MVM TV Tasters are a chance to see 2 episodes tasters of some of anime’s finest TV series

Serial Experiments LAin

There is a world around us, a world of people, tactile sensation, and culture. There is also a wired world, inside the computer, of images, personalities, virtual experiences, and a culture all of its own. The day after a classmate commits suicide, Lain, a 13 year old girl, discovers how closely the 2 worlds are linked when she receives an e-mail from the dead girl: I still live here. I just abandoned my body.

Serial Experiments Lain has taken on a life of its own in recent years. It shows up across social media, usually as isolated clips posted to YouTube or TikTok, or illustrating those 4-hour music compilations people put together for vibes. And it’s maybe not surprising that Lain’s influence is best felt online, as this thirteen-episode anime series is perhaps one of the greatest predictors of the modern internet and the way people interact with it.

The show stars Lain, a high school girl who isn’t great at socialising. She’s quiet, withdrawn and rarely spends time with friends of her own volition. One thing she does love, however, is computers, and encouraged by her father she steadily digs into the Wired, a virtual realm. Here, people can be who they want to be or do what they want to do, all connected together in this parallel space.

Serial Experiments Lain released in 1998. At this time, the internet was still predominantly dial-up. Social media at the time consisted of forums and IRC chatrooms. Myspace didn’t exist, let alone Facebook. And yet, for all its surrealism and psychological horror, Lain isn’t too far off the world we live in now. A world where online content is driven by algorithms easily manipulated by shady political forces, people offload their thinking to chatbots and somehow, despite being constantly connected, we increasingly isolate ourselves.

These themes are central to Serial Experiments Lain. It raises questions around loneliness and what it means to truly connect with other people. It examines the sense of self, and the way our personalities can be fragmented into the different ways we present ourselves online. It examines our relationship with technology and how it can be used to consume us instead of aiding us.

All these themes are presented with some of the strangest visuals in any anime. While Lain’s grasp on reality breaks as the series goes on, there’s never really a truly grounded reality within the show itself. Stark contrast colours cause environments to look alien, obscuring things like steps through shadows that look like starry skies. Lain’s ever-changing room becomes a maze of wires and screens, obscuring the walls and windows that ground her to the natural world.

The show has also been compared to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and it’s not hard to see why. Both shows provide a painfully close-up experience of a character’s slow deterioration while desperately craving connection and finding it in all the wrong places. Visually there are a lot of similarities, drawing from a distinctively 90s anime style dripping in surreal imagery.

BAFF will be screening two episodes of the series, giving you a taster of this strange, dark world. Whether you choose to explore it further is entirely up to you.