Serial Experiments: lain *spoilers* and explination

[Guest]

Here is my thoughts on lain.

I have gone to about ten sites concerning explanations for lain, and i think i have finally put it all together. I love this show, and if you dont want to understand it so it can always remain a mystery then dont read this, I kind of wish i hadn't figured this out, but reading on one of the sites it just kind of hit me and i decided to write it down. Anyways, here goes. (copied and pasted the word document, the line spacings represent new facts) just some general ideas.
There is no general order for this.

Eiri and lains father create her with protocol 7

Protocol 7 aligns the human subconscious collective’s frequencies to that of the earth and the wires all around and allows the wired to begin to sync with the real world. This is how the dead’s info, therefore they are remembered on the wired only as being alive still, because there is no way the computers know they are dead. Eventually they fade as they realize that death sucks.

Eiri’s motives go bad and he ends up getting fired, kills himself, because of protocol 7 his info leaks onto the wired.

Eiri forms the knights to try to manipulate lain to serve him. To help him more he has them create the wired lain to force her to come over to stop the suffering.

The knights and Eiri put KIDS back together using the game the teenagers are playing and linking it to the kindergarteners game to it so that they would harvest the phsy.

Lains father is a good man, and loves lain. He does not want lain to find out about all that she is.

When mika dies after being hit by a car she is replaced by the knights so that it wont seem quite as wrong to her family.

The knights screw with lain’s head and all the weird stuff happens.

The guys in black work for tachibana and are helping to take down the knights.

After the knights are gone lain has to overcome eiri who temps her with power.

Alice represents her attachments to the real world. Lain's whole life is in the real world, how would you like to leave everything behind to be almost entirely alone and not rememberd by anyone except for you father, or god? nevertheless, a god of the wired, a true, yet manmade god.

Her father is in the wired and acts as god of the wired after lain overcame eiri, she had the power to overcome him and the knights and anything else all along, she just had to realize it.

Lain exists forever on the wired after the reset, overwriting the other lains that were on the wired.

Her father was helping her and giving her a lot of the power most of the time, but the merging powers were hers.

When she or her father reset the memories of lain, they do not reset them entirely. People still have the faintest memories of her face so that she can visit the real world. (a gift from her loving father)

But in the end, the curiosity and recklessness of humans caused lain to lose it all. The suffering of one(a godlike being) for the salvation and satisfaction of an entire race.

[Kinou Himmel]

I think thats a pretty good way to sum it up

[darkdriver]

Oh, the darkdriver had to pull into this stop. After all, my sig is a line from my SEL-based fanfic. I am THE Lain fan!

So, here's one clue to help everyone get started:

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Lain is an amalgam creature, consisting of the Lain program (a supervirus created by Eiri using the Rushkoff effect as its hookups) and the superPK girl created by the KIDS array. The girl's mind was erased at Club Cyberia and replaced with the Lain virus.

As for the other points made...

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Eiri created the Lain virus by himself.

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Eiri created IP7 as a virtual world for the souls of the dead, a world completely under his control.

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The Knights are Eiri's minions. He used them to keep the authorities away from himself; he disposed of them when he no longer needed them.

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Eiri downloaded the KIDS program directly from Hodgeson. He used the aspect that forced people to kill themselves mainly...but he did use the other aspect (forcing the victims to focus their tiny amount of psi-power to accomplish collectively a giant task) once in the series.

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Lain's 'father' is a surrogate, not her real father.

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Mika dodged the car. But the car was aimed at her because the people around her perceived her as Lain..the work of Lain's program-clone, 'daring Lain'. This was in fact a Mika-clone created by 'daring Lain' to be used as bait and as a wedge between Mika and Lain, as Mika had guessed Lain's secret. Once Mika was done running around, 'daring Lain' destroyed the clone and dumped the memories into the real Mika, driving her insane.

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Eiri got Lain to cooperate with him not by tempting her with power (as she already had more than he did--which is why he was talking to her in the first place: she was more powerful than him!) but by wearing down her resistance with endless haranguiing about the problems of the world that she could solve by doing what he told her to do.

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The other 'father' seen at the end is 'daring Lain' transformed into 'the Comforter'.
'Daring Lain' tempted Lain to remake the world in her own image to please herself, and she refused that last temptation. Thus, she now needed reassurance that she made the right decision.

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The remembrances are Lain's gift to the three people that made a lasting impression on her: her father, Taro, and Alice. The strength of the memory corresponded with the depth of the impression.
And though Lain does primarily keep to the Wired (as the beginning of each episode shows: the opening animation is totally post-Reset!), she can reform a body in the real world if she wants, given the power she has.

Finally...

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the reason why SEL is so hard to understand is that it's actually two things at once. Triangle Staff wanted a supernatural thriller for Japan, while Pioneer wanted a wirehead commercial for America. SEL is the result.
That's why there's so much Christian imagery in the series, even though its premise is more reminescent of a Shinto/Buddhist anime thriller.

Hope this helps...and don't forget the Easter eggs!