Words like 'weird' or 'bizarre' are almost systematically associated to review the series by English Language reviews due mostly to the freedoms taken with the animation and its unusual science fiction, philosophical and psychological context.

In 2009, Yoshitoshi ABe announced a spiritual sequel to Serial Experiments Lain called Despera who will reunited many of the staff who worked on Serial Experiments Lain, including Chiaki J Konaka and Ryūtarō Nakamura. Ueda and Konaka declared in an interview that the idea of a multimedia project was not unusual in Japan, as opposed to the contents of Lain, and the way they are exposed. A dōjinshi titled 'The Nightmare of Fabrication' was produced by Yoshitoshi ABe and released in Japanese in the artbook Omnipresence in the Wired. The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series, though the series was released first. Producer Yasuyuki Ueda said in an interview, 'the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products'. The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga). Later, when he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed. This would lead to a 'war of ideas' over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures. He explained he created Lain with a set of values he took as distinctly Japanese he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. Serial Experiments Lain was conceived, as a series, to be original to the point of it being considered 'an enormous risk' by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda.

Serial experiments lain opening theme