In trying to estimate how long Lain was in the planning stage for, I’d guess that the seeds were sown in the mid 90’s, or possibly even earlier - perhaps the spiritual aspect came first, then the Wired was added to the concept later on as the internet made itself known.

I’m glad you appreciated the artwork too - for some reason it gets criticised quite a lot, which I think isn’t quite fair when it’s so innovative and pretty good quality for its time.

Lain appeared in 1998, but I think the seeds of a lot of its sensibility were planted a couple of decades earlier, in the era of John Lilly and Ted Nelson and the Whole Earth Software Review: the first flush of the computer-utopians (for a glimpse into some of this era, take a look at John Markoff’s What the dormouse said, though, even better if you can find it, Ted Nelson’s Dream Machines/Computer Lib or Stewart Brand’s Two cybernetic frontiers. Lain is more of a computer dystopia, but the blending of the psychic and the cybernetic that was used in Lain echoes a lot of that stuff (and John Lilly is even mentioned in the series, as I recall).

The other thing that always struck me about Lain is its unique look. Lain was still done with cel animation for its characters, but a good deal of the series was done with CGI in a way that was an improvement on most of the series that came after. You get the impression of real artists exploring the capabilities of new tools to produce a look that was both unique and uniquely appropriate to the series.

@Mike: Yeah, I really enjoyed your article since it highlights the spiritual side of the show. I’ve always seen it as a sci-fi story but there’s more to it than that, as I found out.

@j.valdez: as much as we can push ahead with technological advances, there’s no escaping the fact that deep down, we’re still the same. One aspect of Lain that makes it so unsettling I think is when this creates a clash - there are still some things that we can’t quantify and categories into neat little lines of 1s and 0s.

It’s funny how the Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, Lain, among others come up with regard to Dennou Coil. I brought them up as well when I wrote about that show.

It really is a primal fear of the unknown. People can postulate about whether human consciousness can be boiled down to something as simple as a Turing machine, substrate dependent, or how/if the soul plays a part. The common factor is that people are unwilling to simply let the unknown be un-known. With the willingness to guess at answers comes the hopes and fears that drive the illusions in a series like Lain.