Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain is an anime first aired in 1998 which continues to enjoy a cult following today.

Plot Summary
A middle school girl, Lain, receives an email from a girl in her class who committed suicide. She tells Lain that she has only "abandoned the flesh" and gone to a new plane of existence called the Wired. Later, Alice, her friend, and two of her friends take Lain to a nightclub called Cyberia. While there, one of the friends is shot. Lain seems to be paralyzed by the shock, but she bravely confronts the shooter, who shoots himself. (This is usually interpreted as the appearance of Wired Lain, one of her personalities, the timid "real life" Lain being another.) Lain's father helps her set up her new NAVI (computer).

The next day at school, Lain finds a chip in her locker. At home, she asks her father what it is, but he doesn't know. However, a small boy at Cyberia identifies it as an extremely powerful processor that will allow full access to the Wired for any device on which it is mounted. She installs the chip in her NAVI and continues to work on it.

Lain and her family attract the attention of two mysterious men in black wearing laser pointer headsets. They shine their lasers on Lain's room. Lain tells them to go away, they refuse, and the NAVI destroys their headsets. The Knights of the Eastern Calculus, an organization based on the Wired, bomb Lain's room. The two men in black take Lain to their headquarters, and question her about her family. She becomes frustrated as she realizes she does not know the most basic things about her parents.

Alice is spied on by Evil Lain, another personality of Lain. Wired Lain confronts and wrestles with Evil Lain, but because they are the same person, neither can defeat the other. Wired Lain deletes her friends' memories of the incident, but becomes invisible and is replaced by a copy of herself.

The Knights turn Lain's elder sister into a human modem. Lain encounters a man whose body is stitched together with tape. His name is Eiri Masami, and he killed himself after he was fired for trying to link all human brains together in the Wired. He claims to be Lain's creator and to be a God. Lain continues to be unnoticed by the world. When she gets home, the house is empty. Her family has left her.

Lain releases the names and addresses of all members of the Knights into the Wired, and they are killed off in mass by the men in black. Alice is now the only person that remembers the old Lain. She decides to visit Lain, and finds that her house seems to have been abandoned for many years. She finds Lain and demands to know why hers were the only memories of Lain that weren't wiped. Lain tries to tell Alice about the Wired, but Alice just says that Lain is a human being just like her. Just then, Eiri Masami takes the form of a grotesque beast and attacks them, but Lain tells him that he is proving the point by using physicality to achieve his will.

Lain decides to reset the world all over again without her. She sees the world where she never existed. Wired Lain and real life Lain walk through the world and discuss what they have seen. Lain's father meets her in the skies and tells her she doesn't have to carry that weight anymore. Lain meets a now grownup Alice who wonders if they have ever met. Lain tells the viewer that she is of the Wired, and she will always be with the viewer.