Elfen Lied is a very enjoyable anime, but not for the reasons that it thinks it's enjoyable. I initially had a different opinion on this show, but rewatching it has allowed me to come to a definitive conclusion: Elfen Lied is not a "dark" or "disturbing" show at all, which is something that many people will tell you. Elfen Lied is a FUNNY show; I'm talking laugh out loud hilarious. This is the kind of anime you show your friends because you can't even believe it exists. They'll be like "What's this?" and you'll be like, "Oh, you'll see…". Every character in Elfen Lied is basically a piñata full of blood and guts, and the first 5 minutes of the first episode are more then enough to let you know what you are getting into. Why shouldn't this be considered "messed up"? Well, we will get to that:
Story: 5/10
Synopsis: A girl named Lucy breaks free of a high security government lab, where experiments were being conducted on her, by killing all the guards in one of the bloodiest sequences in anime history. She manages to reach the ocean and jump in, but not before she is hit the head by a bullet. Lucy, as it turns out, is a "Diclonius"; a specially evolved species of human who are born with "vectors", which are some kind of invisible set of arms that vibrate at high enough frequencies to cut through nearly any material. Lucy then wakes up on the shore of a beach where she is found by Kouta and Yuka; our other two main characters. However, Lucy retains no memory of who she is what so ever. She goes from a merciless, stone-cold-killer to an innocent girl with the intelligence of a pokemon: She communicates only by saying only one word: "Nyuu", and so that's what Kouta and Yuka name her when they decide to take her home and look after her. Meanwhile, Lucy's escape from the lab has prompted extreme measures from the government and military, because Lucy's abilities are apparently devastating enough to pose a threat to national security, so a huge manhunt is conducted.
Elfen Lied is the bloodiest, nudiest show you will ever see. As previously mentioned, the first five minutes should be enough to convince you of that. Not a single episode goes by without gratuitous amounts of blood and fanservice that gets way, WAY too excessive, which brings me to something I simply need to get out of the way:
Fans of this show are convinced that Elfen Lied is some sort of tragedy; that it tells a very mature, very serious story in a masterful fashion. *Sigh. My friends: NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING could further from the truth!
Elfen Lied is not mature show because it tries so hard to be one. It is unfathomably shallow. The opening sequence of the show is so over the top that the viewer becomes 100% numb to the rest of the violence of the show. It stops being disturbing and it starts crossing into the territory of just being fucking hilarious. I mean, hell, after that opening sequence, the only way the show could possibly top itself is to… I don't know… Cut the legs off of a chi-… Oh. How about beating a puppy to dea-… Oh. The show clearly demonstrates that it doesn't give a fuck, and therefore neither should the viewer; I simply laughed my ass off at the absurdity of it all. Elfen Lied looks for any excuse to show boobs or gore for pure shock value in every single possible scene, and that is both the biggest problem and the best part of it.
Anyway, Elfen Lied is supposed to be a tragedy; it attempts to tell a depressing and meaningful story about a girl (Lucy) who has been nothing but a freak in the eyes of everyone she knows for her entire life and to convey that when a person is mocked, ridiculed, and outcast without ever having so much as a single friend, he/she will eventually reach a breaking point. To be fair, there were actually some very nicely written and effective story telling techniques used in Elfen Lied, but the absolutely absurd tone of the show makes it impossible to take seriously. Maybe something in the show could have actually resonated with me if Lucy's tits weren't popping out every 15 minutes as she proceeds to slaughter mostly innocent people. Throw in a lot of pacing issues, plotholes, and overall strange writing decisions and you have a storyline so ludicrous that it is hilarious to watch. So it's both very good and very bad at the same time?... I guess so.
Art: 5/10
The animation on the environment is alright. The backgrounds and settings visually appealing some of the time. The character animation? Not so much. Elfen Lied's animation is usually fluid and satisfactory, but inconsistency exists. A few of the action scenes are handled poorly, while others are handled great. That doesn't matter much when 90% of the screen is covered in blood most of the time though, does it?
Sound:8/10
Elfen Lied has a fantastic stand-alone soundtrack, but boy does it not fit the mood of what is happening on screen. Sure, it fits the mood of what they were TRYING to do, but what they were trying to do is very different from what they actually did. The voice acting is average in the sub and below average in the dub.
Characters: 3/10
Everyone says that Lucy is the only interesting and worthwhile character in Elfen Lied, and, well... Yep. Pretty much. But even she's not that great.
The characters in Elfen Lied are just painfully boring, and the budget for their character development probably went towards animating Lucy's boobs.
Kouta, the protagonist, in particular is just unbearably devoid of a distinguishable personality. There is nothing interesting about him except his back-story, which we get to see for mindless bloody fun. There isn't really much else to say about him.
Then there's Yuka. Oh god have mercy. FUCK Yuka. She is beyond the point of uninteresting. She is the only character in any TV show I've ever seen to have no personality, and STILL be annoying as hell. She never shuts her damn mouth about things that the others characters don't care about and the audience ESPECIALLY doesn't care about. Horrible character.
Lucy, of course, is considered the heart and soul of Elfen Lied. Her back-story is tragic, blah blah blah, but despite how cold-blooded and murderous she is, blah blah blah, she's no that bad on the inside, blah blah blah. Now back to more blood and boobs!... But in all seriousness, nobody should care about Lucy's backstory because it doesn't appear that the show itself even cares; the "main themes" of Elfen Lied take a backseat to mindless violence, which makes it impossible to take seriously. Not to mention her "Nyuu" form is embarrassing and shameless objectification, but that's another story.
Overall: 5/10
Elfen Lied does not give the mature and serious themes it contains the attention they need and deserve in order to thrive. Instead, those themes are overshadowed by a complete and utter bloodbath of cute, pink-haired anime girls doing insanely violent things for no other reason then because they are violent. This makes for a very funny and comedic experience, but really not much else. If you are 17+ years of age, give Elfen Lied a watch (with friends, preferably). You will either somehow not be put off by its absurdity and get something out of it, or be treated to a good laugh. It's a win-win situation.
