Info
- Title:: Serial Experiments Lain
- Platform:: Sony PlayStation
- Developer:: Pioneer LDC
- Publisher:: Pioneer LDC
- Year:: 1998
- URL:: https://laingame.net/
Log
2026-01-21
i guess i now have both time and a reason for playing this. or, i guess i always had the time, but with the story idea inside infanity being kinda relevant to what this game is – not to mention the name directly referencing what this is, i guess i minds well play this to see how much i want to do is already done here.
so with that said, my current thoughts after a couple hours:
- it takes a strange approach to nonlinear narrative where you’re presented with a linear structure but then makes navigating it linearly extremely tedious. even beyond some nodes being inaccessible until revealed later, sometimes additional entries inside the node will just yeet you to the other side of the map and you get to decide whether you want to travel back to where you were or just keep reading where you are now
- there is something very, very otaku in the whole conceit of piecing together the narrative database-style. really this whole thing feels like otaku catnip.
- “So you’re effectively reading through the diary of a little girl.” “in the least efficient way, yes!”
2026-01-22
this game could’ve been an obsidian vault.
this game could be an obsidian vault!
i could port this game to obsidian!
(i don’t want to port this game to obsidian…)
- ok yeah touko just might be a kind of shitty therapist
- like in one of her case notes files – which aren’t in any standardized format i recognize – she mentions using anecdotes from “a third-party client” to help lain feel more normal. the third-party client is very obviously her.
- really this just feels like a story about a neurotypical therapist trying to understand a neurodivergent girl and being stymied at every turn
2026-01-23
- oh touko you’re being played… you both smashed and immediately afterward he stopped talking to you?
- and now that we’re into disc 2 you’re still talking about how you’re takeshi-san’s? have you two even done much of anything together throughout the last half-disc?
- Tda059: “lain is not sick” uh, at this point in the chronology shouldn’t she have a sizable cut on her neck?
- i mean, she even shows up with bandages at the appointment!
- maybe this game takes an interesting approach by gating progression by sensitivity more than it does chronology… because how early do you get access to the touko files where she talks about wanting to get some of lain’s cerebrospinal fluid?!
2026-01-25
これから一緒だよ！ミ・ズ・キ
is this what it means to be together with someone? to know all their data?
…well, maybe so, or at least i seem to believe so.
what else could explain my actions? my desires? my motivations?
lain is a girl who loves her father. milk gives her an upset tummy, and she has really good eyesight. she doesn’t have many irl friends at all; most people don’t seem to understand her and are put off by that. she doesn’t consider herself to be very attractive, and she seems to be distressed by the carnal nature that humans are burdened (not blessed!) to carry. she’s a quick learner. she sticks by her friends and deeply desires to have that sort of true friend which is hard for those of a certain persuasion to find. she doesn’t seem to understand others very well, but she wants to learn and is willing to try. she wants to be understood too, and i guess her way of trying to accomplish that is to assemble all relevant data about her into the form of a a browsable database.
but that’s such a strange way of trying to connect to others, isn’t it?
[~/programs/web/quartz] npx quartz build
Quartz v4.5.1
Cleaned output directory `public` in 44ms
Found 327 input files from `content` in 12ms
Parsed 327 Markdown files in 2s
Filtered out 2 files in 131μs
Emitted 823 files to `public` in 10s
Done processing 327 files in 12s
[~/programs/web/quartz]
on touko
perhaps a parallel can be drawn with touko’s story and what is going on here, in that she’s clinging onto a relationship that by all accounts has always been implied, deluding herself into believing that she and takashi-san are a couple in all but name, yet without taking the step to confirm that they are. were i to be poetic then i could say that this reflects the difficulty of ever truly knowing someone’s interiority, and whether true knowledge of any other is possible so long as their feelings remain undisclosed. were i to be pragmatic then i could say that there is a very simple action that one can take to get someone to disclose their feelings!
is touko lain?
i saw this posted somewhere when i was researching the game – though i didn’t read it due to not being very far into it at the time, but now that i’m done i can both see where someone could’ve got that impression yet don’t think the theory is substantiated by the rest of the text.
but i’m also a simple-minded person who tends to take the text at face value. i see lain speaking touko’s words and interpret it as lain repeating the record1 she obtained as if from memory.2 i see her speaking the same words touko said in her own voice and interpret it as lain internalizing touko’s words as her own now. is this a case of each becoming the other, though? i’m not really sure. i don’t know where to define the point where introjection ends and the self picks back up.
so touko might’ve become like lain in that respect. i might’ve also become more like lain in that regard, by virtue of playing through this. but i’m probably also a lot like touko in other respects too; for as boy-crazy as she is throughout the game, it’s not like i’m much different. that’s the beauty of characters: you fill in the gaps left by the text with your own biography.
Notes
Video game counterpart to Serial Experiments Lain (1998).