The thing with this particular anime is that it's a very, very slow and complicated Anime in many of the aspects being shown.
One of the things the anime has got somewhat right is the characters; Where as the main character is at first very, very dull and so are the sub-characters. It does tend to develop some emotions and interesting things to aid the characters.
Anime's artwork on the other hand is rather good for being in 1998 where the switch between the more dark and unique style and the more brighter style really blend in well together.
The most negative thing Serial Experiment Lain has to be honest is the sound, here I don't mean the characters in the series, in fact for that they did it really well, but it's the environmental sound and overall songs that is killing the anime's capacity of being an enjoyment. Due the noise coming from Power poles.
But the story is more or less an incomplete story, as I said before the anime is very slow on what it focus on and even more it does try out some new elements to the story such as (at the time) some conspiracy theories and philosophy, in fact there are some interesting philosophic and story plots which can advance into different ways of thinking/to look at the anime's story.
The problem then comes that they don't quite know what to do with the story it feels sometimes; they try to build up new sub plots but they often just goes away and have nothing to no meaning to the main story, which might be seen as a common thing which would be as to one or two episode but this continues through the whole series, because sometime it's will try to point it's hand that the main character is the main story we as the watcher are to follow the most but then they point to an completely different object which again we are to assume is the main story to follow.
Another thing is that they also are sometime to complicated or doesn't show you the simple explanation when it's needed or not needed to have complicated plots.
Overall it wasn't very or not that much painful to watch but due to some annoying noises and voices it wasn't all that present when it also was wrapped around with a very slow story and long unnecessary scenes/long explanation which has little to no real value to the plot it wasn't really quite the ride I was expecting.
