A lot of people aren’t in that kind of situation that they can afford every major streaming service subscription, which is why they often have to pick just one or two. Seeing how the market is shifting towards streaming services, making a final decision is quite difficult and people often have different criteria when choosing their subscriptions. Some listen to friends, some read reviews and others scroll through the content. The latter is a very important criterium, as you want to be sure you’re getting your money’s worth when content is concerned, and it is because of that reason that we have decided to help all Serial Experiments Lain fans out there to make their decision.
Serial Experiments Lain is, as of March 1, 2021, available only on Funimation’s streaming service and it can be bought on Apple’s iTunes service, but not streamed. Both services offer the series in HD.
In today’s article, you are going to find out two things about Serial Experiments Lain. Firstly, we are going to tell you something about the show, and then we are going to tell you where you can watch it. Enjoy!
What Is Serial Experiments Lain?
serial experiments lain is an experimental anime series that initially aired from July 6, 1998 do September 28, 1998 with a total of 13 episodes. It was written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura. It was initially aired on TV Tokyo. Despite being an one-off anime series, lain is one of the most influential and acclaimed anime series in history.
The series is a typical example of cyberpunk’s “hi-tech/lo-life” paradigm and portrays a society where people are more reliant on their online avatars with which they “live” inside the Wired. The series explores deep philosophical questions such as the essence of our reality, communication, memory and even identity, foreshadowing our relationship with social media, that exploded about a decade later.
The anime had a video game spin-off released in 1998 for the PlayStation console, and also a manga title, The Nightmare of Fabrication, which was published in May 1999.
What Is Serial Experiments Lain About?
The shy 13-year-old girl Lain Iwakura lives in a suburb of Tokyo with her tech- and computer-obsessed father, her cool mother and her expressionless older sister Mika Iwakura. After eighth grader Chisa Yomoda committed suicide, several of her class still receive e-mails from her. Most consider the mail as just a regular Interned-based hoax. Lain also receives an email like this, and Chisa reveals to her in real time via the Wired that she did not die, but only put her body down and found God in the Wired.
The Wired is actually an international computer network that is structured like the Internet but functions as an avatar-based social networking platform. Lain now wants to get to the bottom of these events, but she is also suspected of having written the emails. Only her friend Alice Mizuki stands by her side during these events.
During this time, Lain goes to the Cyberia club in Shibuya with Alice and other friends. Strange events occur there and Lain realizes that there is a very well-known Lain in the Wired, whom she is often confused with. She also meets others of her age who can often be found in the club, according to Taro. Since she doesn’t know much about computers, he helps her and answers her questions, since he thinks she is the Lain known in the Wired. Her father also helps her find out more about Wired.
During her research, she comes across Masami Eiri. He developed the Protocol 7 for the company Tachibana Labs. This should become the Wired’s next protocol. But in order to control the Wired, he changed the protocol and integrated his consciousness into the code. Shortly afterwards his body died and he lived on in the Wired. Some groups consider him the “God of Wired”.
In his opinion, humans can only develop further if they take off their bodies. He also drove Chisa to commit suicide. Now he focuses on Lain, to whom he says that her family and existence are just an illusion. In truth, she is the Lain from the Wired, with whom she is probably one and the same, and was created by him. He also manages to weigh heavily on her relationship with Alice.
But Lain also manages to deal with the Wired and can thus evade Eiri. She realizes that the real and the virtual world cannot be separated from one another. In doing so, she develops different identities and goes through an evolution towards an omnipresent and omnipotent being of the virtual world, realizing that she can, for example, overwrite the thoughts and memories of other people via the Wired at will.
The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone’s memories. She is last seen, unchanged, encountering her oldest and closest friend Alice once again, who is now married. Lain promises herself that she and Alice will surely meet again anytime as Lain can literally go and be anywhere she desires between both worlds.
Where Can You Watch Serial Experiments Lain?
Serial Experiments Lain is without a doubt something you have to watch, even if you’re not a hardcore anime fan. The animation is brilliant and the experimental style is certainly something you’ll love if you like quality animation. It also tackled very deep and complex subjects that Western animation generally avoids, but also most Western live-action movies. But, not that we’ve established that Lain is a must-see, let us see where you can actually watch it?
As a relatively old show (1998), Lain is not readily available and as of March 1, 2021, the series can be streamed exclusively on Funimation, which offers all thirteen episodes of Serial Experiments Lain. Along with that, the series can ne bought and downloaded from Apple’s iTunes service for a total of $26.99, which is around $2 per episode – a fairly reasonable price for such a show.
And that’s it for today. We hope you had fun reading this and that we helped solve this dilemma for you. See you next time and don’t forget to follow us!
