Elfen Lied (Review)
You’re both wrong
I know, I know. I really am terrible. Behind the curve. I just watched Elfen Lied. Incidentally, that name is hard to type, it keeps coming out Lief, like Garrett. Apparently it’s German, meaning “Elf Song,” why I’m not sure I’m interested in knowing. What I do know is that a few years ago when this series came out it was instantly notorious — and very divisive — thanks to its vicious opening minutes, and its gratuitous nudity, violence, and reliance on anime clichés.
Story
Elfen Lied concerns mutated people called diclonius who, at the age of about three, begin to kill with invisible arms called vectors. One especially nasty one called Lucy escapes containment in a research facility in the beginning and proceeds to wreck shit until the amnesiac, mellow and friendly side of her split personality takes over and she moves in with a boring guy called Kouta and his equally boring cousin Yuka in their inherited house/former inn, where they all eat noodles and fuck like beasts. I made only one part of that up, just replace it with “engage in pseudo-hilarious antics of vaguely sexual misunderstanding.” Here’s where shit gets bad, and that’s the first episode. From here on out you’ll find an endless parade of anime clichés from nearly every genre, all living under one roof at the Love Hina Inn.
- Pair of cousins who enjoyed life as childhood friends until the boy moved away and the girl developed unrequited love for him.
- Girl from the sky/aether/secret research lab with destructive powers who doesn’t understand our world and can’t communicate well, and throws herself at boring protagonist.
- A harem-esque setting that continually grows.
- A scientist who loves one of his experiments as his own child while his real offspring suffer.
- A cold-ass female scientist with possible feelings for aforementioned other scientist who eventually realizes her mistakes too late.
- Horrible tragedy in the past causing protagonist to lose all memory until the climactic scene when finally he realizes what the audience has been shouting at him for 13 episodes while throwing Doritos at the TV.
- Nudity. Lots of nudity. And as a bonus… fanservice too. Sounds weird, but it won’t once you see this thing.
So detractors really have a lot of ammo, but at least there’s truly unbeatable gore. The vectors can twist and tear people apart brutally and instantly, so buckets of splatter and severed spines are really the flavor of the day here. Is that enough? I don’t know. There’s not a lot of depth here until the final couple episodes.
Animation and Design
Character design is really crap, except for vicious-eyed Lucy, who seemed to have a little time put into her. The animation is totally capable and really shines during the action/gore scenes. Decapitation seemed to be a real priority for these animators. Diclonius have “horns,” but tell me with a straight face they’re not cat-girl ears.
Fanservice is an odd thing to think about in a series where at least three characters spend a lot of time completely naked. Supposedly there is some symbolism and thought in the nudity, but I didn’t catch it so well. It is interesting, though, the animators (Genco) did seem to treat the naked diclonius different from fanservice: if you need proof, check out episode 6, which is that obligatory burst-of-panty-shots episode you so often see. Someone was definitely conscious of making “fanservice” its own entity here.
Thoughts
The content itself is really going to get in a lot of people’s way, and I think that’s fine, it’s rough at times. Only one bothered me, and if you have a problem with violence against puppies (who are you? Hitler?) it’ll bother you too. But all in all, I not only enjoy the ridiculous gore, I think those scenes are the only ones that really kept driving it for me until the end. Kouta’s moment of realization of what happened to him 8 years ago was obvious in its conclusion, but the execution of it is brutal. And Lucy’s childhood is pretty nasty as well.
If you can see past the clichés and easy routes, you’ll especially find a great character in Director Kurama and a decent, if not especially deep, commentary on the nature and importance of family. But the emotional involvement you can get from Elfen Lied is a lot weaker than what its proponents have claimed.
Ultimately the good is pretty good and the bad is really bad, so it’s a battle for your taste. Your level of anime fandom in general may be directly proportional to the amount of retreaded abbreviations and clichés that you can take before you snap. So I guess that makes Elfen Lied an interesting proposition: Those people who aren’t too familiar with the old chestnuts and those who are willing to overlook them will find scraps of a decent story and some cool brutal action. But in the end it’s neither as horrible or great as people have made it out to be. It’s fairly forgettable save for some of anime’s best dismemberment scenes.
I guess at least there won’t be another show I’ll say that about any time soon.
