serial experiments lain first episode explained

The Ending Of Serial Experiments Lain Explained

Years before social media as we know it, before Cambridge Analytica, before even "The Sims" or "The Matrix," there was "Serial Experiments Lain." This one-season wonder anime explored theories of metaphysics and epistemology with a cyberpunk sheen. It was the blueprint that a lot of media followed, like the "Matrix" series, the "Battlestar Galactica" prequel series " Caprica ," anime such as "Paranoia Agent" and " Paprika ," and IP-laden films like "Ready Player One" and " Space Jam: A New Legacy ."

"Serial Experiments Lain" is about a middle school girl named Lain, who receives an email from a classmate that died. The email explains that this classmate isn't really dead, but rather has merely shed her physical form. She now exists in the Wired (what people call the internet in "Lain") and has found enlightenment/met God in there. Lain delves deeper and deeper into the Wired, finding out truths about herself and the world around her. The Wired starts to affect reality, begging the question: Which world is really real?

Is the Wired real? Is reality real?

"Serial Experiments Lain" starts with what seems like a clear delineation between the "real" world and what goes on in the Wired. One is real, and the other is just communication between real people on a simulated plane of existence. When it's all said and done, the Wired is just a "medium of communication and the transfer of information," Lain's father says to her early in the show. "You mustn't confuse it with the real world." As the show progresses, the difference between reality and Wired get very muddy. Humans abandon their physical form to become programs, and programs become human and warp reality.

Part of this is due to how the internet works in the world of "Lain." The Wired is an online space that has somehow connected to the earth's magnetic field . By resonating with the earth, the Wired taps into a Jungian shared unconscious. Thus, what happens online becomes manifest through humanity's shared perception of reality. Our brains make it real.

Lain eventually discovers that she and her antagonist Masami did not start out life as humans. They are programs that have found a way to shift between the Wired and what we think of as reality. Lain realizes that she can control (or program) both the Wired and our physical plane of existence, like Neo and Bane in the "Matrix" sequels , but years before those came out. The show argues that our existence is defined by others' perception of it. We are other people acknowledging that we exist.

The nature of the extremely online self

In the final episode, Lain chooses to erase herself from existence by removing memories of her from her friends and family. This move underscores the sociological and psychological theory that there really is no such thing as a core self. What we think of as a Self is made up of how we are perceived and interacted with by others. Erving Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" posits that the self is a character we play in our interactions with others. If you don't have an audience to play that part to, do you even have a self? As Lain puts it, "I only exist inside those aware of my existence." 

Removing herself from a fixed point in existence frees Lain to do whatever she wants. She visits her childhood friend Alice as an adult, implying that by no longer being tied to a specific time and place in people's memory, she can now freely move anywhere and anywhen. However, this isn't how the internet works in real life. In an essay for the Ringer , Justin Charity argues that "Lain" presaged many of the ways the self would be destabilized by social media, for the worse. The more online versions of Lain are meaner, more reactive, and more vengeful. A girl who seems completely meek in her real world interactions becomes an avenging troll online. As we've seen with YouTube and Facebook , much of the internet exists to elicit strong emotions in us. Combine this with how online profiles decouple our online words from our faces, and you get anonymous trolls.

Echoes of Lain

"Serial Experiments Lain" was one of the first adult-oriented anime to break through to America. Like " Cowboy Bebop ," " Neon Genesis Evangelion ," and "Ghost in the Shell," it was consumed by a western audience that loved cyberpunk philosophizing. The show wasn't as widely seen as those other anime, perhaps because it never ran on Cartoon Network's Toonami block, but the themes of "Lain" have only gotten more relevant.

We see echoes of the show in films like "Inception" and "Transcendance," which the Daily Beast argued ripped off "Serial Experiments Lain" whole cloth. The idea of abandoning one's body and solely existing online pops up in shows like "Caprica" and " Dollhouse ," which question the idea of a soul and whether it can be uploaded to the cloud. Every person who questions whether this reality is a simulation is, whether they know it or not, following in Lain's footsteps.

The creators of the show went on to lend this philosophical vibe to later works, as well. Screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka went on to write "The Big O," which also investigated ideas of simulated reality and the nature of memory and the soul. The main three collaborators on the show — Konaka, director Ryūtarō Nakamura, and artist Yoshitoshi ABe — worked together on a show about the unseen world of ghosts after "Lain." They were set to create another show, "Despera," until Nakamura's death in 2013. According to Konaka's Twitter , work recently restarted on the anime, with a major announcement due to come out in 2022.

Serial Experiments Lain (anime)

Serial Experiments Lain is an anime series directed by Nakamura Ryuutarou , original character design by Yoshitoshi ABe , screenplay written by Chiaki J. Konaka , and produced by Ueda Yasuyuki (credited as production 2nd ) for Triangle Staff. It was broadcast on TV Tokyo from July to September 1998 and has 13 episodes . A PlayStation game with the same title was released in November 1998 by Pioneer LDC.

The opening theme is Duvet and the ending theme is Tooi Sakebi .

Lain is influenced by philosophical subjects such as reality , identity , and communication . The series focuses on Lain Iwakura , an adolescent girl living in suburban Japan, and her introduction to the Wired , a global communications network similar to the Internet. Lain lives with her middle-class family, which consists of her inexpressive older sister Mika Iwakura , her cold mother Miho Iwakura , and her computer-obsessed father Yasuo Iwakura . The first ripple on the pond of Lain's lonely life appears when she learns that girls from her school have received an e-mail from Chisa Yomoda , a schoolmate who committed suicide . When Lain receives the message at home, Chisa tells her (in real time) that she is not dead, but has just "abandoned the flesh", and has found God in the Wired. From then on, Lain is bound to a quest which will take her ever deeper into both the network and her own thoughts.

The anime series is licensed in North America by Funimation since 2010. Before that, it was licensed by Geneon (previously Pioneer Entertainment) who released the series on VHS, LaserDisc, and DVD, as well as a restored Blu-ray edition. It was also released in Singapore by Odex. The video game, which shares only the themes and protagonist with the series, was never released outside Japan.

A remastered Blu-ray box set was released in Japan in 2009, and the US in 2012. It features the show redigitized to a 4:3 1080p format, with many CG sequences (such as the PRESENT DAY PRESENT TIME opening) re-rendered in higher quality.

The series shows influences from topics such as philosophy, computer history, cyberpunk literature and conspiracy theory, and it was made the subject of several academic articles. English language anime reviewers found it to be weird and unusual, with generally positive reviews. Producer Ueda said he intended Japanese and American audiences to form conflicting views on the series, but was disappointed in this regard, as the impressions turned out to be similar.

• 2.1 Production

Serial Experiments Lain deals directly with the definition of reality , which makes its complex plot difficult to summarize. The story is primarily based on the assumption that everything flows from human thought, memory , and consciousness. Therefore, events on screen can be considered hallucinations of Lain, of other protagonists, or of Lain fabricating the hallucinations of others. Story misdirection is central to the plotline; even the offscreen voices or narrations' information cannot be considered truthful. The series consists of a cross-reflection of philosophical themes instead of the traditional linear events depiction: episodes are called " layers ".

Serial Experiments Lain describes " the Wired " as the sum of human communication networks, created with the telegraph and telephone services, and expanded with the Internet and subsequent networks. The anime assumes that the Wired could be linked to a system that enables unconscious communication between people and machines without physical interface. The storyline introduces such a system with the Schumann Resonances , a property of the Earth's magnetic field that theoretically allows for unhindered long-distance communications. If such a link was created, the network would become equivalent to Reality as the general consensus of all perceptions and knowledge. The thin line between what is real and what is possible would then begin to blur.

Masami Eiri is introduced as the project director on Protocol 7 (the next generation internet protocol in the series' timeframe) for major computer company Tachibana General Laboratories . He has secretly included code of his own creation to give himself control of the Wired through the wireless system described above. He then "uploaded” his consciousness into the Wired and died in real life a few days after. These details are unveiled around the middle of the series, but this is the point where the story of Serial Experiments Lain begins.

Masami later explains that Lain is the artifact by which the wall between the virtual and material worlds is to fall, and that he needs her to get to the Wired and "abandon the flesh", as he did, to achieve his plan. The series sees him trying to convince her through interventions, using the promise of unconditional love, charm, fate, and, when all else fails, threats and force.

In the meantime, the anime follows a complex game of hide-and-seek between the " Knights of the Eastern Calculus ", hackers who Masami claims are "believers that enable him to be a god in the Wired", and Tachibana Labs, who try to regain control of Protocol 7.

In the end, the viewer sees Lain realizing, after much introspection, that she has absolute power over everyone's mind and over reality itself. Her dialogue with different versions of herself show how she feels shunned from the material world, and how she is afraid to live in the Wired, where she has the possibilities and responsibilities of a goddess. The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone's memories. She is last seen unchanged - re-encountering her old friend Alice Mizuki , who is now married. Lain promises herself to look after Alice.

Development

Serial Experiments Lain was conceived, as a series, to be original to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda . He explained he created Lain with a set of values he took as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. Later, when he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed.

The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga). Producer Yasuyuki Ueda said in an interview, "the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products". The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series, though the series was released first. A dōjinshi titled " The Nightmare of Fabrication " was produced by Yoshitoshi ABe and released in Japanese in the artbook An Omnipresence in Wired . Ueda and Konaka declared in an interview that the idea of a multimedia project was not unusual in Japan, as opposed to the contents of Lain, and the way they are exposed.

In 2009, Yoshitoshi ABe announced a spiritual sequel to Serial Experiments Lain called Despera who will reunited many of the staff who worked on Serial Experiments Lain, including Chiaki J Konaka and Ryūtarō Nakamura.

Words like "weird" or "bizarre" are almost systematically associated to review the series by English Language reviews due mostly to the freedoms taken with the animation and its unusual science fiction, philosophical and psychological context. Despite the show judged atypical, the critics responded positively to the thematic and stylistic characteristics. It was praised by the Japan Media Arts Festival, in 1998, for "its willingness to question the meaning of contemporary life" and the "extraordinarily philosophical and deep questions".

In 2005, Newtype USA stated that the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". the author saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and the "perfect soundtrack". It concluded saying that "Serial Experiments Lain might not yet be considered a true classic, but it's a fascinating evolutionary leap that helped change the future of anime."

In 2001, Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet" noticing the presence of horror lore (like ghost from train accident story) and horrific visuals.

The Anime Essentials anthology, Gilles Poitras describes it as a "complex and somehow existential" anime that "pushed the envelope" of anime diversity in the 1990s, alongside the much better known Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop.

In 2003, Professor Susan J. Napier, in her reading to the American Philosophical Society called The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation. Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty real and a dark virtual".

In 2020, the review-aggregation website website Rotten Tomatoes, classified Serial Experiments Lain as one of the 25 anime TV series that have been essential to the medium over the last five decades. ( source )

"Serial Experiments Lain helped usher in a new style of anime, of more digitally-produced shows with a glossy bloom and deeper, darker, complicated storylines. In the wake of Neon Genesis tearing up the typical anime playbook, Lain pursues a surreal, interior cyberpunk story about a withdrawn high school girl who receives an email from a classmate who has recently committed suicide. Questions of hyperreality, consciousness, and the everyday tangibility of cyberspace ensue. Lain is pretentious, symbolic, and absorbing – a prime example of a brave new world in anime."

Despite the general positive feedbacks, some negative critics stated the "lifeless" setting it had, how the last episodes failed to resolve the questions, and how the show relied so little on dialogue. ( source )

• Japan Media Arts Festival 1998: Excellence Prize ( source )
• It was also the name of one of the earliest cybercafé franchises - which had a branch in Tokyo.
• And could also be a successor to the upcoming new internet protocol IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) (the current internet protocol is IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4)).
• NAVI, the trademark-turned-noun for computer in the series, is contracted from Knowledge Navigator, a term invented by Apple CEO John Sculley in his book Odyssey. It referred to a computer connected to a vast network where everyone was connected.
• Copland OS was an unreleased operating system by Apple Computers. See also System 7, its predecessor.
• Devices, in this context, refers to Marshal McLuhan's concept.
• Gaia, a global brain in Cyberia shares a common thread with the collective shared unconscious in Lain
• Earth Coincidence Control Office by John C. Lilly, a higher intelligence controlling the "coincidences" on Earth.
• Knights of the Eastern Calculus: The Knights of the Lambda Calculus are a semi-mythical, semi-serious, real-world group of hackers devoted to the use of the programming language Lisp.
• Tachibana Labs is a play on words on Apple Macintosh, (a type of Apple) itself being the name of a citrus fruit (the citrus tachibana)
• Layer ## at the beginning of each episode is said by Apple's Whisper voice in Mac OS text-to-speech software.
• Nezumi, the Knights-wannabe who carries a computer rig and accesses the Wired while he walks matches the description of a Gargoyle from Snow Crash, as do the MIB agents, who wear the same headgear (complete with laser sight) that Lagos was described as wearing.
• Close the World, Open the neXt. Compare NeXT and neXt. NeXT was the high-end computer company founded by Steve Jobs after his ouster from Apple. The Internet as we know it (that is, * the hypertext-based World Wide Web) was invented by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXTSTEP computer.
• to Be continued, where Be uses the same colouring as Be OS used.
• hello (again), the text from an Apple advertisement, is used in an omake.
• What is Artificial Life? from ALIFE VI is quoted in text-form at several places.
• While it's debatable, Lain can be seen as an Expy of Rei Ayanami. This has been denied by writer Chiaki J. Konaka, who hadn't seen Neon Genesis Evangelion until after he'd written * * the fourth episode. This is not relieving.

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Serial Experiments Lain Explained

Serial Experiments Lain is a Japanese anime television series created and co-produced by Yasuyuki Ueda , written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura . Animated by Triangle Staff and featuring original character designs by Yoshitoshi Abe , the series was broadcast for 13 episodes on TV Tokyo and its affiliates from July to September 1998. The series follows Lain Iwakura, an adolescent girl in suburban Japan, and her relation to the Wired, a global communications network similar to the internet.

Lain features surreal and avant-garde imagery and explores philosophical topics such as reality , identity, and communication. [1] The series incorporates creative influences from computer history , cyberpunk, and conspiracy theories . Critics and fans have praised Lain for its originality, visuals, atmosphere, themes, and its dark depiction of a world fraught with paranoia, social alienation, and reliance on technology considered insightful of 21st century life. It received the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival in 1998.

Lain Iwakura, a junior high school girl, lives in suburban Japan with her middle-class family, consisting of her inexpressive older sister Mika, emotionally distant mother Miho, and computer-obsessed father Yasuo; Lain herself is awkward, introverted, and socially isolated. The status-quo of her life becomes upturned by a series of bizarre incidents that take place after girls from her school receive an e-mail from a dead student, Chisa Yomoda, and she pulls out her old computer in order to check for the same message. Lain finds Chisa telling her via email that she is not dead but has merely "abandoned her physical self" and is alive deep within the virtual realm of the Wired itself, where she claims she has found "God". From this point, Lain is caught in a series of cryptic and surreal events that see her delving deeper into the mystery of the network in a narrative that explores themes of consciousness, perception, and the nature of reality.

"The Wired" is a virtual realm that contains and supports the very sum of all human communication and networks, created with the telegraph, television, and telephone services, and expanded with the Internet and cyberspace . The series assumes that the Wired could be linked to a system that enables unconscious communication between people and machines without physical interface. The storyline introduces such a system with the Schumann resonances , a property of the Earth's magnetic field that theoretically allows for unhindered long-distance communications. If such a link were created, the network would become equivalent to reality as the general consensus of all perceptions and knowledge. The increasingly thin line between what is real and what is virtual/digital begins to shatter.

Masami Eiri is the project director on Protocol Seven (the next-generation Internet protocol in the series' time-frame) for major computer company Tachibana General Laboratories. He had secretly included code of his very own creation to give himself control of the Wired. He "uploaded" his own consciousness into the Wired and "died," leaving only his body behind. Masami explains that Lain is the artifact by which the wall between the virtual and material worlds is to fall, and he needs her to go into the Wired and "abandon the flesh", as he did, to achieve his plan. The series sees him trying to convince her through interventions, using the promise of unconditional love, romantic seduction and charm, and even threats and force.

In the meantime, the anime follows a complex game of hide-and-seek between the "Knights of the Eastern Calculus" (based on the Knights of the Lambda Calculus ), hackers whom Masami claims are "believers that enable him to be a God in the Wired", and Tachibana General Laboratories, who try to regain control of Protocol Seven. In the end, Lain realizes, after much introspection , that she has control over everyone's mind and over reality itself. Her dialogue with different versions of herself shows how she feels shunned from the material world, and is afraid to live in the Wired, where she has the possibilities and responsibilities of an almighty goddess. The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone's memories of her. She is last seen encountering her closest friend Alice once again, who is now married, though Lain herself is unchanged. Lain promises herself that she and Alice will meet again anytime as Lain can literally go and be anywhere she desires between both worlds .

Serial Experiments Lain was conceived, as a series, to be original to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda. [4]

Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement he had made in an Animerica interview where he claimed that Lain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after World War II ". [5] [6] [7] He later explained in numerous interviews that he created Lain with a set of values he viewed as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. When Ueda discovered that the American audience held most of the same views on the series as the Japanese did, he was disappointed.

The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga). Producer Yasuyuki Ueda said in an interview, "the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products". The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series, though the series was released first. A dōjinshi titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication" was produced by Yoshitoshi Abe and released in Japanese in the artbook An Omnipresence in Wired . Ueda and Konaka declared in an interview that the idea of a multimedia project was not unusual in Japan, as opposed to the contents of Lain , and the way they are exposed.

The authors were asked in interviews if they had been influenced by Neon Genesis Evangelion , in the themes and graphic design. This was strictly denied by writer Chiaki J. Konaka in an interview, arguing that he had not even seen Evangelion until he finished the fourth episode of Lain . Being primarily a horror movie writer, his stated influences are Godard (especially for using typography on screen), The Exorcist , Hell House , and Dan Curtis 's House of Dark Shadows . Alice's name, like the names of her two friends Julie and Reika, came from a previous production from Konaka,, which in turn was largely influenced by Alice in Wonderland . As the series developed, Konaka was "surprised" by how close Alice's character became to the original Wonderland character. [8]

Vannevar Bush (and memex ), John C. Lilly , Timothy Leary and his eight-circuit model of consciousness , Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu are cited as precursors to the Wired. [9] Douglas Rushkoff and his book Cyberia were originally to be cited as such, and in Serial Experiments: Lain , Cyberia became the name of a nightclub populated with hackers and techno-punk teenagers. Likewise, the series' deus ex machina lies in the conjunction of the Schumann resonances and Jung's collective unconscious (the authors chose this term over Kabbalah and Akashic Record ). [10] Majestic 12 and the Roswell UFO incident are used as examples of how a hoax might still affect history, even after having been exposed as such, by creating sub-cultures. This links again to Vannevar Bush, the alleged "brains" of MJ12.

Two of the literary references in Lain are quoted through Lain's father: he first logs onto a website with the password "" (" Think Blue, Count Two " is an Instrumentality of Man story featuring virtual persons projected as real ones in people's minds); [11] and his saying that " madeleines would be good with the tea" in the last episode makes Lain "one of the only cartoons ever to allude to Proust". [12] [13]

Character design

Yoshitoshi Abe confesses to have never read manga as a child, as it was "off-limits" in his household. [14] His major influences are "nature and everything around him". Specifically speaking about Lain's character, Abe was inspired by Kenji Tsuruta , Akihiro Yamada , Range Murata and Yukinobu Hoshino . In a broader view, he has been influenced in his style and technique by Japanese artists Kyosuke Chinai and Toshio Tabuchi.

The character design of Lain was not Abe's sole responsibility. Her distinctive left forelock for instance was a demand from Yasuyuki Ueda. The goal was to produce asymmetry to reflect Lain's unstable and disconcerting nature. [15] It was designed as a mystical symbol, as it is supposed to prevent voices and spirits from being heard by the left ear. The bear pajamas she wears were a demand from character animation director Takahiro Kishida. Though bears are a trademark of the Konaka brothers, Chiaki Konaka first opposed the idea. Director Nakamura then explained how the bear motif could be used as a shield for confrontations with her family. It is a key element of the design of the shy "real world" Lain (see "mental illness" under Themes). When she first goes to the Cyberia nightclub, she wears a bear hat for similar reasons. Retrospectively, Konaka said that Lain's pajamas became a major factor in drawing fans of moe characterization to the series, and remarked that "such items may also be important when making anime".

Abe's original design was generally more complicated than what finally appeared on screen. As an example, the X-shaped hair clip was to be an interlocking pattern of gold links. The links would open with a snap, or rotate around an axis until the moment the " X " became a " = ". This was not used as there is no scene where Lain takes her hair clip off. [16]

Serial Experiments Lain is not a conventionally linear story, being described as "an alternative anime, with modern themes and realization". [17] Themes range from theological to psychological and are dealt with in a number of ways: from classical dialogue to image-only introspection, passing by direct interrogation of imaginary characters.

Communication, in its wider sense, is one of the main themes of the series, [18] not only as opposed to loneliness, but also as a subject in itself. Writer Konaka said he wanted to directly "communicate human feelings". Director Nakamura wanted to show the audience — and particularly viewers between 14 and 15—"the multidimensional wavelength of the existential self : the relationship between self and the world".

Loneliness , if only as representing a lack of communication, is recurrent through Lain . [19] Lain herself (according to Anime Jump) is "almost painfully introverted with no friends to speak of at school, a snotty, condescending sister, a strangely apathetic mother, and a father who seems to want to care but is just too damn busy to give her much of his time". [20] Friendships turn on the first rumor; [21] and the only insert song of the series is named Kodoku no shigunaru , literally "signal of loneliness". [22]

Mental illness, especially dissociative identity disorder, is a significant theme in Lain : the main character is constantly confronted with alter-egos, to the point where writer Chiaki Konaka and Lain's voice actress Kaori Shimizu had to agree on subdividing the character's dialogues between three different orthographs . The three names designate distinct "versions" of Lain: the real-world, "childish" Lain has a shy attitude and bear pajamas. The "advanced" Lain, her Wired personality, is bold and questioning. Finally, the "evil" Lain is sly and devious, and does everything she can to harm Lain or the ones close to her. As a writing convention, the authors spelled their respective names in kanji , katakana , and roman characters (see picture). [23]

Reality never has the pretense of objectivity in Lain . [24] Acceptations of the term are battling throughout the series, such as the "natural" reality, defined through normal dialogue between individuals; the material reality; and the tyrannic reality, enforced by one person onto the minds of others. A key debate to all interpretations of the series is to decide whether matter flows from thought, or the opposite. [25] The production staff carefully avoided "the so-called God's Eye Viewpoint" to make clear the "limited field of vision" of the world of Lain .

Theology plays its part in the development of the story too. Lain has been viewed as a questioning of the possibility of an infinite spirit in a finite body. [26] From self-realization as a goddess to deicide , religion (the title of a layer) is an inherent part of Lain background.

Apple computers

Lain contains extensive references to Apple computers, as the brand was used at the time by most of the creative staff, such as writers, producers, and the graphical team. As an example, the title at the beginning of each episode is announced by the Apple computer speech synthesis program PlainTalk , using the voice "Whisper" , e.g. say -v Whisper "Weird: Layer zero one" . Tachibana Industries, the company that creates the NAVI computers, is a reference to Apple computers: the tachibana orange is a Japanese variety of mandarin orange. NAVI is the abbreviation of Knowledge Navigator , and the HandiNAVI is based on the Apple Newton , one of the world's first PDAs . The NAVIs are seen to run "Copland OS Enterprise" (this reference to Copland was an initiative of Konaka , a declared Apple fan), and Lain's and Alice's NAVIs closely resembles the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh and the iMac G3 respectively. The HandiNAVI programming language, as seen on the seventh episode, is a dialect of Lisp ; the Newton also used a Lisp dialect ( NewtonScript ). The program being typed by Lain can be found in the CMU AI repository; [27] it is a simple implementation of Conway's Game of Life in Common Lisp .

During a series of disconnected images, an iMac and the Think Different advertising slogan appears for a short time, while the Whisper voice says it. [28] This was an unsolicited insertion from the graphic team, also Mac-enthusiasts. Other subtle allusions can be found: "Close the world, Open the nExt" is the slogan for the Serial Experiments Lain video game. NeXT was the company that produced NeXTSTEP , which later evolved into Mac OS X after Apple bought NeXT. Another example is "To Be Continued." at the end of episodes 1–12, with a blue "B" and a red "e" on "Be"; this matches the original logo of Be Inc. , a company founded by ex-Apple employees and NeXT's main competitor in its time. [29]

Broadcast and release history

Serial Experiments Lain was first aired on TV Tokyo and its affiliates on July 6, 1998, and concluded on September 28, 1998, with the thirteenth and final episode. The series consists of 13 episodes (referred to in the series as "Layers") of 24 minutes each, except for the sixth episode, Kids (23 minutes 14 seconds). In Japan, the episodes were released in LD , VHS , and DVD with a total of five volumes. A DVD compilation named " Serial Experiments Lain DVD-BOX Яesurrection " was released along with a promo DVD called " LPR-309 " in 2000. [30] As this box set is now discontinued, a rerelease was made in 2005 called " Serial Experiments Lain TV-BOX ". A 4-volume DVD box set was released in the US by Pioneer/Geneon. A Blu-ray release of the anime was made in December 2009 called " Serial Experiments Lain Blu-ray Box| RESTORE ". [31] [32] [33] [34] The anime series returned to US television on October 15, 2012, on the Funimation Channel. [35] The series' opening theme, "Duvet", was written and performed by Jasmine Rodgers and the British band Bôa . The ending theme,, was written and composed by Reichi Nakaido .

The anime series was licensed in North America by Pioneer Entertainment (later Geneon USA) on VHS and DVD in 1999. However, the company closed its USA division in December 2007 and the series went out-of-print as a result. [36] However, at Anime Expo 2010, North American distributor Funimation announced that it had obtained the license to the series and re-released it in 2012. [37]

Serial Experiments Lain was first broadcast in Tokyo at 1:15 a.m. JST . The word "weird" appears almost systematically in English language reviews of the series, [38] [39] [40] [41] or the alternatives "bizarre", [42] and "atypical", [43] due mostly to the freedoms taken with the animation and its unusual science fiction themes, and due to its philosophical and psychological context. Critics responded positively to these thematic and stylistic characteristics, and it was awarded an Excellence Prize by the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival for "its willingness to question the meaning of contemporary life" and the "extraordinarily philosophical and deep questions" it asks. [44]

According to Christian Nutt from Newtype USA , the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". Nutt saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and the "perfect soundtrack" in his 2005 review of series, saying that " Serial Experiments Lain might not yet be considered a true classic, but it's a fascinating evolutionary leap that helped change the future of anime." [45] Anime Jump gave it 4.5/5, and Anime on DVD gave it A+ on all criteria for volume 1 and 2, and a mix of A and A+ for volume 3 and 4. Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet". [46] It notes that the red spots present in all the shadows look like blood pools (see picture). It notes the death of a girl in a train accident is "a source of much ghost lore in the twentieth century", more so in Tokyo.

The Anime Essentials anthology by Gilles Poitras describes it as a "complex and somehow existential" anime that "pushed the envelope" of anime diversity in the 1990s, alongside the much better known contemporaries Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop . [47] Professor Susan J. Napier , in her 2003 reading to the American Philosophical Society called The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation (published 2005), compared Serial Experiments Lain to Ghost in the Shell and Hayao Miyazaki 's Spirited Away . [48] According to her, the main characters of the two other works cross barriers; they can cross back to our world, but Lain cannot. Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty 'real' and a dark 'virtual'". Mike Toole of Anime News Network named Serial Experiments Lain as one of the most important anime of the 1990s. [49]

Despite the positive feedback the television series had received, Anime Academy gave the series a 75%, partly due to the "lifeless" setting it had. [50] Michael Poirier of EX magazine stated that the last three episodes fail to resolve the questions in other DVD volumes. [51] Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network noted that the English dub was decent, but that the show relied so little on dialogue that it hardly mattered. [52]

Related media

• An Omnipresence In Wired : Hardbound, 128 pages in 96 colors with Japanese text. It features a chapter for each layer (episode) and concept sketches. It also features a short color manga titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication". It was published in 1998 by Triangle Staff/SR-12W/Pioneer LDC.
• Yoshitoshi ABe lain illustrations ab# rebuild an omnipresence in Wired : Hardbound, 148 pages. A remake of "An Omnipresence In Wired" with new art, added text by Chiaki J. Konaka, and a section entitled "ABe's EYE in color of things" (a compilation of his photos of the world). It was published in Japan on October 1, 2005, by Wanimagazine , and in America as a softcover version translated into English on June 27, 2006, by Digital Manga Publishing .
• Visual Experiments Lain : Paperback, 80 full-color pages with Japanese text. It has details on the creation, design, and storyline of the series. It was published in 1998 by Triangle Staff/Pioneer LDC.
• Scenario Experiments Lain : Paperback, 335 pages. By "chiaki j. konaka" (uncapitalized in original). It contains collected scripts with notes and small excerpted storyboards. It was published in 1998 in Japan.

Soundtracks

The first original soundtrack , Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack , features music by Reichi Nakaido : the ending theme and part of the television series' score, alongside other songs inspired by the series. The second, Serial Experiments Lain Soundtrack: Cyberia Mix , features electronica songs inspired by the television series, including a remix of the opening theme "Duvet" by DJ Wasei. The third, lain BOOTLEG , consists of the ambient score of the series across forty-five tracks. BOOTLEG also contains a second mixed-mode data and audio disc, containing a clock program and a game, as well as an extended version of the first disc – nearly double the length – across 57 tracks in 128 kbit/s MP3 format, and sound effects from the series in WAV format. Because the word bootleg appears in its title, it is easily confused with the Sonmay counterfeit edition of itself, which only contains the first disc in an edited format. All three soundtrack albums were released by Pioneer Records .

The series' opening theme, " Duvet ", was written and performed in English by the British rock band Bôa . The band released the song as a single and as part of the EP Tall Snake , which features both an acoustic version and DJ Wasei's remix from Cyberia Mix .

See main article: Serial Experiments Lain (video game) . On November 26, 1998, Pioneer LDC released a video game with the same name as the anime for the PlayStation . [53] It was designed by Konaka and Yasuyuki, and made to be a "network simulator" in which the player would navigate to explore Lain's story. The creators themselves did not call it a game, but "Psycho-Stretch-Ware", and it has been described as being a kind of graphic novel : the gameplay is limited to unlocking pieces of information, and then reading/viewing/listening to them, with little or no puzzle needed to unlock. [54] Lain distances itself even more from classical games by the random order in which information is collected. The aim of the authors was to let the player get the feeling that there are myriads of informations that they would have to sort through, and that they would have to do with less than what exists to understand. As with the anime, the creative team's main goal was to let the player "feel" Lain, and "to understand her problems, and to love her". A guidebook to the game called Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide was released the same month by MediaWorks . [55]

Further reading

• Web site: Movie Gazette: 'Serial Experiments Lain Volume 3: Deus' Review . Anton. Bitel. Movie Gazette. October 11, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060521165625/http://www.movie-gazette.com/cinereviews/847. May 21, 2006.
• Web site: Carl Gustav. Horn. Serial Experiments Lain . February 19, 2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20010219070334/http://j-pop.com/anime/archive/reviews/14/05_serialexplain.html. Viz Communications. September 25, 2010. dead.
• Web site: Dani. Moure. Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #2 . Mania.com. September 25, 2010. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402112855/http://www.mania.com/serial-experiments-lain-vol-2_article_76117.html. April 2, 2015.
• Web site: Dani. Moure. Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #3 . Mania.com. September 25, 2010. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402114224/http://www.mania.com/serial-experiments-lain-vol-3_article_78989.html. April 2, 2015.
• Napier, Susan J. (2005)
• Prévost, Adèle-Elise; Musebasement (2008) "Manga: The Signal of Noise" Mechademia 3 pp. 173–188
• Prindle. Tamae Kobayashi. Nakamura Ryûtarô's Anime, Serial Experiments, Lain (1998). Asian Studies. 3. 1. 2015. 53–81. 2350-4226. 10.4312/as.2015.3.1.53-81. free.
• Web site: Justin. Sevakis. November 20, 2008. Buried Treasure: Serial Experiments Lain . Anime News Network . September 25, 2010.
• Jackson. C.. 10.1353/mec.2012.0013. Topologies of Identity in Serial Experiments Lain . Mechademia. 7. 191–201. 2012. 119423011.

External links

• Official Funimation website

Notes and References

• Napier. Susan J.. Susan J. Napier. November 2002. When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain . Science Fiction Studies. 29. 88. 418–435. 0091-7729. May 4, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20070611205327/http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/abstracts/a88.htm#Napier. June 11, 2007. live.
• Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20070323032932/http://www.anime-revolution.com/anime/sel-character-profiles. March 23, 2007. [SEL] Character Profiles]. Anime Revolution. December 30, 2006.
• Web site: Otakon Lain Panel Discussion with Yasuyuki Ueda and Yoshitoshi Abe . September 16, 2006. August 5, 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20061026065237/http://www.cjas.org/~leng/o2klain.htm. October 26, 2006. live.
• Web site: Abe Yoshitoshi et Ueda Yasuyuki . AnimeLand. Anime Manga Presse. Scipion. Johan. September 16, 2006. fr. March 1, 2003. https://web.archive.org/web/20070927120258/http://www.animeland.com/index.php?rub=articles&id=399. September 27, 2007. live.
• Animerica , (Vol. 7 No. 9, p. 29)
• Web site: Online Lain Chat with Yasuyuki Ueda and Yoshitoshi ABe . The Anime Colony. September 16, 2006. August 7, 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20061024122218/http://www.cjas.org/~leng/lainchat.htm. October 24, 2006. live.
• Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20080804105225/http://www.animejump.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=32&page=1. August 4, 2008. Anime Jump!: Lain Men:Yasuyuki Ueda . September 26, 2006.
• April 2000. Serial Experiments Lain. HK Magazine . 14. Asia City Publishing. Hong Kong. in Web site: HK Interview . Chiaki J. Konaka . September 25, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101124051110/http://konaka.com/alice6/lain/hk.html. November 24, 2010. live. and Web site: HK Interview . Chiaki J. Konaka. September 25, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101101005437/http://konaka.com/alice6/lain/hkint_e.html. November 1, 2010. live.
• [Animerica]
• Serial Experiments Lain , "Layer 01: WEIRD"
• Web site: Movie Gazette: "Serial Experiments Lain Volume : Reset" Review . October 11, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060521165608/http://www.movie-gazette.com/cinereviews/860. May 21, 2006.
• Yasuo: "I will bring madeleines next time. They will taste good with the tea." Serial Experiments Lain , Episode 13, "Ego". Lain has just erased herself from her friends' memories, while for Proust the taste of madeleines triggers memories of his childhood.
• Web site: Anime Jump!: Lain Men: Yoshitoshi Abe . September 16, 2006. 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20060510030644/http://www.animejump.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=33&page=1. May 10, 2006. dead.
• FRUiTS Magazine No. 15, October 1998.
• Manga Max magazine, September 1999, p. 22, "Unreal to Real"
• Benkyo! Magazine, March 1999, p.16, "In My Humble Opinion"
• Web site: T.H.E.M.Anime Review of Serial Experiments Lain . November 24, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20061011155649/http://www.themanime.org/viewreview.php?id=353. October 11, 2006. live.
• Web site: DVDoutsider Review of Serial Experiments Lain . November 24, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20120305015738/http://www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/reviews/s/serial_experiments_lain.html. March 5, 2012.
• Web site: Anime Jump!: Serial Experiments Lain Review . Mike. Toole. https://web.archive.org/web/20080610033719/http://www.animejump.com/index.php?module=prodreviews&func=showcontent&id=201. June 10, 2008. October 16, 2003.
• Serial Experiments Lain , Layer 08: RUMORS
• Web site: List of Serial Experiments Lain songs . December 7, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20070113231952/http://animelyrics.tv/anime/lain/. January 13, 2007.
• Book: Abe, Yoshitoshi. Visual Experiments Lain. 1998. Triangle Staff/Pioneer LDC.. 978-4-7897-1342-9., page 42
• Manga Max Magazine, September 1999, p. 21, "God's Eye View"
• Serial Experiments Lain, Layer 06: KIDS: "your physical body exists only to confirm your existence".
• https://web.archive.org/web/20060302194747/http://www.ahcca.unimelb.edu.au/refractory/journalissues/vol3/colman.htm Study on Lain , Buffy , and Attack of the clones
• Web site: Conway's Game of Life . Carnegie Mellon University . June 24, 2009. https://web.archive.org/web/20090722175621/https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/code/fun/life.cl. July 22, 2009. live.
• Serial Experiments Lain , Layer 11: INFORNOGRAPHY.
• Web site: Be, Inc. . https://web.archive.org/web/20031128123907/http://www.beincorporated.com/. November 28, 2003. November 27, 2006. dead.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain – Release . September 16, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20100216181824/http://www.geneon-ent.co.jp/rondorobe/anime/lain/release.html. February 16, 2010.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain Blu-ray Box RESTORE . ImageShack. April 14, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402163147/http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/292/lainblurayrestore.jpg. April 2, 2015. dead.
• Web site: serial experiments lain Blu-ray LABO プロデューサーの制作日記 . September 16, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20101226100424/http://blog.geneon-ent.co.jp/graphid/. December 26, 2010.
• Web site: Playlog.jp Blog . October 15, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20090817033108/http://playlog.jp/sendenman/blog/2009-08-15. August 17, 2009.
• Web site: Lain on BD announced – Wakachan Thread . October 15, 2009. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20120227184130/http://hr.deadgods.net/hr/kareha.pl/1250369962/. February 27, 2012.
• Web site: FUNimation Week 43 of 2012 . dead. https://archive.today/20130123180703/http://www.funimationchannel.com/schedule/2_e243.htm. January 23, 2013.
• Web site: Geneon USA To Cancel DVD Sales, Distribution By Friday . Anime News Network . September 26, 2007. January 30, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100328222859/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-09-26/geneon-usa-to-cancel-dvd-sales-distribution-by-friday. March 28, 2010. live.
• Web site: Funi Adds Live Action Moyashimon Live Action, More . Anime News Network . July 2, 2010. July 3, 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100704090410/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-07-02/funi-adds-live-action-moyashimon. July 4, 2010. live.
• Web site: Movie Gazette: 'Serial Experiments Lain Volume 2: Knights' Review . Anton. Bitel. Movie Gazette. September 16, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060821190520/http://www.movie-gazette.com/cinereviews/828. August 21, 2006.
• Web site: Sci-Fi Weekly: Serial Experiments Lain Review . Tasha. Robinson. September 16, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060720210555/http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue123/anime.html. July 20, 2006.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain Vol. #1 . Beveridge. Chris. Mania.com. July 13, 1999. September 16, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20150402114355/http://www.mania.com/serial-experiments-lain-vol-1_article_73942.html. April 2, 2015.
• Web site: The Spinning Image: "Serial Experiments Lain Volume 4: Reset" Review . Southworth. Wayne. September 16, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20070928001632/http://www.thespinningimage.co.uk/cultfilms/displaycultfilm.asp?reviewid=872&aff=13. September 28, 2007. live.
• Web site: Anime News Network: Serial Experiments Lain DVD Vol. 1–4 Review . Silver. Aaron. September 16, 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060325152323/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/reviews/display.php?id=34. March 25, 2006. live.
• Web site: DVD.net: "Lain: Volume 1 – Navi" Review . Lai. Tony. September 16, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20060920211809/http://dvd.net.au/review.cgi?review_id=1081. September 20, 2006.
• Web site: 1998 (2nd) Japan Media Arts Festival: Excellence Prize – serial experiments lain . https://web.archive.org/web/20070426014853/http://plaza.bunka.go.jp/english/festival/backnumber/10/sakuhin/serial.html. April 26, 2007. Japan Media Arts Plaza. September 16, 2006. 1998. From the Internet Archive .
• Nutt. Christian. January 2005. Serial Experiments Lain DVD Box Set: Lost in the Wired. Newtype USA . 4. 1. 179.
• Book: Bush, Laurence C.. Asian Horror Encyclopedia. October 2001. Writers Club Press. 978-0-595-20181-5., page 162.
• Book: Poitras, Gilles. Anime Essentials. December 2001. Stone Bridge Press, LLC. 978-1-880656-53-2., page 28.
• The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation. Susan J., Dr.. Napier. Susan J. Napier. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 149. 1. March 2005. 72–79. 4598910.
• Web site: Toole. Mike. Evangel-a-like – The Mike Toole Show . Anime News Network . November 20, 2015. June 5, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20151010114552/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the-mike-toole-show/2011-06-05. October 10, 2015. live.
• Web site: Serial Experiments: Lain . March 16, 2002. April 17, 2015. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110927060034/http://www.animeacademy.com/finalrevdisplay.php?id=201. September 27, 2011.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain – Buried Treasure . May 11, 2000. April 17, 2015. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110826092828/http://www.ex.org/5.2/25-anime_followup_lain.html. August 26, 2011.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain – Buried Treasure . November 20, 2008. April 17, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150403122125/http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/buried-treasure/2008-11-20/serial-experiments-lain. April 3, 2015. live.
• Web site: Serial Experiments Lain . September 25, 2010. January 22, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210122195345/https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00005OVPO/. live.
• Web site: Games Are Fun: "Review – Serial Experiments Lain – Japan" . April 25, 2003. November 10, 2006. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110927061706/http://www.gamesarefun.com/gamesdb/review.php?reviewid=67. September 27, 2011.
• Book: ja:シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン公式ガイド. Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide. ja. .

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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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Episode list

Serial experiments lain.

S1.E1 ∙ Weird

S1.E2 ∙ Girls

S1.E3 ∙ Psyche

S1.E4 ∙ Religion

S1.E5 ∙ Distortion

S1.E6 ∙ Kids

S1.E7 ∙ Society

S1.E8 ∙ Rumors

S1.E9 ∙ Protocol

S1.E10 ∙ Love

S1.E11 ∙ Infornography

S1.E12 ∙ Landscape

S1.E13 ∙ Ego

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Layr:02 - Girls is the second episode of the anime series Serial Experiments Lain . The episode was written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryuutarou Nakamura. It was broadcast in Japan on July 13, 1998.

• 2 Introduction
• 4 Characters Introduced

Summary [ ]

Alice, Juri, and Reika talk to Lain saying they saw her during their first visit to the hardcore techno club 'Cyberia', but with a far more vigorous and forceful personality. After some persuasion, Lain decides to join Alice and her friends who are at Cyberia again to disprove that it was her. However, Lain becomes involved with a shooting in the club by a man under the influence of the micro-machine drug Accela .

Introduction [ ]

A spinning mirror ball and heavy beat blare from the dance club. Floating text appears: "Cyberia. I don't want to be there." A boy is sitting at a table in the club and is approached by strange woman wearing a gas mask. She hands him a small packet and he pays her for it. Floating text appears: "10,000 Yen. That's Expensive! The Market price is only about 4,000 Yen." The boy stares at the packet. More floating text appears: "We call it "Accela'' Although its from the same supplier its not exactly a drug."

Licking his lips, the boy opens the the packet which reveals a capsule surrounding a small object inside. Sweating and breathing heavily, the boy slits open the capsule with a hobby knife revealing the small device. He ingests the device and washes it down with his drink. Immediately his perceptions begin to change and he starts to foam at the mouth. Floating text appears: "I feel accelerated." Everyone he sees appears to be moving in slow motion. He sees an image of Lain's friends Alice, Reika, and Julie at a table. A man falls to the ground. He has been pushed down by a woman. We see her face, which appears to be an angry, more mature looking Lain. She mouths words.

The boy leaves his seat. Floating text appears: "Come on quickly."

Now a scene of the streets at daytime and the familiar buzz of power lines. Now in Lain's room, she talks to her Navi: "No its not. No mail received. I don't get it." Mika appears at the door to the room. She comments "I thought I heard someone else in here." Lain asks "Who?" Mika responds "Your imaginary friend, or something like that". Mika closes the door warning "You'll be late for school again." Lain pads down the hall and leaves the house.

While walking Lain sees a shadow behind a telephone pole, she then sees a strange, slightly bearded man staring at her. Frightened, Lain breaks into a run down the street. Shortly she runs into her three friends. Alice calls to her "Lain, Good Morning!". Reika comments: "See I knew she's not the one." Juri isn't sure. Lain says "What?". Alice chides the others "Stop it, you're picking on poor Lain," but the other girls just giggle. Alice says "Never mind them let's go."

Walking, Lain asks Juri if she's received anymore mail. Juri seems to have forgotten. Lain inquires further, "from Chisa?". Juri says no. Alice asks Lain if she received another prank mail. Juri asks: "Is it true?" Lain replies: "I'm just a little curious." Reika asks "About what? Now that I think about it she really looks like... " and then continues "Lain, where you last night." Lain is confused. Juri adds: "It was you, wasn't it." Alice corrects them: "I told you it wasn't her." The others say "well probably not." Reika explains to Lain that there was someone who looked like her at Cyberia last night.

Lain asks "Cyberia?" Juri explains that the Girls had gone there for the first time the previous night. Reika casually adds: "It was no big deal." Alice teases the other two: "You looked so tense," then turns to Lain and explains that it is an club where kids gather at midnight. Alice tells Lain that there was someone there who looked like her. Lain replies: "Yesterday I was..." but is cut off by Alice saying: "I already said it wasn't Lain. She was wearing a provocative dress and had a terrible temper." Reika breaks in "Her personality was completely opposite." Juri suggests: "How about taking Lain there tonight". Reika sarcastically expresses her doubt that Lain would go. Alice tells her to knock it off. Juri says: "Lain you might change if you went to the club." Alice agrees: "Lain might become even more outgoing." Juri thinks its a wonderful idea, while Reika thinks it will be interesting. Alice thinks that going would improve Lain's mood and tells Lain it will be fun.

The scene shifts to some sort of informational display. The Accela device spins while this commentary is recited: "Accela is a kind of 'smart supplement'. When it enters the body it oscillates at a certain frequency and helps the body secrete one specific hormone. When the hormone is secreted, one's sense of time will be altered and will feel that his consciousness has accellerated. Not only his consciousness, but his brain's calculation speed will also be increased by about a facor of 2 to 12 times faster. The digestive juices will dissolve this nano-mechanism in one day. But the effect is... "

As the voice fades we are back in Lain's classroom. Lain's palm computer flashes under her desk. Alice sends her a message: "Let's have fun at Cyberia tonight." Lain responds "I can't go tonight." Floating text appears: "Humans are all connected."

Lain is walking down a dark hall in the school. She pauses momentarily and sees the shadow of a girl coming from a closet. Then shadowy figures walk by her. Lain is visibility frightened. The girl from the closet approaches her. Her face changes form following the same pattern as the "train girl" from the previous episode... from smiling, to terror, to decaying deformity, to a contented smile. Lain cowers in fear as the image of the girl passes through her.

Back on the streets with the electric hum, Lain pauses when she sees a delivery truck in front of her house. As she approaches the driver asks "Is this your house?" He tells her he has a delivery and then proceeds to unload the truck. The driver asks Lain to sign the delivery confirmation. He is impressed with what he has delivered, indicating that he "always wanted one himself." Lain does not know what any of it is. The man tells her it is the latest Navi model, fully equipped. "With this much machine power," he comments, "it will make your surfing on the wired trouble free. I made one for my own use, but its now match against this." Lain says "but I don't know anything about this." "Soon you will," says the driver with a smile as he leaves.

The scene shifts to Lain in her bear pajamas. Lain hears a sound and gets out of bed. As she descends the stairs she sees her mother and father engaged in a deep kiss Lain stares. Noticing her, her Father breaks it off and says "Your new Navi has arrived." Her mother says "Please clean up soon, they're in the way." Lain's father offers to set up the computer after dinner. He comments: "This Navi is so powerful that I'd like to use one myself." Lain asks her Father if he can set it up now. Her father is surprised at her eagerness, but Lain just stares back. He agrees.

In her room her father admonishes: "Don't use the Navi with kids all the time. Communication needs more advanced systems whenever you get involved in more mature human relations. You got that Lain?" Lain just stares. Her father boots the new computer and invites Lain to log on to the machine. She takes down the hood of her bear-suit then her father tells her to talk to it. Lain says: "Hello Navi." Her father tells her: "Finally this Navi is yours. You can show this off to your friends!" As his father opens the door he finds that Mika has been listening there. She feigns disinterest and walks away.

Lain checks her mail on the new system, but there is none. A beep comes from school jacket. Her palm computer has a message from Alice: "Lain, where are you? We are waiting for you. Be sure to come." Floating text appears: "Why don't you come here quickly."

Out on the street in the club district Alice is giving Lain directions over her palm computer. She points out the Cyberia Cafe and Club. Alice continues "its in the basement of the building." Lain stands indecisively on the steps. She hears a boy's voice saying "hey, sis, I can't get through." Lain apologizes. There are three kids descending the stairs, two boys and a younger girl in a frilly dress. The boys talk among themselves: "If you do it that way you'll be caught by the information surveillance center." The other boy asks "Isn't safe to just hack it." The girl says "Let's talk about this later at the game center."

Inside the club the beat pounds and Juri sees Lain saying "You're late Lain." Reika adds "Well, you know that its already past her bed time." Juri says "You should have dressed more appropriately for tonight." The three girls are wearing very adult outfits while Lain seems to be wearing a conservative black turtleneck. Alice protectively places her hands on Lain's shoulders and says "How about if we choose some adult clothes for Lain next time." Reika snaps "Will they match her well?" Alice retorts "Reika." Juri continues "It seems that the one we saw last night it was not Lain after all." Reika says: "That's what I've been telling you, Lain doesn't wear that kind of clothes or speak so roughly." Lain asks: "Did she really look like me?" Juri indicates that she was absolutely sure it was her. Lain says "is that so."

A faint gunshot is heard and a light shatters. People begin to scatter as a second gunshot goes off. Juri falls. Alice and Reika rush to help her. Lain stands perspiring, her back to a wall. Blood pools on the floor. A mans heavy breathing is heard and the light from an infrared gun sight flashes about while the bodies of a man and woman can be seen shadowed on the dance floor. The boy who took the Accela drug the previous night holds the gun. He has a crazed look on his face. Alice and Reika escort Juri off the dance floor. Alice looks back and calls to Lain. Reika says towards Lain "What is she doing." Alice dumps Juri into Reika's arms and goes back to get Lain. The boy with the gun notices Lain and says "What are you looking at!" but she just stares back at him. Alice approaches Lain imploring "What are you doing? Run away Lain." Lain continues to stare at the boy. "I said go away," he says and approaches. He now has a good look at Lain's face and steps back in shock, his cap falling to the floor. "Why did you make me do such a thing!" He yells. "What right do you have to make me do it!" Lain continues to stare at him. "I just wanted to clear my mind," he continues. "I don't know, I have nothing to do with you. I have nothing to do with it." Then again he yells "I have nothing to do with it. Wired must not interfere with the real world! I have nothing to do with it. Who the hell are you." Lain begins to step away from Alice and walks stiffly toward the boy. He levels his gun at her, the laser site flashing across her body. "I don't understand, " he says. "I don't know anything about it." The laser site is locked nervously between Lain's eyes. Suddenly Lain proclaims: "No matter where you are humans are all connected." This brings tears to the boy's eyes. The pinpoint of the laser site moves across the room and targets the back of the boy's mouth. A flash of red and then blood splatters on Lain's face and the boy falls to the ground, his dead body sprawled across the other two victims.

Characters Introduced [ ]

• Delivery Man

Gallery [ ]

• 1 Lain Iwakura
• 2 Serial Experiments Lain

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[Rewatch] Serial Experiments Lain Episode 9 Discussion

Ｌｅｔ'ｓ ａｌｌ ｌｏｖｅ Ｌａｉｎ！

"Protocol"

Extra info and links.

ANN | MAL | TV Tropes | Wikipedia | Crunchyroll

Comment of the Day!!

Unboxiois finally made it!! He has a fun story about the hidden 7 black presidents which leads me to asking, which ones!? XD

I met a guy IRL once who was convinced that ancient Egypt didn't exist and that the US had 7 black presidents who were president before George Washington. That's more of a conspiracy theory than a rumor, but these things aren't so different, are they?

Zadcap made an aspiring comment yesterday about how despite the Clamp girls being genuine degenerates who should be behind bars, that they kinda have a point.

The worse part is, as a young and impressionable child, CCS was a gateway into the rest of CLAMP as much as it was the start of my eternal Mahou Shoujo love. There was not a single forbidden romance those ladies didn't try to put on paper, and I read more taboo love stories than I can remember before I learned about the ideas of them being a taboo in the first place. So I grew up to know, as long as it's safe and consensual, then there's really nothing wrong with it just let love be love. -says someone who is going to die single lol

SilkyStrawberryMilk totally pwned that dumb Lain of the Kusogaki!! You show her!!

your haircut is poop

Vaadwaur believes that the doujin numbers have meaning!!

It occurs to me that the security through obscurity trick at play may not be obvious. This was an old school trick since people looking for hackers tended to ignore porn assuming it was, well, irrelevant.

Name an instance when history has been retroactively changed. Hard mode, no China, Holocaust, or US History.

What do you believe the "staring grey man" represents?

With the reveal that Taro is linked to the knights, do any of his previous actions particularly jump out to you? Should he have had to swallow that chip as revenge for breaking Mika!?

Did the extended Area 51 chats mean anything to you or do you still just see it as the funneh alien UFO zone?

Which Lain would you rather go on a date with? Is Taro an idiot for picking Wired over Bear Onesie? Or is Kusogaki the secret best girl?

Rewatcher Question!! Please someone explain the video segments in a clear and concise way XD It's a free Abyssbringer section win for you!

Did anyone else get Video Girl Ai vibes from our cliffhanger?

Abyssbringer's "What is the thematic purpose of this scene corner!!"

DegenerateRegime fights in the name of LOVE!

That's not the right prompt . Look at that =w= homewrecker. The way the eye looks like a sunset, like someone's soul is sinking in flames. Listen. I'm not here to be some insistent LainxAlice shipper. Alice at least has, um, other interests? But they had something, right? lluNhpelA was just talking about it. You can absolutely how people could see it that way, especially once you get the idea of what it is that Alice has been trying to downplay and trust her friend about. And there's unpraiseworthy Lain, intruding from the corner with the face of a thousand memes. This scene has to be what it is to establish ideas about Lain and Alice's relationship, to put something under a cup so that when the carnie spins it around, you feel liike you know where it's gone. Yeah, she has a nice cat-got-the-cream look later, the classic "my life now, Lain of the bedroom, enjoy the metaphorical-metaphysical cuck chair" expression. But I can't help but sympathise. Poor Lain of the Other Side! Our girl had a bear onesie AND a best friend. Our other girl had... what? The head may not say it, but the heart knows that this episode is for the sake of LOVE.

Yesterday's Prompt!

Today's prompt, tomorrow's prompt, abyssbringer's "what is the thematic purpose of this episode corner".

Quiddy pog!

We'll see if I change my mind with what's left, but this has historically been my favorite episode of the show. An emotionally charged episode with the Alice - Lain stuff, the other Lain being quite over the top and some interesting imagery as well. Some good range from Bridget Hoffman in this episode playing two different versions of Lain. The whole concept of how one can be a totally different person online, one who can be totally unrestrained and become quite a horrible person I think has been a theme built up from earlier on, but really comes to a head here. Was Alice really having a relationship with that teacher? My position is no, she just fantasized about him. If anything I feel more strongly about it due to thematic stuff we get in the next episode. Which I'll have to wait until then to discuss.

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Trump Picks His Running Mate, and Political Heir

Former president donald j. trump chose the 39-year-old senator j.d. vance of ohio as his vice-presidential nominee..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today, on the first day of the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump makes his choice of a running mate. We watched it unfold in real time from Milwaukee.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It’s Tuesday, July 16.

Are you OK?

I’m getting phone interference.

Oh no, maybe that’s from your phone. There’s like 16 phones in this car.

I’ll start it.

OK. It is 9:35 AM on Monday morning, and we are driving into downtown Milwaukee to the headquarters of the Republican National Convention. And it’s day 1, the opening hours of what will be the Republican Party’s crowning of their nominee, former President Donald Trump. And the singular event that hangs over this entire convention is the one that none of us expected, which is the attempted assassination of the presumptive Republican nominee.

And the news is just flying at us this morning. We just got word that he’s going to be announcing his running mate today, his choice of a VP. So this is a pretty extraordinary day already before 10:00 AM, and we’re going to try to make sense of it all.

We just went through the first round of secret service asking to see our badges. We are now stopped at a giant metal pop-up wall. And in front of us, cars are being slowly and very thoroughly inspected by bomb-sniffing dogs and security teams.

Hi. You guys are good. You just have to get screened through the checkpoint.

Perfect. OK, thank you. Thanks.

Secret Service? Should I open the trunk?

— turn the engine off and pop the hood for me, please?

Oh, the front hood? How do I do that? We’re in a rental car. Here we go.

She’s got it. Look at her.

And also, don’t run into my barricade. People keep doing that even though it says stop on it, you know? Keep your eyes open, all righty? Let’s be safe, everybody.

Great. Thank you so much.

So we’re headed into deeper security.

— take off your sunglasses. Can you back up for me real quick?

Good. Good to go. Carlos?

Good to go. And —

Good to go. Thank you.

There wasn’t a single package inside that bag that they didn’t search. Hi.

Check in over here. Thank you guys for coming.

Hi, I can take whoever’s next.

Once we made it through all that security, we walked into the first official event of the day, a briefing for reporters from the Trump campaign about what this first day of the convention would look like.

So we’re inside a very big ballroom that has a podium and two flags set up next to it. Wisconsin, United States, there’s about 200 journalists in here, filling a quarter of the room and a lot of red-shirted RNC staffers and volunteers who are kind of corralling us. And we’re going to wait and see what they have to say.

But just as this briefing was about to begin, we were told that it was for planning purposes only and that we couldn’t use any of the audio from it.

I just want to summarize what we heard in this news conference. Essentially, what senior advisors to the Trump campaign just told us is that this day is going to be very action-packed. It is going to begin in the early afternoon with the official technical nomination by delegates of Trump as the Republican nominee. And then in the early afternoon, around 3 o’clock or so, the nomination of a vice presidential candidate will occur.

What that means is that sometime between now, 10:30 AM or so, and 3:00 PM, we will know the identity of who Trump’s running mate will be. And finally, we are going to lay eyes on Donald Trump himself at around 9:00 PM in the evening. And the crowd is going to go wild because it’s the first time many of them, many of us will have seen him since the assassination attempt. So it’s a really packed schedule filled with a giant piece of news in the middle, which is who Trump picked as his running mate.

Mike Bender.

To get inside Trump’s decision making, we turn to our colleague Mike Bender, a politics reporter at “The Times,” who’s been on the VP beat for the past few months.

OK, we just want to bug you for a minute about what is the status of the VP choice. Last time we talked to you, you told us that there were three top contenders — Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio Senator JD Vance. So where do things sit here at 11:00 at noon on Monday?

Just hours before he’s actually supposed to make the announcement and nominate the running mate? I mean, I literally ran into a couple of sources who are with other VP contenders who are telling me that they haven’t received word one way or the other yet. I don’t think he’s told the person yet. I mean, we’re three hours from a nomination. I seriously do not think that Trump has actually made the formal offer yet.

We have to go — I think we have to just, like, explain that to people. We’re three hours from the necessary public disclosure of this information, and it’s not clear the decision’s been made.

Yeah, no, it’s amazing. I mean, Trump is known to vacillate over big decisions. He did almost the same thing back in 2016 when he picked Mike Pence. He decided to pick Mike Pence and then spent the night before their first news conference together, complaining to aides that he had made the wrong choice, wondering if he could pick someone differently. My reporting over the last week has been that he’s been going through similar iterations on this decision.

So we’re going to lightly stalk you until we get the news. And hopefully, when we get the news, you can break it to us. Or it will be broken over our heads, and then we’ll talk about it. And we’ll make sense of it.

Yeah, definitely. I am also hoping to be the first to know. And if I’m the first to know, you guys will be the second to know.

OK thank you, Michael.

Yeah. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Just as we finished talking to Mike, he made a phone call.

Hey. You don’t think — why don’t you think it’s Marco? He called? Like, just now? OK, I just saw some folks outside for another contender who haven’t heard anything yet. So I mean, and that was 30 minutes ago. So I’m wondering if it’s happening now. No, I didn’t see that. OK. OK. OK. Thanks, bye.

So can you just tell us about that phone call you had?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. This was someone who is very close with one of the VP contenders, one of the final three. This contender just received a call from Trump’s team saying he’s not the pick.

Soon enough, Mike confirmed that Marco Rubio had been crossed off the VP list, and that Rubio wasn’t the only VP contender to receive that call.

So it’s 1:30 PM, and this is a little orthodox, but I’m peeking over the shoulder of my colleague Mike Bender. And I can see that he’s writing the following. Both Doug Burgum and Marco Rubio have been told that they are not Trump’s VP choice. So in real time, assuming that this is right, we’re left thinking that the choice is either JD Vance or some wildcard person who we haven’t even thought of.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin a very important part of our program. I would like to ask that the aisles be cleared and the delegates please take their seats. Thank you.

In the meantime, the official business of this convention began. The nomination of Trump as the Republican nominee.

Michael, tell me what’s happening.

OK. So at this point, 2:00 PM, the roll call of delegates is underway on the floor of the Convention Hall.

West Virginia, 32 delegates.

So what’s happening right now is that the delegates from each state are publicly pledging their support to Donald Trump. And the delegates from each state represent the outcome of the primary vote that happened many, many months ago. So like right now, West Virginia’s designated speaker with a red hard hat on, is saying, from the great state of West Virginia —

And to cast those 32 votes for our former and future president, Donald J. Trump!

— we are pledging our 32 delegates to Donald Trump, and on and on and on it will go. And so this is a formality, adding up all the delegates from all the states. But it’s actually a technically required component of Donald Trump becoming and accepting his party’s nomination. And Trump will become the official nominee when 1,215 delegates in this room have pledged their support to him, which will probably be in about 30 minutes.

I stand before you today on behalf of the great state of New Hampshire.

And after Trump is nominated, this entire exercise happens all over again for his running mate whose identity we still don’t know. So that’s where a lot of the suspense of this moment is, not in the obvious fact that Donald Trump is about to be nominated, but that everyone in this room is about to nominate a running mate that they don’t know the identity of, that we don’t know the identity of. And we have to know the identity of it before it happens.

And all of a sudden, after not knowing how or when we would learn Trump’s choice, we finally do. And it’s delivered in classic Trump fashion.

So I’ve just seen on Truth Social that Trump has announced his VP pick, and it is JD Vance of Ohio.

OK. “Daily” editor Rachel Quester breaking the news that it’s Vance, which we kind of thought it would be, but now we know.

After the break, Vance’s nomination and why Trump picked him.

We’ll be right back.

OK, so we’re walking to the Convention Hall. It’s a bit of a trek. It’s very hot outside and blazingly bright. And we are now entering the media doorway.

Hi. How are you? Thank you.

Where are you all trying to get?

To the floor.

To the floor? To the floor?

OK. Just right out there and then somebody on the direction.

Around 3:30 or so, we walked out onto the convention floor just as Vance was being nominated as Trump’s running mate.

USA! USA! USA!

All right, time for a little convention business here. The question is on the motion that Senator JD Vance be nominated by acclamation —

This room is about to complete the nomination of Vance as VP.

All those opposed signify by saying no. In the opinion of the chair, the “ayes” have it, and the motion is adopted. Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table.

And just to give you a little bit of a sense of the feel of the room, JD Vance is smiling really widely. He’s leaning back. He’s laughing. Crowd is chanting JD, JD. And he seems a little in awe of the moment.

I am proud to announce that Senator JD Vance has the overwhelming support of this convention to be the next vice president of the United states.

And that’s that. JD Vance, the vice presidential nominee. We got to get out of here.

The chair is pleased —

When that was over, we headed back to where Mike Bender was working to talk to him about Trump’s choice.

So welcome to “The Daily” studio here in Milwaukee.

Can you close this door?

You can shut that, yeah. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Mike, you’re ready?

So if you believe that Donald Trump made this decision, as we think he did kind of the last minute, even if he’d been thinking about it for a long time, what’s your understanding of why he chose JD Vance?

I think Trump is making this pick on who he thinks gives him the best chance to win in November. He announced this decision in a Truth Social post and mentioned a couple of key states in that statement, essentially saying that he thinks Vance can help him win in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, Wisconsin. These are essential states for victory in November, both for Trump and President Biden. Trump won them in 2016 but lost to Biden in those same states in 2020.

Hm! He’s very openly saying, I have made a strategic choice. What’s interesting about that, Mike, is that in our conversation a couple of weeks ago when we talked about who Trump was looking at closely, you had said that he wasn’t thinking about these traditional questions of, Does my VP win me X state, Y state? You know, he was engaging in questions of personal rapport. And he got along really well with Doug Burgum.

So clearly, the strategic question became front of mind for Trump. And I just want to understand, Was there something in the race that changed that made him suddenly think about this or what?

Well, well, well, look at “The Daily” fact-checking its reporters here on air. Well, you’re not wrong either, Michael. There has been a shift in the last few weeks with Trump. He’s gone from talking about finding a running mate who could help him govern, to finding a running mate who can help him govern and someone who can help him win.

And when he ran the analysis here, when he looked at the different set of candidates he has, his ultimate decision was that JD Vance is the one who can do that. Vance will take him deeper into the states where he needs to win in the Midwest and appeal directly to the working-class, blue-collar voters he needs to capture these battlegrounds.

Explain exactly why he thinks JD Vance helps him win those three or so key states? What is it about Vance’s story that maps on to that strategy?

The answer is both biographical and rooted in policy. Vance is a child of Appalachia. He grew up in a poor, working-class neighborhood in Ohio. He served in the military. And when he decided to run for his first elected office in 2022, he was very far right on a lot of issues. He is one of the most staunch anti-abortion voices in the Senate right now. He’s an economic populist, the sort of anti-trade isolationist.

He was one of the first voices urging the Senate to vote against aid for Ukraine at a time where his party leaders were supporting that. So for Trump, when it comes to selling the idea of Trumpism and MAGA-ism, JD Vance is a very effective communicator for him, particularly in a crucial area of the country, that if Trump wins some of these Midwestern states could mean the end of Biden as president.

Got it. So we should see this decision as Trump picking someone who is ideologically extremely aligned with him, perhaps even a little further to the right than Trump, an issue like abortion, and from and of the place in the country that Trump needs to win, the Midwest, Appalachia. And that combination means, for Trump, Vance.

Yeah, exactly. I think it’s also helpful to put this in the context of the other contenders.

Vance is not bringing a new piece of the puzzle to Trumpism. Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, would have been a Spanish-speaking advocate who may appeal more to Latinos. Governor Doug Burgum, from North Dakota, could have helped settle down that pro-business Republicans who are nervous about Trump’s unpredictability. Trump is sort of signaling here that he’s not interested in adding to the party. He doesn’t want to make the tent bigger. He’s doubling down on this sort of white working-class, pro-MAGA piece of the party that he sees not just as a way to win in November, but very clearly the path for the party in the future.

Of all the candidates Trump was thinking about for VP — and we’ve talked about this with you — they went on a journey, right, from Trump skeptic to Trump supporter. But JD Vance’s journey stood out because he was so unstinting in his criticism of Trump. When Trump first entered the political scene back in 2016, I remember interviewing Vance and talking to him about this stuff. I mean, he compared Trump to Hitler. He called Trump the opioid of the masses. He suggested Trump was a con man. That’s a lot to overcome, but he did.

But he did. I mean, this is the most stunning 180 degree political flip-flop of our time. To go from saying the sort of things that you just brought up to now being chosen as his most trusted advisor, a running mate, a number 2, who will serve as president if something should happen to him, is extraordinary. I mean, you may have to go back to post-revolutionary times when we used to pick vice presidents by who came in second place to find a vice president who has said such searing criticisms of a president.

Fascinating. And ultimately, what’s your understanding of why Trump could get past that, somebody who is not very good at accepting criticism?

No, that’s true. But as much as Trump hates criticism for his own actions and deeds, he loves the redemption narrative. And he loves being asked for forgiveness. And JD Vance has spent several years seeking Trump’s approval by going on television, making nice with all of the right-wing websites and media in order to show how much he has changed his mind on Trump, and maybe most effectively, blame the media.

That point has been proven by Vance himself, who has explained his new thinking, his evolution on Trump by saying he was lied to by a media narrative about Trump. And now that he’s gotten to know Trump and now that he’s seen him, Trump in action as president, he has changed his mind.

Right. And it sounds like he never really needed to change his mind about some of the fundamental ideas of Trumpism. He had to change his mind about Trump. He seems always to have been fundamentally aligned with the ideas that Trump embraces — economic populism, some pretty far-right social positions. He needed to change his mind on the man, not the message.

Yeah, it was very personal, I think, for both Trump and Vance in this instance. Again, Vance is someone who grew up in rural Ohio, whose family is from Appalachia, saw some of the things that Trump has railed against when it comes to manufacturing jobs that are being shipped overseas, you know, these sort of pillars and institutions of society that have failed to uphold their end of the bargain when it comes to working-class, blue-collar, small-town Americans like Vance is.

If you are the Democrats right now, Mike, and you’re absorbing this news, where do you see the greatest vulnerabilities are going to lie for Trump now picking Vance?

Democrats are definitely going to use Vance’s old words against him, this sort of library of video clips and audio interviews of Vance going after Trump. But Democrats will also seize on Vance as an extremist, whether that’s his ardent abortion view and support for a national ban and his willingness to do what his predecessor, Mike Pence, wouldn’t. Vance has been on record already saying that he would have blocked the certification of the 2020 result, and that would have helped overturn that election.

Right. So you’re saying one simple way that the Biden ticket can go after Vance is by saying that you will enable Trump to break the law, overturn the election. We should expect that.

Yeah, I think so. I mean, looking back on what happened after 2020, the system worked because there was a lot of people around Trump who maybe they weren’t guardrails, but maybe more speed bumps. And there’s no indication that Vance has any willingness to play that role in the next Trump administration.

In that vein, it was pretty widely noted that in the hours after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, we saw JD Vance come out with a statement. It was the most strongly worded of anyone seeking to be his VP. And it had some factual problems. Here’s what he said. He said, “Today, the attempted assassination is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” We should say. There’s no evidence that that’s true. We don’t know the motivations of the shooter. We don’t know that he consumed any of that rhetoric or that Vance is even characterizing it correctly. So what should we make of the fact that Trump chose that running mate who made that statement in this moment?

I think Vance in a lot of ways kind of embodies the id of Trump and that instinct to fight. And even though these sort of manufactured statements from the campaign are calling for unity and calling for peace, what Trump really wants —

Since the attempted assassination, right.

That’s right. What Trump really wants is someone who is going to keep fighting. You know, factual or not, I think this shows the passion and the energy Trump was looking in at running mate, valuing that interest in fighting more than —

Interest in unity and peace.

Yeah, or facts on the ground.

Right. I want to end, Mike, with something you hinted at earlier, which is when you said that Trump is looking to Vance to set a path for the future of the Republican Party. What is that path with Vance as number 2?

Vance is only 39 years old. He’s barely old enough to be president.

Right, 35 is the requirement.

Exactly. So he’s obviously going to be viewed very much as the heir apparent for Trumpism. Trump knows this. And the signal it’s sending to everyone, not just in the party but the rest of the country, is that any remnants of a debate about whether this party snaps back to its sort of pro-business establishment culture —

Pre-Trump era.

— the pre-Trump era is exactly that. It’s a pre-Trump era. It’s over for Republicans. And when it’s not Trump, it’s going to be JD Vance or someone exactly like him.

Right. In other words, Trumpism is here to stay. It is the Republican Party now that I’ve chosen JD Vance.

There’s no going back anymore, Michael.

Thank you, Mike. This is really helpful. I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Are you guys from — are you guys from Michigan?

We make “The Daily” podcast.

Back at the Convention Hall.

We wanted to ask folks from all the big swing states about the selection of JD Vance about an hour ago and what you make of that decision, and if you think it’s going to help Trump win this state.

Absolutely. Look, I think the key thing in the platform is that it is dedicated to the forgotten men and women, and that is the blue-collar workers in the flyover states. JD Vance gets that.

It was clear that Republican delegates saw JD Vance as helping Trump win those key Midwestern states that will be essential to Trump winning in November.

So if Donald Trump wins Pennsylvania, which we’re going to make damn sure he does, we’re going to work our asses off.

You think that Vance helps them do that?

And just to make sure — I want to understand why.

Because JD Vance is like the common man. He’s like the common guy.

And that like Trump, they do see Vance as the future of Trumpism.

And the other nice thing is he’s young. He’s 39 years old

Why’s that matter?

It’s good to have somebody young with somebody that’s old in case, God forbid, something ever happens to Trump.

In other words, you already see him as the successor, the inheritor of Trump’s message and the party in MAGA?

Well, yeah, he’s going to have to carry the mantle. That’s probably what’s going to end up happening. Trump is only there for four years. You need somebody afterwards for the next eight. You need somebody for the next eight after that.

OK, can I — [MUSIC PLAYING]

And you’re from Wisconsin. You’re a delegate from Wisconsin. This is important. Trump mentioned Wisconsin in announcing Vance. Why was Vance your number one choice?

I think he brings youth to the field, to the vice president. And I looked at the upcoming years in ‘28, what’ll happen. And I think he was the man that can do it in ‘28 for the Republican Party.

You’re already looking forward to the next race?

Yes, very much so.

Here’s what else you need to know today. In a stunning decision, the judge overseeing Trump’s classified documents case threw out all the charges against him. In the process, she rejected what was widely seen as the strongest federal charges against the former president. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled that the special counsel who filed the charges had been given his job in violation of the Constitution.

That finding flew in the face of previous court decisions reaching back decades. In response, the Department of Justice said that it plans to appeal Cannon’s ruling.

Today’s episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Clare Toeniskoetter, Jessica Cheung, Mooj Zadie, Eric Krupke, and Rikki Novetsky. It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg and Rachel Quester, with help from Paige Cowan.

Contains original music by Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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Hosted by Michael Barbaro

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Produced by Carlos Prieto Clare Toeniskoetter Jessica Cheung Mooj Zadie Eric Krupke and Rikki Novetsky

Edited by Brendan Klinkenberg and Rachel Quester

With Paige Cowett

Original music by Dan Powell Elisheba Ittoop Marion Lozano and Corey Schreppel

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On the first day of the Republican National Convention, Donald J. Trump chose his running mate: Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.

We watched the process unfold in real time in Milwaukee.

Michael C. Bender, who covers Mr. Trump and his movement for The Times, takes us through the day.

On today’s episode

Michael C. Bender , a political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump and his Make America Great Again movement for The New York Times.

Background reading

What to know about J.D. Vance , Mr. Trump’s running mate.

Mr. Trump’s decision to pick Mr. Vance signals concern for the future of his MAGA movement.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Michael Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering Donald J. Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections. More about Michael C. Bender

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