In the town of Kurouzu-cho, Kirie Goshima lives a fairly normal life with her family. As she walks to the train station one day to meet her boyfriend, Shuuichi Saito, she sees his father staring at a snail shell in an alley. Thinking nothing of it, she mentions the incident to Shuuichi, who says that his father has been acting weird lately. Shuuichi reveals his rising desire to leave the town with Kirie, saying that the town is infected with spirals. But his father's obsession with the shape soon proves deadly, beginning a chain of horrific and unexplainable events that causes the residents of Kurouzu-cho to spiral into madness.

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. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

With dead and lifeless eyes, Rachel Gardner wishes only to die. Waking up in the basement of a building, she has no idea how or why she's there. She stumbles across a bandaged murderer named Zack, who is trying to escape. After promising to kill her as soon as he is free, Rachel and Zack set out to ascend through the building floor by floor until they escape. However, as they progress upward, they meet more twisted people, and all of them seem familiar with Rachel. What is her connection to the building, and why was she placed in it? Facing a new boss on each floor, can Rachel and Zack both achieve their wishes? [Written by MAL Rewrite]

After mustering up the courage to propose to a girl in an online game, naïve otaku Hideki "Rusian" Nishimura is devastated when she flat out rejects him. To make matters worse, the girl reveals that she is actually an older man in real life. With his dreams crushed and his heart broken, Rusian comes to an abrupt decision in the midst of his raging fit: he will never trust another girl in an online game again. Years later, Rusian is now in a guild with three other players, one of whom possesses a female avatar by the name of "Ako." Ako is deeply in love with Rusian and wants to marry him. Although he entertains the possibility that she might be a guy, Rusian accepts her proposal, claiming that her gender doesn't matter as long as she is cute in the game. However, after a discussion between guild members that led to all of them having an offline meeting, Rusian finds out that Ako, along with the other members, are not just girls, but also his schoolmates. [Written by MAL Rewrite]