This is less of a review and moreso just me collecting my thoughts on this anime since it's been constantly stuck in my mind since finishing it in one binge session. I will try to avoid spoilers.
Serial Experiments Lain is a relatively popular anime, making its debut in the summer of 1998. It's difficult to tell someone what this anime is about without giving away massive spoilers. I believe even the AL description itself is a spoiler, though only to a mild degree. The best description I've seen so far is off IMDB, and though you've undeniably already read AL's, I strongly urge you to focus on this instead:
Strange events begin to occur as a withdrawn girl named Lain becomes obsessed with interconnected virtual realm of "The Wired".
From both my own views and what experiences I've heard others have, Lain is a type of media, anime or otherwise, that feels like you neeed to put effort into sitting down and watching it someday, months after you discover it. Without sounding like I'm rushing you to dive into it, most people really over-exaggerate its complexity, making it seem like an incomprehensible schizo series. I understood most everything watching it in one sitting, and reading the Wikipedia article filled in the few gaps in any objective understanding I lacked. Objective being a very key word, as there is plenty of themes in Lain to consider in your own personal perspectives.
- Story
The story of Serial Experiments Lain is greatly underappreciated by so many different mediums and genres. Not only did Lain normalize and set a tone for future anime within the psychological horror and sci-fi genre, I have a strong reason to believe that this is one of the most influential pieces of cyberpunk media within recent history, and I am incredibly eager to see how much of its influence is visible within Cyberpunk 2077 when it comes out.
Serial Experiments Lain is as unique as any _story _can get. This is barring any influence from general concepts and influence from sourceless and unfounded common urban legends, particularly within modern Japanese culture. The story is written with such surgical precision, as it intends to pace and control your thoughts like a string puppet throughout your viewing duration. It clearly feels like the absolute number one rule for its writing is to avoid giving the viewer a god perspective. The viewer doesn't know anything more than a fly on the wall present in every shown location of every episode would know. There's various purposeful, small gaps in the story that are left for the viewer to fill in, and the mental stimulation from doing so is like filling that one final empty space in a 300 piece puzzle you did when you were six.
Lain definitely isn't a slice of life with a very mindless and relaxed pace (not that there's anything wrong with that genre, it's actually my favorite), it is a show that makes you actively watch rather than passively. It is filled with symbolism and questions of the future of the human society. Ergo Proxy came out 8 years afterwards, and feels strongly influenced off Lain. However, I didn't really enjoy Ergo Proxy. It felt like it was going out of its way to be confusing and overly symbolic at times. Lain is multiplication and simple equations as Ergo Proxy is to college-level calculus. I understand Lain, and while I have to put some effort into thinking about how the plot fits together, I don't have to necessarily go to the teacher or the Indian tutorials on YouTube for help answering half the questions (some explanations of Ergo Proxy are dozens, even hundreds of paragraphs long for a full explanation).
The themes Serial Experiments Lain explores and the questions it brings up alone nearly makes it a masterpiece outright. Though it came out 22 years ago and was undeniably in production for at least a few years prior, it was incredibly ahead of its time.
- Characters
In short, a lot of what could be said about the story applies to the characters. The characters are unique, well-written, and heavily tied to the various themes throughout Serial Experiments Lain. Explaining the topic of characters within Lain any further, I believe, would delve into spoiler territory, so I'm going to ignore discussing the subject any further, leaving the rest for you to discover on your own.
- Art
The artstyle of Serial Experiments Lain ties perfectly into the themes, and arguably more importantly, successfully promotes exactly the overall mood the creator was shooting for. It is uniquely depressing, dreary, psychedelic, and horrific. Somewhere between a rainy day, an album of liminal spaces, and a cyberpunk version of Twin Peaks set in Kowloon. Does that make sense? Probably not, but there isn't any one word to explain this kind of style.
Aside from symbolism and whatnot, the general quality is very good. Ahead of its time, probably not enough so to be a benchmark for future works, but enough to be appreciated in its own right, even against modern anime.
- Music
Okay, I admit that the music may have been stuck in the forefront of my mind morseo than the actual story and symbolism. The opening theme is an absolute bop, and the music within the episodes themselves very well may be the best fitting music within any anime I've seen. Here's just a couple short samplers to explain with actual audio rather than my shit explanation:
Bôa - Duvet
- Final Thoughts
To keep something brief out of this review, there's so much to Serial Experiments Lain I'd like to put into words, but can't due to a lack of words existing in the English vocabulary and my general lack of intelligence. It deserves so much more recognition for its incredible influence in so many different forms of media and genres. I don't give perfect 10/10 scores to things only if they're the best of something I've experienced, but rather if I don't have any complaints against that thing be it personal or objective. Serial Experiments Lain is both damn well nearing perfection, as well as being something I don't have any criticisms against. I do not feel like I've let it marinate in my mind long enough to call it an absolute masterpiece, but it's likely I'll give it the title in the near future.