May 23, 2023
LUCY: SORRY I DECAPITATED YOUR FATHER AND SPLIT YOUR SISTER IN HALF BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES AS WELL AS KILL COUNTLESS INNOCENT BYSTANDERS BECAUSE I SAW YOU HUGGING YOUR FEMALE COUSIN AT A FAIR… I LOVE YOU, KOUTA!!!
KOUTA: THATS OK! I LOVE YOU TOO, YOU HAD A BAD LIFE SO I FORGIVE YOU!
LUCY: YIPPIE!!
*passionate kiss*
DAS ENDE
...
MORAL OF THE STORY:
MAYBE DO NOT CREATE AN ADVANCED RACE OF SUPERHUMANS WITH TELEKINETIC POWERS AND TORTURE THEM WITH HORRIFIC EXPERIMENTS THEIR WHOLE LIVES OR THEY MIGHT KILL PEOPLE
In all seriousness, this anime has some really solid emotional moments scattered throughout. The main premise sounds stellar, but Elfen Lied is an unfortunate victim of self-sabotage. For each interesting idea and emotion-gripping scene, there are at least two more that drop the ball so hard it shatters into a million pieces. How is one supposed to take this anime seriously when there is a brutal mass murder with gory Happy Wheels-esque physics then directly proceeding it is an upbeat ending song with the lyrics “Baby, I wanna be your girl/Baby, all I need is you”? How is one supposed to take this anime seriously when there is a horrific and vastly upsetting SA scene inter-spliced with a pointless cousin incest romance storyline?
As for the characters, Kouta is such a weak protagonist, he becomes a little less one-dimensional as the story progresses, but by then it’s too late. Yuka is almost completely expendable and outside of the first few episodes only exists to have a meaningless jealousy drama for a non-existent love triangle. Lucy, a fantastic character in concept, is heavily botched and for the most part, comes off as a device for shock value by ripping droves of people apart. You get to see why she does this, and what the message is supposed to be, though the execution is poor. Kurama has an interesting backstory and later on, he is a more fleshed-out character, but at the beginning, he was written so poorly I thought he was intended to be sociopathic. Bando is a contender for the top ten most over-the-top characters in anime. As for Mayu and Nana, they are not without their flaws, but they are the most likable, and their retrospective backstories are done the best, more so Mayu, but Nana’s is also almost as good as it gets in this series.
Much else I’d have to say is nitpicking territory, so I digress. It feels wrong to diss Elfen Lied, as what it tries to do is exceptional but it sadly did not reach its full potential. It’s not bad by any means, barely mediocre, but I found it disappointing that the show never soared to the highs it was capable of.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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