Serial Experiments Lain E5: “Distortion”

It's been a while, but we're now getting back to Lain, or whatever is left of her. Where the previous episode ended, it wasn't clear if any of the characters are still themselves. But, there's still 2/3 of the series to go, so there's got to be something that happens!

An unfamiliar, distorted English voice informs us that it is "present day" and "present time" before laughing mockingly. Thanks for the update, I never would have guessed that on my own. And then, this episode features an actual intro with an actual song! I imagine that we'll be keeping this henceforth, and if so I'm glad for it, because this is a pretty good one. Gloomy guitar piece, with even gloomier English lyrics. The visuals alternate between Lain alone stumbling through her home city (without any effed up visual anomalies, and with distant camera angles that suggest an outside perspective) and Lain in the telephone wire techno-hell. There's also a recurring motif of birds. Cyberpunk anime seems to go with bird imagery a lot. Wonder what's up with that?

Anyway, like I said, it's a good OP. Definitely more memorable than Ergo Proxy or MHA's.

After it, we go back to the old, very brief, intro of people walking through the neon-lit nighttime city and a voiceover saying an ominous phrase, in this case "If you can hear it, then it is speaking to you. If you can see it, then it is your..." As is customary, this is followed by the cyberdemon saying "Distortion, layer 05."

The episode proper starts with...yet another unfamiliar voiceover. It's kind of getting hard to tell when the "actual" episode of SEL starts. In this case, it's a calm, authoritative male voice criticizing the human condition using some very questionable biology. For instance, this brainlet seems to think that humans have astonishingly low cancer rates compared to other animals (hahahaha what) and that this is proof that human genetics are too stable to allow for further evolution (HAHAHAHAHA WHAT). This leaves humanity as a ridiculous, misbegotten species, driven only by a desire for physical sensation. Yup, that's humans alright. The most mindlessly sensualistic members of the animal kingdom. :V

The voice then explains that there is finally a way out of this miserable state of being; a way for humans to abandon the flesh that has failed them and become something greater. Ah, okay, this is the Knights' propaganda or something, that explains the blatant falsehoods.

However, it turns out that this isn't the kind of propaganda that you watch on a screen, but rather the kind that beams itself directly into your brain. Lain suddenly looks up from the crowd she was walking through, and asks the voice what it means. It then adresses her by name, and explains that it's talking about the Wired. Abandon the flesh, and enter the network, and she will be saved.

She asks the voice who it is, and its tone becomes patient and fatherly as it replies.

Well, I guess the cyberdemon is talking directly now. That might make things a little less confusing. Of course, as I've been saying, it seems like there may be multiple competing cyberdemons, so I'm going to arbitrarily name this one Rudolph.

Cut to Lain's sister getting dressed and leaving her boyfriend's place. I think we've seen her talk to him on the phone before, but this is his first time appearing onscreen. Boyfriend asks her when she wants to meet again, and suggests some outdoor activities, but she completely ignores him and walks out without a word. He just shrugs and leans back in his easy chair. Okay. Then we follow her onto the street as she makes her sleepy way to school. Lain is a middle schooler, so her sister is probably mid to late high school aged. Suddenly, a car swerves out of its lane and races right through the middle of a crosswalk full of pedestrians, honking wildly. Fortunately, it looks like everyone including her is able to dash out of the way in time. She watches the aftermath until the police show up, and then goes on her way.

That evening, Lain kneels on the floor of her room and asks one of her dolls to tell her a story. You know, like people do. After she begs it a few times, the doll finally relents and asks Lain what story she would like to hear. Lain wants to hear one that she doesn't already know, but the doll tells her that that's impossible, because she already knows everything.

With a little more prodding, the doll says that while there isn't a story Lain doesn't already know, it can still teach her a new fact about the nature of reality. For every event that happens, there is first a prophecy. Every single occurrence is predicted and foretold. Lain asks it who makes these prophecies, but the doll just falls silent again.

I'm not sure if the doll is hinting that reality is a simulation that's all predesigned by a computer, or if this is a Wired entity fucking with Lain, or if she actually is just going insane. The assertion that Lain already knows every story that's ever been written could likewise mean that she has the internet flowing freely and unrestricted through her brain and thus knows everything on it, or it could just be the babbling of dream logic.

Later that night, the news reports that there were a string of car accidents all around Tokyo, caused by a malfunction in the networked traffic control system. Ah, I see. The local government has repaired and rebooted the system, and this dangerous bug should be fixed now. The next morning, Lain and her sister are both walking to school again. They're crossing the same street at the same time, but they're walking nowhere near each other and not looking at each other. I guess that's what a sibling being assimilated by the Borg does to family dynamics. As they walk, some rando runs through the crowd and hands everyone a packet of sanitary wipes, which Lane and her sister both take with appropriately confused expressions. Then, sister is hailed by that little elf kid from the club.

I mean. I guess I'd appreciate the forthrightness and politeness, in her position? She doesn't though, simply turning away in disgust without a word. When she turns her back, techno-elf splashes his soft drink all over her arm and then runs away while babbling that it was an accident.

She glowers after him, and then takes out the wipes she was just given to hopefully clean off the liquid before it can stain. When she uncurls the wipe though, there are blood red letters written all over it with an apocalyptic message.

She throws the wipe away and tries to figure out what the hell is even going on this morning. Before she can, she notices her little sister standing between lanes in the middle of the road as cars whizz passed her on both sides, staring zombielike at the ground and whispering to herself. She's shocked for a moment, but as Lain doesn't seem to be in harm's way (just sandwiched right between two of harm's ways...) she turns her back on her sister (okay, that's still a real dick move. Just because you're ostensibly mentally ill sister who is currently in zombiemode isn't standing in front of traffic right at this second doesn't mean she won't be soon...) and tries to continue on her way. However, the big TV screen mounted on one of the nearby buildings catches her attention as it stops showing the news and starts displaying a closeup of Lain's face.

Cut to Lain's room again. Or, well...the screen is all blurry and the voices have an echoing effect going on, so maybe Lain is just imagining that she's in her room while standing in the middle of the street and syncing her brain with the universe. Anyway, she's talking to a plastic mask this time, and it's telling her in a harsh, deep voice about how moments in time can be rearranged to change the order of events.

She asks the mask who determines which events are placed before which other events, and once again the inanimate object on her bedroom chair falls silent.

Then we go back to Lain's sister being spooked out by Lain's face hacking the news broadcast. Yeah, that "bedroom" scene was just in Lain's head. Or, perhaps, Lain was in multiple places at a time either physically or (more likely) through the Wired. Then, we jump ahead to Lain having eventually found her way to school, where her friends are all dying to know how she managed to hack a TV broadcast like that.

Lain has no idea what they're talking about.

Later, Arizu and the other two (no sign of Lain) discuss some weird, culty spam emails they've been getting that might be related to the Knights. Then, that night, the news confirms that the traffic control glitches were caused by malicious actors and that the Japanese government is trying to find the hacker(s) responsible. Then Lain is in the ghostly representation of her room again, this time being told by her mother that the Wired is actually the real world. The only thing that exists is information, and the "material" universe is created and sustained by information-based entities like themselves.

Lain asks the thing that looks like her mother if it actually is her. It falls silent, and fades out like a ghost.

The music in this scene is like a techno-hymn.

At dinner, Lain's sister asks her what's going on and why she's seeing her in places she shouldn't. Lain doesn't know what she means. Their parents eat silently at the table with them without paying any attention to what their daughters are saying.

And then Lain's sister is back on the street, on her way to school, staring at Lain on the TV screen. She's dropped to her knees, and people are staring at her just as they were at Lain when she froze up between the lanes a minute ago.

What the...fuck?

Um. I guess Lain's sister is the one making the "prophecies" at this point? Seeing and/or determining the future, or at least one possible future?

Or else something else is rearranging moments in time, and Lain's sister is just somehow able to be aware of it when something just got readjusted.

This is starting to feel more like Inception than anything else, with the whole "nothing exists between the camera cuts" assertion that's now being made. Of course, this show long predates Inception.

The onlookers turn into quivering blue slime-specters, and then Lain's sister is sitting in the cafe where Arizu and the other two girls are chatting about the creepy spam emails they've been getting at a nearby table. Her hand trembles as she starts shutting down from the confusing shuffle of herself through time and space, and she spills the coffee cup sitting on the table in front of her. The foam spells out a message.

Because why not I guess.

She looks up in alarm and sees that the cafe is now empty, and the sun is setting. The tables have all been cleaned. It's as if she just jumped a few hours ahead in time.

She goes (or is transported to? the cuts are not trustworthy, as we've learned) into the bathroom, where she washes herself with cold water and tries to stop hyperventilating. She's supposed to be home by this hour. She's supposed to be having dinner with her family.

She tries to leave the bathroom, but suddenly the power cuts out, and she hears someone else in the room. Someone who doesn't answer when called out to. She huddles against the wall, trying to find her way out of the dark bathroom without being stabbed to death Suddenly, the light coms back on, and the door has been replaced by a white plaster wall with the words "fulfill the prophecy" scrawled over it a million times.

She screams. Then, we're back to Lain's room or a representation thereof, the techno-hymn is playing again, and Lain is now consulting a levitating ghostly version of their father. He explains that he isn't sure if the emergent network of global communications nicknamed the Wired actually created a new reality, or if it just allowed the physical world to interface with a preexisting universe of pure information. If both ghostdad AND ghostmom are reliable, then that information realm was already where humanity resided, we just created the physical world around us as a means of interaction with one another, and now the Wired might be rendering our bodies, at least, obsolete.

Again, assuming both are reliable. That's a big assumption.

Ghostdad also says that God exists in the Wired, or at least in the information-based world accessible through it. And, as the Wired has gotten more sophisticated, that God has increased its ability to manipulate the physical world to a limited degree. Combining that once again with what ghostmom said, this would mean that God's ability to control the synthetic physical world to a much greater degree than any individual "human" entity, perhaps using the planet earth itself as its "body" with the Wired acting as its nervous system.

That said, ghostdad cautions Lain that calling this thing a "god" might not actually be strictly accurate, depending on how one defines godhood. Either way, it's an extremely powerful nonhuman entity.

She asks ghostdad if he's actually her father. Like ghostmom, he just falls silent and fades out.

Cut to Lain's sister stumbling through the door, crying and panting. She drops to the floor and just sobs.

No telling if she managed to escape the cafe and run home, or if she just found herself transported from there and then to here and now. She's horrified all over again when another version of herself dressed in casual indoor clothes comes into the hall and stares at her in confusion.

Hmm. Seeing a version of herself that was already in this moment of physical-world-time?

The two stare at each other for a minute until Lain comes in and asks casual!sister if she's okay. She just silently turns and walks away.

Lain stares after her for a moment, and then looks over at the ghostly, unmoving remnant of schooluniform!sister that's frozen in an expression of abject horror in front of the door.

Actually, is that even schooluniform!sister anymore? It looks like it might have turned into Lain's dead acquaintance who jumped. IDK. Anyway, the episode ends with Lain in her borg-assimilated room asking a screen who it's going to be today.

Who..what? Who is going to fulfill the prophecy? Who is going to get shunted around spacetime? Who is going to get killed in a traffic accident? IDEFK. End episode.

I can't say anything about this one. Too confusing. Too disjointed. I'm sort of at the border of frustration with this show, and will likely cross it if things don't start making at least a little bit more sense in the next episode or two.

That said, once again: even if SEL does end up failing at everything else, I've never seen a work that captures the experience of being mentally ill so convincingly. The alienation, the disjointedness, the quiet, empty despair, the feeling of being in a mist-shrouded netherworld that no one else can reach you in. That's the real deal.

Anyway, next review is another Lain episode, so things might come together enough for me to actually do some analysis.