Review - Elfen Lied
A few years ago I reviewed Elfen Lied on a different site. Recently I decided to give it another watch, and see if my perspective on it changed at all now that I've broadened my horizons a bit in terms of anime. While Elfen Lied isn't the worst OVA I've ever seen it's still not a tremendous piece of work. I'm not a fan of OVAs in general as they often are just animated spark notes containing key elements of a series but don't explain what happened to put those elements in place or what carried them along. Elfen Lied is a good example of this. (The manga it was based on is very long. I actually took a glimpse at it and found it to be no more enjoyable than the anime was.)
Story: C+
The story of Elfen Lied is about the origin and lives of mutants known as "diclonius", which are essentially horned human females with pink hair and the ability to create invisible arms known as vectors that they can use to rip people apart and spread the "diclonius" virus by infecting human males. They are treated as diseased, inherently violent individuals and isolated by a secret facility in which they are quarantined and brutally experimented on. The story begins when Lucy, who is believed to be the first diclonius, escapes from her confines and in a display of incredible violence, escapes the quarantine facility. However she is shot in the head, and falls into the ocean. She doesn't die as the shot was mostly absorbed by a helmet she's wearing. She washes ashore in a nearby town and is discovered by cousins Kouta and Yuka. However, the gunshot has left her with no memory, and she can only speak a single word, "nyuu". Kouta and Yuka take her into their home while the facility she escaped from begins the search for her. Throughout the series we learn Lucy and Kouta have a history together, but Kouta has no memory of it. However when Lucy's memories sporadically return, he begins to piece together why he lost his memory to begin with.
Elfen Lied is one of those shows that dresses itself up with philosophical elements and appealing aesthetics to present itself as better than it actually is. The title, which translates to "Elf Song", has no greater meaning and the poem it takes the name after has no significance to the plot. The backgrounds and settings of the show are very beautiful, and the opening theme which consists of references to Christianity and is entirely in what I believe to be Latin, was specially made for the series. Unfortunately the show itself has very little depth making all of this a mere distraction from the total absence of intelligence in the actual story. Right from the get-go you can point out the many, MANY plot holes and sheer stupidity on the part of the facility where the diclonius are being held (ie being aware the diclonius can stop bullets and yet giving the security a bunch of guns instead of knock-out gas or something). The series isn't long enough to significantly develop the majority of the characters, and I ended up disliking most of the ones I was supposed to sympathize with. This story doesn't do its presented topics any real justice. They aren't explored very well and just kind of exist.
There is a lot of gore and nudity in this series, and is by no means for younger audiences. A lot of the nudity is entirely unnecessary, and serves as little more than fanservice. This series is infamous for its gratuitous gore; which is rather disturbing, but becomes merely excessive as the series continues. Elfen Lied was originally written by a woman known to be suffering from depression, and it shows. Any spark of happiness in this show is almost immediately destroyed by whatever is coming next, and it becomes depressing to watch. It's like watching a train wreck--it's horrific and yet you can't look away. I've said it once, I'll say it again: it's a soap opera on steroids. All of the characters except for maybe Yuka have some traumatizing backstory, and there is constant death and blood everywhere. There's no balance of emotion in this series to the point where it looks like it can't decide if it wants to be serious drama, a black comedy, or whatever. It goes all over the place and what little humor there is isn't original or all that funny. It comes off as awkward and forced, or simply as a reused cliche' anime joke.
The climax of the series also felt really poorly done to me as it focused more on another character than it did the main character, and the ending felt very rushed. There's a lot of glaring errors in basic story telling and dozens of plot holes, which doesn't help.
Characters: C-
Lucy/Nyuu - Lucy is the "queen" diclonius the show centers around. Through the series we learn how she grew up, how she developed her powers and how they've affected her as a person. As a character she's quite interesting. Due to her rather miserable childhood she fosters a hatred of humans and has little trust for anybody. Everyone she developed a bond with underwent their own kind of suffering from associating with her; half of this she brings on herself while the other half comes from the fact she was hunted down for being what she is. She has a horrible temper and does quite a few reprehensible things, often slaughtering humans without a second thought. I grew to dislike her more than like her, but still found her to be sympathetic.
As for Lucy's split personality, Nyuu, who is created as a result of her memory loss (and possible brain damage), I was more annoyed by her presence than anything. It doesn't help that she is nearly a complete rip-off of Chii from Chobits. She only serves as a reason to get rid of the violent and temperamental Lucy when the plot calls for it.
Kouta - Kouta is pretty much your standard bland male protagonist. Other than the fact he likes to help women because his younger sister tragically died, there's really little to nothing interesting about him. He's incredibly dense at times and never seems to really grasp the insane situations he gets into as a result of Lucy coming back into his life.
Yuka - Yuka was by far the most annoying member of the entire cast, even more irritating than Nyuu. She has a crush on Kouta that she's fostered since they were children. She gets incredibly jealous of Nyuu (who at the beginning of the series could be considered mentally handicapped, for pete's sake) and acts like a tremendous bitch for no good reason. She smacks Kouta around a lot "for being stupid" and gets whiny about it afterwards. She contributes next to nothing and she's pathetic as a character. (By the way, it's not illegal for first cousins to fall in love or get married in certain parts of Japan.)
Nana - Another diclonius sent to find Lucy. Nana is a different form of diclonius than Lucy, and is entirely different in terms of personality. Nana is a polite and very sweet girl with none of the murderous intent the other diclonius seem to inherently have. Her existence instigates the argument about whether or not diclonius are all violent by nature. After a series of rather horrific events she finds herself staying with Kouta and Yuka. She was one of the most likeable characters, and her relationship with Kurama was one of the only ones I cared about in the slightest.
Kurama - Kurama is the second in command of the diclonius-studying facility. Besides Lucy, Kurama had the most interesting story out of any of the characters. His deep involvement in the diclonius experiments and his relationship with Lucy fuels an interesting conflict, and he gets the most significant development as one of the human characters. He's the most relatable character in the series even though he does some (arguably) reprehensible things. His relationship with Nana was very sweet and by the end of the series I felt genuinely bad for him and his daughter.
I'm not going to go over the minor characters in extensive detail (such as Mariko and Shirakawa) because they weren't in the series long enough to establish any sort of actual character for themselves. They were just plot devices keeping things going and we never really got to know them. I'm including Mayu in this category as her character contributes nothing to the overall plot and was simply thrown in for more depressive material. This is another thing that works against the OVA as we never learn of the facility director's true motives (in the manga this isn't explained until roughly the very end of the series).
Music: C+
The most memorable song in this series is the song "Lilium". It is the opening theme of the show and variants of it are often used throughout the series. The song itself is very pleasant to listen to and carries a sad tone that fits the show well. I don't remember any other tracks in the show--the rest of the soundtrack is almost entirely forgetable. I also wasn't a fan of the choice of the ending theme, "Be Your Girl", which sounds way too poppy and high school shoujo for such a dark and depressing series that isn't about romance to begin with.
Animation: B-
The backgrounds and settings of this show are very lovely. The visual aesthetics and look of the show are probably the best aspects of it. The grotesque gore scenes are also animated in a lot of detail. However I wasn't a fan of the art style for the characters. Too many of them had the same exact face and different bodies, especially the diclonius characters.
Voice Acting: B+ (Japanese) / D (English)
I have almost no problem with the Japanese version of this show. Everyone seemed appropriately cast and did a good job, especially Lucy's voice actress. The English version on the other hand was a mess. Many of the protagonists sound older than they are and bring nothing to the table in terms of effort. The translation was also sloppy and eliminated important lines that rarely brought genuine thought to any significant scene.
Overall Score: C
While it isn't the worst anime or OVA I've ever seen, this is by no means a show I genuinely enjoyed. The best things about it are the looks and the potential rewatch value just for horror's sake. The majority of the characters were bland or flat out unlikeable; the plot goes all over the place; the story itself is insanely depressing and glaringly obvious which rids it of any tension or build-up; and as a "horror" anime it fails by being so continuously and obnoxiously grotesque that you become jaded to it.
Elfen Lied is a show that gore and nudity fans will enjoy. This is not a series for those with a weak stomach or those who don't like to be purposely depressed by something they watch. This series has blood, gore, "experimental" torture, child death, sexual violence and abuse (and a rather unsettling bit of animal abuse in one episode). This series is positively saturated with over the top violence and drama. If you're a fan of that sort of thing and could care less if the plot makes any sense, you might like this show.
~Lotus~