Reviews

With all the hype surrounding Elfen Lied all I could muster up about the anime was a big "meh". Now, don't get me wrong, I understood the message the story was attempting to deliver and it was very powerful and heart wrenching. But, it seemed to me that the story was told without much explanation as to "why" things happened as they did and when there was an explanation it was forced and incomplete. Due to the length of the series the character development seemed stunted and I mean in a glaring way; characters change not over the the course of a few episodes but within minutes of the same episode. It's a shame because I think the idea behind each character was masterfully done and could have been portrayed much better had it not been for the length of the series. In addition the violence that the anime portrayed seemed to force itself upon the watcher as an attempt to illustrate the pain and tribulations this work was meant to convey, it just didn't flow naturally in the least.

The artwork, while well done, struck me as choppy and could have been put together much better, but there are a lot of good anime that have the same issue. Given that however, I would still recommend watching this if you have any down time in which other things aren't occupying you just so you can get the experience.

The one shining thing about this anime was the sound. The music was just superb and fit perfectly with the intended tone. However, on the flip side, the voice acting was among the worst I've ever heard. The voice actors sounded bored with the script while recording and it shows through the lack of inflection in any character through most of the 13 episodes. Granted, I did watch this dubbed in English and we all know that's always much worse than the original Japanese but from what I've heard and read the Japanese isn't much better.

Overall I was seriously let down. It's not necessarily that I didn't enjoy this anime but the flaws it contained were too much and too many to simply overlook and enjoy the plot itself.