深夜放映とゲームとのメディアミックス展開で注目を集めたサイコアニメ。内向的な女子校生・玲音を主人公に、確かなようであやふやなネットワークコミュニケーションに浸る女子高校生たちの姿を描く。舞台は現在よりも多少未来の東京。テレビと同じぐらいの力を持った情報端末NAVIが普及し、女子高生の間ではネットワークを通じてコミュニケートすることが当然となりつつあった。そんなある日、玲音のもとに、自殺した少女からの電子メールが届く。
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.
Written by Chiaki J. Konaka, whose other works include Texhnolyze, Serial Experiments Lain is a psychological avant-garde mystery series that follows Lain as she makes crucial choices that will affect both the real world and the Wired. In closing one world and opening another, only Lain will realize the significance of their presence
