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Lain Iwakura (Japanese: 岩倉 玲音, Hepburn: Iwakura Rein)[a] is the title character and protagonist of the Japanese anime television series Serial Experiments Lain.
Lain Iwakura | |
---|---|
Serial Experiments Lain character | |
First appearance | 6 July 1998[citation needed] |
Created by | Yoshitoshi Abe |
Voiced by | Kaori Shimizu[citation needed] |
Creation and conception edit
The character design for Lain was the responsibility of Yoshitoshi Abe, a newcomer to the industry who would later continue his career in works such as NieA_7, Haibane Renmei, and Texhnolyze.[2]
Appearances edit
Lain Iwakura is the title character and protagonist of the 1998 Japanese anime television series Serial Experiments Lain. She also features in the subsequent interactive-fiction game of the same name and is depicted in several art books.
In the anime, .....
The anime begins with ...
Reception edit
Anime scholar and critic Susan J. Napier compared Lain to Alice, the title character of the 1865 classic novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, seeing similarities in how both characters descend to a surreal world and possess godlike abilities. Nonetheless, Napier contends that the characters ultimately diverge when Alice recognizes the Red Queen and other inhabitants of her dreamworld as mere material objects, whereas Lain embraces immateriality and vanishes.[3]
Legacy edit
As of 2022, the character has become a popular subject of surrealist internet memes, particularly among chronically online female audiences, often relating to subjects such as mental illness.[4] In 2023, the anime and manga social cataloging website MyAnimeList was forced to go temporarily offline after a hacker changed all titles on the service to "Let’s All Love Lain" as a reference to the character.[5]
References edit
Notes edit
Sources edit
- ^ Clements & McCarthy 2015, p. 2079; Brown 2010, p. 161.
- ^ Clements & McCarthy 2015, p. 2079.
- ^ Napier 2002, pp. 432–433.
- ^ Yalcinkaya, Gunseli (24 November 2022). "Are you lainpilled? How Serial Experiments Lain took over the memescape". Dazed. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
- ^ Colbert, Isaiah (12 May 2023). "Weeb Hacks Popular Anime Database Just To Recommend One Show Over And Over Again". Kotaku. Retrieved 22 July 2023.
Bibliography edit
- Napier, Susan J. (2005). Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 177–180. ISBN 1-4039-7052-1.
- Napier, Susan J. (November 2002). "When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "Serial Experiments Lain"". Science Fiction Studies. 29 (3): 418–435. ISSN 0091-7729.
- Clements, Jonathan; McCarthy, Helen (2015). The anime encyclopedia: a century of Japanese animation (3rd ed.). Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. pp. 2079–2080. ISBN 978-1-61172-018-1.
- Brown, Steven T. (2010). Tokyo Cyberpunk: Posthumanism in Japanese Visual Culture (1st ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. pp. 161–185. doi:10.1057/9780230110069. ISBN 978-0-230-10360-3.