Serial Experiments - Lain: Knights (Layers 5-7)
As Lain's story continues to unfold, she--and the viewer--becomes increasingly unsure of what is real and what exists in the cyber-realm of The Wired. The cyber-Lain grows bolder and more unpleasant, spying on her friends and spreading rumors, while her real-world counterpart seems to be fading out of existence. Does she need a body any longer? Does she still possess one? Her father departs, announcing that her family has never been anything but a group of actors. The Knights, who seemed omnipotent within The Wired, lose a critical power struggle: its members are executed by agents of Tachibana Laboratory. Lain greets these revelations and questions with her usual fixed stare and little indrawn breaths. Chiaki Konaka clutters his already fragmented screenplay with references to alien contacts and some odd theology. Lain debates the nature of God and free will with the Masami Eiri, who researched the idea that human minds are linked like electronic circuits on a subliminal level--before he was found murdered. Director Ryutaro Nakamura doggedly reuses the same close-ups of Lain's eyes, the shots of power wires, the simple computer graphics, etc. Viewers will love or hateLain; no one will watch it with indifference. Rated 16 and up for violence, implied sexual situations, and an abstruse story line.--Charles Solomon