1998 Score 8.1 13 eps Blue-Green Complementary MAL ↗IMDb ↗ Triangle Staff Avant Garde Award Winning Drama Mystery Sci-Fi

Serial Experiments Lain

Pixel Slice — 1px center crop per frame
Pixel slice barcode
Smooth Average — mean color per frame
Smooth average barcode
Rank Mosaic — columns sorted by luminance
Rank mosaic barcode
Circle / Radial — polar transform
Circle barcode
Edit Pace — frame-to-frame color delta (bright = fast cuts)
Edit pace barcode
Color Temperature — warm (gold) vs cool (teal) per frame
Color temperature barcode
Frame Density Comparison — every 2nd vs every 4th frame
Slice · 15s
Avg · 15s
Slice · 30s
Avg · 30s

Lain is the dataset's most visually striking outlier. Where 80% of anime bleed warm reds

and oranges, Lain's palette is dominated by Blue-Green — the cold, clinical tones of

cathode-ray tubes and fluorescent corridors. Director Ryutaro Nakamura and art director

Shuichi Kurita constructed a world where technology has colonized color itself.

The bright-ending arc is counterintuitive for a show about dissociation and

identity collapse — but that final act flare is the Wired asserting dominance. Lain's

world brightens as she becomes less human and more signal. The barcode doesn't just

record the episode's colors; it records a soul being overwritten.

Brightness Arc (episode progression)

Hue Distribution

Act Breakdown

Opening
0.451
Middle
0.453
Closing
0.534
Avg Brightness
0.494
Avg Saturation
0.214
Warmth
0.493

Color Palette

#1A1919
#E6E7E5
#5C5D5E
#9EA0A1
#D8CCAF
#212C5A
#5B6E92
#CDB49E

3-Act Color Story

Opening
Middle
Closing
Color Twins
Perceptually nearest palettes — measured in OKLab space, not RGB
My Hero Academia Season 3
2018
My Hero Academia Season 3
Blue-Green
My Hero Academia Season 2
2017
My Hero Academia Season 2
Blue-Green
My Hero Academia Final Season
2025
My Hero Academia Final Season
Blue-Green
Bleach
2004
Bleach
Red
RahXephon
2002
RahXephon
Red-Orange
Also from 1998
Other top-rated anime from the same year
Cowboy Bebop
1998
Cowboy Bebop
Red
Initial D First Stage
1998
Initial D First Stage
Red
Outlaw Star
1998
Outlaw Star
Red
Trigun
1998
Trigun
Red-Orange