Elfen Lied

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By giving this series an overall rating of 6 is me being generous. Elfen Lied to me feels like a series that had so much potential. The ideas behind the story were deep (extinction of humanity, the moral question of what is human compassion). However, the way they were brought out were horrible.

Nearly every other page contains somebody crying in drama; so much that it got old fast. To those that will eventually read Elfen Lied; prepare for a big cry-fest. Rest assure though, the artist does randomly throw in comic relief, which end up make those moments incongruous with the flow of the ... story.

There came a point when the story became predictable. Many chapters ended with a cliff hanger... Too many actually. Cliff hangers ended up being so absurd (a character being killed off way too soon) that when I started the next chapter, I could almost exactly predict the outcome. My thinking process was "Nope, the artist doesn't have the guts to kill him/her off yet."

As mentioned before, the delivery of the story could've been better. 107 chapters were not necessary. I enjoyed the anime more than the series; it kept the main themes of the story short and sweet without dragging on. Around chapter 80 was when I realized that the artist is now trying too hard to hammer in her themes.

All in all, Elfen Lied was a huge waste of potential. With better story telling antics and better character development, this could've been a great series.

"Elfen Lied," or in english, "Elf's Song," is a manga series inspired by a German poem written by Eduard Morike. The poem tells the story of an Elf who unknowingly wanders into a small village and is ostracized by the humans there. The poem ends with the Elf being clobbered over the head by a man.

In this manga, our 'Elf,' is a mutant named Lucy and our 'village,' is Kamakura, Japan. Herein lies a tale of racism, prejudice, misanthropy and incestous relations between cousins. I came into Elfen Lied with high hopes after hearing how it was supposedly, "sad," and "beautiful," it is. ... Sadly, the manga was nothing like the Germanic poem I read in preparation for this. What I read was a mess, a very poorly written mess.

The story, as I mentioned earlier, revolves around a Diclonius mutant named Lucy. The Diclonius bear striking resemblance to humans, except for the two horns that protrude from their foreheads and the fact that they have telepathic hands that allow them to rip anything apart. It begins with Lucy breaking out of a top secret facility, after massacring about 20 people. She then gets shot in the head, falls into the ocean, and wakes up with amnesia so bad she can only utter one word, "Nyuu."

Firstly, I would like to point out how cliche that amnesia is as a plot device. I have seen a million and one shows and books using the same thing. But, I am not as close-minded as to judge an entire manga based on a plot device. So, I continued to read on, hoping that the story would pick up. 107 chapters later, I was left disappointed. There are so many problems with Elfen Lied, one of them is the fact that not every character gets developed.

At one point we are introduced to a 13 year old girl who was sexually abused by her stepfather. And that is it, the author never expands upon this other than mentioning the fact that she was raped. Another character has to wear a diaper at all times because she has panic attacks were she ends up urinating on herself. The only characters who get any development are Lucy, Kouta(the male protagonist) and his cousin/love Yuka(the equivalent of Shirley Fenette in Code Geass). Even those characters are not compelling or relatively well written.

Lucy, is plays the role of the "moe," helpless amnesiac girl who, when threatened, turns into a killing machine. She is the star of manga, and anytime there is a female lead, nudity ensues. She spends 1/3 of the manga naked, to me this seems like overt fanservice to get people to by the manga. Next, we have Kouta the man who obviously has romantic feelings towards Lucy, but any attempt to romance her is thwarted by his cousin Yuka. Now Yuka is the absolute worst character in this manga. I despised her with every fiber of my being. First off, Kouta is her cousin/childhood friend yet she still wants to marry him. Why does she want to marry him? Because of some stupid childhood promise they made when they were five years old. Her love was complete artificial not to mention the childhood promise has been done a million and one times.

Another issue I had was how it dealt with its themes. The entire manga focuses on the contrast between the Diclonus and humans; how they differ from one another and how they are the same. I felt there wasn't enough differences to truly differentiate one from the other, unless that was the author's intent. Next, we have the other prominent theme of misanthropy. We people committing vile acts one after another, kids murdering animals with vases and scientists performing inhumane experiments on the Diclonus.

First off, at what elementary school do you find groups of kids brutally torturing and killing animals? I know that is a work of fiction, but the implausibility of the situation makes the drama seem blatantly forced. And the "evil," scientists performing insane experiments on living creatures has been a common trope in the science fiction genre. Everything seemed so sloppily put together, any supposed emotional scene left me feeling apathetic.

I would say the only entertaining parts of Elfen Lied would be Lucy turning into a badass, and killing lots and lots of people. You see her telepathic hands rip people limb from limb. It is a truly glorious sight to behold.

Overall, Elfen Lied gets a 6/10 from me. It isn't well-written nor all that intelligent. The only way I could enjoy Elfen Lied was by turning my brain off, and simply taking it all in. There is nothing wrong with a manga that does not require a lot of thinking but when this show is touted as something of an intellectual masterpiece, I can't help but be disappointed.

(just for the record, this is a slight alteration of my anime review)

This used to be the series most recommended to newcomers as means to show them a amanga which was not some silly cartoony characters with spiky hair. There were already many violent manga around but this seemed to be the most broadly advertised and most didn’t know the rest so it’s like it was the only one. It also mixed lots of favorable elements such as nude and gore, along with interesting story ideas.

It also starts with a bang since in the first chapter we see a massacre of the highest possible gore ... and splatter you could ever dream of witnessing back then, backed up by a scary naked woman wearing a demonic metal mask and horns. You even see a person who acts all silly assuming to be the main comic relief character throughout the series to be eventually brutally murdered in seconds. WOW, HOLLY SMOKES, WHAT IS THIS??? Instant hook! And here starts the rave of the series. Sex and violence always sell and EL happened to have an extremely amount of both.

That was so political incorrect that drew people in by the thousands; especially after the anime version came along. Because after all, the more political incorrect something is, the more attractive it appears to young people. Everyone was either crazy or evil; there were no clear good guys and bad guys. No sir, here the humans are sadistic little bastards who like tormenting little girls and are being slaughtered like pigs as revenge. Even children and women were not spared! When was the last time they showed even women and children being killed? Heck, even kicking puppies was quite cruel and rare back then.

Now let me make it clear that in the following years all the elements of EL were copied in following series. Mainstream manga nowadays are far more sexual and violent, something that EL helped visualizing thanks to its gargantuan fandom. People wanted sex and violence and that is what they got. Open any recent manga and there is little to no chance to not see nude, splatter, lolis and all the sick stuff successful series like EL helped to establish.

So far so good, sounds like the best manga in existence, right? … Not by a longshot really. It does feel shocking and different and special if you are a newbie in the field without any previous exposure to this sort of manga but otherwise it feels quite ridiculous by itself if you are already a veteran reader. I was already exposed to far more sinister stuff way before EL and guess what, it didn’t seem worth not even half of what everyone was raving about. Because the shock value was low. And here is where this series most aims at in order to impress. Shock value. The more it shocks you, the better it appears to be. Because without it, it feels as silly as watching Goku eating a mountain of food without gaining a single pound.

Let’s get now to more conventional analysis, starting with the artwork. It starts off with very crude visuals, stiff motions, simplistic caricatures, and silly splatter. Along the way it improves a lot and after midway it looks like a well drawn harem show of multicolored hair bimbos doing silly stuff all over the place. The characters remain cute, with huge eyes and silly clothes, which I guess contributes to the shock of seeing them taking part in gore. It helps to hook you by the extreme amounts of fan service it has. There are panty shots and boobs almost every 5 minutes, while underage girls are most of the time shown being tortured. Yeah, great eye catcher stuff for sadists.

The story is essentially about humans being sick bastards who like tormenting little girls in an attempt to not be exterminated by a new race of horny (literally) red haired lolis which are genetically created and programmed to kill everything that moves. So, the story gets more complicated when the female ringleader of those lolis has convenient memory loses and turns from a heartless killer to a playful pussycat every time the scriptwriter wants to prevent the story from ending. Also, the characters keep behaving in the most ludicrous way possible as means to not end the whole mess in 10 seconds by implementing common sense. And if you don’t believe me, think of this:

“Hey, mister police officer, I found a naked girl on the beach. Better take care of her because I am a male teenager living alone and can’t just take her home where anything can happen.”

There, see, he just took her home and didn’t do anything to her, despite being defenseless and amnesiac, all excused by the fact that he was very pure in heart … and missing a dick. Then follows a long line of enemy waves who want to capture Lucy, the ringleader. But are all so damn stupid, they can’t even breathe without chocking to death. Imagine sending in a sadistic military dude to capture Lucy. He will be talking for half an hour about what a bastard he is instead of just capturing her, until Lucy conveniently gains back her memory, cuts him to pieces and then conveniently forgets everything again. Then imagine a girl who was being molested by her father and another horny girl who was almost killed by Lucy, to be accepted in Kouta, the dickless boy, in his house. Supposed, they are safer in the house where Lucy kills someone every now and then than just going to the police. Or the police themselves being so autistic they never do anything about the dozens of people who are being found in pieces right outside of that house. Wait, that could be because they are in league with the villains, right? … Sure, and that is the only reason the dickless boy and his harem of lolis don’t leave that house despite being targeted by manslaghtering sadists every two days.

Add to this the way they throw in incest and even more amnesia for other characters just as extra shock value that has nothing to do with the story, how everyone meets (or meats lol) someone, remembers and forgets, finds and loses, in the most far-fetched ways possible and always in the most convenient times and… well… the story is written with the mentality of a 5 year old. But as I said it is all about shock value rather that realism. The plot is quite fast for its duration and shocking every 5 minutes, while there are many social messages to leave you something to think about. Still, as I said, it only works if you are a newbie in the field who never thought of such things up to that moment. The logic of the drama is paper thin to fall apart while the ending is basically not any different that a silly date sim, proving that it was essentially made to please otakus and not other people. Yes, it was a series by otakus, for otakus after all.

In all, if it got to shock you the first time, it is bound to become your fav for many years and even open a portal to you, leading to the darker regions of the otaku realm. It has done so a million times already. All I can say is that it is much harder for someone to be impressed today by it because most modern manga are far more violent and sexual. Heck, even cartoons are. In fact I know many who admit that they have no idea why they liked that series so much. Simple, the shock value faded away and left behind only ashes and bones. So while I give it a high Value for its very important contribution in mainstreaming anime (for good or bad; I kinda hate the way most modern anime are all full of fan service) I must still give it a very low mark in Enjoyment because it doesn’t work if you are not a newbie and in no chance in hell it feels good if you are a veteran reader. I got the same messages the series has in Akira, the same type of gore in Choujin Locke and those felt far more realistic and credible, without fan service and ridiculous behaviors fooling you to consider “idiotic” as “brilliant”.

The first thing I thought when reading the first few pages was 'good God, that art though'.
It didn't get much better from there.
Elfen Lied is a series that could've really gone somewhere. It has an interesting basis as a story, but it just doesn't really deliver on it well. The serious, gory moments go back and forth with the impromptu fanservice scenes, which tend to be more awkward than anything.
The characters are typically of the exceptionally bland variety, with the exception of a few here and there (most noticeably the head guy with the glasses; I can't even remember any of their names).
The ... art is - for a lack of a better word - extremely ugly. Most characters who have smaller, detailed eyes tend to have them drawn rather wall-eyed, and the ones with the big moeblob eyes constantly take on this expression where their eyebrows are turned upwards, their mouths hang open at the lowest part of their face possible, and you can practically hear the 'duhhhhhh' escaping from said mouths. Also - what's with the artist and drawing the characters heads jutting out (excuse me for using this phrase again) as far as possible from their necks?
Even the gore isn't that spectacular. I tried to find a way of saying this without sounding like an edgy teenager but - I couldn't help but laugh at the dramatic, bloody scenes. I'm not usually the type of person to do that, but all of the intense moments involving massive bodily damage are just so over the top and so melodramatic I couldn't help but find it humorous.

Looking back, it really is disappointing. The story could've gone somewhere really cool, but unfortunately was ruined by lackluster characters, over the top dramatic scenes, uncomfortable fanservice, and cringe-worthy art.

Elfen Lied.... Going to make a very short review.

With such a great start, it seems to only go downhill.

Story- Had a ton of potential but nope, flush it all down the toilet. The last chapter didn't feel rewarding at all; it made me feel as though I was wasting my time rooting for Lucy and Kouta.

Art- Nothing to brag about, sometimes the characters look amazing. And others they just look mediocre. Can't complain much because I loved Lucy's character design and Kouta's. Nana and Mayu both look compelling as well most of the time. I however wasn't a fan of Nyu's design, but that's ... just a personal taste. It was drawn very well. Most of the time it just felt... So empty. That's why I gave it a 6.

Characters- Characters well all around fleshed out and believable. This is where Elfen Lied excels. At least with the main characters. The side characters on the other hand, hell I don't remember one of their names (except for Anna and Wanda), not even Kouta's cousins name. On a sidenote, I doubt many people care but they literally started calling him Kohta at the end of the manga.... Did I miss something? His name was Kouta for like 80+ chapters then they just start calling him Kohta?
Translators come on.

Enjoyment- It was alright, I think it's just the nostalgia that's making me give it a 6, otherwise it'd be lower. [spoiler] I felt like I was reading it to see Lucy and Kouta end up together. I probably was, and when that didn't happen it just made me feel sick. I feel as though I hate the fact that I wasted my time, on the other hand I'm glad I actually got around to reading it. [/spoiler]

Overall- I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I was told the ending is sweet but sad. No, it's just fucking sad. It makes you want to forget you ever read the damn thing. [spoiler] All we wanted was for Kouta to somehow forgive Lucy and end up with her and we got nothing close to it. [/spoiler]

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone sadly because of how.... Appalling the ending was to me. Did the writer think that's the ending that we wanted? That we deserved? Man... I just wish it could have been different. If I had to describe it, I'd say very very bitter, hardly sweet.

I honestly don't care if anyone finds this helpful, I just needed to get that off my chest.