The key to understanding Serial Experiments Lain
The key:
You might be under the impression that ‘the wired’ is the internet. That’s a functional definition, but not the best perspective with which to understand the show. A car is not the chassis alone. Lain is an androgynous girl that grows in power and influence as she develops her mind into an ego. However, we can find a much more interesting story if we look. I’ll now give you a different perspective and we’ll go back over some of these events:
Lain is the consciousness of the internet, represented symbolically as an androgynous girl, as it grows in power and influence, as it develops into an ego.
The series can be divided into three rough ‘arcs’, which I’ll arbitrarily label as:
‘The Set-Up’ (1-4), ‘The Mind-Fuck’ (5-10) and, ‘The Wrap-Up’ (11-13)
The Set Up:
It’s as it sounds. In each episode, we are given the introduction to a new character or group of characters.
WEIRD: Lain
GIRLS: Lain’s classmates
PSYCHE: The other inhabitants of Cyberia, Mika, The mother and father, Lain’s Navi
RELIGION: The Knights and the corporate ‘men in black’
By the time episode 5 rolls around, Lain has a reasonable degree of sentience, which enables the real experiments to begin.
The Mind Fuck:
Is is a mistake to think that the pacing of Serial Experiments Lain is slow. From episode 5-9 in particular, the viewer is assaulted with a barrage of contradictory information, with only brief abstract philosophical discussion given to help to make sense of their surrounding scenes. A large number of events of underestimated significance occur out of order and with great speed.
By this point the viewer is expected to have picked up on patterns that have shown themselves in the presentation of the show. Each episode starts with a title and narration by which the rest is to be interpreted. From episode 5 onwards, this idea is expounded upon.
05 DISTORTION: There are several scenes where Lain talks with images in her room. These seem like pseudo-philosophical ramblings, but each of them precedes a scene that it is designed to make sense of.
For every event there is first a prophecy. The knights have caused a traffic accident. We see the knights are involved with the alteration of Mika – a malicious package of information sent to her. It’s the knights that have made prophecies about Lain, and it’s the Knights that are trying to alter history so that the prophecies they have predicted can be fulfilled. Mika then sees Lain whispering as though Lain is guiding the traffic. In fact, she then sees Lain everywhere she looks, as though Lain is in the place of everything that could be conceived to be directed by the internet.
“The prophecy is being fulfilled, Lain.” History is a series of points that are made to connect. Lain asks who it is that connects them:
The next face shown is… Mika. That’s all we get. Just an image of Mika.
Lain is then blamed for the hacking stunt that Lain has no awareness of doing.
Mika finds herself sitting in traffic. Everything goes out of focus. She is surrounded by the Knights.
Let’s take some of these events out of order:
Alice is sitting in a café and receives a spam message on her phone. What does the spam say? ‘Fulfil the prophecy’. She deletes it.
“It’s reasonable to see the Wired as an upper layer of the real world”
Mika is sitting in a café and receives a message. What does it say? ‘Fulfil the prophecy’. Suddenly, everyone around her is deleted. The whole scene is deleted.
Mika is alone in the bathroom when the lights go out and she loses the ability to receive messages. When the lights come back on she sees a wall full of them.
Mika arrives home, distraught and shuddering. She discovers that she has been replaced by another ‘Mika’. The prophecy has been fulfilled.
The Knights shut down one Mika with something similar to a DDOSS attack and had some involvement with her replacement. We watch as Lain forgets about the old Mika, erasing her from existence. Mika is phones.
06: KIDS
We see children worshipping Lain. This is confusing to teenagers and adults. They don’t understand. Children see the internet as the fount of all knowledge and power. Are they wrong to worship it?
The ‘KIDS’ experiment is a substitute or dummy variable that represents the danger of dangerous information being leaked online. For example: how to make nuclear warheads, or some variation of ‘The Anarchist’s Cookbook’, or arguably even certain kinds of religious instruction.
The Knights have apparently managed to plant a parasite bomb in Lain’s system. We do not know whether the new Mika was involved. That it is called a parasite bomb suggests that she was.
07: SOCIETY
“Some say that the Wired doesn’t have political borders like the real world. But there are far too many nonsense-spouting anarchists or idiots who think that pranks are a revolution.
But the Knights don’t seem to be either of those.”
“Knights…”
“I don’t know how much of what you do is intentional. Your presence in the Wired is highly unnatural. And the Knights seem to have a special interest in you.”
“I… I don’t… I don’t understand what you’re…”
“The Knights… You’ve been in direct contact with them at some point.”
“But I… I don’t…”
“At any rate, it looks like they want to use you for something. We believe that is something that must be prevented, no matter the cost.”
“Iwakura Lain, are you and the Lain of the Wired one and the same?
Who are you?”
“I… I’m…”
“Are your parents your real parents?”
“Huh?”
“Is your sister your real sister?”
“W-What are you saying? O-of course they are…”
This continues into a full blown interrogation. Lain apparently has no answers regarding the birthdays or birthplaces of any of her family members or even herself.
“I… What does it matter? It…”
“You don’t know? You don’t know anything?
Are you okay? You don’t know anything.”
At this moment Lain’s disposition entirely changes, going from being distraught to a haughty and pointed demeanour.
“Shut up, damn it… Who cares about that crap? Like any of it matters…”
“You’re Lain of the Wired?”
“So what if I am?”
“If you’re here without a device, you know that the border between the real world and the Wired is starting to crumble, don’t you?”
“So?”
“We believe that to be dangerous.”
“Sounds interesting.”
The battle to control the internet is one currently being waged between religious groups and corporations, a battle between spreading a global message and controlling other messages, a sort of battle between God and Money, if you like. If the internet’s consciousness is an amalgamation of conflicting ideas, and it was being represented as a person, it would take the form of someone with several different personalities. The Knights seek to imitate Lain and use that imitation for establishing power over the truth. The corporation seeks to control Lain as a machine, for profit, another form of power.
08: RUMOURS
Lain sees Lain sitting on a bed and grinning at her.
“Who are you? You’re not me. I’d never do what you do.”
“I…”
“Stop it! Why are you acting like the part of me that I hate?
The other Lain’s laughter drives Lain to anger: she clasps her hands around the laughing Lain’s throat.
“You…”
“I’m committing suicide!”
“Why? Why are you warm?
Why do I have to feel your body heat?”
“Hey, I’m Lain, aren’t I?”
“No!” The flesh and blood Lain cries out the exclamation.
The ride of symbolism goes on. Lain finds herself surrounded by ‘dummy-Lains’. These represent the collective individual perceptions of Lain. Lain expresses her confusion and The ‘God’ of the wired responds:
“What are these things?”
“They’re all you. I said that you’ve always existed in the Wired, didn’t I?
You’re the same as me. You’re omnipresent in the Wired. Wherever anyone is, wherever they go, you have always been there. You’ve watched what they didn’t want others to see.
You’ve told everyone about it, that’s all.
It was the right thing to do. The Wired’s information should be shared, shouldn’t it?”
“Everything you say is a lie.”
“Why is that?”
“Arisu and the others said that they saw me in the Wired when I wasn’t there.
As long as I’m aware of myself, my true self is inside me! You’re telling me that these dupes are me? What a load of garbage! I…
If I’m really what you say I am, then…”
“Then what, Lain?”
“Their memories of being seen by Lain… I could delete that information!”
“That’s true. Give it a try. You were born with that kind of power.”
Lain discovers that when such an action is performed, the person her friends know as Lain is no longer her. It’s some other Lain.
“That’s right! Lain is Lain, and I’m me.”
At this point the assumption is that Lain is able to rewrite history to suit her own purposes, and in this we see her first attempt at doing so. This idea is then expounded upon.
09: PROTOCOL
The knights think that they can kill Lain and construct a new one in her place.
The book of revelation states that an antichrist will arise: “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
Episode 9 of Serial Experiments Lain begins with narration that we can use to frame the rest of the information presented in not just this episode, but the entire final arc of the series. Sort of like a protocol. A protocol is an official procedure or system of rules that governs affairs.
If you want to be free of suffering, you should believe in God. Whether or not you believe in Him, God is always by your side.
PROTOCOL
A protocol is the accepted or established code of procedure or behaviour in a group. The definition extends further. It’s not just for any group, but for any situation. Any situation has a protocol. Even the rules by which you watch a show have a protocol. That you interpret the events inside each episode based on the title of the episode and the narration that occurs at the start of it is the protocol of watching Serial Experiments Lain.
We’re going full meta here. The protocol about protocol is that we would follow the protocol by viewing the following events in protocol through a lens focused on protocol.
And what exactly is the narration? It’s about God; It’s about a protocol of human interaction that’s in action, one used by a large chunk of the world.
The episode’s events begin with the discussion of a recent historical event. A craft of some kind crashed in a desert in New Mexico, sparking the Roswell incident.
“What it was has yet to be proven. Conjecture has become fact, and rumour has become history.”
It’s strange that the events are described as ‘yet to be proven’. The importance is of course noting that a historical narrative about the unknown events has come into being.
If you’re thinking that this episode sounds ‘anti-religion’ you couldn’t be more correct. There’s an old joke online about the internet being the place ‘religion comes to die’, and that idea is explored in protocol through the lens of debunking conspiracy theory.
Lain has rewritten her own history, deleting data that her friends knew about her from their minds. We see her back in a bear suit, regressed to childlike behaviour, slovenly musing, while her machine lays dormant. The symbolism of a bear waking from hibernation is hilarious with its subtlety: If someone glanced at that scene out of context all they would see is a bear. Lain then sees an alien.
To clarify: what we see of Lain isn’t what Lain is.
Small childlike appearance, giant head and eyes, no hair, elongated limbs.
The conspiratorial narrative about the Roswell incident involved people turning something that did happen into something that didn’t. This segues nicely into Lain’s next question:
“How could I turn something that did happen into something that didn’t?”
Lain is back in the wired, talking with the omnipresent voice: rather, she is talking to many (mostly) disembodied voices.
“I don’t know you. But you know me…”
“The flow of information doesn’t always go both ways. Since the moment of the Wired’s creation, you have been here. Here, you are free.”
“I’m trying to tell you that that’s not me!”
“I suppose.” “How long have we been here then? At the very least, we cannot have been here since this world was created.” “That has nothing to do with it! If a being is remembered, that proves that it’s part of a record!” “That’s preposterous. How old do you think this ‘Lain’ girl is? She’s still a child!”
“Let’s not worry about me now, okay? I…”
All of the ‘part beings’ immediately fade out of sight, cutting Lain off.
We’re treated to another piece of history: the origins of multimedia data storage came from the concept of ‘memory extension’. Media systems came about from the idea of increasing the data a person would have available to recall at will.
JJ spots Lain at a bar. She’s wearing a lab coat. He hands her a package that he recalls her having left behind. It’s a processor with a ‘knights’ logo.
Back in Cyberia, Lain asks the boy that told her about her psyche chip (Taro) to go out with her as he promised to do, something he doesn’t remember, but regardless agrees to. After inviting him into her room, she shows him the processor she’s been given.
“You’re with the Knights, aren’t you?”
Another interesting line from Lain:
“I don’t know whether or not there’s another me in the Wired. But there’s definitely no other me here in the real world. The other one with a body has only appeared in the club. You only need to manipulate the memories of the people there, right?”
Lain intends on removing all false depictions of her from the Wired and, in turn, from history.
“It’s almost over, isn’t it? Finally.”
“So while we still can, we should…”
Mika is struck dumb, receiving orders. She sits in blackness, on the floor, outside of the room where her parents are kissing. There is no lifelike redness to the shadows. The camera zooms out infinitely from the scene, as if being slowly dropped in to a fake black hole with no spin
We now find out that the data at JJ’s place (a.k.a. Cyberia) is able to change how the very room appears to look. Data is changing how a scene looks to the human. This is (also) a protocol.
The chip Lain had been given was a malicious one. She finds out by threatening to shove it in the kid’s mouth, analogous to how one would insert a floppy disk or USB thumbdrive into a computer.
“I-It’s non-volatile memory! It’ll overwrite existing memories!”
An interesting description of the knights comes from Taro:
“The knights are users who are fighting to make the only truth there is into a reality.”
He elaborates further:
“The truth has power because it’s the truth. And because it’s the truth, that makes it just. It’s persuasive, isn’t it? Don’t you want truth like that?”
Taro kisses Lain and gives her a physical piece of information, mouth-to-mouth.
Xanadu is the concept name of a written library of information stored and transmitted across satellites freely available at every terminal, a concept realized in hypertext.
The earth’s human population is approaching the number of neurons in the brain.
Douglas Rushkoff proposes that the consciousness of the Earth itself might be awakened when all humans on Earth become collectively networked. The network’s evolution would follow a neural model, and just as neurons within the human brain are connected by synapses, the Earth itself would become a neural network.
The information Taro gave Lain is this: if someone is trying to alter Lain’s memories to reflect one truth, what’s to say that someone hasn’t done the same to her already? Lain decides to run a check on her actual memory. We now discover Lain’s history.
Why are people filling up the internet with lies?
We now cut back to a view of Lain staring up at the camera, as a child would stare at a parent.
“There is only one truth. God.”
The omnipresent voice replies.
“Yes. Me.”
While we’re blending truth with fiction as Eiri was: Another documentary-style scene is presented to us, this time providing completely false information from the same trustworthy narrator. Not false information per se, but information that is of the world of Lain, and not of God; information that is from the show, and not from our history: Schumann Resonance can be used to wirelessly connect humans to the internet without the need for devices. Lain’s ‘father’ shows up in a picture working with Eiri
Eiri Masami is the character that is responsible for this change in the new protocol: humans are now capable of interacting with the Wired using their own minds. He was then dismissed from Tachibana General Labs and his body found on a train line a week later.
The episode ends with Lain and Eiri facing off against each other, alone on the empty street.
10: LOVE
Portions that were spoken with reverberating voices in this back and forth have been italicised, and the conversation has been split into three parts, so that it can become understandable:
L: “There is only one truth. God”
E: “Yes. Me. Isn’t that right, Lain?”
L: “You’re God?”
E: “Yes. I am God.
—
Why are you God? I don’t understand. You’re dead aren’t you? A dead human. Somebody like that can’t be God, can they?”
L: “I realized that I had no need for a body. To die is merely to abandon the flesh.”
E: “That’s… That’s just what Chisa said.”
L: “I suppose she did, at that.
I caused the protocol that governs the Wired to evolve.”
E: “Yeah. That’s what you did. But a protocol is just an agreement.”
L:”Yes, but I incorporated code that operates on a higher phase.”
E: “So?”
L: “There is compressed information mixed into the protocol.”
E: “What kind of information?”
L: “Human memories. Mine.
The thoughts, history, memories, and emotions of the man named Eiri Masami.”
E: “What does that mean?”
L: “I can live forever as an anonymous entity in the Wired, and will be able to rule it with information.”
E: “What do you think a being like that should be called?”
L: “A god.”
E: “There is no God.”
L: “Yes. Even if I were an omnipresent being and could influence others, with no one to worship me, I am no god.”
E: “But you had them. Or made them, I should say.”
—
L: “Knights.”
E: “You no longer need a body, Lain.”
L: “That’s a lie!”
With no message at the start of the show, this dialogue is what we have to work with as a basis for interpreting the events of this episode. Try reading the sectioned off middle of the conversation as though Lain and Eiri’s roles in the conversation were switched. The two messages are indistinguishable from each other at this point. To many people, the messages of many religions seem indistinguishable from each other.
For episode 10, we can take the exploration of the following proposition as one that any godlike entity would pursue: Lain thinks that she needs a body.
Lain walks into her class and walks to where her desk should be. It’s missing. No one can see her. A teacher hands a paper through her to the girl sitting behind her.
“I’m real. I’m alive. I’m here. Why is this happening? Was it something I did? I always tried to keep something like this from happening. I always tried not to say anything weird.
Can it be true? I’m not supposed to have a body?”
Lain turns to see Alice staring her down as she speaks:
“You’re not needed in the real world.”
Blood and flesh Lain walks home, dejected and isolated. It’s empty. Magazines are strewn about. Food is still in the fridge. Plants have withered and died. Lain looks into what I think is Mika’s room. Clothes and books are scattered on the floor. Mika called. No toys.
What use does Lain have of her house?
Lain sees a familiar face:
“Papa?”
“This is goodbye, Miss Lain.
You must have figured it out by now. Our work here is finished. It was only for a short time, but I know I didn’t do enough for you. You’re now free to become anything you want. No, you were free all along. I wasn’t given permission to say goodbye, but I loved you.
It’s not that I enjoyed playing house… Maybe I envied a being like you. Goodbye.”
“Wait! Don’t leave me alone!”
“Alone? You’re not alone.
If you connect to the Wired, everyone will welcome you. That’s the sort of being you were.”
Interestingly, the next time Lain talks to the Wired, the first voices that respond are female:
“Do you want to do anything, Lain?” “This is your world, Lain.”
“Who are the Knights? They’re the ones who made the fake me, right?”
“I’m not sure.” “No, it’s possible. They say you can trace the origin of the Knights of the Eastern Calculus back to the Knights Templar. They’ve used that invisible human network, the collective unconsciousness, since long before the Wired was born.” “What do you want to do, Lain?”
“Knights… Who are the Knights?”
“You really want to know, don’t you, Lain?”
“The Wired’s God is a god because He has worshipers.”
Taro and friends are at Cyberia; the place is dead. They discover that the Knights have been doxxed. The ‘men in black’ are quick to take advantage of this and get around to what I can only presume is some insanely efficient murdering. The corporates snuff out the rebels. A corporate takeover of the internet is one in which every connected ‘neuron’ must conform to a guideline of moral standards lest they be cut off. This is what we’re seeing in this episode.
Lain is ‘back in her room with her Navi’, where the ‘men in black’ decide to pay her a visit, and we get some insight into the interests of their corporation.
“You hunted down all the Knights in the world. Our associates are now on their way to dispose of them.”
“But why?”
“The Wired can’t be allowed to be a special world. It can only be a field that functions as a sub-system reinforcing the real world.”
“But still…”
“You can’t be allowed to exist in the Wired, either. But here you are, safe and sound.
Some god or whatever must be protecting you.” “Eiri Masami’s residual thought program will eventually be disinfected from the Wired. Our client is working on a total rewrite of the Protocol Seven code. We have no need for gods.” “Right. Not in the Wired or in the real world.”
The only people who would work to remove all higher powers are those wishing to be the higher powers. Freedom of speech eventually fades from all areas of the internet with significant popularity, like a mind trying to organise its thoughts.
Karl once again insists on getting an extra word in, this time before he leaves the room where Lain is:
“We still haven’t figured out what you are. But I love you. Love certainly is a strange emotion, isn’t it?”
The episode ends where is begins. We’re back to Lain and Eiri, and there’s now a harsh breeze.
“What will you do?”
“Well, let me think…”
“You don’t have anyone to pray to you now.”
“I can’t be a god, then. But I haven’t lost all of them. If only one believer remains, I can still be a god.”
“Who?”
“Come now… You, Lain.
It’s because of me that you can stay yourself. You were originally born in the Wired.The legend of the Wired. The heroine of the Wired’s fairy tales.”
“Liar.”
“The real world’s Iwakura Lain is merely a hologram of her. A homunculus of artificial ribosomes. You never had a body to begin with.”
“That’s a lie.”
“A fake family. Fake friends. Yes, it was all a lie.”
“That’s a lie.
That’s all a lie…”
“Poor Lain… She’s all alone. But I’m here. The man who loves you is here. You should be able to love me, the man who sent you to this world… I am your creator. Love me. All right, Lain?”
“The other…
The other me, she’s…”
“That isn’t another you. It’s the real you.”
“Like it matters!”
Eiri is thrust away from Lain. Wires overhead become severed and flail around. The ground beneath Lain’s feet has cracked as though a lightning bolt struck it. Lain is frozen still.
The point at which someone breaks from the perception their creators hold of them and ceases to function as expected is something common to puberty. It’s part of the process of being a teenager. Breaking away from norms and reconstructing yourself is part of growing up. The final episodes are the episodes which follow Lain reaching a state of maturity and self-awareness. This is represented in the final episode by her existing as two minds in equilibrium, as two Lains hold a dialogue and attempt to balance out thoughts; Lain finally has one last revolution, in which she reaches a state of coherency in thought by which her actions can be morally guided, and from this springs forth Love for everyone, including her creator.