Spotlight Character: Lucy (Elfen Lied) MAL Character Information Page: Lucy MAL Favorite Character: #23 (with 1107 favorites) For the next week I would like to have everyone familiar with Lucy discuss what they think makes her an exceptional character. What attributes make her stand out in the ocean of interesting characters that exist in the realms of anime and manga. Unlike the other two subjects I will not force this conversation to fall into any set structure. Characters that are nominated typically get here because they are adept at breaking the existing character molds and defying definition. Because of this freedom I encourage everyone to do their very best to stay on topic and keep any and all debate civil. Have fun and I look forward to seeing what everyone has to say about this character. RESULTS OF THE "YOU DECIDE" POLL Lucy did NOT get inducted into the club Character list: 31 Yes - 31.96% 52 No - 53.61% 14 I don't know this Character - 14.43% of the total number polled |
BlackMagicSep 21, 2008 8:38 PM
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| I've never killed another human before. - Episode 4 The first glimpses we get of Lucy in Elfen Lied are that of an emotionless killer. Let the record stand that the majority of characters in anime portray nothing of the sort. Yes, we still have murderers and psychopaths, but emotionless indiscriminate killers who show no sympathy yet no delight in what they do? Not so. But this is not Lucy's character. This is simply Lucy by what she does. Lucy's character, as I have told many friends, is such a psychologically complex character that I could probably write my dissertation on her. Getting past the obvious bits first, Lucy got fucked up as a kid. Terrified by her emerging powers, desperate for friends in a world that tortured her for being different. We say we had rough childhoods, but Lucy watched her few but dearest friends die before her very eyes time after time. It's no wonder she gave up hoping for someone to be kind to her. It's no wonder she began to see nearly all of humanity, with the rarest of exceptions, as not human at all. Her black-and-white psyche, unwilling to identify shades of grey, set her apart from many others that could be linked to her. Even when she starts to fall in love with Kohta, though she cannot bring herself to kill him, she still punishes him by killing everyone that she can that was close to him. And yet, despite how brutal she is, she is pitiable, mainly because we know that she did not choose this life for herself. Society chose it for her. Returning to the opening quote, Lucy does not see the world like most other characters. Lucy sees humanity as scum and her own kind as possible for mercy. She is a sympathetic evil. She is the refuse of a narrow-minded society that fears what it does not understand. Through Lucy's eyes, anyone can see the world around them in a darker, more sinister light, but it is Lucy's unconditional love for Kohta, though she despises him for what he did to her as a child, that is the shining ray of hope for her character. My personal decision is to give Lucy this "yes" she so rightfully deserves as a one-of-a-kind character who also stands as a poignant social commentary on the narrowmindedness that this world unintentionally shares. |
| My first novel, Kardia has been published! Click here to read! |
| I completely agree with Splitter's post and have nothing more to add, really. |
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| i'm gonna say hell yes as well and Splitter has pretty much said all that needs to be said... |
| I personally thought lucy and her split personality while being somewhat unique, was utilized fairly poorly. I just didn't find anything extraordinary about Elfen Lied and especially in the characters. I tried to like it...but I didn't find much to like about the series and Lucy isn't the character I'd highlight out of the series. there are some intriguing parts. The multiple personalities, the tortured past, the nudity, and some other interesting stuff. I just personally thought the follow through was very mediocre. 5 |
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| Is the anime version better than the manga incarnation? I've only gone through 60 or so chapters in the latter and if I were to base my vote on that, I'd go "no" by default because I think it takes more than a psychological fuck up and tragic circumstances to make a character interesting. As I mentioned earlier, mentally unstable characters with superpowers in inhumane environments seem too demanding for me in the suspension of disbelief department; it's too convenient an excuse for contradictory aspects and actions of the character. And it's almost as if the creators did everything in their power to make the characters pitiful in the eyes of the viewers. I hate that lack of subtlety. *spits out SaiKano and Air* |
YuunagiSep 12, 2008 8:24 PM
| *Wishes he was capable of writing something about a "character" so blank.* |
Dozer said: *Wishes he was capable of writing something about a "character" so blank.* Coward. Look at Yuunagi's post above of yours. That's an acceptable negative criticism. You're just trying to excuse your dislike. |
| My first novel, Kardia has been published! Click here to read! |
 Looking forward to it. |
| Ugh. This is a really tough call for me. As a whole, I thoroughly despise Elfen Lied. But if there is something that might be well done about it, it's Lucy. Maybe it's wrong to base an opinion of a character off of a physiological response, but Lucy made me afraid. Like, really. Afraid. She was so unpredictable... whenever she appeared on the screen, I just felt like screaming at the other characters (in typical and cliche'd fashion), "RUN AWAY! No, don't go through the door! No, NOOOO!" And so forth. So did the creators of Elfen Lied just get lucky? I have a feeling they merely followed horror movie conventions and ended up with a scary character (I can't watch horror movies without getting nightmares), and in that case, the uniqueness of the character drops quite a bit. Additionally it gets hard to separate the character from the absolutely abysmal context she exists in. The other characters act completely unrealistically (for the most part), so maybe Lucy just seems good by comparison. I honestly don't know. Splitter said: Her black-and-white psyche, unwilling to identify shades of grey, set her apart from many others that could be linked to her. Maybe that sums it up best. I find the whole "black-and-white-psyche" interesting, certainly, but can you really call that "psychologically complex," as you stated earlier? The more I think about it, the more I feel like Lucy's craziness was something of a gimmick. |
Splitter said: Coward. Look at Yuunagi's post above of yours. That's an acceptable negative criticism. You're just trying to excuse your dislike. Lol. Megalol. Gigalol. Lolololololololololol. Let me just put that last bit up in it self, just to emphasize: ...excuse your dislike. ... *does a facepalm* Splitter, what's wrong with you? If you've read what I've written on the club discussion boards, you should know that: a) If I dislike something, I have a well grounded reason for it, and I keep to that reason with pride. and b)My dislike towards everything that is and is in Elfen Lied would be the very last thing I would feel ashamed for, as I consider dislike for Elfen Lied, as I've already stated, common sense. Hell, never mind that, the mere notion that I should excuse myself to you because I don't like Elfen Lied is so out there and so stupid, it puzzles me how you are still a member of this club. (Take note, I never wrote stuff like that.) Besides, Yuunagi wrote, really, as much as I ever could about Lucy. It really amazes me that, in a character in which you see so much complexity, I only see very, very, very bad writing. Writing so bad it would make John Solomon vomit. I can't write anything about her because she has the depth of a sheet of silk- paper. Hell, Totally Spies has characters with more depth than Lucy. Or the entire cast, for that matter. But I'll just save the rest for the shows own discussion... Long story short: I'd appreciate if you would not write such bullshit(your accusation, not your analysis). |
| Dude, just stay on topic and get to the point. The thread is for discussing Lucy and I was hoping that you'd deliver more with last week's Dozer said: I really want to bash that show and destroy(figure of speech) it's fans. |
| Ah. Heated arguments. Volatile invectives. Terror. Chaos. Tis all music to my ears :) On the subject of Lucy I will begin with this - they didn't need the character of Nyu (or whatever the hell she was called). Nyu, to all intents and purposes, was supposed to represent the "innocent" Lucy that nobody had ever seen, and while the idea was sound in principle, it was sorely let down in practice. They attempted to show Lucy with an extreme dualistic personality (very much the black and white that Yuunagi mentioned), and to hammer that fact home they created Nyu, assuming that people would understand that where Nyu is trusting, curious, playful, etc, Lucy is suspicious, violent, cruel, and more besides. What they should have done was get rid of the whole Nyu idea and focus solely on Lucy, as what you have in Elfen Lied is essentially half a character. Oh, people can say that she's complete because Nyu and Lucy are the same person, but even with multiple personality disorder or total amnesia, some habitual or instinctive behaviours remain from the prime consciousness. Nyu didn't have any of those, and neither did Lucy. One question that always bugged me about the show was that it never once explained what Diclonius actually were, and it never explained why they were always tortured so much. It seems to me that the whole "tortured captive" bit was simply done in an effort to get the viewer to sympathise with the character, something which could have been done better by delving into Lucy's past. For me, Lucy is one of the long (and ever growing), list of anime characters that had amazing potential, but were let down for one reason or another (other examples are Yagami Light, Ikari Shinji, Suzumiya Haruhi, Miharu Rokujo, Kunisaki Yukito, Iwakura Lain, etc, etc,). If they'd simply explored her persona more instead of turning her into Nyu, then she could have been a great character. Unfortunately that's not the case, so tis a no-no from me. |
| What a day! What a lovely Day! |
Archaeon said: ..but even with multiple personality disorder or total amnesia, some habitual or instinctive behaviours remain from the prime consciousness. Don't want to take this too far off on a tangent, but while a person with amnesia might retain particular habits or hard-wired behaviors, the same isn't necessarily true for people with multiple personalities. Rather than Nyu being a preservation of Lucy as a child before all these positive feelings were lost, Nyu is more likely a completely separate personality composed of these traits..though I would have to re-watch EL to see if this is actually the case since it's been years. I don't know that I'll have time for a re-watch though so odds are I'll be abstaining from this poll. |
| Seeing a most of what I would say has been written here, I believe I'm going to have to abstain. Splitter gives me good reasons why I should vote against, while Dozer and Yuunagi give me good reasons to vote for. Too much of a toss for me. |
| I'm just going to be extremely shallow and uncritical as much as I'm going to be biased: The woman's frequent nakedness distracted me from anything I could have actually cared about her with, so I'm just going to say she was a poorly conceived pair of absolutes made to extract pity from her audience. Kind of like Air's Misuzu in a way, 'cept 'gao' is replaced by tits. Just didn't cut it for me. |
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| Not really much else to add besides that I agree with Splitter's review almost completely. Having said that, if people can't get over whatever it is about Elfen Lied they see (or can't see), then asking to appreciate Lucy AT ALL is next to impossible. |
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Yuunagi wrote: Dude, just stay on topic and get to the point. The thread is for discussing Lucy and I was hoping that you'd deliver more If the discussion was about the show itself, I could, but anything I could write about Lucy, I already did. Take time to read the posts of other people, dammit. |
I was hoping that you'd deliver more Clearer?Anyway, I had just finished the manga. She does improve somewhat in the latter chapters when she starts acting more as an individual rather than just a killing machine. Still, Archeon has a point in saying that she would have been much more effective as a character if Lucy and Nyu had been two aspects of a person rather than two distinct personalities. It would have been better if her character had been used to emphasize the theme of society creating its own monsters (ala Erik of The Phantom of the Opera) but the story is diluted with too many bizarre sci-fi details for it to be taken seriously. Instead, we're given a young lady on a streak of bad luck. Who talks to her DNA. And is supposedly the one who would put and end to humanity and give birth to its superior mutant successors which sport weird horns on the head as well as multiple phantom arms of destruction. |
YuunagiSep 14, 2008 5:52 PM
| Splitter's comment reflects my opinion and the reason for the Yay. |
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| I got no love for her |
| Signature removed. Please follow the signature rules, as defined in the Site & Forum Guidelines. |
Yuunagi has no idea what he is writing with: Clearer? Why are you asking me about what you write? |
| Just clarifying that I do indeed take time to read the posts of other people, dammit. Since you appear to be the one who dislikes Elfen Lied the most and Lucy happens to be one of the main characters, I thought you'd supply more nails for the coffin. |
| Does this discussion end on the 19th? I watched half the episodes of "Elfen Lied" last year, and if I have a few more days, I can watch the rest before then. While I don't have a definite opinion on the series as a whole, I already have a very specific view about the main character. |
| The voting starts on weekends but the spotlight threads remain open. |
Yuunagi wrote: Since you appear to be the one who dislikes Elfen Lied the most and Lucy happens to be one of the main characters, I thought you'd supply more nails for the coffin. How many times must I say this? I can only drive Elfen Lied to the ground if we are discussing the show itself. It's one of those rare cases in anime where the result is more than the sum of it's parts. It's pieces are merely painstakingly bad and obnoxiously shallow. Ergo, there's not much that could be wrote about Lucy. This is not the first time I have wrote this. But when these pieces come together, they form the WORST. ANIME. EVER. Be patient. As soon as Seishi finally selects Elfen Lied as a spotlight, you can be sure that I'll give it everything I've got. Until then, why not watch some Zero Punctuation? |
| Lucy is like everything in Elfen Lied to me - obvious. Elfen Lied is a show that wants to appeal to a mainstream audience but get just far enough out there that the more judgemental anime fans would get into it as well. It incorporates very open-ended psychological and philosophical themes to give the illusion of 'deepness' to justify showing blood and tits to a jaded fan while automatically roping in the kind of audience that just wants to see blood and tits. However, it doesn't cover it's tracks very well. What we get is a show that seems like something a 14-year old would produce after reading a whole bunch of really good psychological novels (I know, because I've got a lot of stories I wrote back then that are exactly like this.) They want to incorporate all the great shit they've read into their work, but they are the kind of person who can go straight from reading Boogiepop to watching Inuyasha and like them for the same reasons. Lucy is not a unique character. In psycho mode, she's your average psycho character, and in Nyu mode, she's your average moeblob. The only difference is shock value. This moe is SO clumsy she PISSES herself! This psycho is SO psycho, she kills 45 PEOPLE! But it's the same old story. At the start of Elfen Lied, the psycho half is all emo and shit because of her past, and as she develops, she starts to appreciate her friends. READ: tsundere. The blob part is just... blob. Its not to say I don't like Lucy or Elfen Lied or appreciate the effort. Yeah, she's a superfusion of overblown cliche, but at least she's not JUST a cliche, and yeah, the show's silly and poorly made superfucion of genres, but at least it's not genres. You can't say it's unique, but you can't say it's unoriginal. The only phrase I can think of for Elfen Lied is, well, 'it's okay.' |
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| I loved this series, and I loved this character. Simply wonderfully well-done and well-rounded for her past and everything. I do not like the Nuu incarnation of her but if we're just talking about the killer who loves Kouda then yes, I think we should totally add her. |
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| Well, my opinion about Lucy: For first look she is a mentally unstable chaotic character who kills everyone in her sight. I only saw the first Ep of the anime, but I heard lots of infos about her. For me she's just a non-noticable typical superpower character, but that's my opinion. Altough she's very popular, so behind that chaotic state she got some other quality that lots of people likes. Relunx |
| I think that if you judge Lucy on solely on what she brought to the table as the main character, then I think you could say that she is passable, if not exceptional. However, I believe one must also judge a character on what was given to them in terms of story and development, and thats where I believe she suffers. In the midst of gratuitous fanservice, a strong narrative for Lucy was severely lost. If only they concentrated more on the psychology as they did with the (if I remember correctly) two episodes of flashbacks throughout the series, instead of overselling us on the "moe-ness" Nyu (which I count as Lucy also, therefore hindering my acceptance of her), the series would have been able to properly spread its wings into a more compelling character vehicle. |
noteDhero said: I think that if you judge Lucy on solely on what she brought to the table as the main character, then I think you could say that she is passable, if not exceptional. However, I believe one must also judge a character on what was given to them in terms of story and development, and thats where I believe she suffers. In the midst of gratuitous fanservice, a strong narrative for Lucy was severely lost. So Lucy can't get in because she walks around in her birthday suit often? Since when is the frequency of nudity considered in characterization? Besides, the nudity, at least in terms of the holding facility, reflect how the diclonius were treated as animals and not human beings. Not all nudity is fanservice. |
| My first novel, Kardia has been published! Click here to read! |
Splitter said: noteDhero said: I think that if you judge Lucy on solely on what she brought to the table as the main character, then I think you could say that she is passable, if not exceptional. However, I believe one must also judge a character on what was given to them in terms of story and development, and thats where I believe she suffers. In the midst of gratuitous fanservice, a strong narrative for Lucy was severely lost. So Lucy can't get in because she walks around in her birthday suit often? Since when is the frequency of nudity considered in characterization? Besides, the nudity, at least in terms of the holding facility, reflect how the diclonius were treated as animals and not human beings. Not all nudity is fanservice. That's the thing right there, though. The show gives you reasons like that to justify the nudity, so that you won't take it out on the show, however the nudity is definitely there as fanservice. I mean personally, I wouldn't mind nudity even if it was fanservice, and it is, but the show wants you to believe that there's deep reasons behind it all. |
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2008digitalboy said: That's the thing right there, though. The show gives you reasons like that to justify the nudity, so that you won't take it out on the show, however the nudity is definitely there as fanservice. I mean personally, I wouldn't mind nudity even if it was fanservice, and it is, but the show wants you to believe that there's deep reasons behind it all. So random, unexplained nudity is preferable to explained, reasonable nudity? |
2008digitalboy said: Splitter said: noteDhero said: I think that if you judge Lucy on solely on what she brought to the table as the main character, then I think you could say that she is passable, if not exceptional. However, I believe one must also judge a character on what was given to them in terms of story and development, and thats where I believe she suffers. In the midst of gratuitous fanservice, a strong narrative for Lucy was severely lost. So Lucy can't get in because she walks around in her birthday suit often? Since when is the frequency of nudity considered in characterization? Besides, the nudity, at least in terms of the holding facility, reflect how the diclonius were treated as animals and not human beings. Not all nudity is fanservice. That's the thing right there, though. The show gives you reasons like that to justify the nudity, so that you won't take it out on the show, however the nudity is definitely there as fanservice. I mean personally, I wouldn't mind nudity even if it was fanservice, and it is, but the show wants you to believe that there's deep reasons behind it all. Maybe that's because the show does have deep reasons behind it all... but this is not the time for that kind of talk. When the series is spotlighted, we can continue with this. Lucy being naked though does not take away from her character. Clothes do not make the man, as they say. |
| My first novel, Kardia has been published! Click here to read! |
Splitter said: Maybe that's because the show does have deep reasons behind it all... but this is not the time for that kind of talk. When the series is spotlighted, we can continue with this. Lucy being naked though does not take away from her character. Clothes do not make the man, as they say. Clothes don't make the man, but I think you're missing my point. What I am trying to suggest is that whatever exceptional traits that Lucy is given is foregone, because of writers, for nudity and Nyu. There was much more emphasis given to Nyu and her lame interactions with characters than Lucy. Lucy only was given two episodes at the end to help show her motivation, but we were given few interactions with anyone else besides fights, and for that reason of mis-prioritization she is left as a rather hollow character. |
noteDhero said: Splitter said: Maybe that's because the show does have deep reasons behind it all... but this is not the time for that kind of talk. When the series is spotlighted, we can continue with this. Lucy being naked though does not take away from her character. Clothes do not make the man, as they say. Clothes don't make the man, but I think you're missing my point. What I am trying to suggest is that whatever exceptional traits that Lucy is given is foregone, because of writers, for nudity and Nyu. There was much more emphasis given to Nyu and her lame interactions with characters than Lucy. Lucy only was given two episodes at the end to help show her motivation, but we were given few interactions with anyone else besides fights, and for that reason of mis-prioritization she is left as a rather hollow character. Lucy did spades with the time she was given onscreen in Nyu's place, and it wasn't two episodes near the end. Her escape from the facility, her fight with Bandoh, her fight with Nana, her backstory, the last two episodes... even though Nyu got a lot of screentime, Lucy was always a central focal point. And so what if all her characterization was garnered from fighting and backstory? It's still a developed characterization regardless of the method. Also, Nyu was indeed a plot device in order to fit Lucy into the frame of public society again, but even then she adds her own elements to the story and develops a personality reminscent to the innocent Lucy who wanted to make Kouta happy. In a sense, Nyu is like a mental rebirth of Lucy, quite literally too as she starts off with the personality of a two-year-old. |
| My first novel, Kardia has been published! Click here to read! |
Splitter said: Lucy did spades with the time she was given onscreen in Nyu's place, and it wasn't two episodes near the end. Her escape from the facility, her fight with Bandoh, her fight with Nana, her backstory, the last two episodes... even though Nyu got a lot of screentime, Lucy was always a central focal point. And so what if all her characterization was garnered from fighting and backstory? It's still a developed characterization regardless of the method. Also, Nyu was indeed a plot device in order to fit Lucy into the frame of public society again, but even then she adds her own elements to the story and develops a personality reminscent to the innocent Lucy who wanted to make Kouta happy. In a sense, Nyu is like a mental rebirth of Lucy, quite literally too as she starts off with the personality of a two-year-old. It's my opinon that Lucy fighting did nothing to further her characterization that wasn't done magnificently in her breakout of the facility. We get it, she heartless without any regard for humans. That was done very well, so all subsequent fights did was remind us of that fact. Also, I don't think that Nyu was reminicent of a young Lucy, because even that Lucy was very cautious and wary of humans. If Nyu had been more like young Lucy, then I think all her scenes would have improved ten-fold. Essentially, Nyu comes out of nowhere from a psychological perspective, and exists only to be cute, get fondled and fondle others. |
noteDheroSep 19, 2008 10:08 AM
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