Serial Experiments Lain E12: “Landscape”

We're right as rain, light as Lain, and ready for layer "12: Landscape," the penultimate episode of this single cour series. Granted, given our heroine's newfound ubiquity, it might be more of a Laindscape now amirite?


Intro is back to how it was before. Presumably because Lain has finished reformatting her brain now so things are slightly less meta-screwy. Maybe. I keep wondering if I should just give up on trying to analyze this as a science fiction story at all and just focus entirely on atmosphere and feely stuff, but whenever I'm about to start doing that the show throws another long technobabble sequence at me that I can't talk about except as a scifi work. Anyway, the voiceover quote for episode 12 is "Oh, okay, so that's how it works. I had no idea the world was this simple. I used to think the world was such a big and scary place, but once you figure it out it's all so easy." Mass mind control does make life simpler, yes Lain. Then another voice, I think her mother's, replying "See, I told you so." Parents, tell your kids about technopathic memory wiping, or someone else will.

The episode starts a few minutes after the last one ended. Lain and Arisu are in their homeroom, and the two other girls have rematerialized and are gaily chatting with Lain while Arisu sits across the room and stares at them nervously. Lain flashes her a smile at one point, but it doesn't look like the evil Trollain smile. Maybe she's swapped out of this avatar now, or this could just be part of the trick.

A moment later, Arisu gets a text from Lain (either this Lain or another part of her) advising Arisu to erase any unpleasant memories of her own she might have. Um...sure? If you think Arisu can do that, great.

Then, Lain is addressing us directly across a staticy blue void, and explaining that the reason there are multiple versions of her is because everyone sees her differently, and in the new magical Wired those different versions can take on separate-ish existences. Oh, okay then! That explains why she has three or four consistent personas instead of hundreds, and why one of those has nothing to do with how anyone she knows could have plausibly been seeing her! Brilliance!

Cut to the dark and empty Cyberia, where the elf kids are still listlessly sitting around doing nothing. Pervy is watching something on an AR headset that sets him laughing uncontrollably. When asked what happened, he explains that he just learned that he kissed an angel.

I'm still not sure why Lain didn't melt his brain after that, but compared to her house getting bombed being totally swept under the rug I guess that's small potatoes.

Cue a bunch of urban scenery, and then the Matrix Spires being superimposed over an artshifted version of Tokyo.

Boss Tachibana is giving a speech about how the new Protocol Seven servers with their Schumann pulses will seamlessly exchange information between the Wired and realspace, and then breaks down and starts ecstatically chanting "let's all love Lain!" From there, another montage of random urban-techno imagery with Masami monologuing about the need for humans to evolve beyond the limitations of the body and mixing it with some more Jordan Peterson shit about the universal human consciousness that we allegedly used to be connected to but lost until his invention fixed it. Cut to Lain standing on a windy street staring out at the radio towers and looking very pleased with herself, and then to the men in black parking under an office building somewhere.

The one who told Lain he loves her starts smoking, to his partner's irritation.

He doesn't acknowledge this. After a mutually resentful silence, they start talking about the job. Nonsmoker asks why "this" is still happening after they did their job and decimated the Knights. I'm guessing "this" refers to general Wired weirdness. I thought these guys knew about Protocol 7, and that it was just being purged of Masami rather than taken down altogether? It seems like technopathic weirdness is bound to keep going as long as the Schumann resonances are connected with the servers and interacting with brains, right? Maybe they're just stupid, that's possible. Smokey Lover Boy suggests that someone other than them seems to have been hunting the Knights outside of Japan, and suspects that their employer isn't the only one whose agents participated in the crackdown.

Ah, okay. I thought Tachibana had a whole militia of these guys. I guess they're actually just two random cyberpunk mercenaries who Boss Tachibana hired for a specific, short-term job.

Smokey says that he learned their employer has been in recent contact with Masami, who may be using other agents of his one to wipe out the Knights abroad.

...um. Don't the Knights worship Masami? Aren't they his agents? What was the point of any of this if there aren't actually two opposing sides?

Nonsmoker reminds his partner that Masami is dead. Wow, this guy really, really, REALLY hasn't been paying attention, has he? Did he not actually believe in any of this stuff even while doing the job? Despite seeing proof of some magical Wired consciousness stuff right in front of his eyepiece, up to and including violent technopathy? Well, I guess he really is just that stupid, while his cigarette-smoking partner is at least moderately sharper.

Their rendezvous arrives and gets out of his car, prompting them to do the same. They ask Boss Tachibana (if he actually even is the boss of Tachibana? That could have all been a lie, who knows) what they're supposed to do next, and he responds by tossing them a briefcase full of bills. When asked if he's just cutting them loose now, he grins at them evilly. So much for nice old retro-computer-fixing man. They ask where they're supposed to go now, and he just shrugs and says that they'd better hope they can find a place with no tower or satellite coverage.

When they protest, he answers that they're the ones who seem to think they need to "go" anywhere. If they want to not have their brains sucked out by the ascending cyberdemon god, then they'll need to find a place like that. For his own part, Boss Tachibana says, he eagerly awaits the sucking out of his brain.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe this scene is taking place prior to the rest of the series. The way they're talking about how the Wired "will" interconnect with the real world without need for personal devices rather than how it "is" interconnecting makes it seem like none of the stuff has quite happened yet. So maybe they end up coming around to his way of thinking or just getting mind controlled after this point.

Although, I guess maybe it's just a local Tokyo phenomenon until Lain gets her powers all sorted out, and when they talk about how the Wired WILL become humanity's hive mind they mean as a global phenomenon. That fits better.

Why do they need Lain for any of this again, though?

Or, if the answer to that question is something as sensible as "Lain is the AI that's going to run this whole borgshow," then that just kicks the can down to "why did they need to put Lain in a teenaged girl body and send her to middle school for any of this again, though?"

Boss Tachibana gets back in his car and drives off. They just stand there floundering helplessly rather than, you know, holding him at gunpoint. Normally I'd think the risk of security cameras etc in a place like this would be the deterrent, but but if they're expecting to have their brains eaten in the near future either way I'm not sure why that would effect their judgement here.

Suddenly, Nonsmoker starts convulsing and collapses on the ground. Smokey stands over him and tries to help, but can't figure out what's wrong. He tears off Nonsmoker's eyepiece and tosses it away, but that doesn't make a difference.

We go into Smokey's POV as he uses his own eyepiece to do a cranial scan of his convulsing partner. The only anomaly he's able to find is a tiny reflection on one of his pupils that shouldn't be there.

He jerks back in shock. Nonsmoker appears to die of his convulsions. Then Smokey's own vision starts being overtaken by indistinct Spooky's Jumpscare-ish figures closing in on him, and he convulses to death as well.

Sure, I guess. Maybe they were killed by the cyberghosts of the Knights they murdered or pushed to suicide? Who did so using their own personalized aspect of Lain? I'd normally assume that their ex-employer did this, but if he was going to do that I'm not sure why he'd bother meeting them face to face and throwing a box of yen at them before that.

Cut to Arisu walking morosely up the street toward Lain's house. She knocks, and receives no answer. The door isn't locked though, so she nervously looks inside to find the place dark, empty, and completely trashed. Everything thrown on the floor, furniture overturned, red and blue paint splashed violently on the walls.

Either the men in black did this during their last visit, or its just the result of Lain's sister running around the place making modem noises and bumping into things for days or weeks on end. Is she still around, actually? I don't know. I'm not sure how she could have gotten that paint all over the walls though, unless she was spreading it on purpose.

Anyway, Arisu is disturbed by what she's seeing, but also not terribly surprised, which is about what you'd expect at this point. As she explores deeper into the house, nervously calling for Lain or anyone else in her family to answer, the air starts getting smokey. I'm guessing either Lain's hive chamber is releasing a lot of pollution, or there have been a bunch more bombs that weren't important enough to show or talk about.

As she ascends the stairs, Arisu catches a glimpse of Lain's sister wandering by the upstairs hallway, still staring around blankly and making modem noises. Okay, she's still here I guess. Arisu freaks out at the sight and starts crying. When she gets ahold of herself and the sister has passed on by she proceeds, but she's still much more visibly disturbed and fearful than before.

Finally, Arisu finds her way into Lane's room. The hive chamber looks...dead. No floating holograms. No whirring engines or glowing monitor screens. I wonder how much of that stuff was just augmented reality features that Lain was conjuring? Maybe this is just the first time we're seeing the place from someone other than Lain's perspective, and it always looked this dead and decrepit.

Anyway, Lain crawls out from under her pile of wires and jumper cables and says Arisu's name stiffly, as if she hasn't spoken with her actual mouth for some time. Her hair is also a little wilder than usual, though not super overgrown, so it can't have been *that* long. Arisu asks her what she's done, and Lain says that she's been doing nothing, only "watching." When Arisu asks her what she's been watching, Lain just gives her a spooky smile.

You and me both, Arisu.​

Arisu next asks why Lain singled her out to have her memories left intact while wiping everyone else's. She breaks down and cries about having to remember "so many horrible thing," and asks Lain why she hates her in particular so much.

...

Given that SEL seems to have a reputation as one of the philosophical and intellectual highlights of anime, I'm guessing that my increasing frustration with it has ruffled at least a few readers' feathers. Maybe I'm just an idiot who's been missing all the depth and substance because of my own idiocy. That's a possibility I'm willing to entertain.

But this whole subplot? This is just bad. Solidly, objectively bad.

When the rumor thing first started, I figured it was the beginning of something that would escalate further. I'm two thirds of the way through the penultimate episode now, though, and it still hasn't. Now, I don't want to undersell how serious high school bullying can be. People have been pushed to suicide and worse by it, and exploring how the information age has transformed and exacerbating the problem is a logical thing for a show like SEL to do. But in this execution:

1. We never see Arisu suffering any consequences of Trollain having spread the rumors. In fact, within the only social group that Arisu has been seen to interact with both before and after the event, Lain was the one being ostracized over it.

2. We never see the rumors even being circulated at all, for that matter. We're given no way of assessing how bad it was, how wide a reception it got, etc.

3. At the same time, we have other subplots going on that have people being extorted, manipulated and murdered in agonizing ways, beside which trivial shit like middle school gossip chains are not only unimportant but also incredibly banal and uninteresting.

Is Trollain also the one responsible for killing those two men in black, or turning her sister into a fax machine, or doing whatever the hell happened to those kids playing the multiplayer game? If so, THOSE are the crimes of hers that the show should be taking time to deal with. I get that Arisu is a very important link to normal human society for Lain and that losing her could be a big deal for what Lain becomes going forward, but that just makes this even more underwhelming. The be all and end all test for this critical friendship is just some high school clique bullshit? Really? With all the other things going on, with all the things Lain's various aspects are capable of doing and have been doing, this is the entire basis of this very important conflict? Also, remember, this confrontation scene is happening after the (very effective) haunted house sequence where Arisu crept through a smoky ruin, past Lain's zombified sister, and found Lain's physical body fused to its Borg alcove. Arisu has just seen all this, and what she's asking Lain about is, um...

WHO THE FUCK CARES ABOUT THAT BULLSHIT ANYMORE, ARISU? WHY AREN'T YOU ASKING "WHY DOES YOUR SISTER THINK SHE'S A MODEM?" OR "WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR PARENTS?" OR "WHY ARE YOU A FUCKING CYBORG?" How is she even still THINKING about anything other than what she's just seen in this house?

This is all compounding the fact that it's not clear what Lain even did with regards to the rumors, and how Arisu came to the conclusion that Lain was responsible. If Arisu was alert to all this Wired telepathy stuff going on, then that could have maybe made sense. But, this very scene that I'm watching right now makes it clear that Arisu is a complete muggle who doesn't know about any of the technopathic hivemind shit at all and is still a little skeptical about it even after being confronted with material evidence.

So, the emotional core is unconvincing, the stakes are nonexistent, and the hows and whys of the storyline itself are unspecific to the point of invisibility. There's also the pacing issue of multiple episodes worth of attempted drama being milked out of one singular incident (an incident which, remember, hasn't visibly hurt Arisu's social life) with pretty much nothing since it. That things-happening to people-being-upset-about-things-that-happened ratio would be excessive even in an arc about someone mourning a fucking loved one. I've liked Arisu as a character, but at this point I just dread seeing her again because of this limp excuse for a subplot she's been mired in.

The fact that half the time we see the school friends talking to each other it feels like I'm reading that "men writing women" Twitter account doesn't help either. :/

...

So, Arisu tells Lain that she thinks she left her memories alone untouched to fuck with her extra, and given the creepiness of the Lain who she was dealing with at the time she might be right. Lain counters that Arisu doesn't understand, she doesn't hate her. In fact, she's her best, most important, and in some ways *only* friend.

As she says this, she climbs out of her cyberpolyp and crawls toward Arisu on all fours in an uncomfortably sexual manner, and seems to try to kiss her before Arisu backs off.

Lain also gibbers something about how she considered Arisu to be her most important friend even though she "wouldn't link" with her. Arisu, still nervously staying out of kissing range, asks her what the hell that's supposed to mean (to ask a question of my own: when has linking with Lain ever been voluntary or even conscious? When Arisu "wouldn't" link with her, does that mean she's staying away from the Wired? No, that couldn't be it, we see her use her phone and computer all the time. Maybe her tooth fillings are protecting her from the Schumann signals or something? In any case, how could this have ever been something she "did?"). Lain explains that humanity used to all be linked together in a telepathic network, but somehow we lost that in ancient times. Presumably when the Martians broke the planetary love bond by making a synthetic Merkabah out of pyramids and sent our Atlantean ancestors down twelve levels in consciousness. Lain just connected everyone to the Wired to turn it into our surrogate hive mind and make things the way they're supposed to be again. Lain herself, she says, is a program designed to restore the human network.

Arisu, trying to keep up, asks Lain if she's an AI. Lain responds with the most cryptic, weasel-worded answer ever.

It's kind of like some Christian theology arguments I've seen, where people are debating whether or not Jesus was the literal son of God, and some galaxybrained hipster cuts in and says "EVERYONE is the son of God" in this tone of voice like he expects everyone to be awed and blown away by the wisdom he's just dispensed. Like, okay, sure, if you want to define the term that broadly then that's fine, but it also completely dodges the actual question being asked (essentially: "what was the thing that made Jesus different from just any old human?"). I'm not even Christian, but I still get annoyed on behalf of all the other participants when I see someone do that. Just like I'm annoyed on behalf of Arisu right now.

Arisu says that what Lain is saying isn't true, and demonstrates it by feeling Lain's heartbeat, and then having Lain feel her own. O...kay? I don't think Lain's physical body or Arisu having a working heart was ever in doubt by either party? What is she proving exactly? The two of them repeat the word "beat" over and over again while feeling each other's hearts and then giggling, which is a very wholesome and human little scene that seems to make Lain act more like a complete person than usual. So, emotionally this works, even if narratively it's baffling (if only more of the show could succeed as well at this...).

Lain then asks her why her heart is beating so fast, and Arisu says it's because she's scared. Lain asks what she's so scared of, and Arisu isn't sure how to articulate it, so Dr. Masami manifests in the room and explains to Lain that she's afraid of losing her body.

Arisu can't see his AR avatar. I'm not sure how many people besides Lain could see it at this current level of systemic Wired-Brain fusion.

Masami tells Lain that unpleasant emotions like fear are a consequence of the brain's neurology, and that she should just suppress Arisu's fear impulses and give her pleasant emotions instead to reflect Lain's love for her. Wait, wait, hold on. All this talk about how humans not actually needed their bodies, but now he's telling Lain to control Arisu by manipulating her body? Which flavor of cyber-transhumanism is this supposed to be? Eh, whatever. He tells Lain to go ahead and link with Arisu to adjust her emotions (b...but...if Lain hasn't been in Arisu's head before, how the hell was she appearing to her in her room? Was that just a different aspect of Lain? If so, why does Masami need the cooperation of this particular part of her when he can get others to do his bidding?), but Lain hesitates. Masami concludes that Lain must be glitching, and promises to debug her immediately. He lowers his hand toward her head, and the hand becomes visible as a transparent apparition to Arisu.

Giving Arisu a placating gesture for now, Lain stands up and asks Masami why he's trying to get rid of mechanical man-network interfaces when he used those to upload himself in the first place. He explains, quite matter-of-factly, that he's given himself a privileged administrative position in the new Noosphere by building himself into the servers, and that he doesn't want anyone else challenging his supremacy. As the inventor of consciousness-uploading and Schumann transmission, he considers himself to have earned this fair and square. I guess that's refreshingly honest villainy, though I don't seem to recall the show ever having suggested that he's going to try to make physical computers harder to access. Maybe he's planning to just genocide the entire human race's physical existences and imprison them all in the Noosphere without physical hands or something, but if so it hasn't been communicated or even strongly hinted at.

Then, Lain asks him how he's so sure that he's the one who actually came up with any of his inventions. He asks her what the hell she's talking about. She explains that he never could have been a god of the sort he wants to be, because that office was already filled.

He has an enraged shonen villain breakdown complete with "N-NANI???"s, and screams that no, there was no previous god, he's always been free, and everyone else was too until he came along. He then tells Lain that he's the one who harvested her from her disparate, formless little data streams throughout the network of human brains, using the technology that he created, and that he's the one who congealed her into an entity with a mind and will of its own and installed it into a physical body. He was the one who made her, not the reverse.

...

So, Lain is literally the Jungian collective unconscious woo-woo God.

Too bad Lain isn't a white guy. This would be Jordan Peterson's favorite cartoon if she was.

...

Apparently she needed the Schumann Wired in order to take back control of the people after the Martians ruined the sacred geometry of crystalline, so she took control of Dr. Masami and used him to invent the Schumann Wired. Because that's not self-contradictory. Anyway, she apparently had a will of her own before he rejiggered her into a software program (and put her in a Japanese schoolgirl body because it was his fetish or whatever), it was just more sorta cloudy and distributed or whatever.

...

Also, after typing the above paragraph I realized that under all the artsyness, this entire show is just another example of Japan's obsessive fascination with turning things that are not schoolgirls into schoolgirls. Battleships, but they're schoolgirls. Airplanes, but they're schoolgirls. Endangered animal species, but they're schoolgirls. The human collective unconscious, but it's a schoolgirl.

We started out with a sensitive, thought-provoking show about urban alienation and mental illness as they interact with the information age. Twelve episodes in, and it's putting itself on the shelf next to fucking Kancolle.

...

Dr. Masami's avatar starts spasming. Arisu freaks out even more, and Lain hugs her while continuing to tell him what a shmuck he is. Then, she starts forcing him into a body. Arisu sees it too. I don't think it's AR. She actually summons these scraps of physical flesh and bone out of the air and sticks them together into a human body that she can eject him into.

I guess if you get enough little psychic kids thinking hard enough, they can create living tissue out of air. Or maybe it's a feature of the alien technology from Roswell that got worked into our early computers that the scientists just never figured out how to use. :/

Masami fights back by somehow turning his new body into a tentacle monster and using it to attack the girls.

But then Lain animates all the computers and cables in her room and uses them to crush it to death, still hugging Arisu.

End episode.


What more do you even want me to say about this?