- List of Serial Experiments Lain episodes
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Boxed Set, All four volumes
Serial Experiments Lain was created as a multimedia production, including an anime, a video game, a manga, and several artbooks and soundtracks. This is the complete episode listing of the anime produced for Serial Experiments Lain, which first aired on TV Tokyo on 6 July 1998 and concluded on 28 September 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.[1] 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".[2][3][4][5]
Contents
Episode list
# Title Original air date 01 "Weird" 6 July 1998 People are getting emails from a girl who killed herself last week (Chisa Yomoda), which claim that she only gave up her body, but is actually still alive inside the Wired, and that God is also there. After getting one of these emails, the introverted Lain becomes interested in computers and asks her father for a new NAVI. 02 "Girls" 13 July 1998 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. 03 "Psyche" 20 July 1998 Lain's life is thrown into further disarray as she begins to recognize that she is being spied upon by a car containing Men in Black (MiB) agents near her house. At school, Lain is anonymously sent a mysterious computer chip, about which she initially asks her father, and then the similarly aged Taro at Cyberia. Taro then recalls seeing Lain in the Wired once, noting her Wired personality being the complete opposite of her restrained real world persona, bringing about the possibility that there could be two separate Lains. 04 "Religion" 27 July 1998 Rumors are flying around Lain's school and in the Wired with regards to numerous senior students of various high schools committing suicide, with each of the deceased being addicted to the online action game, PHANTOMa. Interested, Lain investigates only to discover the deaths were most likely caused by the elite secretive hacker group known as the Knights of the Eastern Calculus (or the Knights for short). 05 "Distortion" 3 August 1998 Amidst the events surrounding Tokyo having its traffic information transmission system hacked to cause deliberate accidents, Lain experiences a series of hallucinations teaching her (by means of inanimate objects, and eventually her parents) the nature of the Wired, and the supposed God (Deus) within it. In the meantime, Lain's sister Mika is driven to the point of insanity due to the Knights repeatedly communicating the message for her to "Fulfill the Prophecy". 06 "Kids" 10 August 1998 An image of Lain appears in the sky and children are raising their arms toward the image. Lain searches for the reason behind the strange happenings and finds Professor Hodgeson, the creator of KIDS. KIDS was an experiment that tried to gather psi energy from children and store it. The result of the project destroyed the children. Now it seems that the Knights have gotten hold of the project's schematics. 07 "Society" 17 August 1998 Knights activity starts surfacing as they make the evening news. Lain gets more and more involved in the Wired, being connected even in class through her HandiNAVI. Alice starts worrying about her closing up again, saying she starts resembling "her old self". The Men in Black finally make their move, asking Lain to follow them to a Tachibana office where a man wants to know more about her, her origins, her parents.... 08 "Rumors" 24 August 1998 Lain is investigating the Wired ever deeper. A rumor is spread about Alice having sexual fantasies about a male teacher, and a second one says that Lain has spread the first. To cope with the distress of rejection, Lain acts directly on reality for the first time, and duplicates of herself start appearing more frequently. 09 "Protocol" 31 August 1998 Throughout the episode, background information is being shown from "archives" about the Roswell incident, MJ-12, Vannevar Bush, MEMEX, Xanadu, John C. Lilly, the Schumann resonance, and Eiri Masami. During that time, Lain gets a microchip from JJ, the DJ from the Cyberia nightclub. She then asks Taro on a "date", to ask him about it. After being scared to death, he admits it is code made to disrupt human memory, made by Knights. He takes their defense, but admits not knowing much about them. 10 "Love" 7 September 1998 Eiri Masami introduces himself as God, explaining that he is such because of his believers, the Knights. Knowing this, Lain deals with the Knights once and for all by leaking a list of all of its members onto the Wired, leaving a trail of murder (by the Men in Black) and suicide in its wake. 11 "Infornography" 14 September 1998 Lain lies exhausted in her room, wrapped in electrical cord. After a long, complicated flashback, Eiri appears to congratulate her for downloading her NAVIs in her own brain, but warns her about her "hardware capacity". Lain appears to Alice, and declares that anything is possible, as they don't need devices anymore; so she'll make everything all right for Alice again. The next day, nobody seems to remember the rumor incident, and Lain smiles at Alice complicitly. 12 "Landscape" 21 September 1998 The frontier between the Real and the Wired falls down. The Men in Black receive their final payment from their employers. Eiri Masami makes his final move, resulting in one last confrontation with Lain. 13 "Ego" 28 September 1998 Lain resolves her inner quest for identity and takes radical action. Further reading
- (English) "Unofficial site listing of all episodes". TV.com. http://www.tv.com/serial-experiments-lain/show/16143/episode_listings.html. Retrieved 17 May 2006.
Notes and references
- ^ "Serial Experiments Lain - Release". http://www.geneon-ent.co.jp/rondorobe/anime/lain/release.html. Retrieved 2009-09-16.
- ^ http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/292/lainblurayrestore.jpg
- ^ "serial experiments lain Blu-ray LABO プロデューサーの制作日記". http://blog.geneon-ent.co.jp/graphid/. Retrieved 2009-09-16.
- ^ "Playlog.jp Blog". http://playlog.jp/sendenman/blog/2009-08-15. Retrieved 2009-10-15.
- ^ "Lain on BD announced - Wakachan Thread". http://hr.deadgods.net/hr/kareha.pl/1250369962/. Retrieved 2009-10-15.
Categories:- Serial Experiments Lain
- Lists of anime episodes
- Lists of science fiction television series episodes
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