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Serial Experiments Lain: The Nightmare of Fabrication Edit What would you like to edit? Synopsis Background Alternative Titles Picture Chapters/Volumes Publishing Dates Relations Type External Links  

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Serial Experiments Lain

"I have only abandoned my body, I still live here" - are the words emailed to friends of Chisa, several days after her death by suicide. As Lain delves deeper into the world of the "Wired" (also known as the internet), the line between it and reality becomes more and more unclear. Close the world, open the nExt.

• Psychological
• Virtual Reality
• Original Work

Content Warning

• Mature Themes,

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StoryIf the purpose of Serial Experiments Lain is to get your mind whirling, it succeeds. If its purpose is to get you thinking, not so much. This anime is a hit-or-miss philosophical cesspool that could either captivate or disgust. It’s like swallowing a series of shots that burn your throat and make you either drunkenly euphoric or nauseous. At the time, Serial Experiments Lain was covering ground few had covered before, and people were hailing the work as the turn-of-the-21st-century version of 1984. Now, more than ten years later, one could look at Lain and call it even more relevant. As it ponders the consequences of over-stimulation and over-connectedness, we ourselves have to ponder if being connected is the only way to assert our identity. In this way the anime is worthy of praise. It uses an innovative, pertinent medium to ask an age-old question. Is it possible, though, for subject matter like this to come in such an unsavory form? The anime’s highly experimental and impressionistic style ends up blurring much of what it wants to say. In ingesting the Lain pill, the viewer becomes desensitized instead of enlightened, and eventually he gets lost and stops paying attention.  For all the effort it takes to watch the thing, it leaves one with a diaphanous general idea and little satisfaction. There have been arguments that Lain does this purposefully so that we can make our own conclusions, but the storytelling isn’t engrossing enough for us to even want to make our own conclusions. The anime burrows under a smothering blanket of metaphors, leading us on and then giving us a paltry return for how much we invested. We will follow the mystery as if by masochistic impulsion, stomach the nearly indigestible, and then emerge at the end with our mind whirling but not made any better.AnimationThe animation does its job. And it’s an important job. Rarely does one come across an anime whose central tenets are linked so closely to how they are drawn. The dark red splotches on the pavement hints at a shadowy world that lurks just beneath the real one; solid gray figures sit inertly at their desks and on the train, unable to connect to the world around them; connected power lines loom against a garish yellow sky, ready to entangle those who walk in their midst – they’re all symbols. It is a visual style so abstract it could be called meaningful, a style so distasteful it could be called artistic. A cruel beauty, if you will.SoundThe sound, or rather the lack of sound, suits the anime well, and eerie minimalist electronic music quietly adds to the unsettlement. Personally, I would have replaced the ill-fitting alternative-rock riffs for some Berg or Kurtag. Rock is just too down-to-earth for this business.CharactersLain is not a girl I would want to take up in my arms and cuddle. Her vacant expression and porcelain-glass eyes incite more unease than empathy. However, the identity crisis she undergoes in the latter half provides all that is needed for the story to jump-start. Lain’s efforts to fill her empty life with worth becomes mildly arresting, if not frustrating. As she continues to ask herself the same questions and uncovers no answers, her journey to self-discovery teeters between suspense and stagnancy. Things do come to a head at the end, but I have to wonder if it's worth the hours of waiting. Meanwhile, the other characters fit into Lain’s story a bit like incorrect puzzle pieces. Some of them, like Lain’s sister and father, are good ideas that lack the punch to make an impact. Others, like her friend Alice and the mysterious men who spy on Lain outside her house, appear again and again, meant to be manifestations of Lain's internal struggles but instead flickering out as uninspired motifs that the viewer would likely deem not important enough to figure out.OverallThe beginning of the last episode opens with Lain saying, “I’m confused again.” I agree. To me Serial Experiments Lain resembles those books one reads in high school English class that are supposed to be eye-opening but actually just sweep past the brain and go out the other ear. There is no denying that the anime is a groundbreaking and creative work, but it seems to have remained in anime history not so much for what it says as for what it represents. While the ideas are there, it has stumbled a little over its convoluted wording.

There are anime in this world that will make you tilt your head to the side so hard you get a crick in your neck for a week. Lain is probably one of the best examples of this genre. There will be times while watching Lain where you need to stop and try to wrap your mind around what just happened. And while other anime slowly build to this point, like Evangelion or Paranoia Agent, Lain goes straight into the realm of mindf*ck in early episodes. However, as an older anime, it does suffer a bit from limited tools, but I would say it holds up to its more contemporary counterparts.  Story: The plot of Lain is actually fairly straightforward for all of it's weirdness. The perplexity of the story is not in the complex plot, but rather the way the plot unfolds. Instead of immediately stating how the world of Lain works, especially the Wired, the plot unfolds each layer like taking apart an origami crane. Once the truth is revealed, layer by layer, the plot begins to make sense. It isn't necessarily an anime that will make you question existance, in a way The Matrix might. Lain is more of a story about the potential of computers, in much the same wavelength as Ghost in the Shell. But unlike other anime, it throws strange imagery, unreliable narration, and often odd behavior at the viewer to hide the plot.  Animation: Here's the main part that Lain falls short. It's not that the animation is bad, it's just that the tools for the time period mean a lot of the animation is saturated. Many scenes are too dark to make out detail, while others are light-bleached. The animation itself is rather fluid, though there are jerky movements from time to time (a lot of it intentional). There isn't a lot of detail to the faces, especially Lain's, and much of the scenery can be fairly bland. However, the complexity of the Navi systems seems to be what took up most of the animation budget.  Sound: For the most part, the sound is great. The opening song is so 90s that it's nostalgic to my generation, even if its the first time hearing it. The voices are excellent, and the sound studio mixes a reverb or metallic sound whenever a voice is over the Wired, which I found interesting.  Characters: Here's the problem with the characters; there are a lot of them introduced, but not many are given more than a token trait. For example, Lain's family is very distant, but beyond a trait like "loves the Navi system", they don't have much going for them. Lain's friends are a bit like stock characters, except Arisu, who actually has a personality and flaws. The Knights are shown, living their daily lives, but are not given much exposition beyond their role in the Wired as a group. And the main character, Lain, isn't a reliable source of information. She's very difficult to relate to because of who/what she is. Still, I liked Lain, for all of her weirdness and flaws.  Overall, I'd recommend the anime and not just because it's for a badge. Just be prepared to suspend disbelief completely.  This review brought to you by Secret Santa 2016. 

Lain is mostly remembered today for the opening song, or the creepy atmosphere, but it also stand out as a period piece by being one of the best speculative fiction series of the time period it came out. Although the way it presented the internet in its early stages can be seen as silly now that we are all using it, it still predicted how it affects the way people think or how bad guys would abuse it for achieving deification by controlling peoples’ minds. It’s an exaggerated version of what actually happens today. You know, the mass media controlling the narrative, megalomaniac sociopaths promoting their agendas, and many becoming NPCs who are supporting the current thing. The presentation in Lain is of course not that down to earth, it’s done in a metaphysical way, as was the style at the time. Because back then the end of the millennia was near, people were worried about new technologies, and Neon Genesis became a big hit by having the exact same concept with Instrumentality, so let’s copy it to get a piece of the pie.Historical impact aside, the anime is obviously dated in terms of visuals, although it still holds up in terms of mysterious atmosphere and mindfuck special effects. The biggest issue most newer fans will have with it is how it doesn’t have the usual crap that sell, such as elaborate fight choreographies, or excessive fan service. The heroine can be seen as a waifu when she is dressed in those silly bear pajamas (and you are that fatally desperate to need one for watching an anime), but she’s mostly a surrogate for the viewer. She’s not there as a manic pixie dream girl that motivates some dull guy to participate in some hobby, as is the trend these days. Lain is not entertaining, it’s not about carefree characters in some high school and there are no silly romantic triangles. You see, the bulk of anime are about escapism. To run away from the boredom of your dull existence and into a realm of excitement and lack of responsibility. Lain seems to be doing that at first with everyone getting hooked on their internet and videogames (with wireless joysticks I must point out, at a time when it wasn’t widespread or cheap). And then it makes the whole thing to seem horrifying by changing peoples’ perception, and by causing death and mayhem everywhere. In effect it becomes anti-escapism and a cautionary tale on what happens when you indulge too much in any hobby. That’s the prime difference with something like Sword Art Online which is the polar opposite of what Lain is going for. You know, videogames are cool, I too wanna get trapped in a virtual reality and have lots of waifus being amazed with me. That is the main difference between sci-fi shows of the late 1990s and the 2010s. Back then almost everything was serious and scary. Lain is of the same vein as something like the original Ghost in the Shell movie. Philosophical, about loss of self in a virtual sea of impersonal information. What happens if your consciousness becomes data and you get a fusion of man and machine? Do you become a God? Do you ascend into a higher dimension? It’s that shit that makes science fiction great and memorable. With that said the show has its problems. How does a girl who doesn’t know or like computers that much changed so fast in a few episodes? It feels like a character rewrite because we don’t see the change, it happens out of screen. It’s the same thing with Kirito and Asuna in Sword Art Online loving each other when we hardly see them together. I mean, it’s done for maintaining a sense of mystery by making you ponder why does such a thing happen, but it’s still too sudden. Also why does nobody do something if videogames and The Wired are forcing people to commit suicide? What are the parents doing, the teachers, or the police? Why don’t they ban or regulate the damn thing? Because if they did we wouldn’t have a story. Also the whole concept of technology changing your perception is resolved in a really cheap way at the end that almost makes the whole theme pointless. The answer to the mystery of what is going on and why is Lain acting like a different person at times is not her losing touch with reality because of overexposure to The Wire. She was a deity. Not because of the internet, she was all along. So, um, what kind of a moral message does that leave you with? It’s no longer about how technology changes her, because she was always different. She was another Suzumiya Haruhi, which is not helpful when she’s supposed to be a stand-in for the viewer. Oh, what a betrayal. We are mortals, we wanna view and evaluate the show with mortal standards. That’s why it was way better when in the Haruhi anime the protagonist was Kyon. A mortal, not the goddess. As if that wasn’t enough, the mortals in Lain (and by that I mean every other character in the show) don’t achieve that much. Not only the heroine takes up most of the screentime, the others don’t affect the outcome much. There’s this really elaborate conspiracy going on that involves a dozen different things which are resolved in a hurry at the end and in a cheap way because the heroine can do a lot of weird reality warping shit. So what was the point of the show? If you are not the Special Chosen One from the very start you are fucked? Thanks every popular fighting shonen ever made! What would we do without your important moral message?With that said, Lain is still a good watch. It’s thematically powerful and attracting as a mystery, the music and the atmosphere hold up. It’s just that it’s very impersonal (and dare say un-relatable if you are a feelfag) when you get the answers and not everything comes together in an organic way at the end. It works far better conceptually than it does in execution. Still worth recommending, but not flawless.

Related anime

• same franchise

Serial Experiments Lain: LPR-309

• 2000-01-01 - 2000-01-01
• DVD Special: 3 ep

Related manga

Serial Experiments Lain: The Nightmare of Fabrication

• 1999-05-01 - 1999-05-01

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The Nightmare Of Fabrication

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Lain Iwakura

• Edit source

Lain Iwakura (岩倉 玲音 Iwakura Rein) is the titular protagonist of Serial Experiments Lain .

She is introduced as a shy Japanese girl in middle school at the beginning of the show.

After receiving an e-mail from Chisa Yomoda who had committed suicide, Lain discovers the virtual world of The Wired . Throughout the series, Lain is subjected to hallucinations by the Knights in order to make her lose her sense of self and attempt to find solace in the Wired, in order to fulfill the Knights' prophecy of the arrival of the goddess of the Wired.

• 1 Appearance
• 2.1 Lain of the Wired
• 2.2 The Third Lain
• 2.3 The Fourth Lain
• 3.1.1 Alice Mizuki
• 3.1.2 Chisa Yomoda
• 3.2.1 Miho Iwakura
• 3.2.2 Yasuo Iwakura
• 3.2.3 Mika Iwakura
• 4.1 The Third Lain
• 4.2 The Fourth Lain

Appearance [ ]

Lain appears to be a 14-year-old girl and stands at a shorter height than most of the characters in the show. She has pale skin, brown eyes and brown hair. Her hair is short, left slightly above the shoulders and a long lock of hair on the left side of her face. She wears a yellow hair-clip throughout the show. The hair-clip is 'X' shaped and wraps the entire lock of hair securely. Throughout the show, Lain could be seen in her school uniform, which consists of a grey blazer, with a blouse and a red tie underneath, a green skirt and white indoor shoes accompanied by black socks. When she is not in her school uniform, she either wears her pajamas, which are stylized to look like a bear or plain clothes. Some characters in the Cyberia club have also mentioned that she dresses like 'an innocent schoolgirl'.

Personality [ ]

Lain is quiet and doesn't talk much, which leads to her being a bit of a social outcast in contrast to the rest of her classmates, always dissociating herself from big crowds and is shown to be rather shy, and does not seem to talk as much as her other classmates while overall being a very genuine and kind person. Her eyes are soft and naive and her posture is slumped depicting her introverted personality. She often hallucinates and sees things that aren’t real. At one point she thinks that steam is coming out of her hands, during an interview director Chiaki J. Konaka said that this means that she's mentally ill.

Lain of the Wired [ ]

One time called the "Wild Lain" by Taro . She's a different persona of Lain that appears most of the time when Lain is investigating the Wired. She is no longer the introverted person that she usually is. She has an offensive attitude, an erect posture, and she is all wide-eyed and alert. She exudes self-confidence and thrives on facts over emotion.

The Third Lain [ ]

Appearing in the fifth and the eighth episodes . Her half-lidded eyes and casual posture demonstrates a new more laid-back persona of Lain. As she only appears to torment Alice and Mika in the series, she is shown as a more vicious, ill-intentioned persona than the others. Some clues in the series may lead viewers to think that she was her own entity created by the Knights to cut from the original Lain anything that could make her want to stay in the real world.

The Fourth Lain [ ]

Appearing in the final episode , it is not clear if she is another one of Lain's personas or her own entity. She appears more serene than the other personas. She is confident about what she knows, playing a guide trying to convince Lain to embrace her godly nature.

Affiliations (Relationships) [ ]

Acquaintances and associates [ ], alice mizuki [ ].

Alice is the first to attempt to help Lain socialize by taking her to a nightclub, and from this point always tries to protect and take care of her.

Chisa Yomoda [ ]

Chisa went to the same school as Lain and both were in the same grade. After her suicide, Chisa sent mail to her entire school including Lain. Lain responded to the mail and started to chat with Chisa about the Wired. This chat sparked Lain's interest of the Wired. After the chat, Chisa appeared before Lain two times but disappeared each time before having a conversation with her.

"Family" [ ]

Miho iwakura [ ], yasuo iwakura [ ].

Lain's father-daughter relationship with her "father" is more calm and collected as she gradually learns more about herself and her extraordinarily strong and deep affinity with the Wired itself. He is the very first person she turns to in wanting to test her newly improved Navi's personal computer and software. She later disregards his warning of not confusing the real world with the virtual one; the latter being nothing more than an ever evolved form of communication worldwide. She assured him that she will be able to further blur the invisible line between the two and go into it more freely, consciousness/mind and all, without requiring any devices, expressing his uncertainty of whether Lain remains the girl he knows.

Mika Iwakura [ ]

At first, Mika seems to be judgmental and rude towards her younger sibling, Lain. After a while, Mika seems to care and show more interest and became obsessed, leading to her downfall where she later loses her sanity.

Gallery [ ]

• She was designed to look like her Japanese voice actress Kaori Shimizu.
• Minor edit source: https://twitter.com/lainscreens
• 1 Lain Iwakura
• 3 Serial Experiments Lain

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The Terrifyingly Prescient ‘Serial Experiments Lain,’ 20 Years Later

How the anime classic predicted the obsessive and compulsive habits of our online life

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At the onset, Lain Iwakura’s father warns her about the social perils of the internet, alternatively known as “the Wired” in the parlance of Serial Experiments Lain . “When it’s all said and done,” he says, “the Wired is just a medium of communication and the transfer of information. You mustn’t confuse it with the real world. Do you understand what I’m warning you about?”

Lain is young, and doesn’t yet know how to use a computer, but she knows better than to place her faith in the older generation’s rigid distinction between real life and online performance. “You’re wrong,” she responds.

At age 14, Lain was extremely online. Yes, she’s a fictional character—a cartoon, even — but there is no more frightfully prescient web parable than her story, Serial Experiments Lain , the 13-episode anime series that first aired in Japan in July 1998. Twenty years later, Lain is a distressingly faithful portrait of online life in the 2010s—a hellscape of warring avatars, self-serving mythology, catastrophic self-importance, compulsion, and inevitably, disillusionment.

At his young daughter’s sheepish request, Lain’s father installs a state-of-the-art personal computer—a Navi—in Lain’s bedroom. Lain’s father takes pride in his daughter’s budding technological interest. “In this world,” he explains, “people connect to each other, and that’s how societies function. For communication, you need a powerful system that will mature alongside your relationships with people.” Curiously, Lain’s father doesn’t seem to have many enviable relationships of his own. His conversations with his wife are cold, and his enthusiasm for his daughter is born conditionally from her interest in her father’s profession. Lain’s father wears glasses that are frequently filled with a monitor’s awesome light, even when he’s sitting on the couch with just a newspaper in front of him. He sees the screen at all times.

Fearfully, Lain regards the new, glowing screen stationed at the far corner of her bedroom as a haunted portal. But she’s chasing her former classmate Chisa — a young girl who kills herself in the show’s opening scene only to email Lain the day after she’s thrown herself from the roof of their school. Inevitably, Lain’s search for Chisa leads her into “the Wired,” whence Chisa claims to have retreated. By Episode 3, Lain is assembling a desktop fortress without her father’s supervision. As the series progresses, Lain develops her technical proficiency exponentially, and her hardware expands to turn her bedroom into a dim, electrified jejunum.

Through intensive study and ingenuity, Lain accesses deeper, darker levels of the Wired, which is to say, the internet. By Episode 7, Lain—a character who predates the following phrase by nearly a decade—is glued to her proto-smartphone; her eyes glow, too, lit constantly with a forum troll’s fervor. Online, Lain builds a second life, and she even cultivates a fan base—but her interactions within the Wired mostly anger her. Online, she hacks and bickers. Offline, Lain ditches her friends and stalks through her suburb defensively, evasively, in paranoid silence. Gradually, Lain realizes that the Wired is a disaster and a trap.

For Lain, the web portends intrigue, delusion, and death. In the Wired, Lain is an altogether different person—a much darker person who is easily moved to vengeance. Quickly, Lain sees that her digital presence is a cruel and gutsy perversion of her true self; a cunning doppelgänger who’s already cultivated some fearsome mythology about the girl named Lain Iwakura. As the real Lain watches in shock, the digital Lain confronts a delusional young man, addicted to nanomachines, who shoots up a nightclub. “No matter where you go,” the digital Lain tells the gunman, “everyone’s connected.” She means it as a threat, and the gunman is so horrified by the Wired’s ubiquity that he then turns the gun to his mouth and takes his own life. The digital Lain is a bully, and the real Lain struggles to comprehend her personality and her mission. The real Lain—the meek middle school student who avoids human interaction and confrontation—greets the digital Lain with a gasp.

Throughout the series, the real Lain’s struggle to reconcile herself with the digital Lain drives the former toward a full and fateful resemblance of the latter. The real Lain ditches her friends, taunts her father, and barks back at her pursuers. She turns to a permanent state of obsession and rage. The web bolsters her personal mythology while ruining her mood and disposition. But she cannot log off; nor can she tell her friends or herself why. Without predicting social media as a popular mode for online life, Serial Experiments Lain nonetheless prefigured its addictive and ruinous qualities. The protagonist, Lain, and the antagonist, Masami, both cultivate self-importance and an illusory “control” that the viewer recognizes as a disastrous loss of self-control. They can’t stop posting.

Admittedly—for all its prescience— Serial Experiments Lain looks quaint. The technological sprawl that overtakes Lain’s bedroom includes big fans, black tubes, and bulkheads. There are wires everywhere—from the show’s opening credits through its twisted climax. There’s a great fondness for the word “cyber,” such as the popular nightclub being named Cyberia Café & Club. There’s text-to-speech interludes and ominous command prompts, all recalling so much other Y2K cinema, from The Net through The Matrix . Visually—to an amusing degree, honestly—the series fails to anticipate the great shrinkage and stylistic minimalism of the present century’s consumer electronics. Essentially, however, the Wired is an astoundingly prophetic depiction of the World Wide Web—especially its lawless, anonymizing communities—as a cipher of misinformation and malaise.

Many critics find that Lain often pales in comparison with Neon Genesis Evangelion , another turn-of-the-century anime series that culminates with lengthy ruminations on the self and a sad, messianic transcendence for its weepy protagonist, Shinji Ikari. Evangelion came first, and it’s far more acclaimed than Lain for its dramatization of the subconscious; Lain is widely seen as a smaller, lesser successor to Evangelion ’s intellectual pretensions. Their shared existentialism aside, Lain is uniquely and definitively concerned with web obsession. Literally, Serial Experiments Lain is about a young girl’s reluctant march toward digital martyrdom. Today, Lain’s story resonates more so as an allegory about the perils of forging one’s identity—an alternative identity, however false, misguided, perverse, delusional—using the internet. The Wired is Lain’s world. Other users just live in it at her mercy.

Eventually, Lain dispenses with her real-world pursuers, the Knights of Calculus, the Men in Black; so Lain and Masami export their conflict to the web exclusively. That’s where they live. That’s where they wrestle for singular, godly dominance. It is understood, then, that the web doesn’t require conventional, physical grunts to enforce threats against a human being. The web is perfectly equipped to destroy a person on its own terms and within its own structures. Despite the web’s many catastrophes, Lain never unplugs. Rather, she burrows deeper into the Wired, convinced through equal parts deduction and delusion that humanity lives and dies by her unique participation in the Wired.

Ultimately, Lain’s will wins out over Masami’s plot to demolish the distinction between the material world and the Wired. The series doesn’t climax with Masami’s gruesome disintegration in Lain’s bedroom, but rather with Lain’s friend Arisu barging into her room to drag her from the buzzing cave. Laughing, the real Lain reasserts herself, and she embraces her fearful friend. Serial Experiments Lain ends with a teen girl sobbing over a madeleine, regretting her terminal investment in digital life . In the final scenes, Lain shows no hardware or wires, yet the worrisome murmur of electricity resounds in every corner of civilized life. No matter where you go, Lain feared, everyone’s connected. Presumably, the sound is Wi-Fi.

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The Nightmare of Fabrication

The doujin manga of Serial Experiments Lain , titled The Nightmare of Fabrication , appears in the Omnipresence in Wired artbook. The manga serves as the missing "Dc1029" file from the game and appears to take place in the same continuity as the game, although there are elements of the anime as well.

Plot Summary

Lain is alone in her room, in desperate want of human contact. In a state of isolation relating to events from the game, Lain lists off her various prior connections, including Touko Yonera (who has been moody around Lain), her parents (who are now at this point divorced), Tomo and Kyoko (who she has cut ties with) and finally Misato (who has been exposed as imaginary).

After cutting off the collar of her toy dog, Bike-chan , Lain vehemently exclaims that Misato is not imaginary, but has trouble finding evidence of her memory upon discovering art supplies she had bought with Misato are not in her room. After doubting her own memory and becoming distressed over the mounting evidence that Misato may not have been real after all, Lain begins to worry that becoming completely isolated would cause her existence to end.

To prevent this, Lain decides to modify Bike-chan, although her cutting the dog with scissors makes her feel guilty. She writes a program for a very basic artificial intelligence extremely quickly and cuts open Bike-chan to install various electrical devices, all the while shushing the dog in an almost motherly tone, trying to reassure it (and very likely, herself), that she isn't hurting it. The automation eventually causes the dog to bark and say its own name repeatedly, to Lain's delight.

It is revealed that Bike-chan's automation is a sort of field test for Lain's later plans. After completing Bike-chan by giving him mobility and the ability to talk, Lain would then make a robot of her father, Tomo, Misato, Kyoko and her mother, the latter two with adjustments to their personality so that they would treat Lain better than their counterparts. By surrounding herself with artificial friends and family, Lain feels that she can be "connected" and would prevent her loneliness and avert her fear of disappearing from isolation.

However, Bike-chan explodes, his automation failing for some reason or other, to Lain's shock and despair. After breaking down and sobbing apologies to the dog's remains, a voice calls out to her, offering to bring the dog back to life. The hazy form of Masami Eiri , claiming to be from a higher plane of existence, reassures Lain of his powers and gives her an identical stuffed dog, telling her to act as though this dog is the same as the original and telling Lain that if nobody knew that Lain had killed Bike-chan, then it never happened. Lain opposes this at first, since she would still remember the previous Bike-chan, but Eiri reassures her that she need only rewrite her own memories.

Eiri then informs Lain that she has killed Bike-chan several times before and hints that he had replaced him, calling the validity of Lain's memories into question, and also remarking that Bike-chan looked rather new for a toy that was supposedly twelve or thirteen years old, which calls into question either the time of Lain's birth or how old the dog really was. Lain begins to panic as Eiri informs her of how alone she really is and how few of her experiences she has shared with other people, causing Lain to have an apparent anxiety attack as she weakly defends the validity of her memories. Eiri comments that her perception of reality is based entirely on memory and that perception of what is and what really is are far apart, while remarking that Lain might have the ability to consolidate the two somehow and further Eiri's plans, referencing her role in the anime.

Lain abruptly awakens, finding Bike-chan on her desk and thinking that what had happened was all a dream. As she walks away from her desk after holding the dog in her arms, she discovers the bell she had cut off from the previous Bike-chan's neck on the floor. In a panic, she buries the bell and tries to repress the memory of the "dream", repeating Eiri's principle of what isn't remembered never happened, and thus in her mind erasing the dream's existence.

Effect On Lain's Mental Health

The incident (or series of identical incidents) implies that Lain has been involved in a cycle of denial for a long time, mainly due to her unfortunate social and home circumstances. This may also apply to her vehement denial of Misato's nonexistence, despite there being large amounts of evidence suggesting the contrary. As such, the description of her activities with Misato in Lain's Diary and her counseling sessions may also be fabricated or heavily modified by Lain, while simultaneously being only vaguely aware that the changes were made.

The incident also shows that Lain has trouble accepting her own existence and fears that total isolation will cause her to stop existing somehow. This could be taken literally, that she believes that relationships are proof of existence, or it can be taken as an implication that Lain is afraid that isolation could drive her to suicide, losing any reason to exist anymore. The latter appears to be true, as Lain eventually ends her physical life after the disappearances or deaths of the people she considers close to her.

During this incident, Eiri taunts her for not having other people around her to verify her memories and by extension her lack of friends, which could serve as a subconscious impetus towards Lain's growing obsession with creating friends for herself, particularly her father, whom Lain's relationship with was most healty, whom Eiri mentions by name, and whom Lain begins to create an automaton for first.

• This is Yoshitoshi ABe's first color manga. In addition, the entire manga was completed in roughly 24 hours.
• This manga was the first major work of serial experiments lain , published in AX magazine in March of 1998.
• This manga has direct continuity with the game; however, there is a possibility that an altered form of Eiri's conspiracy still exists in the universe of the PSX game, and Lain's eventual suicide leads to Eiri's success, contrasting with Lain's refusal to kill herself in the anime.
• ABe has also written humorous short manga about Lain.

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Serial Experiments Lain

• TV Mini Series

Strange things start happening when a withdrawn girl named Lain becomes obsessed with an interconnected virtual realm known as "The Wired". Strange things start happening when a withdrawn girl named Lain becomes obsessed with an interconnected virtual realm known as "The Wired". Strange things start happening when a withdrawn girl named Lain becomes obsessed with an interconnected virtual realm known as "The Wired".

• Yasuyuki Ueda
• Kaori Shimizu
• Bridget Hoffman
• 95 User reviews
• 33 Critic reviews

Episodes 13

Top cast 99+

• Lain Iwakura

• Additional Voices

• Additional Voices …
• DJ (Present Day announcer)

• Mika Iwakura
• Arisu Mizuki

• Reika Yamamoto

• Yasuo Iwakura

• Lain's NAVI …
• Miho Iwakura

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

IMDb's Top 50 Anime Series

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• Trivia There are numerous references to Macintosh and Apple Computers: The phrase "To Be Continued", with a colored "Be" is shown at the end of most of the episodes. This is a reference to BeOS, whose logo has similar coloring. The Be company was founded by Jean-Louis Guasse, a former Apple executive. The Navis use an operating system named Copeland, which was the codename for Apple's MacOS 8. Navi's operating system has a graphical user interface (GUI) similar to that of MacOS. Arisu's Navi resembles the original Apple iMac. The series slogan "Close this world. Open the NeXT" is a reference to the NeXT company, founded by Steve Jobs in the late '80s and purchased by Apple Computer in December 1996. All of the Navis shown in the series use one-button mice as Macintosh computers do. The electronic voice heard saying the episode titles is the "Whisper" voice from the MacOS Speech Control Panel, a program that permits text-to-speech. The child's Navi that Lain used to use was modeled after the 20th Anniversary Macintosh. The HandiNAVI, the handheld computers which both Lain and Arisu used was based off the Apple Newton, the first PDA. Navis and Macintoshes are both built by companies named after fruit, Tachibana (a type of orange) and Apple, respectively.

Lain Iwakura : No matter where you go, everyone's connected.

• Connections Featured in AMV Hell 3: The Motion Picture (2005)
• Soundtracks Duvet Performed by Boa

Technical specs

• Runtime 24 minutes

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Fullmetal alchemist endings explained: how does the manga & brotherhood conclude ed & al’s stories.

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Jojo's bizarre adventure's strongest stands are officially ranked by series creator, 10 best boruto quotes, quick links, how fullmetal alchemist's manga ends, how fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood's ending differs from the manga, the themes of fullmetal alchemist's ending explained.

• The endings of 'Fullmetal Alchemist' manga and Brotherhood anime differ in details, but both stay true to the story's themes and key events.
• Edward sacrifices his alchemy to save Al; Mustang's actions differ slightly in the manga and anime endings.
• Both versions feature strong conclusions with similar events; recommended to experience both to appreciate the differences.

Fullmetal Alchemist is widely renowned as one of the greatest anime and manga ever made, and its ending is densely packed, making it easy to miss certain details in the onslaught of information. The endings of the Brotherhood anime and the manga are also slightly different, making it a bit difficult to be absolutely certain of what's happened.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was being produced at the same time that the manga was ending, and the manga's final chapter was not yet released when the final episodes of the anime were being made. The Brotherhood episodes are based upon the storyboards for the final chapter instead, making for some minor but still noteworthy differences in how the two play out. Which version is "canon" is mostly up to the individual fan, but the two are so similar that it hardly matters which ending is preferred. Here are the details on how the manga and anime ended, and what was different between them.

Edward Surrenders His Alchemy to Save His Brother

Chapter 108 of Fullmetal Alchemist opens with Edward still bravely battling against Father. As a last-ditch effort, Father tries to steal Greed-Ling's philosopher stone, and succeeds in ripping it out of his body, leaving Ling devoid of Greed. Greed, however, decides to use his ultimate shield to sabotage Father, converting his body into carbon's weakest form, graphite, instead of its strongest. Ed punches a hole in Father's now-weakened chest, allowing the souls of the citizens of Xerxes to escape. Father is then dragged into the realm of Truth, where he's told he will return to the other side of the gate. Father protests, but is powerless to stop it.

The story turns to Alphonse, who was already down as a result of sacrificing his soul for Ed's sake. Both Ling and Hohenheim offer their philosopher stones to revive Al, but Ed has a different idea. Ed conducts his human transmutation and offers Truth the greatest thing he can: his ability to use Alchemy . Pleased with this turn of events, Truth accepts, and turns over Alphonse--his real body and all.

Mustang's people put out a cover story, explaining that the highest ranked officers had attempted a dangerous Alchemy experiment, and that Mustang and Armstrong were able to put an end to it before anyone was hurt. In a field hospital, Mustang is approached by Dr. Marcoh, who offers to fix his blindness if Mustang will help re-establish the nation of Ishval. Mustang gladly accepts, hoping to finally repay the people of Ishval for all their suffering.

Various other characters are given endings as well; Ling tells Lan Fan he won't punish the other families when he becomes emperor, to Mei's great relief. Pinako, Winry's grandmother, finds Hohenheim at Trisha's grave, having passed away at long last. Scar, recovering in a hospital, is approached about aiding in the Ishval restoration as well, which he agrees to. Ed and Al return home; Al eventually decides to head to Xing to learn Alkahestry, while Ed and Winry confess their feelings for one another and get married, and are shown to eventually have two children together.

A Few Key Differences Change Brotherhood's Ending

The basic events of the manga's ending do all occur in Brotherhood ; it's mostly in the details where there are significant differences . The scene between Dr. Marcoh and Roy Mustang plays out differently in the anime, for example. In Brotherhood , Roy Mustang has the idea of restoring Ishval himself, rather than have it proposed to him by Marcoh. Roy Mustang agrees to have his sight restored, but insists Marcoh use the stone on Havoc first. In the manga, Havoc is shown to still be in physical therapy in the final panels, but in the anime, he's healed thanks to Mustang's insistence.

Riza Hawkeye's dog, Black Hayate, is shown to have puppies in the epilogue of the series, while the dog's picture is buried but still visible in the manga. In the manga, the final page shows photos of the cast several years after the story ends; the picture with Edward, Winry, and their children has Al and Mei in it in the manga, while in the anime, Paninya and Garfiel are also present, suggesting that they've maintained a strong relationship with Winry over the years. It also seems to imply that Al might develop a relationship with Mei , and likely spent time with her during his visit to Xing.

Two of the chimeras, Jerso and Zampano, are shown in the manga to be learning Alchemy from Alphonse, and accompany him on his trip to Xing as bodyguards. They're hoping to find a way to use Alchemy to restore their own bodies to being fully human, but are only at the theoretical stage at this point. In the Brotherhood anime, there's no mention of these two learning Alchemy, although they are still comitted to returning their bodies to normal.

Ed and Father's Final Fates are Foils to Each Other

One of the big themes of the final chapter of Fullmetal Alchemist is the idea of Alchemy as power. Father sought dominion over all, and stole power wherever he could. However, Edward willingly sacrifices his access to this power in order to revive Al. It's the ultimate example of selfishness and selflessness, showing the true difference between hero and villain clearly. Ed tells Truth that he has no need for this power, because he has others that he can rely upon, something which Truth seems to gleefully approve of. Like many shonen manga, the power of friendship seems to be the ultimate force in Fullmetal Alchemist 's ending.

While Fullmetal Alchemist 's manga and the Brotherhood anime have some differences between the endings, both are overwhelmingly similar. Still, for those who want the fullest experience, it can't hurt to experience both, and to take in the differences between them to enjoy each story's take on the ending. Fullmetal Alchemist , in either form, has an extremely strong ending that stays true to the story's themes, and that's more than a lot of anime and manga receive.

Fullmetal Alchemist