Interviews

This page aims to be a comprehensive list of recorded staff interviews related to Serial Experiments Lain, and transcriptions or descriptions of events attended by Lain staff, and supply sources for those interviews, digital or print. (It probably never will be comprehensive, though.)

Most, if not all, of the English interviews listed below are on the MisceLAINeous interview page.[1] Here, dead links have been replace with web archive links.

English or English Translated

1998

• FRUiTS

October 1998
English: [2]
Interviewee: Yasuyuki Ueda

1999

• Lain talk live

February 27, 1999
Interviewees: Nakamura, Ueda, Konaka, Yoshitoshi Abe, Takahiro Kishida, Hiroyuki Kakudou (who worked on Layer 09's documentary film portion[3]), Akira Takemoto, etc.
English:[4]
Japanese:[5]

• Animerica

October 1999
Interviewees: Ueda, Nakamura, Konaka
English only: [6]

• HK Magazine

Winter 1999
Interviewee: Konaka
English: [7]
Japanese: [8]
Note: Published in French.
Note: This interview was translated from Japanese by the same guy who wrote about Lain Talk Live above. Cool!

2000

• Otakon 2000 panel

August 5, 2000
Interviewees: Ueda, Abe
English only:[9]

• A Fan's View

August 4-5, 2000
Interviewees: boa, Ueda, Abe
English only: [10], [11], [12]
Note: the second link is an account of the same Otakon 2000 panel as above.

• Anime Jump

August 2000
Interviewees: Ueda, Abe
English only: [13], [14]

• The Anime Colony online chat

August 2000
Interviewees: Ueda, Abe
English only: [15]

• Zigzag Asia

Date unknown
Interviewee: Abe
English only: [16]
Note: this is more about NieA_7 than lain

2001

• Anime Central 2001

May 11-13, 2001
Interviewee: Abe
English only: [17]

• Anime Expo 2001

Summer 2001
Interviewee: Konaka
English only: [18]

Japanese Only

1998

• AX Magazine

August 1998, October 1998
Japanese only: [19]
Interviewees: Ryuutarou Nakamura, Kaori Shimizu, Chiaki Konaka
Note: It's unknown if other issues of AX contained interviews of lain staff. These are listed because fragments of staff interviews are clearly visible in the scans of these issues on MisceLAINeous.

1999

• What is "lain"?

Interviewees: Ueda, Konaka
Japanese only: Visual Experiments Lain, page 2

• Digital Effects and "NAVI" System

Interviewees: Junji Nakahara, Tomokazu Tokoro
Japanese only: Visual Experiments Lain, page 24

• Opening and Ending Themes

Interviewees: boa, CHABO
Japanese only: Visual Experiments Lain, page 72

• Sound Direction, Effects, and Design

Interviewees: Youta Tsuruoka, Kouji Kasamatsu, Akira Takemoto
Japanese only: Visual Experiments Lain, page 74

• Film Direction & Design

Interviewees: Nakamura, Kishida
Japanese only: Visual Experiments Lain, page 76

2000

• That Of Lain Which Couldn't Be Spoken Of Until Now

（今だから話せる『lain』のあれ）
Interviewee: Ueda
Japanese only: [20]
Note: The date of its publication is unknown. 2000 at the latest, but it could have been as early as 1998.

2010

• Lain 12 Years Later (12年目のlain)

August 30, 2010
Interviewees: Ueda, Abe, Konaka
Japanese only; interview included in the 2010 reissue of Scenario Experiments Lain
Note: maybe this should be translated as "lain turns 12"? i don't know, it's literally "lain of the twelfth year"

• serial experiments lain|REUNION

November 2010
Interviewees: Ueda, Abe, Konaka, Shimizu, Akihisa Okuda, Hiroshi Saitou, Youichi Senzui, Tetsuro Satomi, Burger Suzuki
Japanese only: [21], [22]
Note: This was an event held at Cine Libre Ikebukuro in Tokyo to promote the release of the Bluray Box|RESTORE.[23] It seems like most of the people on stage were random animators who had nothing to do with the production of Lain, unless I'm just bad at finding credits. And one of them was named Burger! But my best guess is that they were the people involved in the restoration process.

Other

2002

• Mangaes

March 2002
Interviewee: Abe
Spanish only: [24]