https://jameso2.neocities.org ◄ [RETURN]

i was eight years old when i watched Serial Experiments Lain on Teleto.
Later i would watch mai brother play the PS1 Serial Experiments Lain in our room,
instead of sleeping like we were supposed to be doing.
i remember having many dreams about it, but not what most people would think of
when they think of nightmares. It was more of an imaginary dream friendship,
becoming her friend, because it seemed to me that she had no real friends.

i grew up understanding that the game and the show were meant to tell the whole story together.
And having seen both, i never suffered the confusion that seems to have gripped portions of the internet
regarding who she is, what the story was really about, and the final ending of the story,
which is not her death...

💣◣◥◣◥◣◥ CAUTION ◣◥◣◥◣◥💣
💣◣◥◣◥◣◥ SPOILERS ◣◥◣◥◣◥💣

There is so much content in Lain,
intended to represent the info-dump that can easily happen,
when we search for some thing with our browsers.
And if those were traps, then some people definitely fell into them.
Ending up in lengthy dissertations about the Schumann resonance and transhumanist theologies.

The simple plot is this:

GOD created humanity and reality.
Humanity created the internet and virtuality.
Virtuality becomes a dangerous, godless place.
So GOD takes a random human girl,
and makes a virtual avatar of her.
The virtual girl grows into adolescence
and discovers through a series of incidents
that she is not real, but virtual.
GOD, who had played the role of her father,
reveals Him self to her and asks her how she feels about
every one else she has met...
All of the good and evil and every thing that has happened
and all she has seen,
and she admits that she loves us, breaking down into tears.
Lain becomes our virtual angel, watching over us here,
in the wired.

That is it.
That is the plot.

All of the layers full of mystery and strange ramblings,
all of that data about the creation of the internet,
all of the transhumanist philosophizing,
the moment when an extraterrestrial Zeta Reticulan (aka. a Gray)
shows up at Lain's room, wearing a Freddy Krueger T-shirt,
the copycat Lains, the porn site she visits, the so-called Knights hacking group...
it is all a mixing of situations, things she sees online,
and the people who become aware of her, and how they perceive her.
Some people fall in love with her,
Some people worship her,
The Knights believe her to be some super hacker and they set out to find her.
The Tachibana Corporation believe her to be a child prodigy,
The computer genius who translated his consciousness into the wired
believes that Lain should be his possession, and he tries to control her,
only for her to literally tear him OUT of the wired and destroy him,
when he makes Arisu afraid.

There is a scene at the school, when seeming ghosts appear in the hall,
and one of them walks through her as she stands, frozen, not knowing what to do.
Those ghosts were no more or less than human souls, not dead, but living people.
It is Lain her self that is not "real"... and... watching the opening of every episode,
when reality seems to freeze.. the bird frozen in the sky...
but Lain walks away... is foreshadowing the final reveal.
Our Lain is the virtual Lain. Not the real Lain.
Later in the show, Lain does meet her real incarnation,
and that Lain is a very typical, healthy, somewhat rude and popular girl.
And our Lain, unable to understand what she is seeing, thinking the real Lain is
some sort of doppelganger, tries to strangle her.
But the real Lain only laughs, and thinks the whole situation is comical.

Lain is not hard to understand.
Lain is a wonderful, deeply heart touching story.
People seem to focus on certain aspects of it,
like this wonderful video, talking about the PS1 game
and its depictions of mental illness...

<except when you watch the show it is not mental illness>
Or any one of the many other writings and videos online about Lain,
each one seeming to look from only one direction, seeking to make Lain
fit like a peg into the hole they set out to put it in.
How spirits of the dead live on here, in this virtual space,
their writing and their videos just waiting for us to find them
and hear their voices, watch them living their lives
even though they actually died, perhaps years ago...
How technology connects many of us with the world,
but how those who seek to manipulate us,
spread disinformation into the wired daily...
Dueling philosophies, each here seeking converts
to join their secular paradigm perversions of reality...
Lain shows us examples of these things.
and in that sense she provides us with warnings,
object lessons for us, if we want to accept them.
And...
to be blunt, we NEED Lain.
We NEED an angel, watching over us here
because virtual monsters cause us very real harm.
To our hearts and our minds.
It is so easy to get distracted
pulled down into some politically motivated pit
where the demons wearing people clothes
tell you whom to hate and whom to love
and they want you to think their fascist nationalism is patriotic
and their white supremacy is the true Christianity...

Or, since Serial Experiments Lain is really just a show /game /manga...
If we cannot have an angel,
then we need to take care of our selves here,
and each other.

And Lain can still show us how.