Anime Director Maki Ito (also known under the name Pierre Ito), recently announced that his indie anime project lain: Protocol 7 reached its initial crowdfunding goal of 2 million yen in only one day since the launch of the project’s Campfire page on July 7. At the time of writing, the project has managed to raise almost 4.6 million yen, and with 54 days left until the campaign ends, it seems like it’s steadily moving towards its next stretch goal of 8 million.
While it is based on the Serial Experiments Lain franchise, lain: Protocol 7 is a completely unofficial and independent fan-made OVA. The full anime is set to be around 60 minutes long, and will attempt to “connect the Serial Experiments Lain of the 1998s with the reality of the 2020s,” exploring the Wired in the era of AI. As for the legality of using the Lain IP for such a big unofficial project, the creators launched it in accordance with the series’ official fan creation guidelines.
The story of lain: Protocol 7 is centered around counseling sessions between school counselor Toko Mera and Lain Iwakura, who starts experiencing strange occurrences which blur the lines between the internet and reality – messages she never sent start appearing out of nowhere; an email arrives from a girl who is supposed to be dead. Through these sessions, Mera gradually gets closer to understanding the truth of the personal-log response-body experiment known as “Protocol 7.”
Thanks to the project’s immense popularity, the creators have already announced stretch goals for the campaign. At the time of writing, the project is less than 500k yen away from reaching its first stretch goal at 5 million yen. If they manage to achieve this goal, the production team promised to create a full visual novel based on the script of the OVA, with multiple branching endings that offer a different perspective to the animation’s story.
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