[Tv series] Elfen Lied

[Maya Miyazono]

Type: TV episodes, 1 OVA
Episode count: 13
Age rating: Mature (May contain sex, drugs, and extreme graphic violence)
Genres: Horror, Drama, Supernatural, Science Fiction, Thriller, Romance, Seinen, Shounen, Psychological, Action

Plot synopsis: The Story begins with a Diclonius named Lucy who is a mutated homo sapien that is said to be selected by God and will eventually become the destruction of mankind. She manages to break free from her inprison from mankind after brutally killing most of the guards in the laboratory then later getting shot in the head as she makes her escape. She survives and is found along the beach by two Adults named Kouta and Yuka. Having lost her memories, she was newly named after the only thing that she speaks "Nyuu," Kouta and Yuka allow her to stay at Kouta's home But it turns out that her true side Lucy is still very alive.

Story (7/10) Similar to a Slice of life setting in human style it has a lot of dangerous and very mistreated characters wanting to live a normal life but feeling inraged with normal human fear and actions which leads to a mad driven road for them. For the Diclonius having to possess telekinetic powers it causes a grave amount of pain to themselves and those around even when living with the ones who care and love them.

Characters (5/10) I want to have this rather short how much I dispise Kouta's character and role with Nyuu. Having to loose his famliy at a young age he misses his younger sister dearly having a shell she caught at the same beach nyuu has been found to remember her by. Nyuu herself breaks it half driving him in understandable rage at her making her run away shortly bringing her back as she makes herself look at his younger sister. He has a even deeper history with Lucy nyuu's real Diclonius side. Later falling in love with them both he jumps into save them from whatever danger they both face no matter how many times people expain to him that she's a Diclonius and killer.

Art/animation (9/10) High art quality and excellence is shown when you watch the background animation. Blood is greatly shown in nearly every episode while the nudity are respective to female and male body parts not over doing it but sometimes showing it at uneeded times. (An amount of Fanservice in a way) The Symbolistic artwork influenced shown for it's opening is known for having a mix of European painting and japanese Ukiyo-e.

Voice acting, music (8/10) Opening theme very unsually has a beautiful German melody and lyrics shown with it playing in every episode. While the ending theme has a very cute J-pop melody and sound telling about hidden love for someone else close to them. I love how Sanae Kobayashi did her role for Lucy knowing to have a sadist emotional sound while doing her character over as she puts a very notable childish sound for her counter part Nyuu.

Overall (10/10) Heed the Age limit for this series! If you cannot handle a huge deal of blood and nudity you don't want to watch the show. With a epict amount of child sexual abuse and animal abusment and parts of incest cousin and cousin relationship it might turn you the wrong way. Socially I felt for the characters and the true meanings rather then getting disgusted or overly shocked with the behavior involvment that happens in very graphic and tear dropping parts. Like neon Genesis Evangelion I deeply praise this series for it's social realism and other culture creativity.

[Otaking]

Story (7/10)
If you are looking for a really deep and moving plot you should look elsewhere. This story revolves around the exploration of humanity and emotion. Often it fails even there by being unable to keep a serious pace and actually move ahead until the very end. The story is original and it is fresh, but by no means extraordinary.


Characters (6/10)
Schizophrenia. Depression. Torture-victim. Murderer. Some words to describe the characters of Elfen Lied. It's dark nature knows no bounds. The horrible connected past of the main characters is deep and disturbing, but they constantly live in a world of disillusionment and in the case of Lucy, schizophrenia.


Art/animation (7/10)
Beautiful animation and amazing art. It definately looks like anime should of our time, but that's about it. There is no revolutionary art-style changes or major influence from the locations of the characters at nearly any point in the series. The overall use of the animation is done with some skill, but the problem lies in the fact that it constantly is being plagued by a story which seems to be slapped together and the animation seems abused in several instances of fight scenes as a way to play down the serious nature of conflict. Perhaps the most inspired shot is of Lucy simply walking towards the door with the iron mask on her head, but other then that the actual animation does little to provide an addition to the series. It is often used best to enhance gore and that alone.

Voice acting, music (7/10) - Japanese version
The characters are true to their characters voices and they play off each other well. Sanae Kobayashi is skillful in the voice of Lucy and Nyu. Sanae Kobayashi is finally showing her skill and adaptability in a series as a main character. Chihiro Suzuki however is a disappointment to the series. Following a typical male character he has a somewhat generic voice and even though it matches the emotions he voices do not seem to have the full effect they should have. The music is often downplayed and is limited. The score is complimentary and matches the dark mood of the series, but does little overall to enhance the series.

Overall (7/10)
Overall this is a good anime. However its dark and mature themes are not fully developed and played well upon. It has many little flaws that prevent it from being a wonderful series, but it is still a good anime. You should consider getting the anime if you are fans of deep psychological anime. Sadly, most people will remember the opening of the anime more then they will remember the anime itself, aside from Lucy (and not Nyu). This anime tried to do too much and got hung up on the important parts of character development, but still managed to make for a good series. Drop the fanservice. Drop Nyu. Answer the many open-ended questions at the end of the series and you would have a great anime.

[Vintniv]

Story (10/10)
Humanity portrayed at its worst with enough reason to hate yourself to go around. While that is what the anime is really good at doing, but do not overlook the fact that is is a romance. The ending is a massive cut off and leaves you indeed wondering what the girl means.

Characters (9/10)
Every character has been pre-designed with a flaw, you just need to look clearly. One hates humanity, another is in love with her cousin, another has childhood trauma, and another is just easily emotionally crushed. But the thing to look for is the fact that the anime wants to show you that people cannot handle other people's differences too well unless they are just out plain children who dont see them.

Art (8/10)
The characters are well designed, showing why people are treated so differently. The thing that does bring this anime down is the fact that certain areas such as the blood and gore are a bit, exaggerated. Though one thing to really keep in mind s the honest fact that this anime is not for children who cant handle these sorts of things.

Voice Acting (9/10)
Innocence at its best. The voices match the characters from a brutey marine who wants nothing more to kill a girl, to the girl herself with two sides that has plenty of kills behind her.

Overall (10/10)
One of the very few animes that put me to honest tears and kept me coming back to re-watch it. Its something everyone should see, that is if you can handle it, and then take a good look at themselves. The Anime brings light to humanities dark secrets, and then slices their heads off.

[Luzifer]

Story (10/10)
One of the most beautiful and powerful stories, that distinguishes itself form others with the amount of honesty and senstitivity the characters are treated. Filled with strong emotions that grip you and pull you in, along with action and thrills to keep you on the edge of your seat but which don't take away from the reality of this show as a psycological horror. It gets in your mind and even while mankind decays you see the beauty the lives in each sad person, their spirits bending towards the sky.

Characters (10/10)
The characters here are full of power and life. They aren't treated with gloves. You see their good and their bad sides. It leaves you echoing the famous Christian words so ignored in our society "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Even when you most sympathize with a character you realize they aren't pure, or if you look at it a different, even in their darkest moments even the basest of humans has a golden spark of divine light. Even the murderous soldier shows shreds of honor.

Art (10/10)
This may seem minor to some but this series has one of the most amazing musical intros, where the chracter's are mixed with reinvisionments of several paintings by a Russian painter whose name I don't remember. This segment captures the longing for humanity perfectly as each character holds an empty lifeless marionette close to their body, symbolizing the human longing for someone, but the inability of the individual to reach out to actual humans.

Voice Acting (10/10)
I'm not a good judge of voice acting so I won't pretend to be but there was never a part where the voice acting nettled me.

Overall (10/10)
This may be one of the best Anime's ever made. Its passion and sadness, its aches and its despair shimmer across its surface and resonate in its core. I cry everytime at the end. And, as an added bonus, their are no melodramtic deaths. Nobody hangs around as they slowly die in stereotypical fashion. They just get "skooshed".

[氷の動物]

Story (6/10) First and foremost I kind of felt like much of the gore and nudity in this series was really out of place, as far as the gore there were times were it felt like it was just being immensely gory for the sake of it rather then serving to add anything at all to the story, and the nudity while acceptable at times, such as when you see the Diclonius released from their containment chambers, also delved into the ridiclously out of place when you have a couple of bath scenes with some very underage naked girls in them which could have been edited out entirely.

My only other major complaint about the plot is that every episode of a very short series seems to revolve around "hey somebody got lost... lets go search for them... again" I'm fairly sure this was used in over half of the episodes in this very short series, and by the end your just like alright who's going to get lost in this episode requiring a band of people to go out looking for them?

With all that stuff I didn't like out of the way I will say that the plot does a fairly good job of exploring the darkness that's hidden within humans and contrasting it with the Diclonius.

Characters (7/10) Most of the characters are well crafted with well thought out back stories, and the only character I really didn't like was Kouta for being a main character it seems silly that his back story isn't explained until almost the very end, and even worse is the fact that his back story is really the only interesting thing about him for most of the series he is just a spineless guy who can't really seem to get anything done and takes forever to make up his mind.

Art/animation (9/10) The art is amazing as is the opening to the series, the only complaint I have is the aforementioned misuse of gore and nudity which at times doesn't serve any purpose.

Voice acting, music (8/10) I really didn't have any major problems with the Japanese voice work. And the music served it's purpose although I didn't really find any of it to be memorable.

Overall (7/10) I think this needs to be reiterated: "Heed the Age limit for this series! If you cannot handle a huge deal of blood and nudity you don't want to watch the show."

Basically the series does have a powerful theme to it, but it gets held back by its sometimes improper use of gore and nudity, and weak story writing that makes the episodes seem too similar.

[Kanjoudakai_Ira]

story: 6/10. Pretty weak. I just don't consider it something that good.It was original tho but not enough exploited.I liked the gore and blood but it was just dry and just reaping someone's head off isn't that fun to watch...i liked the sadism but i hated the combination of sadism with innocence and stuff. They could have made it better...

Characters: 5/10. I think they were kinda...retarded. I hated the fact that Lucy was becoming Nyu or whatever and going like "nyu? nyu! nyu...nyu.." That really pissed me off. I mean a merciless bloody killer was becoming out of the sudden a innocent girl that didn't know anything,not even talking? I liked the Lucy part of her,not the Nyu one >/ And the rest of the characters were dumb too,like,Kouta for example.
Art/animation : 8/10. The animation was good,the characters were pretty drawn and the details were also good. But i didn't like all the nudity in it.But it was kinda boring,it should have used more fights and more dynamic actions.

Voice acting/music: 7/10. The voice acting was acceptable but the music wasn't too interesting

Overall: 7/10. It should have had more action and the gore should have been with more purpose,dynamic. I wouldn't watch it again and it's not one of my favorites...

[alchemist4533]

Story: 8/10 I think perhaps I am being lenient on the story because of how much I loved the characters...With the shortness of the series, I feel more needed to be done with each episode. The story while dark, twisted, and shows the brutality of the human race in their ability to be completely inhumane and the humiliation (well it makes you feel like they are being humiliated) toward the diclonius. I know a lot of people didn't enjoy the combination of innocence and detached violence/sadism but i watched it and felt a real connection with it for some reason. Again, I think I am letting the story off easy since the characters were amazing. I would like to know more about the organization as well as the history of the diclonius. Also the excessive nudity, while distracting at times, showed the vulnerability of those characters. Another issue was the ending...I won't say much cause I dont want to give spoilers, but WHAT? It cant end like that!

Characters: 10/10. These characters were in a word, amazing. Each one poses certain strengths and weaknesses that every person can see in themselves. Jealousy, Indifference, Pain, Loss, Humiliation. I really fell in love with Lucy/Nyuu. For reasons I cant put words to...she struck me. Their developments were...rushed, to say the least. I would have liked to understand each person better but again, that is what comes with such a short series. It is truly regrettable we don't get to learn more.

Animation: 9/10 The animation was fantastic, they were able to keep detail while having quick movement frames and also kept good detail on the blood splatter and facial features during emotional trauma.

Voice actors 10/10 I couldn't say anything against them. None were horribly irritating, nor did I feel any of the voices didn't coincide with the characters.

Overall 8.5/10 I felt everything was amazing in the series, the only real issue was the shortness and that I feel that the story could have kept going and added a lot of extras the audience wanted.

[OtakuInu!!!]

Synopsis: Dicloni (sing. Diclonius meaning 2 horns) were mutated/next generations of humans. They were said to eliminate humankind and be the new humans. The organization that keeps them also keeps this info. from getting to the whole world. Their said queen (like the queen bee) of the Dicloni is Lucy one of the most dangerous dicloni ever. She is also said that she is the only 1 who could reproduce dicloni. So when she escaped the org. made sure to do everything they can to track her down and eliminate her. Then she was found ashore by 2 people who took her in. She also lost her memories, & can't talk fluently, so she was called Nyuu because that's all she can say. A lot happened though but I don't wanna type anymore.

Story (8/10): This should be 6/10 though. But I reviewed my observations and found that there are more positive things I like about it so I decided to give it an 8/10. Anyways, it deals about the facts of life. Like oppression, child abuse, That's the part where I little regretted to watch Elfen Lied.　And some trauma watching it. maltreating others who are unlike us. But it does have some good characters in it. Also, it deals with much violence and gore.

Characters (9/10): I like the characters. But they make Lucy/Nyuu look like she has a multiple personality (in fact she does but they make it look that it's always active and she doesn't remember her other personality). And Mayu's past is very delicate. And the characters have their own little story.

Animation/Graphics (8/10): The grahics are fine. But the dicloni's hairs are always pink. Also some parts where they show severed limbs are very cool but disgusting at the same time.

Voice acting/Music (10/10): I have no problems with the seiyuu's voice acting. And I like the music, creeped me out a little, but I like it. The Opening is Lilium (Lt. lily) by Kumiko Noma and the Ending is Be Your Girl.

Overall (9/10): I forgot what I voted for this but I'll put 9/10 because I like it but the traumatic experiences I had watching it made me think about the negative possibilities that might happen to me. And it lead me to a little negative thinking.

[TwiDragon1000]

Story - 8/10
Theres two storys that start out, and they join together. You have the story about the scientists, and the story about Khota. I can't say much, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who is reading reviews. I will be glad to say that there is no filler in this anime!
Characters: 7/10
I liked most of the charachters. All of the main charachters had a backstory, and there all sad. All of the charachters have emotion, there is only one or two chrachters who stick with one emotion. However, IMO Yukia is the worst charachter. She was under-devolped, and really jelouas with Khota at times. What I think is even more wrong, is that there cousins and she has a crush on him :banghead:
Art/Animation: 9/10
The animation needed to be fast moving for this anime. The company did a good job at doing this! As for the art, I think that the artists could of lowered the blood and nudity level. At some scenes it felt like they just wanted to throw in a random shot!
Voice actors 8/10
Everyones voice fitted for me except Yukas. Her voice actor really didn't try in my opinion. It sounded like one of those crappy fan-dub voice actors you find in the grave yard of youtube. It was really bad! I've heard other reviews who didn't mind her voice, but still. It was just a joke to me!
Overall 8.75.10
I enjoyed this anime, sure it was a bit gorey at times, and it had some intense scense, but it has a nice story, awesome charachters, and is just overall great. I will not say this show is for everyone, because my sister backed down from this on the 2nd episode!

Anyways, I do reccomend this to anyone. Although if you can't make it through the first 5 mins, then just stay away from this show. Because it gets 10 times as voilent, intense, and dramatic.

-Matt

[threewolves]

Really enjoyed this series. But it does want me to go get the manga and read it, just to see the difference.

Edit sorry, should of read the rules first.

Story - 9/10 - Loved the story, and enjoyed how they tied everything into each other.
Characters - 8/10 - Characters were well done, and existed well with each other. Only issue was Yukia, should of been developed better than just a jealous person. Just seemed that was her main drive, and it never really explained why. I dont buy thats its just cause of the crush.
Art - 9/10 - Enjoyed the art/animation. Was very pleasant to watch and fed into the storyline very well.
Voice Actors - 9/10 - the actors showed very good control of their voices to express the emotions needed at the time. It never distracted me, and drew me into the story.
Overall - 9/10 So far, since coming back to anime, this is one of my favorites, though after watching it, I did have to go watch some light hearted anime. :)

[Mugiwara-no-Basuke]

I've just started watching this anime and it seems pretty interesting! :D

[MVPDJ23]

I've just started watching this anime and it seems pretty interesting! :D

it is interesting, you love it :) but it sucks that it only goes to 13 episodes :(

[Mugiwara-no-Basuke]

it is interesting, you love it :) but it sucks that it only goes to 13 episodes :(

I already am :) Yeah, that really is a shame, I felt the same about Deadman Wonderland (12) and I certainly will feel the same about EL

[Kaleohano]

loved it enough to make myself a sig of it and theme my profile after it!

[darkrider21]

this was one heck of an anime. i loved it :) 9 out of 10