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. 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.
The Serial Experiments Lain video game, based on the anime of the same name, was released for PlayStation exclusively in Japan on November 26, 1998, by Pioneer LDC. It is largely dialogue-centric, differing from traditional video game gameplay structures. Throughout the game, the player, in the role of a therapist, unlocks pieces of information and multimedia with the assistance of the source material's protagonist, Lain Iwakura, to explore her mental state. This material includes Lain's therapy sessions, her diary, notes from her therapist, and video segments. The game shares the themes and protagonist, but not the plot, of the original anime series. The game was designed as a "network simulator" which the player would navigate to explore Lain's journey between real life and online life.[1] The creators themselves did not describe it as a game but as "Psycho-Stretch-Ware," [1] incorporating visual novel and non-linear multimedia elements; the gameplay is limited to unlocking pieces of information and then reading/viewing/listening to them, with little or no puzzle needed to unlock.[2] Lain distances itself even more from classical games by the random order in which information is collected.
