Shows like serial experiments: lain

Serial Experiments Lain (stylized as serial experiments lain) is a 1998 Japanese anime television series produced by Yasuyuki Ueda and animated by Triangle Staff. It was directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura and written by Chiaki J. Konaka, with original character designs by Yoshitoshi ABe. The series' 13 episodes were originally broadcast on TV Tokyo from July to September 1998, and explore themes such as reality, identity and communication through philosophy, computer history, cyberpunk literature and conspiracy theory.

The series focuses on Lain Iwakura, an adolescent middle school girl living in suburban Japan, and her introduction to the Wired, a global communications network which is similar to the Internet. Lain lives with her middle-class family, which consists of her inexpressive older sister Mika, her emotionally distant mother, and her computer-obsessed father; while Lain herself is somewhat awkward, introverted, and socially isolated from most of her school peers. However, the status-quo of her life becomes upturned by a series of bizarre incidents that start to take place after she learns that girls from her school have received an e-mail from a dead student, Chisa Yomoda, and she pulls out her old computer in order to check for the same message. Lain finds Chisa telling her that she is not dead, but has merely "abandoned her physical body and flesh" and is alive deep within the virtual reality-world of the Wired itself, where she has found the almighty and divine "God". From this point, Lain is caught up in a series of cryptic and surreal events that see her delving deeper into the mystery of the network in a narrative that explores themes of consciousness, perception, and the nature of reality.