God is in the Wired in ‘Serial Experiments Lain’

Widespread Internet use was still in its early stages in 1998. But Serial Experiments Lain, a single anime series running that year on late-night TV, introduced an extraordinary depiction of all human communication within the realm of ‘the Wired.’

Within the Wired, thoughts float at maximum freedom. At first, protagonist Iwakura Lain, an awkward and isolated high-school girl, does not yet recognise the vast network lying beneath her daily life, having never opened her computer. Yet, amongst people, telephone wires, and machines, the unconscious overlaps with reality and the surreal seeps into the everyday. Lain’s own everyday life is irreversibly upturned after a cryptic email arrives from her dead classmate. Claiming that her soul is still alive in the Wired, it reads, ‘God is here.’