2023 marks the 25th anniversary of the show's broadcast.
Hey guys! I'm the creator of expLAINed ^_^ This website is dedicated to finding the complete "true answer" of serial experiments lain.
" I imagined that Mr. Konaka said that there is one true answer between the creative team".
- Yasyuki Ueda, The anime Colony interview, 2000
I am an Indian man based in the southern part of the country, who fell in love with Lain as an anime around 2 years ago, but was deeply unsatisfied with explanations of the anime on the internet.
I wrote these explanations because I was touched by the masterpiece this anime was, and explanations on the existing internet unfortunately left much to be desired.
I recommend reading the sections in this order if you just want to understand the plot and what happened:
1) The Wired explained
2) Lain explained
3) Common questions
4) The plot explained
In addition, I've included tiny summaries at the end where necessary. I close off with my personal thoughts on SEL and what exactly its relevance means in these current times. Again, deeply sorry for any spelling and grammatical errors as this analysis was done in sort of a hurry.
I could have never wrote this without all the lovely Lain fans whose opinions and interpretations have proved invaluable to my own interpretation of he show. Consider this not my creation, but the collective consciousness of the Lain community taking form, because expLAINed was only possible with the internet, our world's Wired.
P.S Feel free to use the contents of this blog any way you like. Credit is completely unnecessary!
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June 2025 update, from the writer of this website:
Hi everyone. As of late I'm planning on migrating my content to another wesbite like wordpress but am not technically adept enough to pull it off. This place is a labour of love project, so if it has brought you any joy then I hope you can help me with migration to safer alternatives. Else, I'm afraid I may have to delete it for a few years for my own safety and for those of others. Thank you.
I would also like to add that, although it's pretty clear that Konaka and Ueda's intentions are to convince the viewer to perceive America or the American government in a certain way, Lain is ultimately a story of the value of love, connection and accepting other people, and Lain goes so far as to forgive Eiri and spare his life.
Unfortunately, my experiences seem to tell me that even if America has a lot of flaws, the American people have consistently been the only ones to treat me with dignity and respect. I cannot unfortunately say the same for other people from other countries, white or "poc". This is not to say there aren't racist ones, but at least they have the willingness to talk about certain topics.
While it's debatable that American culture and the American government is a net positive to the world, the Americans as a people are far better than most others by a long, long shot, and it's more often the case than not that a country suffers because it cannot let go of reactionary ideals that hold it back. American culture isn't unfortunately the only evil culture in this world: Most are far, far worse and are apples rotten to the core. Peel back far enough, and you will guaranteed lose sympathy.
I only want to explain a certain perspective which seems obvious. If what you took away from this blog is "I hate America", I think you have completely missed the point. I don't want anything I've written to contribute to hating certain groups of people, especially not the only people who treated me with a certain baseline sense of decency.
Talking about historical contexts, thinkers, ideas and places DOES NOT equate to me necessarily agreeing with them or endorsing their views. A lot of the people whose views I've gone through with the trouble of explaining are terrible, terrible people whose "arguments" come from a deeply hateful place and who are individuals I deeply detest.
But sometimes the worst people you know have something interesting to say.
Signing off,
Ed
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