| “ | Yes, it's me. That's right, Lain. I am your true god. | „ |
| ~ Eiri meeting Lain. |
Eiri Masami is the main antagonist of the anime Serial Experiments Lain. He created Lain and was one of the main developers of the Wired (the Internet in the series).
He is voiced by Shou Hayami in Japanese version and Kirk Thornton in English dub.
Appearance[]
As a regular human he wears a plain gray suit with a tie and has short black hair. In the Wired, he has a thin body and a distorted face, with his eyes being unusually far apart. He has red markings under his eyes. Eiri's hair is long, messy and tied with tape. He wears no shoes, blue pants, no shirt and a white labcoat. He also has tape wrapped around his belly, arms and knees.
Personality[]
Eiri is a very centered person and wants to get his ideas through. He is dedicated to his own work and gets easily aggravated if others disagree. He later also becomes psychotic and develops a god-complex. He doesn't care if people get hurt in his experiments. To get what he wants, he does anything and he sees himself as superior. Eiri also cruelly torments Lain and bluntly reveals to her, that she never truly existed.
Biography[]
Eiri Masami has worked closely in the creation of the Wired and plans to connect the consciousness of all human beings, so that the earth itself could be one mind. In his theory humans don't need a physical body, since that can no longer evolve and only a humans mind can further change by becoming digital entities. He presented this theory to his officials and the other scientists and tried to implement the code into the Wired. They found him crazy and fired him, which led to his suicide. However his consciousness was transferred into the Wired and he has become connected to it.
Eiri manipulating Lain
During that time Masami somehow created artificial life, called Lain. She is actually the god of the Wired. What Eiri then tried was to manipulate her and get her under his control, so he can be the god. Lain gave herself a physical body and a fake family. She didn't know of her origin and started to expand and update her own computer. Eiri communicated with her and told her that she must connect herself. He eventually showed himself to her and insisted he was a god, since he was always everywhere and could experience everything. He also told Lain, that she was never a real human, which drove her crazy. He pushed her to keep connecting to the Wired and she became true software.
However, when Lain's friend Arisu saw her in an almost catatonic state, Lain snapped out of it. Eiri continued to insist that humans who have managed to evolve have a right to greater abilities. When she questions who gave him that right, Eiri went mad and feared a true god, that isn't him, actually exists. He tried to manifest himself a physical body with everything around him, which ended up in a grotesque pile of flesh and electronics. He attacked them, but Lain used her powers to erase everyone's memories and reset everything, so that she never existed. Eiri was alive again and angry that no one appreciated his ideas.