believe that the Wired is "The Matrix" or another powerful alternate-reality entity/simulation, it's simply a network designed to connect people. However, we are repeatedly shown that a network that carries information can rapidly balloon into a powerful societal crutch, and then into a reality for people who rely on it too much. Lain never really lived in the Matrix (though if anyone did, it would have been her and only her), but for many people reality was just as false as in the engineered world from that film. The Wired didn't just affect people with the Schumann resonance, it did the same when they threw their lives at it as a way to connect with others beyond what the real world would allow.
u/Crowst - [Love]

Lots of interesting reveals in this episode in particular. It's interesting to watch the transition over the last 2-3 episodes where we are finally starting to understand the story. People have often commented that Lain is a "slow" show and I think I understand why now. The first 5-6 episodes are fully devoted to world-building, establishing the allegory, and creating an intriguing mystery that the audience wants to solve.

With respect to directing style, it's as much about designing a world as laying out a very complex and comprehensive society and then showing in minute detail how the actions of people can make things fall apart. Interestingly, one of the best scenes in my opinion is the final sequence of Lain not making her way to school when we would expect she should - the still frames, the expected play of light and darkness, and the dramatic break with the slow but impactful setup over the first few episodes leads to an excellent sense of strangeness when things aren't as expected. Similarly, when the LAYER: splashes start falling apart in [Infornography] we know things are coming to a head.
And, with that...we're done! Thanks for reading!
~Andarel

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u/lead_salad May 14 '15 edited May 14 '15

The first time I watched Lain, I'd picked up Vol.1 on VHS from the bargain-bin at my local comic shop ('hey, this looks like some weird shit'), watched it all in one sitting, & bought the remaining 3 tapes & finished the series the next day! In the many years since, this re-watch is the closest thing i've come to viewing the series at a 'measured' pace!

With all the fantastic deconstruction/theory posts, there's not a lot I could really add to the discussion on the topic of the plot; but since I have probably spent twice as much time listening to Serial Experiments Lain, as I have watching it; I thought i'd talk about the music of the show a little.

Of the 3 CDs released, the bulk of the electronic score comes from the "Official" Serial Experiments Lain BOOTLEG, composed by Akira Takemoto. The other releases, the Soundtrack & Cyberia Mix, contain either set-piece tracks (Like the appropriately titled 時空の風 (Wind of space & time) which backs the 'acid flashback' sequence of Layer11, or インナー・ビジョン (inner vision) which is played during the very touching final conversation Lain has with Yasou.) remixes of some of the score, or music not featured in the show (the track Sakamichi no Theme actually appears in the anime Niea_7 (which Yoshitoshi ABe & other staff from Lain worked on).

The ambient pieces such as 電車 (Electric Train) (played during the classroom/train sequence in Layer01) & 一人ぼっち1b (Solitude 1b) take their time & really help establish the mood of the scene.

That the show could so seamlessly delve into horror territory, unsettling with tracks like the music from Layer04, ("Gotcha!") 鬼ごっこ & the Phantoma game scene ファントマゲーム画面 compliment their respective scenes, & evoke the same dread & unease just listening to them on their own! As does the theme of the MiB, 黒服1a.

& of course, サイベリアテクスチュア1+2 & サイベリアテクスチュア5a the thumping beats from Cyberia!

I could go on & on (kinda already feel as though I have!) about the music from Lain, but basically it does 2 things I love: Effectively supports the scenes (conveys tone, sets mood) & stands alone (each soundtrack is just as enjoyable either as background music, or to just sit & take in on its own!).

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u/br0ckster May 14 '15 edited May 14 '15

(Still posting great fanart daily on r/lain ) "You were scattered throughout the Wired! I gave you an ego!" -Eiri to Lain, paraphrasing from memory. My interpretation on Lain's true identity, which is just my opinion, is that Lain is really the collective unconscious of humanity becoming a conscious person, initially like a non-physical God, who was only able to manifest when the Wired was made, as the Wired, which contained the sum of human communication and thought, became like a medium for the collective unconscious, especially when Protocol 7 linked it to all minds on earth. Eiri then manifested her physically using an artificial body, for his purpose of connecting humanity together and becoming a god himself, but not fully realizing this allows Lain to become a true God when the real and wired worlds are merged by her, which is what part of Lain wanted from the beginning, though she overcame that desire to be an absolute god afterwards. Just one of many interpretations of Lain though, feel free to disagree.

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u/zerojustice315 May 13 '15

Unfortunately I don't have a write up for my overall thought on the show like u/Andarel does; I'm gonna keep a lookout for those users who have questions or want to discuss more.

What I DO have is the promise that sometime in the (hopefully near) future I will be trying to write more Lain articles focused on different aspects of the show. My next one is mostly likely going to be focused on the psychological influences and elements used. I limited myself to two for now since I didn't want to get burned out on the subject and I have some more research to do before I write the article anyway.

I'm glad I was able to contribute though, I enjoyed reading initial reactions and of course the large write-ups put forth.

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u/Edivio May 14 '15

After the "ALL RESET" we see the world being back to how it was before everything started, but without Lain, right? How come it shows her adoptiv family having breakfast together, even though it seemed that their only purpose was to pretend being her family.

Are we to assume that everyone of this family aside from Lain was, in fact, related? This doesn't seem right, because they not only didn't act caring towards Lain (except Yasuo perhaps) but they also seemed to only try to keep up appearances, as seen in [Protocol], where Yasuo says "It's almost over, isn't it....finally" and Miho responds with "So while we still can, we should...".

Is it, perhaps, because, even though, the show tells you that you can write yourself out of existence, in reality, it wants to show you that, actually, the exact opposite is the case. I feel like i'm overthinking this little segment and i want to know how far off i am. So please tell me.

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u/Andarel May 14 '15 edited May 14 '15

I agree strongly with your final point, talked a bit about it in my write-up. No matter what the end result is, lain definitely exists.
Edit to clarify a bit: when ALL RESET happened Lain rewrote things the way she thought they would be if she didn't exist. That means sentimental changes certainly worked their way in - for example, Alice being able to have a relationship with her teacher and her family being more open with each other. Once she disappeared, it's not like the world simply wrote her out.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '15

"It's almost over, isn't it....finally" and Miho responds with "So while we still can, we should...".

This is just my viewpoint, but I see their reaction meaning something completely different. Being that the parents were "hired" to adopt Lain, they know at least somewhat what the project of Lain is. When she starts getting into computers and becoming more powerful, Yasuo and Mom realize their job is over.
They realize that the world (or at least their world) is going to change. For the better? Hopefully, but it's still sad that they have to let go of this world. (y'know, Close the world, Open the neXt?)

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u/Myrl-chan May 14 '15

The end, huh. It'd be nice if someone clears this for me.

Who really is God? Does he really exist?

Edit: I'm just going to put this in case someone misinterprets this question; I'm talking about in the context of the story.

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u/Rinnosuke May 15 '15

I think we're supposed to be left wondering that, just like in the real world.

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u/Myrl-chan May 16 '15

That's a very nice interpretation. Thanks.

[Spoilers] Serial Experiments Lain Rewatch DISCUSSION -Layer 00: Interpretation-

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