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 professional based in Bangalore. I 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 about its core message that is growing only more and more relevant with each passing year: That the Wired of our world, the internet, was gaining undue influence over the real world.
This trend will only get worse the more tech companies exert their influence over it. As Frank Herbert said in Dune:
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
I hope it lets you love SEL as much as I do. Because it's impossible not to love Lain for the absolute artistic genius it is, let's all love Lain.
I recommend reading the sections in this order:
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.
However, please approach every explanation of SEL with an element of CAUTION. We need more original thinkers who can question what they believe in. so if some part of my explanation makes no sense to you, please do think for yourself and be confident in your understanding of the show.
With all that said, I hope I can explain and make you love the greatest anime ever made, Serial Experiments Lain.
Welcome to being a part of the coolest fanbase on the Internet!
P.S
There are some topics I haven't covered and possibly can't either due to their complexity or my own lack of expertise. Some of them are probably Anarchism, the influence of SF and horror, ecology, queer theory or neuro-divergence, maybe magic and alchemy? You can write to me @ edmersenne@gmail.com if you want to hit me up with discussing lain or anything else really, including possible questions and leads on anything discussed within the scope of this blog that you may be curious about, and I'll be happy to help to the best of my ability. Also, feel free to use the contents of this blog any way you like. Credit is completely unnecessary.