Surpasses 6 Million Yen in Just Three Days! Crowdfunded Fan-made《Lain》Animation to Get a Visual Novel Version!

A cyber-fantasy from the 90s, the legendary experimental anime — Serial Experiments Lain — now has a major fan-made project nearly 30 years later!

Animator いとうまき's crowdfunded fan OVA project《lain : Protocol7》, based on《serial experiments lain TTL 2019-2028》, reached its funding goal on the first day of announcement, and in just three days the funding has exceeded 600万円.

According to the crowdfunding plan, exceeding 500万円 will trigger a visual novel version, and exceeding 800万円 will make it fully voiced.

Crowdfunding Overview

This work is based on an IF-line premise derived from the original: "What would happen if Lain, born in 1998, were reconnected to the real world of the 2020s?"

Today, smartphones record our search histories, movement trajectories, replies, moments of silence, and even our physical condition. AI can already generate text that closely mimics a person's writing style. So, are "replies just like the person themselves," generated from these records, still truly that person?

What this work depicts are "emails from a girl who should already be dead," "personality responses generated from personal data logs," and "the noise that is indispensable to being human."

Precisely because we stand outside the official sphere, we believe another《lain》can be created.

This work will combine various techniques: hand-drawn animation, live-action footage, 3D layout, digital compositing, and AI as a production support tool. However, the final direction, art composition, editing, and finishing will all be personally overseen by the creators.

We hope this project will not stop at the planning stage, but will truly be completed as an approximately 60-minute OVA animation.

While it is only a fan work, judging from the PV and character designs released so far, the level of polish is unexpectedly high, and it is very faithful to the original.

The visual novel version will be based on the first draft of the OVA script, reconstructing the story as a visual novel game. It is also expected to include scenes cut from the OVA itself, as well as ending plans abandoned during production.

There are also crowdfunding tiers for overseas backers this time; see the crowdfunding page for details.

Lain in the AI era — a very interesting theme. At the current pace of growth, surpassing ten million yen in crowdfunding is only a matter of time.

More intriguing than the polish the OVA has already shown is how the visual novel version will ultimately turn out — stay tuned, everyone!

Crowdfunding page:

https://camp-fire.jp/projects/958338/