Serial Experiments Lain Episode 13 Reaction

Serial Experiments Lain Episode 13 Reaction

Ahh, I'm a bit lost. Confusing to the last. At least it wasn't a completely unhappy ending. I wouldn't call it happy either, though. Lain did avoid the impulse to suicide that was a major theme a few episodes back. She overcame her villainous creator. It's just so sad to see her erase everyone's memories and apparently even roll back time... It's kind of a lame ending, too. This ending means everything we just watched over 12 episodes sort of never happened at all. Even the incredible impact of the suicide of the opening episode is gone now. It's an ending both too sad and too happy, somehow.

The problem is now none of it meant anything... Nothing really happened... It might have been better if the show ended after episode 12... The final episode was the weakest in some time.

I was confused by the final conversation between Lain and her other self. So Lain is truly a god? She's what... A conduit to the collective unconscious or something? I didn't get it.

Is Lain somehow a villain, in the end, after all? I don't think the show intends us to think that. However, she is playing god in an immoral way, I would argue. She is removing people's free will. It might have been terrible for Chisa to kill herself but what right does Lain have to rewrite reality? Lain has become a cosmic dictator at the end of the show, I think you might have to say.

Though you could also interpret the ending, maybe, as Lain being a heroic sacrifice. She deletes anyone's memories of her so that the Wired will not destroy reality. In this interpretation Lain would be a god, or like a god... Like the god who died on the cross, to be precise. The problem with this interpretation, I think, is that she didn't die. Earlier, I wondered if the show was building up to a heroic sacrifice where Lain kills herself and/or deletes herself from existence to save the world... Instead what she does is warp people's memories. It also sure looks like she will keep playing god at the end of the series... Isn't that the point of the final scene with Alice? She will bend reality to go be with Alice when she feels like it? I don't know.

"The Wired was just connected to something else all along." What does that mean? It was connected to Lain? Huh? But Lain rejects the suggestion of her other self. She doesn't become god, she choose to be human... I guess. Well, it still kind of seems like she does become a god. How else to interpret the very last lines of the series? Followed by a final shot of the humming wires, with the implication that this constant background hum is the eternal presence of Lain?

It's interesting and a little odd that right to almost the very end, there are still multiple Lains. Earlier in the series there was an emphasis on there being a seemingly evil Lain on the Wired, while the real, innocent Lain was in reality. There still being two Lains makes one wonder if the 'real' protagonist Lain has truly figured everything out... Is she still lost in illusion somehow? It would almost make more sense if her remaking of memories and the past was a false fantasy world she's created for herself inside of the Wired.

One issue with this ending is the suggestion that Lain erasing the memories of her would undo past events, even such that the dead rise, does not make much sense. This isn't an idea that is in keeping with the previous episodes of the show either. The suggestion is that if something isn't remembered, it didn't happen. Let us assume that is true. Why would deleting memories rewrite the actions of other characters, like Chisa? It would make sense if everyone forgot Lain existed, yes. We see something much more comprehensive than simply forgetting Lain, however. Another problem is the obvious paradox -- Lain removes the very cause of her own existence.

The ending falls limp because it seems a retreat from the harshness of reality. Everything bad that happened in the show is suddenly, magically undone. Abruptly, it all seems like play acting. There was a magnificent, authentic darkness in many of the scenes of this show. Wiping all the dark dramatic tension away doesn't make for a good story. The hard, dark, difficult event of Chisa killing herself is simply undone.

Okay, the show didn't have an amazing, satisfying ending. There simply wasn't much tension in that last episode. That simply means Serial Experiments Lain is a show where the strength lies in the journey along the way, not the final destination. There was more meaning in many of the episodes before the last... Perhaps the ultimate meaning of Lain should not be looked for in its conclusion, then.

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That was a lot to read, but it was the last episode. And Lain is a confusing show...
Anyway, SpaceHey seems to me like the kind of site that Lain might have browsed... Or maybe does still browse. It's like part of the old Internet before smartphones, when people sat in their rooms on their computer when they went online, like Lain. What better place to talk about the god of the Wired than here...
Let's all love Lain.

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