Lain in the Japan Media Arts Database

I recently learned about a cool Japanese website: The Media Arts Database! From their own “About” page, this is how they describe the database:

In order to promote media arts in Japan,＊the Agency for Cultural Affairs has been conducting a survey on media arts that have been created so far in Japan since FY 2010. As a part of the results, it is the Media Arts Database (hereinafter referred to as “the Database”) that has been widely released to the public.
…
By organizing and developing work information and stored information about manga, animation, gaming, and media arts as a database, the Center provides data that is the key to the access to media arts and the preservation, utilization, and application thereof.

The database is an extremely useful tool for learning more about specific pieces of Japanese media – you can find the exact air dates of specific episodes of a show, the release dates of a game, staff information, and more.

Due to the database’s authoritative nature, I decided to do a dive for Lain-related information to see what I could find.

Warning/Note: For some reason, searching for “serial experiments lain” within the database only returns two results, missing all of the episodes of the anime. This is because the anime itself is actually named “serial experiments laｉn” in the database, where the “i” character is a full-width letter rather than the traditional half-width used in English text. Because of this, it’s easiest to search “serial experiments” without adding “lain” if you want to find all content about the franchise.

In total, there were results in three categories:

Media Arts Exhibitions and Demonstrations (メディアアート展示・実演)
Game Package (ゲームパッケージ)
Anime TV Shows (アニメテレビ番組)

Media Arts Exhibitions

The Media Art Exhibition entry was the most interesting to me: Apparently the Director of the Serial Experiments Lain animation, Ryutaro Nakamura (中村隆太郎) exhibited the Lain anime at the 2nd Japan Media Arts Festival. The festival took place at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, on February 27th, 1999.

Sure enough, I went diving around on the Japan Media Arts Festival website, and they have an entry for Lain! It won the 2nd Animation Division Excellence Award (if everything is translating properly, at least).

Game Package

The Serial Experiments Lain PlayStation game is also listed in the database. It has a publication date of November 26th, 1998 – that’s 4 days from now! And uh, minus 27 years. Apparently the original MSRP was 5,800 yen (excluding tax). Interesting! There isn’t too much information aside from this.

Anime TV Show

As expected, the anime is also present in the database! Each episode’s original air date and staff is recorded, along with the episode title. That being said, some of the data is imperfect… episode 1 doesn’t have its “layer” title, and the rest of the episodes seem to jump around with how they’re formatted (sometimes name before layer, sometimes layer before name, etc.). That being said, I’ll record the episode air dates below just as an extra point of archival!

(Note: I’ve fixed the layer names here – if you want to see the original formatting, check the citations at the bottom of the post)

Serial Experiments Lain Anime – Original Airing Dates

Episode Name	Episode Air Date
Layer:01 WEIRD	1998-07-07
Layer:02 GIRLS	1998-07-14
Layer:03 PSYCHE	1998-07-21
Layer:04 RELIGION	1998-07-28
Layer:05 DISTORTION	1998-08-04
Layer:06 KIDS	1998-08-11
Layer:07 SOCIETY	1998-08-18
Layer:08 RUMORS	1998-08-25
Layer:09 PROTOCOL	1998-09-01
Layer:10 LOVE	1998-09-08
Layer:11 INFORNOGRAPHY	1998-09-15
Layer:12 LANDSCAPE	1998-09-22
Layer:13 EGO	1998-09-29

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