The short answer is no. The long answer is nooooooo.
Only kidding - this review is the long answer, obviously!
When I first noticed "Elfen Lied" on an anime site, it was listed as horror. But the picture shown on the site (not the picture from the MAL page) was this typically cute, giant eyed anime girl with pink hair. First thing that came to my head was: WTF? Cute, seemingly innocent little girl with a dark side going around killing everyone? Little did I realise how close I'd struck to the actual premise of "Elfen Lied". What I didn't anticipate was how far below its hype it turned out to be.
To be fair, my initial impressions of "Elfen Lied" were actually pretty good. From the haunting melodies of its opening song "Lilium" and the combined gothic-anime style artwork in the opening credits, the atmosphere was compelling from the outset. The opening episode throws us straight into a blood bath, with heads and limbs flying in all directions curtesy of Lucy, a diclonius (a kind of mutant human) who is one of the central characters of the story. It was hard not pay attention. "Wow! This is going to be awesome!" I remember thinking. But five minutes of bloody massacre later, an extremely stereotypical ditzy secretary character waltzes in and trips over into the path of Lucy. I blinked as I struggled to get to grips with this juxtaposition, and a small voice piped up in the back of my head: "What the hell is this?! A horror or a goofy comedy?!"
Turned out "Elfen Lied" is both, and it was all downhill from there on. Having been infected by the hype beforehand, I was so convinced that this was going to be one of the greatest anime ever that I'd persuaded a friend of mine to watch this "masterpiece" with me, having sold it to her as this "really highly rated, brutal horror" ... and we both watched with synchronised, slack jawed amazement as "Elfen Lied" descended from that potentially great horror themed show down to a, well, a bizarre horror of a show. (Ok, it's not THAT bad, but I had to use that line :P)
This anime is meant to be horror, and though the horror elements are there, the pr0n elements are almost as strong, if not stronger. I'd heard about the violence, but I wasn't expecting all the fanservice. If people get hit, their clothing magically rips off their bodies; if a person falls over, you can bet the scene will feature the best angle for a pantyshot. On top of that, the female characters all seem to be looking for any excuse to start stripping. It's so over the top that, given any situation, I'd be wondering how they're gonna squeeze fanservice out of it. For example, when the characters got caught in the rain, I was like: Here we go again … I can feel a wet t-shirt scene approaching; they might even start throwing their clothes off once they find shelter! Lo and behold, my wild guesses will hit the mark more often than not. Incredibly, even after the anime had conditioned me to anticipate fanservice at every turn, they still managed to somehow surprise me with it. The prime talent of the creators of "Elfen Lied" appear to be the ability to convert any situation into pr0n.
Now let's look at the horror aspect - it's impossible to talk about "Elfen Lied" without mentioning it. There's an incredible amount of blood and gore in here, but just how effective and appropriate are they? On one hand, the violence does serve its purpose to a certain extent. Its sheer brutality and the fact that, like the fanservice, it can occur at any (and often unexpected) moment gives "Elfen Lied" a heightened sense of tension and dread. When all is said and done, the credentials of "Elfen Lied" as a horror is solidly cemented by all the violence. On the other hand, the violence of "Elfen Lied" is plasticky both in a visual and in a deeper sense. Visually, the series is a bit of a one trick pony when it comes to violence - it's very direct, involves a lot of blood (often too much), and the bodies being ripped apart looked a bit like Barbie dolls being dismembered. It all feels a little fake, and there's nothing as vivid and as disturbing as some of the violence portrayed in the likes of "Berserk" and "Narutaru". Beneath the surface, the show's violence is mainly deployed as shock tactics with very little actual meaning beyond that. Furthermore, "Elfen Lied" goes waaaay overboard with it, and the overuse of this often less-than-meaningful violence inevitably led to diminishing returns on its effectiveness. After constantly being bombarded by the downpour of blood and severed limbs, I found myself numbing to them by the end.
To its credit, I think "Elfen Lied" has got some intriguing concepts to build on. Mutants with invisible, deadly vectors hands? Sounds interesting! Involvement of a secret research facility that has a sinister purpose behind it? Tell me more! But unfortunately, they don't appear to be particularly interested in telling me this story. Unlike the fanservice, the plot points are difficult to come by. In the end, all I'm left with are some half developed concepts, some giant question marks, and a hollow lasting impression. Instead of expanding on its interesting sci-fi premises, it chose to divert a significant portion of its attention to something that vaguely resembles a teen drama (but an ultra-violent one, remember!) Does that mean it poured blood, sweat and tears into developing astoundingly good characters and dialogue then? If only. While the sci-fi aspect of the story can be described as wasted potential, the drama aspect never had any potential to begin with - because it's of the dreaded harem variety. People can try and kid themselves all they want but we all know it's rare to get anything of value originating from that particular genre.
Unless you value lame humour, cliched romance and laughably unrealistic characters, that is.
Speaking of the characters, the marriage of violence to the harem genre has resulted in what would normally be plainly bad characters becoming atrociously bad. If someone tries to strangle you for no reason, would you simply sit up afterwards and ask in a conversational tone: "what did you do that for?" I don't know about you, but I'd be trying to get the hell away from that person! If someone suddenly attacks your friend on sight for no apparent reason, and then tell you they did it because they were hungry, would you believe such a lame ass excuse? My friend and I actually burst out laughing when we heard the excuse... then our mirth turned to astonishment as the dumbass in question not only accepted this sorry excuse of an excuse... but then proceeded to let the attacker into his house. (This extraordinary turn of events only make sense on a meta level when you realise you're watching a harem anime, and the attacker who is a girl was joining a house that was already occupied by about five other girls by then. When looked at it in this light, it's hard not to be impressed by how much effort went into twisting the story and the character interactions in service of the anime's credentials as a harem.) I know that some level of suspension of disbelief is required for a show like "Elfen Lied", but did the makers even read the script to see if it made sense on any level? The portrayal of scientists is mostly a joke, the mercenary/security are practically useless... even the dog that featured briefly was nothing but a plot device, abandoning its owner for no good reason other than so that it could interact with another character and garner sympathy from the viewers for the said character. I've heard of dogs being abandoned by its owners before, but rarely the other way round!
Kurama is one of the few bright spots of amongst the characters. His dilemma is choosing the right thing to do between the contradictory feelings that arise from his roles as a rational scientist, a normal human being, and a father whose child is caught up in the thick of things. This is arguably the only aspect in "Elfen Lied" that doesn't feel a) forced and manipulative, b) inconsistent with the character and the situation, and c) shallow and black and white. Aside from Kurama, most of the characters in "Elfen Lied" are ridiculous to the point of being hilarious. A pity the same cannot be said for the bits that are genuinely meant to be funny (the harem comedy bits).
I've heard many claims about how "Elfen Lied" is a deep anime that explores the ugly side of human nature and societies. Somehow, I am unconvinced of the ability of an anime so chock full of gratuitous fanservice and harem drama to deliver much of substance, but let's examine a concrete example in detail. One of the girls in "Elfen Lied" got given a tragic past that you'd think would have some lasting impact on her ... but looking at her you'd NEVER be able to guess it if it wasn't for the flashback that showed that event. It was like the creators wanted to design this cheerful, upbeat little girl, and then, as an afterthought, tried to give her some depth by shoving in a tragic backstory by way of a flashback ... and then just left it like that. All traces of the effects of her tragic past on her character magically vanish after the flashback, to the extent that I'd totally forgotten about it by the end of the series. Is this really exploring the so called social issue? No. It just smells suspiciously like a shortcut to gain viewer sympathy and a heavy handed approach to character development. What exactly are the profound messages this supposedly deep anime is trying to convey? That children can be cruel? Love conquers all? Don't piss off mutants that have dangerous powers? Shit happens? I don't really know and I'm not sure the anime does either. Like the genre of this show, the messages - assuming it's trying to communicate anything - are all mixed up. Apart from Kurama's dilemma, almost everything monotonously boils down to an excuse for more cruelty and abuse. Worse, the countless abuse that happen in this anime feels quite sadistic, as though someone is getting a kick out of making this, which I find disturbing.
And this is why I can't see for the life of me why this show is so popular. It's blatantly just a shallow ecchi/harem flick, and it's rare to see ecchi harems considered good, let alone being touted as the greatest ever. The only thing that makes "Elfen Lied" stand out against its brethren is its violence, and so I am forced to conclude that showering an anime with blood will fool people into think it's "hard hitting" and "profound". Given the atrocious and manipulative handling of the story and characters, this anime has no chance of ever becoming deep, but with a bit more effort applied in the right direction, it could have at least become a really good atmospheric horror/sci-fi show. It's a crying shame that, instead of focusing on those more intriguing aspects, the makers were apparently more interested in coming up innovative ways to apply fanservice.
Personal rating: -0.5 (mediocre)
