I have had more requests to review this series than any other before it. Problem was, I was feeling a little poor from the Christmas holidays, and wasn't really ready to buy this series quite yet. Luckily, my sister had bought the tape, and lent it to me. After watching the first volume, I immediately went out and bought all four DVD's.

Serial Experiments Lain is what I would describe as Pink Floyd: The Wall meets Altered States from the flip side of The Matrix, as directed by Stanley Kubrick while taking breaks from editing the last scenes in 2001: A Space Oddessy. I'll explain some of this further in later reviews; but we're getting ahead of ourselves in this volume...

The first episode opens with the events leading up to the death of Chisa Yomoda, a young girl in middle school. We initially see her running, distressed over something. Yet when she finally jumps from the top of the building in Shibuya, there's a look of calm serenety across her face -- somewhat reminicent of the look on Marje's face prior to jumping off the SDF-1 in Macross Plus. And like the scene in Macross, it's done to a strangely tranquil soundtrack, until the sounds of the body crashing into objects below jerk you back into reality. From the outset, this is a dark series with a very different take on presentation. Imagery is stark, and there's extensive use of juxtaposed ideas. One of the most prominant is the powerfully intrusive 60 Hz hum from the overhead powerlines which criss-cross the city skyline. In one of the first scenes, Lain is on a train, and she finds herself overwhelmed by the onslaught of the constant noise from her surroundings -- the chatter of her fellow travellers, or is it noise from electrical interference? I was struck by the sheer impact of the scene, especially when the interference is shattered, leaving only the noise of the train itself. (You must watch -- and listen -- to this series on a system which can take advantage of a rich audio track. The tinny sounds from your average TV just won't give you the same impact; the use of audio here is just as important as the visuals.)

I had heard that SEL was done entirely using computer animation, but I don't believe this to be the case -- there are unmistakable signs of cels being used for much of the foreground elements; CGI seems to be used primarily for detail fills and backgrounds. Frame rates vary -- computer animated scenes are full rate, while the cel-drawn elements are usually 1:3 or even 1:4 ratio. Still, the animation quality is above-average, and overall animation direction makes excellent use of the visual medium.

It's easy to forget that this was a TV series -- it could have easily been an OAV, and I'm sure that many viewers simply said, "huh?" But the visuals play to the subconcious; in fact, one of the Café's regular readers referred to SEL's imagery as a "Rorschach test on video." Perhaps not a bad analogy after all...
- AN, 2000.02.06