In the end, it was arisu who connected with her. Again, through the hands. She held lain's hands and even placed her hands on her heart. She confessed that she was terrified about what was happening, to which lain said, "but you're smiling?" Neither of them understood what was happening in that moment, but lain said it earlier. "It's because I love you"
After this moment, we're confronted again with the imagery of the hands, only this time, it is eiri - "the god in the machine" who manifests a digital hand for lain to take. Instead of this, though, due to the lessons she learned from arisu, she rejected his hand, and went as far as to give him an ego (a parallel of what he had done to her, when he gave her a body) only to destroy it immediately and wipe away his satanic infulence (yes, satanic. There's not much Christian imagery in this story, but the idea of "becoming god" is satanic in nature. In the Bible, lucifer literally says "I will ascend my throne above the highest heaven".) Anyways. Lain rejects this idea and outright rejects the proposition of her herself becoming a god. She literally tells that part of hersel to "stfu bitch" and vaporises it. She does this because she realised that all of her attempts at connection ended in tragedy and misery, even with arisu, she ended up being traumatised by what she experienced. Probably the worst emotion lain felt was the guilt of calling people to suicide. Again, she did that all because she was lonely, but the girl from the start ended up telling her, "there's nothing easy about dying". In the end, in a way, she did become a god, but as a watcher, a gondola-esque experiencer, forbidding herself from touch, all because she still at that point doesn't know how to connect without causing pain. The dramatic climax of the show was definitely the incarnation of eiri, but in the emotional climax was lain conjuring up an image of her and her "father" eating and having tea together,
(2/3)