DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionElfen Lied
OVA ActionElfen Lied: Tooriame nite - Arui wa, Shoujo wa Ikani Shite Sono Shinjou ni Itatta ka?

REVIEWS

• 

  ReBuggy

  5/100
  "Elfen Lied is the worst anime I've ever seen."

  Due to what are apparently masochistic tendencies, I've subjected myself to a lot of bad anime. This got me thinking. I asked myself "what is the worst anime I've ever seen?" I thought this over for a few moments, and gave myself this answer: "Elfen Lied. Elfen Lied is the worst anime I've ever seen."

  Elfen Lied is essentially about monster girls with psychic powers behaving violently in response to humans being shit. One monster girl tries escaping and actually manages to succeed, but loses her memory in the process, reducing her to a vegetable who only goes "Nyu!" She winds up in the care of a boy and his female cousin, whose names I've forgotten and can't be assed to look up.

  There are a few things to like about Elfen Lied. The first is the soundtrack. By this, I mean that there's a good song (used for the OP) that is repeated through the soundtrack ad nauseum in slightly different ways. The second is the potential it had. There were a few themes that could have been fairly solid. But we'll get to those when we talk about what was bad. Which happens to be now!

  Any good of Elfen Lied is far outweighed by what's bad. I could be wrong since I don't really have an eye for animation or direction, but I don't remember it being particularly impressive. In fact, I think I remember laughing at how poorly things were animated at a few points. The English voice acting is lackluster, even by dub standards, and I've heard the Japanese acting isn't all that impressive either. Maybe not bad, but certainly not any points in the show's favor. Let's talk about things I can more definitively say are bad.

  I hate to throw around buzzwords, but I can't think of a way to describe Elfen Lied's shortcomings without saying that it tries way too hard to be edgy. There is plenty of gratuitous violence, gore, and nudity, as well as themes relating to the darkness of human nature. It is possible for these elements to make a show good. Elfen Lied, however, utterly fails on that account. It assumes that these things are inherently good, so it makes no further effort. There are many stories in various forms of media that have combined sex and violence in ways that make both more appealing. Elfen Lied seems to be vaguely aware of this idea and has tried to emulate it to ill effect. Instead of having these two elements emphasize each other, they are simply thrown together so that hey both exist. The result is that they cancel each other out. The nudity makes the violence ridiculous, and the gore makes the nudity unsexy.

  Worse than that is the theme, which weaves through the plot. Elfen Lied is about monster girls called Diclonii who can kill people with their brains. The government experiments on these Diclonii, because humans are scumbags. This bit is important, we'll come back to it later. One Diclonius, named Lucy, attempts to escape. She succeeds, brutally murdering half the facility in the process, but a sniper shoots her in the head. Not fatally, mind you. Only enough to give her brain damage, because the plot requires that she become literally [redacted] for a while in order to work. She is found and taken in by a boy named Kohta and his female cousin Yuka.

  The government is not fond of Lucy escaping and murdering, so they send a bunch of Diclonius after her. Her murderous side conveniently reemerges when she is in danger. As the series progresses, the government continues to try to bring Lucy down, while flashbacks slowly reveal Lucy's past. Spoilers follow:

  It is revealed that, as a child, Lucy was bullied for being a Diclonius. We see a scene in an orphanage where, after Lucy makes friends with a puppy, a bunch of children beat it to death in front of her. She then uses her mind-explodey powers and reduces them to strawberry jam. Later, it turns out that Lucy and Khota ended up meeting each other, and he was about the only human who was ever nice to her. Then, one day, Khota's like "Sorry, can't hang out with you today. I've made plans with my cousin to go to a festival" and Lucy's all "Is this cousin a boy or a girl?" and for whatever reason, Khota lies and says that she's a boy. Lucy finds out about the lie and murders Khota's father and sister in revenge. Because even as a child she wanted his dick and was apparently terrified that he'd fall for a blood relative instead of her. Though in fairness, he and his cousin totally do start falling for each other over the course of the season, because incest is edgy and that's how Elfen Lied rolls.

  Ultimately, the series hammers in how much life sucked for Lucy and how horribly everyone always treated her, and how that turned her into a murderous monster. Because humans are trash, you see. We're cruel to anything that's different from us. This on its own isn't an inherently bad idea to explore. There are plenty of ways it can be handled well. But once again, Elfen Lied fails on that front. Instead of showing realistic human cruelty, it subjects us to the most blatant, over-the-top, cartoon villain evil it can find. Men abusing women isn't funny, but when a man randomly backhands a woman in an early episode, entirely unprovoked, I can't help but laugh. It's such a hamfisted way of attempting to show that a character is evil. There were so many times that I didn't know whether I should be laughing or whether I should just be disgusted at how much Elfen Lied was insulting my intelligence. There's making a point, and then there's flat-out misanthropy. Guess which side of that line Elfen Lied is on?

  Elfen Lied is an anime that not only failed to do anything correctly, it flat-out insulted my intelligence and insulted me as a person by implicating that, as a human being, I was terrible simply for existing. Maybe, in the hands of someone more talented, Elfen Lied could have become an average series. If that were the case, it would have at least had the decency to be forgettable. But no, it decided that if it couldn't achieve greatness, it would at least manage to succeed at being terrible enough to be remembered, dammit! And the worst part is, because this was one of the first "edgy" anime to gain relative success in the West, there are a lot of people who are actually under the mistaken impression that this is good. It's not. Worst anime I've seen. One star.

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• 

  TheRealKyuubey

  50/100
  There’s a lot you can say about this show, and not all of it is very nice.

  Ever since mankind perfected the art of starting fires, we’ve been at the top of the food chain. We’ve used weapons to make up for our lack of claws, and we’ve built houses to make up for our lack of immunity to the elements. We’ve invented food processing, as well as other techniques to ensure that we’re not pumping our bodies full of disease and parasites, and we’ve even invented supermarkets so we could stop hunting and sit on our asses all day while marathoning Breaking Bad. We’ve held dominion over the rest of God’s creatures for so long that we’ve never really had to worry about another species knocking us off of our seat at the throne.

  While the practice of humans killing humans is about as common as the practice of making more humans to replace them, we never expected a threat to our population to evolve right from our own ranks… Until the Diclonius arose. They’re the new breed of human, characterized by a pair of bony horns on their head, a set of invisible arms growing out of their back, and no genitalia (which must have been a huge relief to the people in charge of censoring the show). While the way they breed remains a mystery, their mission in life is simple… Wipe out the human race, and then repopulate the earth. And their queen bee just escaped out into the public.

  Now, that queen bee… Lucy… is on the run, ready to gruesomely murder any pitiful human who gets in her way. How will she deal with having to live with the one person she can’t kill?

  Elfen Lied was produced and released by Studio Arms, an animation company that makes it’s entire living off of crap. I’m not kidding. Their library consists mainly of pornos, loathsome battle vixen shows, and obscure OVAs that nobody cares about. Their most ambitious projects aside from Elfen Lied are Genshiken, which I admit I haven’t seen, and last year’s incompetent snoozefest, Mao Yu. This is not a company you want as your alma mater, and visually, Elfen Lied is no exception. Well, that’s not completely fair… To it’s credit, the background artwork is actually really good, beautiful stuff. It’s highly detailed, perfectly lit, and shaded with nothing short of a master’s touch. The character designs, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as easy to look at. They look fairly normal in most shots, with nothing really special or noteworthy. Then there are the facial expressions that look like they were designed by the troll face guy, and far off shots where everything looks distorted and off model.

  The animation is also some of the worst I’ve seen, at least when you actually see it. You spend most of the series staring at key frames that feature barely any movement outside of the lip flaps. The very few full-shot walk cycles that you get to see are embarrassingly bad, as the characters in them barely seem to exist in the same universe as the backgrounds they’re running against. I said earlier that the backgrounds look really beautiful, but even when you clearly hear the presence of strong wind, you’ll never see a single leaf moving. That is, except that there will occasionally be a shot of cherry blossom petals falling down, and this appears a lot in the outdoor scenes… It looks fluid and graceful in motion, at least until you realize that they’re just playing the same bit of animation over and over again… Even in the freaking rain! The animation does clean up and present itself in a few select fight scenes, but they still look mediocre by any other show’s standards. For the most part, a huge chunk of the budget was clearly wasted on the goofy looking CG arms that all the Diclonius…es… have.

  The characters look like garbage, which is fitting, because most of them ARE garbage. Lucy herself is a really good, complex character, but after suffering a concussion during her escape from the research facility, she develops a split personality. That other side of herself, who emerges whenever she’s hit on the head or has a bad memory, is called Nyu, and… Well, to avoid using an offensive and highly volatile term, Let’s just say she’s essentially a walking infant with boobs, which she will happily squeeze into someone’s hand at the slightest provocation. She pees all over the floor, and can only say her name(Yes, like a pokemon). If a character with her personality was included in an American TV show, she’d be banned from the network faster than you can say Derpy Hooves. In short, Nyuu’s existence does to Lucy what Jar Jar Binks did to the original Star Wars trilogy.

  And the couple that takes her in? Kohta and Yuka, both of whom are first year college students? They are insufferable. They’re one of the worst couples in anime history, and I’m not just talking about the fact that they’re cousins. I could forgive that. What I can’t forgive is a will-they-won’t-they dynamic that, for me, was more like will-she-won’t-she-kill them already? Kohta experienced a traumatic event when he was a kid, which resulted in the tragic loss of his personality. Oh, and his family, I think. She hasn’t seen him since then, but has somehow stayed in love with him all this time, even turning down her top choice colleges just to go to his. He’s basically a less interesting version of Shiryou Emiya… and I so mean that… And she’s an obsessed hose beast who takes every possible opportunity to be jealous of the other girls in the house.

  There are a few characters that were good… Like Bandoh, the sadistic army guy, and Nana, the well behaved Diclonius… But both of them overstayed their welcome after somehow surviving injuries that should have killed them. Yeah, they somehow survived losing entire limbs, when another character a few episodes later almost bleeds out and dies from one bullet wound. Seeing them come back to life wouldn’t bother me if their presence beyond that point contributed anything to the plot, which they don’t. But unlike little orphan Mayu, at least they DO contribute something to the plot at some point.

  As much as it kills me to say this, as a die hard ADV fan, I can’t really recommend this English dub. I don’t have a problem with the dialogue, or anything… The adaptive script is actually quite good… But as far as the performances go, it’s a mixed bag. Kira Vincent Davis does an outstanding job playing all three sides of her character… She plays Lucy, Nyuu, and the child version of Lucy, even though the original Japanese had a different Saiyuu for each. She plays Lucy as a jaded loner with a serious chip on her shoulder, and you have to give her props for pulling it off without ever sounding emo about it. There’s a little more hope in her squeakier child version of the voice, and more growth as well. Her performance as Nyuu is ungodly annoying, but then again, it’s an ungodly annoying character, so I don’t hold it against her.

  She probably performs her best as the child version of Lucy, which might have something to do with the fact that she’s playing off of such wonderful actors as Christine Auten, Chris Patton, and Monica Rial. As an adult/woman child, she’s hanging with a certified C squad that plays our main couple, Kohta and Yuka. They’re played by Blake Shepherd, who doesn’t seem to understand what acting even is, and Nancy Novotny, who doesn’t have any talent for it whatsoever. There are some pretty good performances by Jay Hickman, Jason Douglas, and Sasha Paysinger, but in this case, a few bad apples DO spoil the bunch.

  The only time I’d recommend turning the English track on is when little Mariko sets foot… Er, wheel… Onscreen. She’s played by Her Highness Luci Christian, who I believe I’ve gushed about in the past. I hold her in an extremely high regard, as one of the best emoters in the business, and as somebody who’s able to absolutely own every single role she’s presented with. Keep that in mind when I tell you that her role as Mariko is one of her best performances period. She hasn’t jerked tears this hard since Air. I won’t spoil the reasons why, but if there’s a reason to turn on the dub, it’s her.

  As for the story itself, it’s not necessarily a bad one. The plot is one of a kind, is very imaginative, and always manages to take itself seriously without ever becoming preachy or pretentious. The pacing is actually really good as well, as the story never moves slowly enough to start dragging, or too quickly for the viewer to understand what’s going on. That’s not to say you’d necessarily WANT to understand what’s going on, but good pacing doesn’t always mean good content.

  Where it fails it’s hardest is in the execution of the story. There are so many plot holes that I honestly could have made an entire Inconvenient Questions list out of it, if not for the fact that several characters go out of their way to ask about said plot holes… To no avail, of course, as Elfen Lied would much rather question itself than explain itself. Much like Fate Stay Night, Elfen Lied is a story that spends way too much time on it’s main cast playing house and dumping exposition to fully explore it’s own exciting concept. In fact, if you really want me to take my gloves off, this is a 13 episode series with so much pointless material in it that it could have easily been told in the space of only six episodes.

  All you’d have to do is remove the characters who don’t add anything to the plot (Mayu, Bandoh, Arakawa, both of the Kakuzawas), cut the flashbacks down to only the bare essentials, combine Nana and Mariko into one character, and erase all traces of Yuka after she’s filled her role in the first episode. In addition to cutting back on time, having Kohta take more of an active role in the story with only Nyuu/Lucy in the house would have given him a much more complete personality. As a matter of fact, I would have loved this show a lot more if little Lucy had killed Yuka, instead of just Kohta’s father and little sister… Oops, i’m sorry, was that a spoiler? I’d apologize, but if you couldn’t figure out that little plot twist by the end of episode 1, then there’s no hope for you.

  There’s a lot you can say about this show, and not all of it is very nice. What you can’t say, however, is that it fails as a horror title. As bad as the animation may be, the framing and camera angles are absolutely brilliant, working right alongside the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack and perfect instrumental motif to make the show consistently unsettling and suspenseful, even in the more goofy and ridiculous moments. Right from the start, you have no idea who will live and who will die, and aside from Kohta’s family, you’ll never be able to predict what gruesome fates will await these polished, shiny moe models. Whether you love or hate seeing them torn limb from limb, you’ll never feel bored or indifferent about it, which is the reason that it never becomes gratuitous enough to qualify as mindless torture or gore porn.

  Elfen Lied was once available from ADV Films, in a very beautiful thinpack box set. Following the collapse of ADV, it was picked up and redistributed by Funimation, who’ve released a few box sets of their own… They’re not as striking visually, but they’re cheaper, and it’s pretty much the only way to get it on Blu-ray. The original manga has never been released in English, and since I’m not familiar with the practice of streaming manga, I don’t really know where you can find a translated version. What I can find, however, is a fan-made web comic called Nana’s Everyday Life, which concluded several years ago. It’s actually a very interesting read, particular in the latter stages, when they dropped the comedy and went for a more serious, tragic story.

  In conclusion… What do you want me to say? Do you want me to call this show the most awesome thing ever, like so many people do? Well, I can’t, because that’s not true. Do you want me to say that it‘s one of the worst pieces of crap I’ve ever seen, like so many people do? Well, I can’t, because that’s not true either. My opinion of Elfen Lied is much more in the middle… It’s too good to be a bad show, but at the same time, it’s way too bad to be a good show. I really like it, and it will always have a spot on my DVD shelf, but from an objective stand point, I’ll never be able to see it as anything other than average, which is why I wind up giving it an average score… I give Elfen Lied a 5/10, and a strong recommendation to check it out for yourselves so you can form your own opinion on it.

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• 

  Lorde

  70/100
  Dissecting the quality of Elfen Lied, goodbye prejudjement!

  Elfen Lied (or Elvish Song in English)

  It's a anime of the Seinen category, remembering that this anime is not recommended for people under 16 years and people with symptoms of sensitivity for contain: Carnage, nudity, tragedy, carnage, a little Ecchi and more carnage. First of all, I want to talk about one of its most intriguing characteristics (at least in my opinion): The opening song.

  __Follow the Lyrics:__ _Os iusti Meditabitur sapietiam Et lingua eius Loquetur indicium Beatus vir qui Suffert tentationem Quoniam cum probatus Fuerit accipient coronam vitae Kyrie, fons bonitatis Kyrie, ignis divine, eleison Oh, quam sancta Quam serena Quam benigna Quam amoena Oh, castitatis lilium_ Translated version lyrics in the video.

  I confess, the first thing I thought when I heard this passage was: What freshness of hell is this? Calm down, it was not blasphemy, because I didn't pay attention to the lyrics... I only heard the woman singing in Latin. Yes, Latin! This is because the song was created to be a Gregorian chant, and was based on several biblical passages (from some prominent books like Psalms) and a Latin song in honor of Mother Mary.

  The soundtrack is completely calm, with a rather dramatic but reflective lyrics.

  ---

  Synopsis, Diclonius and minor considerations

  The story takes place in the Japanese city called Kamakura, and begins with the escape of Lucy, a powerful Queen Diclonius. Diclonius (from Latin something like "Clones of the gods") are humanoid with horns (apparently only women are born that way) and an unusual development of the brain that allows them to control immaterial arms called by the scientists of vectors, and it is around the Diclonius Lucy that the anime turns. Continuing the synopsis, she escapes from her confinement in a laboratory and, with her vectors, separates members from everyone in front of her, other than the laboratory director (saved by the author). A .50-caliber anti-tank rifle shot knocks her unconscious, knocks her down and breaks her cool helmet (fckin shooter), and awakens her second personality, Nyuu, who is totally naive. It's found on the beach by a couple of cousins ​​who welcome her as Nyuu, and they have no idea that 50% of her is a serial killer (Ah man, only 50%... Give nothing). From there the story begins to branch out and then finds itself, in a somewhat strange way and always sentimental or bloodthirsty.

  We can also compare the Diclonius with the regime of racial segregation adopted in 1948 to 1994 called Apartheid, a regime that divided people into racial groups, for example; ''black '', ''white'', ''Indian,'' and so on, brought with it much violence. The Diclonius also reminds me of the Nazi behavior of the last century.

  

  Elfen Lied does not revolve around insignificant deaths. However we see the story revolve within the most important social themes of today, always convincing us that nothing is meaningless. What I want to say is that Elfen Lied showed me the reason of being different from the other works with the same genre, and I can affirm with all the letters that everything is thought. And I have to say: I just love smart series! even more when in the end it proves to me that everything was planned, nothing was forced, this without doubt is something that I care a lot when I know some manga. I hate when such a work treats me like a donkey, forcing the ''horror'' and more when nothing makes sense. I believe that manga like this does not need something raw, something scarcely told to be frightened, on the contrary, I think that the more information that is shown the more interesting the series can be.

  

  Elfen Lied isn't the most violent series of the century, but it is one of the most striking, not by the heads being severed more because it carries in itself a dramatic charge. The plot gains strength not by the amount of blood but by the emotional appeal, and this makes it different from so many other series.

  #

  ---

  __Characters__ __Lucy__ Lucy has psychotic tendencies and is murderous, being her main personality, taking great pleasure in killing people. She hates humans, because of her past, who has been mistreated, humiliated, suffering prejudices from all around her. Trying to flee the laboratory, he kills almost every armed man without mercy or pain. __Nyu__ It's the innocent personality, Nyu is equal a small child, not knowing how to speak many words and not knowing how to do things, everything for her is a novelty. She is met by Kouta and Yuka, who end up getting her home to take care of her and try to learn more about her life. Nyu is totally different from her main personality, she is kind and caring, who is also jealous of Kouta. __Kouta__ He is very protective, especially with the girls (because of the death of his sister), having a sad past and some problems currently, yet he is very happy. Kouta returns to the city where she spent the summer as a child, because of the university, and finds Yuka her cousin and best childhood friend. She also encounters Nyu and ends up letting her live in her house while trying to learn more about her. The anime also has other important characters, but I thought it best to let you guys see them. #

  ---

  __Final considerations__ For the summary of the conversation I feel obliged to say a few more words. I must warn you that Elfen Lied deeply explores the worst human emotions, showing the consequence of bullyng and prejudjement, in a good dash of drama and violence enjoying science fiction to a good degree, that is, in the right measure. Shows the rot of people in the clearest way possible. Do not be scared by the ecchi because he is not the center and will not leave you excited (only if you are a pervert with certain problems in the head). The anime has a song of religious opening leaving the animation with that good face we know. Do you know those canvasses of Mary's Wolves that we hear at these church services? So... fear! But it's like I said before, seeing only the anime is not enough because the manga is much more complete in various terms of the word. Although the art is clearly questionable, it also has a drama a little that exaggerated, in no way interferes with the series as a whole. Its defects become tiny when we evaluate its qualities. Macabre and seductive I think this sums up well Elfen Lied... What I liked the most about this anime, besides the blood and cruelty of the Diclonius, are the stories behind the stories. The information is well guarded until the right moment and is hinted at by flash backs. What I don't like is the emo romance, but this went far from burning what I consider to be quality in the anime. Speaking of quality, there are many people complaining that the end of the anime is without nexus or incomplete. If you find that, remember that it's a 13-episode anime and 1 OVA based on a 12-volume manga, counting 107 chapters in total (in other words, each volume is almost a bible), so it's much more compact and censored. There are also several changes. If that did not console you and you're too lazy to read everything, read from volume 70 you'll find a much better, well explained. ...I wanted to talk more about this beautiful work of Okamoto Lynn, but I promised: No spoiler. If you have never heard of watch, and if you just watched it I hope you check out the original ending. - Score - 7/10
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