My main interpretation of Lain up until the end was that it was a fairly direct metaphor for how the internet can completely consume people who are more socially isolated, dissociative, etc. As a character Lain reads to me as someone who struggles with some sort of schizoaffective disorders and gets addicted to online validation, and begins to lose her ability to delineate between the Real and the Wired as her sense of identity becomes fractured.

and then the last 3 episodes kinda shat all over that interpretation. From the moment Lain meets "God" up until the end, the show seems to spiral out of control and collapse in on itself. I thought the two Lains was pretty clearly about how people can behave completely differently online than they do in real life, but no, actually there are two different Lains. I think. I guess. She's never sure, so neither am I.

The little grey alien bit is completely opaque to me, I have no clue what the show was trying to communicate by sticking Lain's head on E.T. Something about how she feels alien and distinct from humanity? I guess. I loved the question posed by her ability to edit memories by deleting things from the Wired - if there is absolutely no record anywhere of an event, did it still happen?

I feel like there's a layer I'm missing. Lain ending up as some benevelont God, watching over the Wired and the world as an unaging, lonely being feels like a bad ending, I don't care if she's smiling, it feels like something is missing. Albeit Arisu's "actually being alive is cool because you have a heartbeat" argument was a little schmaltzy, I wanted to see the flesh automaton Lain or whatever she is forge her own path an identity - but maybe that's the point, that she can't do that without hurting people, that the Wired and the real world must stay separated and that's what her job is now.

If that's the case, it feels funnily similar to the end of Loki Season 2? I feel like an idiot comparing this show to some Disney+ Marvel slop, but the ending of that show surprised me by genuinely dedicating itself to a pretty bleak and melancholy conclusion. In both Lain and Loki, the main character can only save those they love by removing themselves entirely from the world and spending the rest of their lives holding everything together on their own. Damn.

Anyways good show.

looking like i'm finally gonna finish Serial Experiments Lain tonight! about to start episode Layer:10 and I have to say I did not expect the Roswell curveball in the previous episode, but then again I shouldn't be expecting anything. I think I kept dropping it the past few times I tried to watch through because it's genuinely distressing on some level. While I don't fully grasp everything it's trying to say with some of the more surreal elements, there's something frighteningly relatable about the socially isolated child paying attention to the internet for the first time in their life and quickly being consumed by it until it starts to take precedent over their real life.

All I'm saying is it's hard to watch this show with headphones sitting at my desk with my computer humming away next to me and not feel self-conscious and directly attacked.