Illya's #1 fangirl

To begin, Serial Experiments Lain is a 13 episode series that was first aired in 1998. Though a bit hard to classify it generally carries the Cyberpunk label and is often compared to things like Eva. More then a bit odd, the artist behind the series comments in the introduction of the art book "An omnipresence in the Wired" that there is a no "right" interpretation of the series. That in mind, lets get to my interpretation.

SPOILERS Beyond this point.

Lain

-Lain herself is an entity that is seemingly everywhere at once. Hence her random jumps in place and time in the first episode without actually leaving the train she was riding and how she saw the girl being hit by that same train in person. This combined with her ability to rewrite human memory, and later ability to appear anywhere at will as the barrier between the real world and the Wired breaks, and some things Lain says herself, like the fact that she exists in the minds of every living human, seems to suggest she is a physical embodiment and/or link to the collective unconscious. Though she is Omnipresent, Lain is also not omniscient, leading to the issue of her having the power to alter the world at will but not the information necessary to know if what she is doing is right or not, leading to conflicts within herself and later with her best friend Alice.

This is supported by the fact that Eri, the series main villain, comments that Lain's consciousness was strewn all over the Wired before he gave her a physical body as well as the fact that the Wired itself is said several times to be connected to something else due to its ability to network so many human minds at once.

The series ending, in which Lain tells of Eri by implying their was an actual god somewhere can be taken many ways. But based on the imagery used a few minutes later when Lain meets with her father carry some overtones that lead me to believe Lain is the proper god, if one wishes to use that word for an entity as powerful as Lain is, of the human race.

Lains three personalities, the quiet girl she is IRL, the aggressive net persona she develops, and her malicious side that enjoys trolling for information and using it to ruin people's lives, are noted in the series as being facets of Lain because "there are as many Lains as there are people."

As for Lain's bear motif. I guess the artist just thought it was cute.

Eri Marihara and the knights

Eri is the series villian, a man who worked on the next generation of internet protocol and uploaded his personality into the system itself in a bid to become a "god", a word which he refers to himself as for a good majority of the series. He succeeds and sets up the chain of events that lead to main story. In comparison to Lain, he is humanity's false god who offers salvation by ridding people of their need for a body. In the world reset by Lain he's an angry office worker who hates his job.

The Knights of the Easter Calculus, a group of hackers, are his followers who work in the background doing things like selling the drug Accella and keeping Lain in check. Named after a supposed real world club that exists at M.I.T.

Tachibana general Labs
The counter group to Eri's knights consisting of two Men in Black esque figures. Their leader is later revealed to have been working with Eri the entire time.

Alice
Lain's best, and likely only, friend. Lain manages to screw up her life many, many, times.
Also makes a cute couple with Lain :3. Also named because Lain's writer really likes Alice in Wonderland.

Summery
Lain is mostly about a small girl coming to grips with her own identity, how other people perceive her, and the world around her. Simple.

Oddities and ends
-Most of episode five is about Lain's sister slowly going insane. But, for a moment when she is sitting in a intersection the shadow caster over her is the Knight's symbol, this is hard to catch the first time around mostly because the Knights as a group aren't fully revealed until later. One theory states that her descent into madness was a result of the Knights trying to play with her brain which eventually destroyed her sense of time and space, hence the jumping around. Her disappearing at the episodes end is likely her consciousness finally breaking down for good, as Lain is the only one who can see her [when the shot pans away, no one is standing where her sister should be]

-During a flash back to the MiBs introducing Lain to her parent's late in the series, the room she is shoved into is set up like Lain's bed room but rather the room she has in the ps1 visual novel/game. I have no explanation for that one.

-What the alien lain imagines during her time locked in her room is beyond me. But, during one of the various trippy wired sequences a female voice yells about a small child in a green and red sweater starring at her from the crack of her bedroom door. The alien wears the same sweater and when Lain appears in Alice's room a bit later in the series she wears the same outfit as well.

-The shadows Lain sees creeping all over are the data of those who have died but whose data still lingers on the network. They appear in the real world because of Eri weakining the barrier between the real world and the Wired.

-The bloodstained shadows present in the series are places connected to the Wired. Hence why Lain's shadow is the same color.

-Infornography is a cool word, isn't it?


Thats all, thanks for listening to my insane ramblings about my favorite anime.