Jul 9, 2011 10:19 AM
ELFEN LIED REVIEW
Anime Relations:
Elfen Lied
I think the review has no spoilers/plot summary as long as you don't click the spoiler-tagged section, though it is long.
The easiest way to attract attention to any piece of media nowadays is to add sex and violence, it seems. While there's nothing wrong with either, it's a sad fact they are most often used only to cover up the lack of substance, not to enhance the work. Elfen Lied is no exception. In all respects I find this anime distasteful and a clichéd approach to anime. Most non-anime people think of anime as "kiddie porn" or hentai. This particular anime falls into that category and give other quality anime a bad name. It's embarrassingly violent and full of over-the-top situations, but it sometimes has a level of poignancy that is hard to deny.
It was the previous internet-mega-hype anime, a 'must see' 'masterpiece' that would reportedly 'change the lives of its viewers forever' (I'm not exaggerating here). Elfen Lied is no longer half as popular as it was just a few years ago because the people have matured and have seen through the manipulative melodrama of the series as illogical as most of it is and noticed how shallow the series is.
Elfen Lied is hard to categorize. The story of Elfen Lied can either be interpreted as a tale of two faces, a rather campy horror film, or a gory display of senseless violence, bad characters, and downright atrocious events designed to milk sentiments. I'm somewhere between all three. The story does have some variant potential like the entertaining premise. However it is so horribly wasted by nudity, poor character development, unrealistic behavior, useless fan-service manipulation and gore without purpose other than to elicit a response from the viewer. They are rather distracting seeing as that they don't fit well. The gore fits though gratuitous, but feels like it's there to fulfill someone's sadistic pleasure than for a genuine purpose like symbolism of the savage nature of Diclonius. I can't shake the feeling that they went overboard like the producers were getting a kick out of it, which sickens me.
But the gore itselfdidn't make me as sick or captivate my attention as they just annoyed me and quickly become old (I got desensitized by ep 2). If you are able to stand the first 10-15 minutes then you are most probably fine with the gore. But by all means some of the parts when people died in the show were sorta satisfying cause those people werel idiots or annoying. Not that I'm sadistic.
The horror part of this is guaranteed by endless graphic violence which at times seems to just be "there" with no purpose at all except to shock. It feels like there were pools of blood simply for the sake of them being there. Because this is all that Elfen Lied tries to do: shock you and set a few not-so-clever traps which make the anime seem like it has a deep meaning and a complex storyline. Well, it does do a rather good job of being emotionally manipulative, which is probably why Elfen Lied regarded so highly by many people. This anime, without a doubt, is the cruelest I've ever seen. It has an unceasing and quite often shocking brutality level. Here, that cruelty works in keeping the viewer interested in the anime.
This anime was meant to be horror, but the pr0n element was almost as strong, if not stronger. No-seriously, why was there a character whose only concern was having a bath? Beats me... Take out the blood and nudity, and it becomes obvious that it's set in a stupid little fantasy setting. 'Fantasy' in how irrationally the world of Elfen Lied functions. I won't cry for lack of realism (this is anime, after all), but the outright stupidity of the characters is used as a melodramatic plot device so often that it outweighs the brilliance of the original concept. The brilliance of Elfen Lied is in its concept, not in its content. What you get are a dozen plus episodes of angst and oh so tragic flashbacks. With some totally confused and downright ridiculous characters, and an unambitious story that seems extremely forced with unnatural progression, the attempt of a plot that this series has is very unsatisfying. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and is full of inconsistencies. Subjective qualities do not create or bring objective quality.
Wait! What about all the social commentary Elfen Lied was so famous for? It tackles such difficult topics as bullying and racism, doesn't it? Well, no, it doesn't really. Barely mentioning social problems and the dark side of human nature is not social commentary, and taking the easiest, most melodramatic way out of every controversial situation is pretty much the same as avoiding those topics altogether - if not worse.
I must say it left me with a bitter taste; not because of the human relations shown within and the portraying of human misery. Neither plot nor characters were properly developed or explored. It could be a series with some quality, but as it is, it's just average or below depending on your tolerance of its pr0niness/violence/nudity/etc. Not that I mind violence and nudity, but here, it is at the detriment of story and character development.
Elfen Lied should be enjoyed as nothing more than a visceral experience, a shameless indulgence of the id. Those trying to depict Elfen Lied as a thoughtful and deep work are missing the point entirely. The sad thing is - this anime could have been so good. A crying shame the producer was more interested in thinking up porno situations rather than ways to develop the storyline.
STORY - I think even just what's written above is enough to give the gist, what's below is more for people who've already seen the show since all the spoilers are specific examples. But there's still lots of stuff you can read even excluding the spoiler tags.
While I was watching it, I got a bit interested in the beginning, later I was more and more disillusioned and disappointed, and annoyed by the stupidity of characters, not to mention their irrational behavior, which served only to help cover the holes in the story and keep the plot from falling apart.
Elfen Lied has two stories. The first is the mystery of the diclonious. The second is your typical 'guy with plenty of girls together' situation. A certain sense of shallowness becomes apparent with the aspects of this anime clashing with each other – the violence and the loving homey atmosphere. Despite the intriguing premise, violence and cuteness seem to get in the way of effective plot progression, evident by the underwhelming unfulfilled conclusion to the show.
The story, to be honest, was poorly executed. Many parts of the plot showed this colossal level of ignorance and far-fetched attitude and it just ended up disappointing me. Not to mention the cliche elements highlight for spoiler hello there's split personality and memory loss
and the series use them shamelessly give the viewer a reason to keep watching the series but in truth the viewers are in it for violence and fanservice because the story is pretty much left alone to rot when it shouldn't be.
Well the story manages to be mediocre at best because of a lot of gaps in the plot-line and a lot of things left unexplained. I cannot accept the idea of the highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler Diclonius just being there, I cannot accept the fact that the male version of the diclonius is not explained. Male diclon? Explain. Are diclon innately homicidal or forced to be that way, or do we truly not know? How did the diclonius come to be at the beginning ? Third generation diclonius? A little more history of their discovery would have been good. Why didn't the story explore this fascinating aspect further instead of poking around a bit?
I cannot accept the stupid turns in the story such as Kouta's reactions at certain points, I cannot accept the fact that the producers leave a lot of holes to be filled by the viewers imagination. That is just a sign of shabby anime-making and an easy way for the producers to squirm their way out of explaining a lot of things that they threw into the anime with no reason. I find it cheap of the producers to resort to such trivial ways of begging for success.
I appreciated the shorter flashes which were used to build suspense for the viewer, but I had already guessed the truth by the middle of the first episode so emotionally I did not feel the suspense. The story is delivered in a mediocre fashion. Everything is just ahead-hinted enough as not to be a surprise anymore, and the events themselves are so trite not to be worth that much attention. You'll discover that things are more closely related than what they had initially taken at face value; though it is clever what they do with the plot, it almost feels TOO coincidental. A very linear and abused cliché-galore.
DEEP AS THE OCEANNNNNNNNNNNNNNN?
Supposedly there are "deep" and "symbolical" aspects of this anime, but no -- In the end, both the story and the symbolism are drowned in the gore and nudity, and it wasn't all that good to begin with. Perhaps the reason why some people prize the story, is that it's surprising it's even decent considering the s***load of gore and fan-service.
Sadness, memories, and family. They're about the only deeper themes that are followed though in this series, and not much more than the shallow spectrum of those themes. What Elfen Lied does really well is introduce several serious and powerful themes and ideas, but that's all it does. What it ends up doing later on is either completely forget about them or, even worse, contradict them. Though this can be rather hard to see though all of that blood, gore, and nudity.
Though I must say I think the episode previews sounded sorta deep. lol.
the pr0n gore galore
this anime actually does offer something... blood, gore and tits! This is almost like a parody of how many people think anime and manga looks; nudity and blood in abundance. The gore and extreme fan-service does NOT contribute to anything.
The context of the anime seems mature, and so these sort of plot routes just seem unconvincing. It doesn't go as a horror/SF story but instead the story progresses mostly as a harem anime. The plot itself doesn't seem to be supporting such scenes enough, instead, it seems to be something 'randomly' assembled just to provide some insubstantial justification for them. Sometimes the visual gags go a bit far and are more cringe-inducing than anything else, and it can feel like you're watching the wrong show for a moment before a flying limb brings things back into perspective. This show is touting itself as horror and yet finds room to throw in worthless ecchi crap? The constant boobery should have been eschewed, just to keep the anime's maturity level consistent. The pace of the story is rather bad like some things happen too fast... highlight for spoiler You have a new character arriving at Kouta's door every two episodes. They just come and start living with him... very unlikely. The way he accepted other characters into the house left me blinking in disbelief.
A great deal of time is spent developing your typical, cliché “guy surrounding by a bunch of love sick girls” show which obviously isn't "developed" really not that I care... uh "harem" much?
The amount of UNECESSARY distasteful scene was simply ludicrous. If people are hit, their clothes magically rip off their bodies rendering them sometimes completely naked. All the characters in here just loved getting naked... Any excuse, and off the clothes will go, or just some parts... just enough to reveal the most pr0n parts of their bodies, if nothing else. If a person falls over, they just had to pick the most pr0n angle to view the fall such that you can see up their skirts as they fall over. There are countless more examples, but it would take me all day to list them. It got to the point where it was so bad that in any situation I started wondering how they're going to make a pr0n out of it. For example, if it was raining, I'd be thinking... oh dear, now they're probably gonna show wet t-shirt scenes and maybe getting their clothes off when they find shelter or something like that. And sure enough, most of them time that would happen. It would be happening even when I'm not expecting it. The producer's prime talent appeared to be able to: take any situation and turn it into pr0n.
COMEDY/ t3h m3lodrama
It can be disturbing and it can be beautiful. There were scenes where I told myself that I should be crying but I wasn’t. Actually, sometimes it can be hilarious (not because of it's "intended comedy" but because I cannot take it seriously at all sometimes. The melodrama was just bad). It's hit-or-miss. The dramatic moments fail more times than they succeed and the same can be said for the comedy moments. Rather than focusing on the "make me cry" scenes, it should have focused more closely on the great assets it had, Lucy was unquestionably one of them, so was the Kurama’s relationship with his wife. Honestly, the only other anime I've seen that has worse melodrama than this is like ef~ tale of memories, i mean for that i couldn't even laugh at the melodrama, it was just bad...
The comedy part and the horror show part don't get along, because Elfen Lied is not a parody. I'd say the greatest downfall of the series is that the humor often comes in the wrong places, and can bring things to a screeching halt. But the comedy can be summed up as some perverted, ecchi-natured type of situation kind of joke so to me it's the tasteless kind... Needlessly to say I only cringed, never laughed... from that anyways...
ENDING - 13th ep.
When the series is over, you don’t really feel much has happened, since a lot of time was spent explaining a corny back story.
When more questions arise even with the ending which is actually an open end, then things are really bad. So in the end it didn’t even deliver a decent enough climax to make up for the shoddy plot. Which is just depressing for someone like me who was just waiting for the "moment" where it finds its stride.
The ending highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler doesn't fit AT ALL with the mood of the anime.
Moreover, the ending is anticlimactic, and does a really half-assed job of putting an end to 13 episodes of wannabe-intense wannabe-drama. Instead, along with nudity and splatter, it only proves that everything is the anime is meant to be food for the teenage fandom.
It couldn't be more disappointing and, even worse, it leaves a lot of ends loose (not the kind of untied ends that are left up to the audience to guess, but the kind that doesn't get a proper explanation).
What happened was the writers walked themselves into a corner and couldn't find a good way out. That way included highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler the moral that they tried to tie into this show, which was forgiveness, therefore settling on something outrageous. It was just a clear gift to the fan-service...
Kouta's decision is truly astonishing in the final episode, it makes him a character one finds hard to believe in. QUOTE "It's true that you massacred my family in front my eyes when I was a kid, and I will never forgive you for that. But I love you". The "no matter what happened in the past, what hardships you caused, how tragic one's past have you made", all you have to say is "I am sorry, I love you" and he/she will forgive you and fight for you to the death and longer. The fact that one sentence will make past go away is just... ugh.
I couldn't comprehend Kouta's feelings AT ALL. The romance is complete crap to me. Hell, didn't even notice till ep 13 when they shoved in some blush thing and I was like for reals? Just bad...
==========================
I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but I can’t honestly say that I didn’t enjoy it either. Perhaps enjoyment is the wrong term to use since a lot of negative emotions are evoked. Yet it’s not the negative emotions that put me off this anime, it’s the fact that there was an abundance of holes in the story, the characters are not believable and many of the dark themes introduced are never fully played out. The whole thing just seemed to be an excuse for gratuitous violence and naked young girls - too sick for my liking.
CHARACTERS
I can't even say the characters were the saving grace of this anime, because they just weren't REAL. Characters are incredibly unreal, and incredibly shallow so I couldn't feel sorry for them, or feel happy with them. Not to mention most of the characters in the series seemed to have the maturity of someone ten years old or younger. Many other character reactions, especially Kouta's, make no sense. Details like this make me wonder about the true aim the series creators had and who was their target audience. Most the characters emoted the same kind of cookie-cutter cuteness seen in many other shows. Just as the plot, characters also are pretty stereotyped, bringing forth a nice collection of seen-already/done-before types, mixed together to make Elfen Lied even more shocking, but poorly succeeding in such intent. It's like they made them from a character-building kit. The characters as a whole in this series were forgettable and clichéd,
repetitively dull and lacking character development.
Our protagonist, Kouta, is just as generic acting as his outer appearance would suggest. Really, how hard IS it to make a half-decent male main character? He's nearly empty. What does he do? Nothing! He just throws some random words or shouts in scary situations. He's as good as brick wall. No wait, he knows one thing, how to be nice. Whether you bite him or pat his head - he will be nice. Kouta, your typical all-around-nice guy & another disturbed character with a troubled past.
Kouta who finds it easy to highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler continue housing new girls that just pop up at his door with absolutely no reason at all except for his big, humongass heart. Which by the way, I don't think they ever explain why Kouta & Yuka lived in that huge house by themselves well I do remember them mentioning something but maybe not....
Plus the fact the he proves that stupidity can reach up to the stars when he highlight for spoiler last ep: highlight for spoiler forgives an act as heinous as the term implies. "To make mistakes is human, to keep making mistakes is demonic"...an old Latin saying...
and this guy is as retarded as one can be.
Kouta, apparently highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler I think last Episode has a really bad memory. He supposedly forgets some truly unmistakable details. It's unmistakable because these are the only two moments in his life that these blatant details appear, and if he had any brain at all he would have noticed instantly. That could have saved him a lot of trouble. The main character suddenly 'remembering' important plot aspects in the penultimate episode? Not good. But then again if that happen to be I'd be pretty traumatized so eh...
He's got to be one of the dumbest lead characters I've ever come across. He cannot connect the dots to the simplest things. It's almost as if he refuses to see what is in front of him. highlight for spoilerep 2
highlight for spoiler
He didn't want to cooperate with authorities even though he had no reason NOT to trust them. Look, all they wanted to do was stop a homicidal psychopath from killing you and everyone you love. 笑笑笑笑笑笑笑 lmao?
Save for the cliché bimbos to ruin it all...
who have trouble keeping their pants on.
Nyuu... Oh man. Nyuu was the worst character; she was absolutely pathetic, although strangely cute, sometimes. She was mostly out of contest, nor she developed, nor she did something important to the series. Waste of time. I don't get these "cutesy" anime characters that have zero vocabulary, and as a consequence have zero personality as well, and whose only purpose is to act stupid and innocent while flashing the audience on occasion. I don't know about you, but I don't get turned on by checking out retarded people, sweet and lovable as they might be...
Most scenes with the Nyuu character were so contrived it was eyeroll after eyeroll as they tried to find new ways to get her naked. This anime was such a forced approach toward sexuality that it just never clicks and the viewer never believes the relationships are valid. Nyuu is a useless, nothing more than comic-relief, to up the fan-service even more, be super cute,
highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler and a way for the viewer to gain sympathy for Lucy. It constantly tries to elicit sympathy for Lucy, when in fact she doesn't deserve it.
What a deep character, cuteness and fan-service together. How lovely.
Yuka is pretty uninteresting and boring and rather colorless in comparison to the others. I think if she was replaced with the dog, there would be no difference at all. Actually, that might've been better. Yeah it would, the dog is so darn cute. She just doesn't do anything. She's a 'filler' character, and she is shallow with her blaring jealousy and whining. This fact helped me to remember her name, yuka means floor- 床, not that her name means floor. No, seriously if I didn't know yuka meant floor I would've NEVER remembered her name. Plus that line in ep 1 I think about floors was awesome... Though the series tries to place her into a motherly role somewhere in the series, it just hard to buy that.
I would have thought that being the only highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler character with a relatively normal childhood, Yuka would help ground them a little, but she just ends up being an accessory.
Mayu and Nana are way too stereotypically and obviously played out. They've had highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler hard and harsh lives, but that doesn’t mean they have to have the voices and behavior of innocent 5 year olds.
By all means, Nana and Mayu’s deep emotional highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler scars should have affected their behavior. If all they’re going to do is act like normal young girls, why bother giving them traumatized pasts at all? So Mayu is a bright cheerful, cute, happy STARVING HOMELESS girl...
Mayu is the most perverse trap in anime. It shows you a dreadful highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler past and then a present as if it the past never happened...How can a child who passed through the 9 Levels of Hell, starving, alone, cold and homeless be so happy is beyond my ability to process. Her tragic past is obliterated by her present attitude and nothing goes back to show us that this past actually did happen.
Mayu's personality is just typically passive. The character just makes you concentrate on the past and makes you forget the present so the producers may slack off some more. She did do some pivotal things but she could have been replaced easily. Mayu's story was for more shock value. Honestly, I don't think she was necessary for the story.
The only saving grace is Lucy, who seems like a genuinely cool and disturbed character, and is played exceptionally well and maturely.
But I still gots problems with her character...
highlight for spoiler
highlight for spoiler I never got convinced about the motivation that Lucy had for killing people. I wasn't convinced that she was good with just one human. I think that, in general, motivations were too segregated, Lucy has had bad experiences, but she also knows nice people, so is difficult for me to understand her actions. Just because of being bullied? The dog's death? Lucy loses her innocence as a child when she is forced by circumstances to become a murderous beast? Oh please...There are plenty of animes out there which demonstrates how one is able change for the better using their determination and belief to overcome their obstacles. Lucy's case is rather foolish.
I'm sure I should have felt pity for those girls at some point, but I just couldn't bring myself to feel anything for them.
Kurama's story. He has this aura of past tragedy, up till his story was unfolded. You see - suddenly he highlight for spoiler stopped being intelligent, mature, caring but rather made error after error, and he did not even make the most basic association everyone with a brain would have made. Thus - that led to tragedy and I could not sympathize with him anymore. How could he make such grave error. I couldn't empathize, it was just ridiculous. Just stunned. Gawd 35... highlight for spoiler last ep well she barely gets anything other than psycho sadistic whatever and then by the next ep she's a cute, poor little girl which is so unconvincing... just HELL no. No sympathy from me.
The silly villain.
Basically a waste of a character, no wait his entire purpose is shock value. Well... he's crazy and ... he's blonde. He's got a gun! And... he's a soldier. What a magnificent character. I think that describes him in every detail. Name? Why should you need it? Is that detailed description not enough? The truth is I don't remember his name, so sorry.
BTW. How long do you think can a psycho crazy guy last ?
Answer: as long as weak scenario needs him there :(
He's supposedly a special forces soldier, but he is too horrible as a soldier to be believable. I guess any psycho can join the Special Forces... no previous experience necessary! He would've surely highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler lastepmade it as general in a few years if not for Lucy. (seriously, what's with this army guy who can't seem to die? why is he such a nut job?) I forgot what happened to him at the end anyway.
He was just boring, tedious...
WTF - N O WAY
Every few minutes I kept thinking, "that would never happen". (Of course, I’m not referring to the whole Diclonius stuff.)
OMG the characters were so bad. They don't talk or react like normal human beings... Okay I know anime characters aren't generally "normal" but you gotta have some degree of realism in them. Watching the character interaction in this anime was so bad it was actually funny (got some enjoyment out of that, you know making the best of it, but still that ain't good~).
very specific examples.
ep 1
----- END
Their behavior is then later contradicted when they even consider taking someone to the hospital since that someone got a cold...
Who in their right minds would take home a naked bleeding girl with horns; lie to the authorities and then hand her over to someone with a dubious claim? I find it hard to believe that if a police comes to your house and says we are looking for a missing girl you will lie to them without any reason. And his behavior to the professor totally contradicts his behavior to the police (to the police he lies, to the professor he says the truth - without any real reason to do so).
If someone suddenly attacks your friend... would you then believe it if that someone tells you that they just did it cause they're feeling hungry?! What's hunger got to do with attacking your friend on sight?! That's the worst excuse ever.
If someone tried to strangle you for no reason, would you simply sit up afterwards and ask IN A CONVERSATIONAL WAY: "what did you do that for?" I doubt it. I'd be trying to get the hell away that person.
A little girl finds a bleeding man with an arm cut off.
Hell, I'd be shocked and disgusted, scream 'Oh my God' and maybe throw up (but obviously that's just me), the girl just stood there normally asking 'What happened'
That girl had a little puppy she took care of. One day the real owner popped up and took the dog away... just two eps later that dog was back without any reason (did I miss an ep?), as if nothing ever happened.
In the last episode (I think), as we all remember Nana is surrounded by the special forces people. She's like bleeding, injured, etc. No wait, she's naked too. But amidst all this Kouta just walks up to her as if she's not naked, bleeding, injured, surrounded by special forces. But then when he gets up to her, he has the "audacity" (?) to ask her Did something happen? It's like...
Kouta and Yuka make some decisions that make me question whether they’ve lost all logic and reason.
There are too many logical problems and few characters' actions make you go "huh?" if you try to make sense of them; just soak in the visceral violence and the general moods. That's what I did...
To be quite honest I didn't really notice most of this while watching so I wasn't bothered by this but looking back on it it's pretty apparent but the stuff I did notice was enough to be like WTF. Perhaps I was distracted by all that unnecessary crap and I was just like yep stuff is happening, etc, not giving much thought, and not really digesting and realizing how unbelievable/hilarious some of the stuff is. Even if you ignore just how ridiculous some of the stuff they did to move the "plot" it's still not very good...
ANIMATION
They could have put some more effort into animation, especially since this anime features only 13 episodes. The artwork is good but the animation is deceivingly simple.
It has the "huge eyes" drawing style, but that's normal anime style. However, childish character designs take away the edge from violence - robbing it of meaning. I was put down by overly cute designs of characters. Such childish looking characters and bloodbath does not suit together, and I suppose it was done in an attempt to be more shocking but still, it fell flat on it's face. The exception is Lucy who is the only character I could take seriously from her looks alone. The character designs were rather generic. Kouta is incredibly familiar-looking, and you'll have sworn that you've seen him in another anime before. The same goes for Yuka.
The adults were for the most part, extremely ugly. The adults in this show were all portrayed as ugly which made me feel a bit depressed. Is this the creators way of indicating once you get to a certain age, you automatically become ugly? Like Kurama... The world is full of beautiful people, and they're not just young girls with big boobs.
The themes dealt with don't really cooperate with the 'lightheartedness' of most of the visuals. The dark mood the creators (I hope) were aiming at was watered down due to the bright colors. A much more mature-looking animation style would have fit so much better with this anime. As for backgrounds, they're pretty unmemorable, ordinary but pretty decent.
The action scenes do have merit despite their forced graphic nature. It lacks the fluid animation which I would expect from a modern anime series. I do not mind blood and gore at all, but sometimes Elfen Lied shows it so that it looks like ketchup sprayed over the screen. Consequently, it looks tacky. I don't know, it should've been shinier? Also the Latin "gothic" feel of the opening might not fit the theme entirely, since there are no connections to Christianity or heaven/hell. But a good song regardless. All these factors make the visuals average for that time's standard - you’ve seen worse, but definitely better.
It's just the blatant pornographic nature of this anime clouds most of its possible merits. The creators use nudity and horror as a means to trigger sexual impulses in the human brain and that’s about all the contents of this animation.
SOUND
The gothic sounding music was rather good and wonderful. The opening theme excellently matched what I thought the anime was going to be like, the anime that it TRIED to be, and the anime that it SHOULD have been.
Everything about the opening is thought out very well and the music and images go together extremely well. The OP theme is brilliant, and sets the tone perfectly. Purity of the Lilies is the single music score that makes Elfen Lied OST worth keeping.
Unfortunately it's dragged down by being used too often. No seriously, they hum it, there's a music box version, some different instrumental version, different singers sing it, like seriously I don't care how they tweak it it's still the same song. Although the music box version and this other version with other people singing it was rather pretty though :) They wanted to play it at every moment by the end of the series which was grating. It’s a damn fine song but enough is enough, let it die already.
The ending theme is the sugar-coated pop song. It's a cute ending theme, playful, maybe a parallel in the way that highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler Lucy/Nyuu's identities are: the former is more tragic sounding, while the other is playful and carefree. The ending song is nothing special but it fits with Nyuu's personality. Happy and careless.
It was catchy but it didn’t really seem to fit and it didn’t evoke the same feelings as the opening song.
Most of the other main characters have a whiny, bland, pathetic, mourning tone, obviously trying to show innocence. These voices constantly reminded me how contrived these characters were. Also, the voices of soldiers didn't sound so convincing. However, the tone of Lucy voice was great.... Overall, the acting was weak or maybe the characters are themselves are just bleh so...
FIN
The overall value of Elfen Lied is mediocre at best. When I finished watching it, nothing at all crossed my mind. Neither positive nor negative. Just emptiness. Which well reflects the real content of the anime. The audience, being 'distracted' by the visually strong contents, can't really focus on whatever the anime tries to say (which, mind you, ain't much).
So the series didn't take any of my emotions. No suspense and smartness for thinking about actions nor funny situations, and not even terror. In summary, nothing special for me, except for the music. Um... classic? masterpiece? Best of 2004? uh... I don't think this series is a deep, detailed series in the least.
If you like plenty of fake blood, flying body parts and boob shots, and/or fan-service/harem shows then should enjoy this, otherwise, not recommended.
BTW I stopped watching the OVA as soon as knife -->pikachu-peekachu. (no, not the yellow pokemon from pokemon)
The easiest way to attract attention to any piece of media nowadays is to add sex and violence, it seems. While there's nothing wrong with either, it's a sad fact they are most often used only to cover up the lack of substance, not to enhance the work. Elfen Lied is no exception. In all respects I find this anime distasteful and a clichéd approach to anime. Most non-anime people think of anime as "kiddie porn" or hentai. This particular anime falls into that category and give other quality anime a bad name. It's embarrassingly violent and full of over-the-top situations, but it sometimes has a level of poignancy that is hard to deny.
It was the previous internet-mega-hype anime, a 'must see' 'masterpiece' that would reportedly 'change the lives of its viewers forever' (I'm not exaggerating here). Elfen Lied is no longer half as popular as it was just a few years ago because the people have matured and have seen through the manipulative melodrama of the series as illogical as most of it is and noticed how shallow the series is.
Elfen Lied is hard to categorize. The story of Elfen Lied can either be interpreted as a tale of two faces, a rather campy horror film, or a gory display of senseless violence, bad characters, and downright atrocious events designed to milk sentiments. I'm somewhere between all three. The story does have some variant potential like the entertaining premise. However it is so horribly wasted by nudity, poor character development, unrealistic behavior, useless fan-service manipulation and gore without purpose other than to elicit a response from the viewer. They are rather distracting seeing as that they don't fit well. The gore fits though gratuitous, but feels like it's there to fulfill someone's sadistic pleasure than for a genuine purpose like symbolism of the savage nature of Diclonius. I can't shake the feeling that they went overboard like the producers were getting a kick out of it, which sickens me.
But the gore itselfdidn't make me as sick or captivate my attention as they just annoyed me and quickly become old (I got desensitized by ep 2). If you are able to stand the first 10-15 minutes then you are most probably fine with the gore. But by all means some of the parts when people died in the show were sorta satisfying cause those people werel idiots or annoying. Not that I'm sadistic.
The horror part of this is guaranteed by endless graphic violence which at times seems to just be "there" with no purpose at all except to shock. It feels like there were pools of blood simply for the sake of them being there. Because this is all that Elfen Lied tries to do: shock you and set a few not-so-clever traps which make the anime seem like it has a deep meaning and a complex storyline. Well, it does do a rather good job of being emotionally manipulative, which is probably why Elfen Lied regarded so highly by many people. This anime, without a doubt, is the cruelest I've ever seen. It has an unceasing and quite often shocking brutality level. Here, that cruelty works in keeping the viewer interested in the anime.
This anime was meant to be horror, but the pr0n element was almost as strong, if not stronger. No-seriously, why was there a character whose only concern was having a bath? Beats me... Take out the blood and nudity, and it becomes obvious that it's set in a stupid little fantasy setting. 'Fantasy' in how irrationally the world of Elfen Lied functions. I won't cry for lack of realism (this is anime, after all), but the outright stupidity of the characters is used as a melodramatic plot device so often that it outweighs the brilliance of the original concept. The brilliance of Elfen Lied is in its concept, not in its content. What you get are a dozen plus episodes of angst and oh so tragic flashbacks. With some totally confused and downright ridiculous characters, and an unambitious story that seems extremely forced with unnatural progression, the attempt of a plot that this series has is very unsatisfying. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and is full of inconsistencies. Subjective qualities do not create or bring objective quality.
Wait! What about all the social commentary Elfen Lied was so famous for? It tackles such difficult topics as bullying and racism, doesn't it? Well, no, it doesn't really. Barely mentioning social problems and the dark side of human nature is not social commentary, and taking the easiest, most melodramatic way out of every controversial situation is pretty much the same as avoiding those topics altogether - if not worse.
I must say it left me with a bitter taste; not because of the human relations shown within and the portraying of human misery. Neither plot nor characters were properly developed or explored. It could be a series with some quality, but as it is, it's just average or below depending on your tolerance of its pr0niness/violence/nudity/etc. Not that I mind violence and nudity, but here, it is at the detriment of story and character development.
Elfen Lied should be enjoyed as nothing more than a visceral experience, a shameless indulgence of the id. Those trying to depict Elfen Lied as a thoughtful and deep work are missing the point entirely. The sad thing is - this anime could have been so good. A crying shame the producer was more interested in thinking up porno situations rather than ways to develop the storyline.
STORY - I think even just what's written above is enough to give the gist, what's below is more for people who've already seen the show since all the spoilers are specific examples. But there's still lots of stuff you can read even excluding the spoiler tags.
While I was watching it, I got a bit interested in the beginning, later I was more and more disillusioned and disappointed, and annoyed by the stupidity of characters, not to mention their irrational behavior, which served only to help cover the holes in the story and keep the plot from falling apart.
Elfen Lied has two stories. The first is the mystery of the diclonious. The second is your typical 'guy with plenty of girls together' situation. A certain sense of shallowness becomes apparent with the aspects of this anime clashing with each other – the violence and the loving homey atmosphere. Despite the intriguing premise, violence and cuteness seem to get in the way of effective plot progression, evident by the underwhelming unfulfilled conclusion to the show.
The story, to be honest, was poorly executed. Many parts of the plot showed this colossal level of ignorance and far-fetched attitude and it just ended up disappointing me. Not to mention the cliche elements highlight for spoiler hello there's split personality and memory loss
and the series use them shamelessly give the viewer a reason to keep watching the series but in truth the viewers are in it for violence and fanservice because the story is pretty much left alone to rot when it shouldn't be.
Well the story manages to be mediocre at best because of a lot of gaps in the plot-line and a lot of things left unexplained. I cannot accept the idea of the highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler Diclonius just being there, I cannot accept the fact that the male version of the diclonius is not explained. Male diclon? Explain. Are diclon innately homicidal or forced to be that way, or do we truly not know? How did the diclonius come to be at the beginning ? Third generation diclonius? A little more history of their discovery would have been good. Why didn't the story explore this fascinating aspect further instead of poking around a bit?
I cannot accept the stupid turns in the story such as Kouta's reactions at certain points, I cannot accept the fact that the producers leave a lot of holes to be filled by the viewers imagination. That is just a sign of shabby anime-making and an easy way for the producers to squirm their way out of explaining a lot of things that they threw into the anime with no reason. I find it cheap of the producers to resort to such trivial ways of begging for success.
I appreciated the shorter flashes which were used to build suspense for the viewer, but I had already guessed the truth by the middle of the first episode so emotionally I did not feel the suspense. The story is delivered in a mediocre fashion. Everything is just ahead-hinted enough as not to be a surprise anymore, and the events themselves are so trite not to be worth that much attention. You'll discover that things are more closely related than what they had initially taken at face value; though it is clever what they do with the plot, it almost feels TOO coincidental. A very linear and abused cliché-galore.
DEEP AS THE OCEANNNNNNNNNNNNNNN?
Supposedly there are "deep" and "symbolical" aspects of this anime, but no -- In the end, both the story and the symbolism are drowned in the gore and nudity, and it wasn't all that good to begin with. Perhaps the reason why some people prize the story, is that it's surprising it's even decent considering the s***load of gore and fan-service.
Sadness, memories, and family. They're about the only deeper themes that are followed though in this series, and not much more than the shallow spectrum of those themes. What Elfen Lied does really well is introduce several serious and powerful themes and ideas, but that's all it does. What it ends up doing later on is either completely forget about them or, even worse, contradict them. Though this can be rather hard to see though all of that blood, gore, and nudity.
Though I must say I think the episode previews sounded sorta deep. lol.
the pr0n gore galore
this anime actually does offer something... blood, gore and tits! This is almost like a parody of how many people think anime and manga looks; nudity and blood in abundance. The gore and extreme fan-service does NOT contribute to anything.
The context of the anime seems mature, and so these sort of plot routes just seem unconvincing. It doesn't go as a horror/SF story but instead the story progresses mostly as a harem anime. The plot itself doesn't seem to be supporting such scenes enough, instead, it seems to be something 'randomly' assembled just to provide some insubstantial justification for them. Sometimes the visual gags go a bit far and are more cringe-inducing than anything else, and it can feel like you're watching the wrong show for a moment before a flying limb brings things back into perspective. This show is touting itself as horror and yet finds room to throw in worthless ecchi crap? The constant boobery should have been eschewed, just to keep the anime's maturity level consistent. The pace of the story is rather bad like some things happen too fast... highlight for spoiler You have a new character arriving at Kouta's door every two episodes. They just come and start living with him... very unlikely. The way he accepted other characters into the house left me blinking in disbelief.
A great deal of time is spent developing your typical, cliché “guy surrounding by a bunch of love sick girls” show which obviously isn't "developed" really not that I care... uh "harem" much?
The amount of UNECESSARY distasteful scene was simply ludicrous. If people are hit, their clothes magically rip off their bodies rendering them sometimes completely naked. All the characters in here just loved getting naked... Any excuse, and off the clothes will go, or just some parts... just enough to reveal the most pr0n parts of their bodies, if nothing else. If a person falls over, they just had to pick the most pr0n angle to view the fall such that you can see up their skirts as they fall over. There are countless more examples, but it would take me all day to list them. It got to the point where it was so bad that in any situation I started wondering how they're going to make a pr0n out of it. For example, if it was raining, I'd be thinking... oh dear, now they're probably gonna show wet t-shirt scenes and maybe getting their clothes off when they find shelter or something like that. And sure enough, most of them time that would happen. It would be happening even when I'm not expecting it. The producer's prime talent appeared to be able to: take any situation and turn it into pr0n.
COMEDY/ t3h m3lodrama
It can be disturbing and it can be beautiful. There were scenes where I told myself that I should be crying but I wasn’t. Actually, sometimes it can be hilarious (not because of it's "intended comedy" but because I cannot take it seriously at all sometimes. The melodrama was just bad). It's hit-or-miss. The dramatic moments fail more times than they succeed and the same can be said for the comedy moments. Rather than focusing on the "make me cry" scenes, it should have focused more closely on the great assets it had, Lucy was unquestionably one of them, so was the Kurama’s relationship with his wife. Honestly, the only other anime I've seen that has worse melodrama than this is like ef~ tale of memories, i mean for that i couldn't even laugh at the melodrama, it was just bad...
The comedy part and the horror show part don't get along, because Elfen Lied is not a parody. I'd say the greatest downfall of the series is that the humor often comes in the wrong places, and can bring things to a screeching halt. But the comedy can be summed up as some perverted, ecchi-natured type of situation kind of joke so to me it's the tasteless kind... Needlessly to say I only cringed, never laughed... from that anyways...
ENDING - 13th ep.
When the series is over, you don’t really feel much has happened, since a lot of time was spent explaining a corny back story.
When more questions arise even with the ending which is actually an open end, then things are really bad. So in the end it didn’t even deliver a decent enough climax to make up for the shoddy plot. Which is just depressing for someone like me who was just waiting for the "moment" where it finds its stride.
The ending highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler doesn't fit AT ALL with the mood of the anime.
Moreover, the ending is anticlimactic, and does a really half-assed job of putting an end to 13 episodes of wannabe-intense wannabe-drama. Instead, along with nudity and splatter, it only proves that everything is the anime is meant to be food for the teenage fandom.
It couldn't be more disappointing and, even worse, it leaves a lot of ends loose (not the kind of untied ends that are left up to the audience to guess, but the kind that doesn't get a proper explanation).
What happened was the writers walked themselves into a corner and couldn't find a good way out. That way included highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler the moral that they tried to tie into this show, which was forgiveness, therefore settling on something outrageous. It was just a clear gift to the fan-service...
Kouta's decision is truly astonishing in the final episode, it makes him a character one finds hard to believe in. QUOTE "It's true that you massacred my family in front my eyes when I was a kid, and I will never forgive you for that. But I love you". The "no matter what happened in the past, what hardships you caused, how tragic one's past have you made", all you have to say is "I am sorry, I love you" and he/she will forgive you and fight for you to the death and longer. The fact that one sentence will make past go away is just... ugh.
I couldn't comprehend Kouta's feelings AT ALL. The romance is complete crap to me. Hell, didn't even notice till ep 13 when they shoved in some blush thing and I was like for reals? Just bad...
==========================
I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but I can’t honestly say that I didn’t enjoy it either. Perhaps enjoyment is the wrong term to use since a lot of negative emotions are evoked. Yet it’s not the negative emotions that put me off this anime, it’s the fact that there was an abundance of holes in the story, the characters are not believable and many of the dark themes introduced are never fully played out. The whole thing just seemed to be an excuse for gratuitous violence and naked young girls - too sick for my liking.
CHARACTERS
I can't even say the characters were the saving grace of this anime, because they just weren't REAL. Characters are incredibly unreal, and incredibly shallow so I couldn't feel sorry for them, or feel happy with them. Not to mention most of the characters in the series seemed to have the maturity of someone ten years old or younger. Many other character reactions, especially Kouta's, make no sense. Details like this make me wonder about the true aim the series creators had and who was their target audience. Most the characters emoted the same kind of cookie-cutter cuteness seen in many other shows. Just as the plot, characters also are pretty stereotyped, bringing forth a nice collection of seen-already/done-before types, mixed together to make Elfen Lied even more shocking, but poorly succeeding in such intent. It's like they made them from a character-building kit. The characters as a whole in this series were forgettable and clichéd,
repetitively dull and lacking character development.
Our protagonist, Kouta, is just as generic acting as his outer appearance would suggest. Really, how hard IS it to make a half-decent male main character? He's nearly empty. What does he do? Nothing! He just throws some random words or shouts in scary situations. He's as good as brick wall. No wait, he knows one thing, how to be nice. Whether you bite him or pat his head - he will be nice. Kouta, your typical all-around-nice guy & another disturbed character with a troubled past.
Kouta who finds it easy to highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler continue housing new girls that just pop up at his door with absolutely no reason at all except for his big, humongass heart. Which by the way, I don't think they ever explain why Kouta & Yuka lived in that huge house by themselves well I do remember them mentioning something but maybe not....
Plus the fact the he proves that stupidity can reach up to the stars when he highlight for spoiler last ep: highlight for spoiler forgives an act as heinous as the term implies. "To make mistakes is human, to keep making mistakes is demonic"...an old Latin saying...
and this guy is as retarded as one can be.
Kouta, apparently highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler I think last Episode has a really bad memory. He supposedly forgets some truly unmistakable details. It's unmistakable because these are the only two moments in his life that these blatant details appear, and if he had any brain at all he would have noticed instantly. That could have saved him a lot of trouble. The main character suddenly 'remembering' important plot aspects in the penultimate episode? Not good. But then again if that happen to be I'd be pretty traumatized so eh...
He's got to be one of the dumbest lead characters I've ever come across. He cannot connect the dots to the simplest things. It's almost as if he refuses to see what is in front of him. highlight for spoilerep 2
highlight for spoiler
He didn't want to cooperate with authorities even though he had no reason NOT to trust them. Look, all they wanted to do was stop a homicidal psychopath from killing you and everyone you love. 笑笑笑笑笑笑笑 lmao?
Save for the cliché bimbos to ruin it all...
who have trouble keeping their pants on.
Nyuu... Oh man. Nyuu was the worst character; she was absolutely pathetic, although strangely cute, sometimes. She was mostly out of contest, nor she developed, nor she did something important to the series. Waste of time. I don't get these "cutesy" anime characters that have zero vocabulary, and as a consequence have zero personality as well, and whose only purpose is to act stupid and innocent while flashing the audience on occasion. I don't know about you, but I don't get turned on by checking out retarded people, sweet and lovable as they might be...
Most scenes with the Nyuu character were so contrived it was eyeroll after eyeroll as they tried to find new ways to get her naked. This anime was such a forced approach toward sexuality that it just never clicks and the viewer never believes the relationships are valid. Nyuu is a useless, nothing more than comic-relief, to up the fan-service even more, be super cute,
highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler and a way for the viewer to gain sympathy for Lucy. It constantly tries to elicit sympathy for Lucy, when in fact she doesn't deserve it.
What a deep character, cuteness and fan-service together. How lovely.
Yuka is pretty uninteresting and boring and rather colorless in comparison to the others. I think if she was replaced with the dog, there would be no difference at all. Actually, that might've been better. Yeah it would, the dog is so darn cute. She just doesn't do anything. She's a 'filler' character, and she is shallow with her blaring jealousy and whining. This fact helped me to remember her name, yuka means floor- 床, not that her name means floor. No, seriously if I didn't know yuka meant floor I would've NEVER remembered her name. Plus that line in ep 1 I think about floors was awesome... Though the series tries to place her into a motherly role somewhere in the series, it just hard to buy that.
I would have thought that being the only highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler character with a relatively normal childhood, Yuka would help ground them a little, but she just ends up being an accessory.
Mayu and Nana are way too stereotypically and obviously played out. They've had highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler hard and harsh lives, but that doesn’t mean they have to have the voices and behavior of innocent 5 year olds.
By all means, Nana and Mayu’s deep emotional highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler scars should have affected their behavior. If all they’re going to do is act like normal young girls, why bother giving them traumatized pasts at all? So Mayu is a bright cheerful, cute, happy STARVING HOMELESS girl...
Mayu is the most perverse trap in anime. It shows you a dreadful highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler past and then a present as if it the past never happened...How can a child who passed through the 9 Levels of Hell, starving, alone, cold and homeless be so happy is beyond my ability to process. Her tragic past is obliterated by her present attitude and nothing goes back to show us that this past actually did happen.
Mayu's personality is just typically passive. The character just makes you concentrate on the past and makes you forget the present so the producers may slack off some more. She did do some pivotal things but she could have been replaced easily. Mayu's story was for more shock value. Honestly, I don't think she was necessary for the story.
The only saving grace is Lucy, who seems like a genuinely cool and disturbed character, and is played exceptionally well and maturely.
But I still gots problems with her character...
highlight for spoiler
highlight for spoiler I never got convinced about the motivation that Lucy had for killing people. I wasn't convinced that she was good with just one human. I think that, in general, motivations were too segregated, Lucy has had bad experiences, but she also knows nice people, so is difficult for me to understand her actions. Just because of being bullied? The dog's death? Lucy loses her innocence as a child when she is forced by circumstances to become a murderous beast? Oh please...There are plenty of animes out there which demonstrates how one is able change for the better using their determination and belief to overcome their obstacles. Lucy's case is rather foolish.
I'm sure I should have felt pity for those girls at some point, but I just couldn't bring myself to feel anything for them.
Kurama's story. He has this aura of past tragedy, up till his story was unfolded. You see - suddenly he highlight for spoiler stopped being intelligent, mature, caring but rather made error after error, and he did not even make the most basic association everyone with a brain would have made. Thus - that led to tragedy and I could not sympathize with him anymore. How could he make such grave error. I couldn't empathize, it was just ridiculous. Just stunned. Gawd 35... highlight for spoiler last ep well she barely gets anything other than psycho sadistic whatever and then by the next ep she's a cute, poor little girl which is so unconvincing... just HELL no. No sympathy from me.
The silly villain.
Basically a waste of a character, no wait his entire purpose is shock value. Well... he's crazy and ... he's blonde. He's got a gun! And... he's a soldier. What a magnificent character. I think that describes him in every detail. Name? Why should you need it? Is that detailed description not enough? The truth is I don't remember his name, so sorry.
BTW. How long do you think can a psycho crazy guy last ?
Answer: as long as weak scenario needs him there :(
He's supposedly a special forces soldier, but he is too horrible as a soldier to be believable. I guess any psycho can join the Special Forces... no previous experience necessary! He would've surely highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler lastepmade it as general in a few years if not for Lucy. (seriously, what's with this army guy who can't seem to die? why is he such a nut job?) I forgot what happened to him at the end anyway.
He was just boring, tedious...
WTF - N O WAY
Every few minutes I kept thinking, "that would never happen". (Of course, I’m not referring to the whole Diclonius stuff.)
OMG the characters were so bad. They don't talk or react like normal human beings... Okay I know anime characters aren't generally "normal" but you gotta have some degree of realism in them. Watching the character interaction in this anime was so bad it was actually funny (got some enjoyment out of that, you know making the best of it, but still that ain't good~).
very specific examples.
ep 1
----- END
Their behavior is then later contradicted when they even consider taking someone to the hospital since that someone got a cold...
Who in their right minds would take home a naked bleeding girl with horns; lie to the authorities and then hand her over to someone with a dubious claim? I find it hard to believe that if a police comes to your house and says we are looking for a missing girl you will lie to them without any reason. And his behavior to the professor totally contradicts his behavior to the police (to the police he lies, to the professor he says the truth - without any real reason to do so).
If someone suddenly attacks your friend... would you then believe it if that someone tells you that they just did it cause they're feeling hungry?! What's hunger got to do with attacking your friend on sight?! That's the worst excuse ever.
If someone tried to strangle you for no reason, would you simply sit up afterwards and ask IN A CONVERSATIONAL WAY: "what did you do that for?" I doubt it. I'd be trying to get the hell away that person.
A little girl finds a bleeding man with an arm cut off.
Hell, I'd be shocked and disgusted, scream 'Oh my God' and maybe throw up (but obviously that's just me), the girl just stood there normally asking 'What happened'
That girl had a little puppy she took care of. One day the real owner popped up and took the dog away... just two eps later that dog was back without any reason (did I miss an ep?), as if nothing ever happened.
In the last episode (I think), as we all remember Nana is surrounded by the special forces people. She's like bleeding, injured, etc. No wait, she's naked too. But amidst all this Kouta just walks up to her as if she's not naked, bleeding, injured, surrounded by special forces. But then when he gets up to her, he has the "audacity" (?) to ask her Did something happen? It's like...
Kouta and Yuka make some decisions that make me question whether they’ve lost all logic and reason.
There are too many logical problems and few characters' actions make you go "huh?" if you try to make sense of them; just soak in the visceral violence and the general moods. That's what I did...
To be quite honest I didn't really notice most of this while watching so I wasn't bothered by this but looking back on it it's pretty apparent but the stuff I did notice was enough to be like WTF. Perhaps I was distracted by all that unnecessary crap and I was just like yep stuff is happening, etc, not giving much thought, and not really digesting and realizing how unbelievable/hilarious some of the stuff is. Even if you ignore just how ridiculous some of the stuff they did to move the "plot" it's still not very good...
ANIMATION
They could have put some more effort into animation, especially since this anime features only 13 episodes. The artwork is good but the animation is deceivingly simple.
It has the "huge eyes" drawing style, but that's normal anime style. However, childish character designs take away the edge from violence - robbing it of meaning. I was put down by overly cute designs of characters. Such childish looking characters and bloodbath does not suit together, and I suppose it was done in an attempt to be more shocking but still, it fell flat on it's face. The exception is Lucy who is the only character I could take seriously from her looks alone. The character designs were rather generic. Kouta is incredibly familiar-looking, and you'll have sworn that you've seen him in another anime before. The same goes for Yuka.
The adults were for the most part, extremely ugly. The adults in this show were all portrayed as ugly which made me feel a bit depressed. Is this the creators way of indicating once you get to a certain age, you automatically become ugly? Like Kurama... The world is full of beautiful people, and they're not just young girls with big boobs.
The themes dealt with don't really cooperate with the 'lightheartedness' of most of the visuals. The dark mood the creators (I hope) were aiming at was watered down due to the bright colors. A much more mature-looking animation style would have fit so much better with this anime. As for backgrounds, they're pretty unmemorable, ordinary but pretty decent.
The action scenes do have merit despite their forced graphic nature. It lacks the fluid animation which I would expect from a modern anime series. I do not mind blood and gore at all, but sometimes Elfen Lied shows it so that it looks like ketchup sprayed over the screen. Consequently, it looks tacky. I don't know, it should've been shinier? Also the Latin "gothic" feel of the opening might not fit the theme entirely, since there are no connections to Christianity or heaven/hell. But a good song regardless. All these factors make the visuals average for that time's standard - you’ve seen worse, but definitely better.
It's just the blatant pornographic nature of this anime clouds most of its possible merits. The creators use nudity and horror as a means to trigger sexual impulses in the human brain and that’s about all the contents of this animation.
SOUND
The gothic sounding music was rather good and wonderful. The opening theme excellently matched what I thought the anime was going to be like, the anime that it TRIED to be, and the anime that it SHOULD have been.
Everything about the opening is thought out very well and the music and images go together extremely well. The OP theme is brilliant, and sets the tone perfectly. Purity of the Lilies is the single music score that makes Elfen Lied OST worth keeping.
Unfortunately it's dragged down by being used too often. No seriously, they hum it, there's a music box version, some different instrumental version, different singers sing it, like seriously I don't care how they tweak it it's still the same song. Although the music box version and this other version with other people singing it was rather pretty though :) They wanted to play it at every moment by the end of the series which was grating. It’s a damn fine song but enough is enough, let it die already.
The ending theme is the sugar-coated pop song. It's a cute ending theme, playful, maybe a parallel in the way that highlight for spoiler highlight for spoiler Lucy/Nyuu's identities are: the former is more tragic sounding, while the other is playful and carefree. The ending song is nothing special but it fits with Nyuu's personality. Happy and careless.
It was catchy but it didn’t really seem to fit and it didn’t evoke the same feelings as the opening song.
Most of the other main characters have a whiny, bland, pathetic, mourning tone, obviously trying to show innocence. These voices constantly reminded me how contrived these characters were. Also, the voices of soldiers didn't sound so convincing. However, the tone of Lucy voice was great.... Overall, the acting was weak or maybe the characters are themselves are just bleh so...
FIN
The overall value of Elfen Lied is mediocre at best. When I finished watching it, nothing at all crossed my mind. Neither positive nor negative. Just emptiness. Which well reflects the real content of the anime. The audience, being 'distracted' by the visually strong contents, can't really focus on whatever the anime tries to say (which, mind you, ain't much).
So the series didn't take any of my emotions. No suspense and smartness for thinking about actions nor funny situations, and not even terror. In summary, nothing special for me, except for the music. Um... classic? masterpiece? Best of 2004? uh... I don't think this series is a deep, detailed series in the least.
If you like plenty of fake blood, flying body parts and boob shots, and/or fan-service/harem shows then should enjoy this, otherwise, not recommended.
BTW I stopped watching the OVA as soon as knife -->pikachu-peekachu. (no, not the yellow pokemon from pokemon)
Posted by
midori-
| Jul 9, 2011 10:19 AM |
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