Lain's guilt over the havoc caused by her interaction within the wired provokes her to take drastic - and irreversible - action.
"God" preaches that our bodies are simply an obstacle preventing the evolution of mankind. An exhausted Lain appears willing to sacrifice her own flesh and blood until Alice convinces her to take a ...
Lain encounters a man who call himself the "god" of the wired, and members of the Knights all across the world log on to participate in a cryptic mass suicide.
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Title: Serial Experiments Lain (1998)
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Lain Iwakura, an awkward and introverted fourteen-year-old, is one of the many girls from her school to receive a disturbing email from her classmate Chisa Yomoda-the very same Chisa who recently committed suicide. Lain has neither the desire nor the experience to handle even basic technology; yet, when the technophobe opens the email, it leads her straight into the Wired, a virtual world of communication networks similar to what we know as the internet. Lain's life is turned upside down as she begins to encounter cryptic mysteries one after another. Strange men called the Men in Black begin to appear wherever she goes, asking her questions and somehow knowing more about her than even she herself knows. With the boundaries between reality and cyberspace rapidly blurring, Lain is plunged into more surreal and bizarre events where identity, consciousness, and perception are concepts that take on new meanings.
"SE: Lain" is a great anime series. It's not godly perfect or anything, but it gets up there...way up there. From the killer opening title sequence (with a great opening song, by the way) to the strange "previews" (they only consist of a girl talking and her body parts - I'm not kidding) for the next show, "Lain" certainly has a fairly unique style. But it goes beyond style and gets into substance.
The story is simple at first and seems half-predictable in these post-"Matrix" times. After a classmate seemingly commits suicide, Lain gets e-mail from the dead girl. Apparently, her consciousness is still on the net...or is it? From then on, things get weird, complicated, and interesting.
Splicing in elements of Matrix-style cyberpunk, X-Files conspiracy, and the David Lynch-esque surreal, "Lain" is, like the Wired world it portrays, a synthesis of disparate ideas and personas, all thrown into a blender for the viewer to interpret. The interpretation's the thing, and those looking for action or comedy may come away slightly disappointed. After 13 episodes, there will probably be more questions than answers, but isn't real life like that, anyway?