Anime in Focus: Serial Experiments Lain Episode 1

 You know, in retrospect, the Matrix wasn't that original

This anime was introduced to me by that one guy that I know who really seems to insist that nothing good came out after 2000. As the high priest of the Eastern Orthodox church of Haruhi Suzumiya, I take offense to that statement. However, that is not today’s point. Today’s point is to introduce you to Serial Experiments Lain if you haven’t seen it.

First episode was actually quite a trip. I got a major Matrix vibe from it, but looking at the release date, this show came out in Japan one year before the Matrix released in America.

More onto the actual episode. This starts out in a city full of unimportant people, living about their lives in the unimportant fashion that they normally do. Then we get to a girl standing on top of a building, with occasional flashes of text questioning the nature of reality. This always happens in the first episode, so I’m not about to start calling things deep yet. Then, the girl on the roof jumps off, colliding with a neon sign and dying. Then we go to the OP.

Now we go to our main character, Lain. Lain is sitting in a math class about to fall asleep, when she starts tripping out and smoke starts coming out of her hands. Meanwhile, there is a rumor running around about people receiving emails from that girl who commit suicide. Lain hasn’t heard of this because she almost never fires up her computer.

Later on, Lain decides that this interesting enough for her to decide to fire up her old computer. There she finds the email that everybody is talking about, which tells her about how the girl who commit suicide isn’t really dead. Then she mentions something about "The Wired." Then the show goes off about the nature of computers and information networks, and their effect on communications.

I was intrigued by this first episode, and would definitely like to see where this show is going.


Coming sometime: next episode

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This series is available in the Geneon signature collection for a great price, especially the individual DVD's: