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*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

I saw the English-dubbed version of Trigun on Adult Swim in 2003, and I hated it. I still hate it now, but my reasoning for it has changed after thinking about the anime much deeper than before in recent years. Widely considered an all-time anime classic, I see it as not much (if any) better than the cookie-cutter low-brow swill like Naruto.

STORY

The story for Trigun is that a mysterious gunman named Vash the Stampede roams a largely desolate planet called Gunsmoke and causes destruction everywhere he goes, even though he doesn't intend to do so. Vash has a gigantic ... bounty on his head and lots of bounty hunters, including a psychotic genocidal freak named Knives and his minions named the “Gun-ho Guns” are out to get him.

TONAL AND STYLISTIC INCONSISTENCY

I'll be frank and say the tonal and stylistic inconsistencies are essentially the “death sentence” for Trigun, because it taints just about every aspect of this anime and makes it so painful to watch. It's like the writers of Trigun couldn't decide between making a cartoonish and light-hearted shoot em' up anime or being a serious action anime with plenty of drama and elaboration of clashing philosophies, so they settled upon the worst option and chose both. Now mixing comedy with drama isn't a bad idea in and of itself when done properly. The problem with the overwhelming majority of anime titles that have both elements is that the comedic elements usually share equal (if not greater) space with the dramatic elements, and the aesthetics of the comedy don't match the overall aesthetics of the anime in question.

PLOTTING

The plotting in this anime is also victim of the tonal inconsistencies because the anime starts off on the light-hearted, cartoonish side but steadily progresses into something largely serious. This doesn't sit well with me because I want the tone of a series or movie to be largely consistent and if there is variation, the variation has to be moderate.

CHARACTERS

Contrary to the gobs of gushing reviews, most of the characters aren't works of art. People everywhere have lauded how “complex” Vash the Stampede's character is. Yes, in a technical sense, his character is complex, but you have to remember that every quality has its good and bad sides. Vash's character is very inconsistent, because he'll act like a loud circus clown then out of nowhere, he'll turn into a whiny pacifist who eats doughnuts and constantly bleats “No one has the right to kill another,” and in some rare instances, he'll turn into a tough-as-nails gunman who doesn't kill the bad guy at the last minute because he just remembered it was “wrong.” Vash's character is comparable to a dish of cottage cheese, powdered milk, boiled tofu, chicken salad, sweet potatoes, cheap Mexican beer, and chopped liver; they're both complex, but they're certainly not good. Some “contrasting” personalities can add depth to a character's main personality, but those other personalities should be there only to complement the main one and be moderate in tone, NOT to share equal space or overpower the main one because it makes the character look very awkward in an unpleasant way.

An example of Vash's inconsistent personality is in one episode where Vash is on a space station and one of the Gun-ho Guns is aboard as well, gunning down helpless people. However, there's plenty of scenes with Vash “navigating” through the space station by using his arm-mounted machine gun to shoot giant holes through the space station floors and while he falls, he screams and makes a big dumb face. Now mixing that loud and dull visual comedy with helpless people being executed like that doesn't sit well with me because it makes the comedic and somber tones feel cheap and undermined. Another is when a senile midget controlling a giant guy with projectile fists is destroying everything, Vash puts on his “serious” tone and stops the old guy and his living weapon, but after that's done, he starts acting like a clown and starts yelling “The world is made of love and peace” with a bunch of kids. Hand me a barf bag.

In previous years, I loathed Vash's pacifist philosophy just because he refused to kill people, but that's largely changed now. Batman as portrayed in Batman: The Animated Series refused to kill people, but was far more likeable because he didn't act like an obnoxious goofball in one moment and turn into a dead serious crime fighter at the drop of a hat. After some mental re-evaluation on certain plot points in Trigun, I was screaming to myself in one of Vash's “killing people is wrong” speeches “ALRIGHT, WE GET IT!! SHUT UP!!” It doesn't help that in the English dub, Vash is voiced by Johnny Yong Bosche, who has one of the most unpleasant and whiny voices I've ever heard in any medium. Some characters like Wolfwood and Knives are actually pretty interesting because they largely maintain a consistent tone (and thankfully, they're more on the serious side), but the consistent characters are unfortunately, less in abundance compared to the inconsistent ones. Meryll Stryfe and Millie Thompson weren't terribly impressive characters because they seemed like all too conventional cutouts of the “George and Lenny” dynamic in the John Steinbeck classic Of Mice and Men, other than the occasional moments of Meryll screaming her head off in a comedic style (these moments aren't funny to begin with).

THEMES

There's some potentially good themes in Trigun about the clashing philosophies between Vash and Knives since the former doesn't believe anyone should be killed, while the latter believes in something closer to eugenics as to where all the “weak and stupid” should be killed so the superior creatures can live in a “better world.” I also like how in one flashback episode where Vash and Knives are kids, Vash sees a spider web with a moth being stuck on it and a spider getting ready to eat it, but Knives kills the spider. Vash protests and says he should have saved the moth instead, but Knives's justification is pretty interesting because it was pretty legitimate, which was “If I save the moth, the spider will starve.” Sadly, these themes are undermined by the well-established tonal inconsistencies.

APPEARANCE

The animation and artwork is actually pretty good, and it shows another quality product from Madhouse Studio (only speaking about production). The animation is pretty smooth and the artwork is nicely detailed, though I'd say this is one of Madhouse's lower-quality products (along with that abomination High School of the Dead). However, more inconsistencies lay in here as well. Vash makes really goofy exaggerated faces throughout the series (along with many other characters), such as when Vash defeats the main bad guy in the first episode, he makes a cat face when he says something like “Some toys are fun, but you can get hurt.” Also, for an anime with villains that do pretty terrible things, some of the villains' appearances undermine the grim moments since they look like something ripped out of Power Rangers (yuck).

SOUNDTRACK

The soundtrack is okay, I guess, nothing special. I honestly don't remember much of it other than some Western-sounding acoustic guitar riffs and some riffing more on the electric and funky side. I wasn't impressed the last time I heard Trigun's music, but the music wasn't anything offensive, so I guess that's a plus.

FINAL WORD

Trigun is a classic case of “what could have been.” Had this anime maintained a serious tone and focused on the clashing philosophies of Vash and Knives and didn't waste time with gobs of redundant comedic filler, this could have been the “great” anime that legions of people are hailing it as. If you like comedy mixed with serious tones, then you may like this. However, if you're like me and HATE mixing the two, skip Trigun since you won't get anything out if it that you can get from numerous other titles that are much superior. If you want some decent light-hearted/comedic anime, go get yourself some Devil Hunter Yohko and Excel Saga (at least they both maintain consistency). I suggest you go watch Perfect Blue, Battle Angel, Neo-Tokyo, Shigurui: Death Frenzy, and Ghost in the Shell for some quality “mature” anime.

Now I want to see Batman and the Punisher taking turns whooping Vash's pathetic ass and then have the Punisher blow his head off with a Desert Eagle.

Devil Hunter Yohko can be best described as “Sailor Moon for boys.” It has a mix of action, violence with some gore, magical girl themes, and even some light-hearted comedy revolving around teen girls. At face value, this sounds like the recipe for disaster, but much to my surprise, this was pretty enjoyable as a “mindless fun” anime.

A lot of people have compared Devil Hunter Yohko to Buffy the Vampire Slayer; I'm sure most of them are talking about the TV series but since I haven't seen the show, I actually think of the campy 1992 film of the same name since both ... aren't meant to be taken seriously and are fun to watch. Officially, there's six episodes in this OVA, but I say there's five since “Devil Hunter Yohko 4Ever” is a compilation of j-pop music videos using footage from the first three DHY episodes (except for one that has chibi versions of Yohko and Azusa).

Each episode in DHY is a stand alone, so that means each episode has its own plot. This opens the door for repetition and depending on who you are and how you choose to see Yohko', can be a good or bad thing. Basically, the plot of each episode is that demons find a way to break into the human world and Yohko (and later, her apprentice Azusa) have to kill them; the main difference is the demons being slain and sometimes, the settings. I can see why some people wouldn't like this, but since this OVA wasn't meant to be on the same level of anime masterpieces like Grave of the Fireflies and Perfect Blue (and doesn't try to be), I don't really mind this since overall, seeing Yohko and Azusa killing demons is fun. The only episode in this OVA I didn't care for was the last one since it was tremendously mediocre and not a good way to end it. Fortunately, since there aren't any overarching plots in this OVA, it's not necessary to get the whole DHY experience.

I'm not going to bother describing each episode because as stated before, many of them are interchangeable with the plot sequences. However, I will describe some of the characters.

The characters aren't exactly works of art, but they fit in perfectly for this type of anime. Yohko Mano is a good lead character since she does act like a teenage girl and as a heroine, isn't perfect (any decent character has flaws). Yeah, she's obsessed with winning a pretty boy's heart, but fortunately this isn't overdone (except for the sixth episode). I also like how despite being a really tough fighter, she isn't an unstoppable fighting machine; she takes considerable amounts of pain in several episodes. She can be a hoot at times like in DHY episode three, when she's transported into an alternate reality and meets a prince in that dimension, she explodes with joy and says something like “I can finally kiss this cursed virginity goodbye!!” (not quoted verbatim) which got me cracking up a bit. Azusa Kanzaki is Yohko's apprentice in devil hunting and is one of my favorite characters in DHY (along with Yohko) since she's as cute as a lamb and has an admirable spirit to be an expert at her desired trade. Chikako Ogawa (Chi for short) is pretty funny as Yohko's best friend as she feeds Yohko information about the “hot boys” in school and of demons for her to kill.

The animation and artwork is good for a lower budget anime from the early 90's, and since the whole OVA spans about five years (1990-95, I believe), the animation tends to improve as each installment progresses. The music isn't too shabby, and to my surprise, I found some of the J-pop tunes pretty catchy and enjoyable for what they are.

At the end of the day, watching Devil Hunter Yohko is like eating a funnel cake or deep fried Snickers bar. It doesn't contain any nutritional value, and it's not supposed to. If you want to see two sexy teen girls kill demons, then DHY will be your cup of tea.

I never read any of the Witchblade comics, so I'm judging this anime solely on its own merits.

I got interested in Witchblade about a month or two before Christmas of 2009 and decided it would be a good Christmas present for myself, so I ordered it and had some family members pay me back. I was hooked into Witchblade by its pleasant imagery (I am a guy, after all) and with its many promises of it delivering a "touching, grabbing story." However, much like Elfen Lied, I was swindled by a bunch of the gushing praise that was totally based in dishonesty (a ... common crime committed among mainstream anime fans). It's yet another modern anime title that's horribly executed yet many people gush over it because they like its message. In art and entertainment, the message is ALWAYS secondary to the execution of it.

"Sought by the greed of Men since the dawn of Humankind, but only bestowed upon the woman whose fate it forever scars – The Witchblade. Is it the Righteous Sword of God, of the Hand of the Devil Himself? Now a new bearer has been chosen and she must discover the answers for herself. As she stands on the brink of destiny, she is forced to seek the balance between ecstasy and ruin…
Masane Amaha is a woman on the fringe of society, bouncing rootless from town to town with her daughter, Rihoko. She struggles to build a life for her family, with no memory of the past and no clue as to what the future holds. But upon their arrival back in Tokyo forces conspire to separate parent from child, unleashing the fury of the Witchblade. The young mother will find herself conscripted into the service of the Doji Group and hunted down by the emissaries of the NSWF, all while seeking to balance the weight of this forced duality."

-Taken from product description (too lazy to summarize plot myself)

CHARACTERS

The characters aren't done well, to put it lightly. They're victims of bad writing, since there's so much time wasted on totally unimportant characters at the expense of everything else. The main culprits of this would be Masane's apartment neighbors. They have no importance to the story yet so much time is wasted on such characters like the inverted fortune teller Naomi, a guy who says and does nothing named Michael, and the perverted old guy who's a computer hacker. It wouldn't be so bad if these characters weren't so bland. Oh look, Naomi constantly fusses over the pronunciation of her name and can't run her business well because she can't talk to people. How funny!! Apparently, the creator of this anime said something in the booklet that came with the DVD along the lines that he wanted all the characters to be relate-able so that you can follow almost anyone in the anime. Sorry, but I'd rather relate to only a handful of interesting characters relevant to the story than a large amount of dull ones that are unimportant to the story.

Also, some characters seem to be fleshed out in pretty ridiculous fashions. Rihoko, Masane's supposed daughter, has an absurd personality because she's a six year-old girl that functions like a fully matured adult, which is a really damaging blow for something claiming to be a character drama (which is what Witchblade claims to be). Development is horribly done for some characters as well. For one, Maria (the main antagonist) suddenly develops from a whiny infantile brat into a fully matured young woman without any gradual steps between those two stages.

PLOT-HOLES/LACK OF LOGIC

While plot-holes aren't that gigantic or abundant, they're big enough to lower the rating of the show. Something that irritated me pretty badly is that one of the main focuses of this anime is of course, the Witchblade weapon. However, the Witchblade itself isn't really elaborated upon that much. Instead, we get the aforementioned redundant character interactions.

Also, the series starts off as Masane finding and killing cybernetic weapons called X-Cons. Masane joins the Doji Group, which makes the X-Cons, and has serious objections to the X-Con program, but those objections fade away without any sort of reason.

COMEDIC FILLER

Like most popular yet poorly made anime titles, Witchblade has moments of pointless comedy thrown in solely to pad out the running length, “lighten the mood,” or add “emotional variety,” when it just degrades the quality of the show. There's a part in Witchblade where Masane spends the whole day out with Rihoko and one of the things that they do is go to a public bathhouse to relax and what could have been a touching moment was killed by a moment of stupid risque humor when the perverted old guy tries to peek in on the two bathing.

There was an episode in the series that was Masane and her neighbors just going to the beach and while that was a really bad case of general filler by itself, it had some really bad attempts at being humorous. The prime example of this would be when a woman in glasses bitches at the perverted old guy because Michael is supposed to be famous, and it's completed with goofy facial expressions more fit for Naruto than a serious anime for adults.

Because of all the filler mentioned above, this wastes a lot of time for the important parts of the story, and this causes the end of this anime to become horribly rushed and unsatisfactory. I absolutely hate it when anime titles do this.

MATURE CONTENT

Witchblade just barely gets a TV-MA rating for one or two moments of ultra-violence, but most of the content is barely risque, and there's blatant fan service given the Witchblade and Cloneblade designs.

ACTION SCENES

As shallow as this sounds, I was really disappointed by not only the lack of action scenes in this anime, but also with how lackluster most of them were. The action scenes had noticeable shortcuts in animation and most weren't so compelling.

APPEARANCE

The animation is decent at best, and while the artwork is nice and shiny overall, the character designs aren't impressive. I don't know why Gonzo hired the character designer for Love Hina to design the characters because they don't work for this type of anime. Yoshiaki Kawajiri would have been a better choice because his character designs are more distinct and mature, and especially for the female characters, much sexier. The designs of the children were too sugary for a serious anime.

POTENTIALLY GOOD STUFF

There were some moments of squandered potential here. I found the themes of “being consumed by the dark side” and the mother-daughter relationship pretty interesting and in the case of the latter, touching at times. I did feel a little sad in some areas, particularly when Masane tells Rihoko to live with Reina Soho (her real mother), but realizes how much she misses her once she's gone, along with the moment towards the end when Masane converses with Rihoko about death and what will happen once she dies. However, these feel like manipulative actions at the behest of the animators in an attempt to make you forget about the show's blatant shortcomings, and I'm not going to fall for it.

FINAL WORD

This is another bad anime that relies on emotional manipulation and some eye candy to “wow” the audience rather than coherent, logical storytelling, and these types of actions really infuriate me.

As someone who puts logic and proper story and character development before anything else, Witchblade really got on my nerves after thinking about it some more.

Watch these anime titles instead that are much superior:

Serial Experiments Lain
Shigurui: Death Frenzy
Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne
Battle Angel
Voice of a Distant Star
Armitage III
Paprika
Millenium Actress

Instead of popping Witchblade into your media player of choice, smash the disks with a sledgehammer.

I was recommended this title by a good friend of mine and decided to purchase this along with Voices of a Distant Star after trading in some anime DVDs I didn't want anymore, and am really, really glad to have seen Battle Angel. My only regret is that I didn't pick that title up in my early years of anime fandom since I clearly remember seeing a VHS display for this at the local Hollywood Video back in the day.

STORY

Battle Angel takes place in a hellhole known as Scrap Iron City. Above Scrap Iron City is a much fantasized floating paradise named Zalem. ... Scrap Iron City is seething with vile criminals, and the most vile ones attack people and take their organs to sell in the black market (particularly spines, which are the most valuable). Due to a lack of police, an organization simply known as “The Factory” hires SIC citizens as bounty hunters, who literally bring in the heads of criminals for cash. Cyber Doctor Ido rebuilds a broken female cyborg and names her Gally. Gally eventually finds a talent for hunting, and falls in love with a boy named Yugo, who on the outside looks like a mechanical repairman. However, things start to look dour when Ido's former partner, Dr. Chiren, tries to “outdo” Dr. Ido in cyborg combat and when crime boss Mr. Vector lures Yugo into a life of crime for the promise of getting to Zalem.

CHARACTERS

One of Battle Angel's best traits is its characters. The development of them is really well-thought out and they behave in complex, realistic fashions. Gally is a great character because of her intrigue due to the loss of her original memories. However, as the anime goes along, Gally gains awareness of her surroundings and becomes a fully fleshed out character. Yugo is also great because his actions blur the line between good and evil. This is so because Yugo, in desperation to fulfill his lifelong dream to earn enough credits to get to Zalem, resorts to spine-thieving, under Mr. Vector's orders, to earn credits quicker. Even though he resorts to these heinous actions, he's not necessarily a bad person because he's desperate to get a better life and escape from Scrap Iron City. Even some of the “bad” characters like Dr. Chiren are interesting because they don't act in such one-sided, cartoonish manners. We see Dr. Chiren as a villain at first, but as we see her more, she does the bad things she does under the promise for a better life (along with Yugo). On a humorous note, I think Mr. Vector looks like the anime version of jazz and film legend Scatman Crothers.

SETTING

Aside from the great characters, Battle Angel gives the audience a setting that perfectly matches the mood it sets out to make. Scrap Iron City is a cyberpunk hellhole; seething with crime and an all around ugly appearance, which is appropriate since it is after all, built out of the garbage dumped from Zalem. Scrap Iron City itself is quite unique because unlike most Blade Runner-influenced cyberpunk anime where it often takes place in an overpopulated high-tech metropolis, Scrap Iron City looks like what would happen if a city was built in the wastelands from The Road Warrior (heck, even one of the cyborg criminals bears a small visual resemblance to Wez) with everyday life integrated with Blade Runner-like technology (computers and cyborgs, etc.). The fact that Battle Angel was a low budget production from 1993 also gives it sort of a grainy picture to it as well, enhancing the unnerving mood the unpleasant visuals present.

CYBORG TECHNOLOGY

What I really like about the cyborgs in Battle Angel is that they don't look perfectly “human,” you can immediately tell that they're machines, and it shows the grittiness of Scrap Iron City since they don't have fancy parts to make the cyborgs look like sexual eye candy. Even Gally's body doesn't have the “perfect” look to it since only her head looks “human,” and everything else below looks entirely mechanical. There's even robots shown throughout Battle Angel that look like they were thrown together by random scrap, particularly the robots that work for “The Factory.”

THEMES

Battle Angel also has several themes going for it, and all of them are incorporated very well into the anime. The most noticeable one is the love theme, which takes place between Gally and Yugo, and the romance itself is pretty sad. There's also themes of freedom, obsession, and following one's dreams all accentuated in Yugo's fixation on leaving Scrap Iron City and getting to Zalem. This is also pretty sad because Yugo is so fixated on his lifelong dream, that he's blind to the good things he already has in life.

ACTION SCENES

Battle Angel has some great, bloody action scenes that add to the overall story and don't seem tacked on to grab the viewer's attention. For an anime with a limited budget, the fight scenes between Gally and several cyborg criminals are well done since I don't really recall much, if any cels being reused during these scenes. The most notable fight scene is between Gally and Grewcica (main cyborg criminal). Grewcica uses crazy things like extending fingers that can slash and destroy just about anything, while Gally relies only on her agility and strong body to fight the fiend. When Ido confronts Grewcica and one of his minions towards the beginning, it was pretty awesome to see him fight the mechanical monsters because it's not everyday that you see a guy in a black trench-coat use a rocket-powered hammer (with a sharp end, nonetheless) to destroy his foes.

MATURE CONTENT

This certainly isnt' an anime I'd let the kids see because while not a constant bloodbath, there's some moments that are pretty gruesome. The most notable example would be prior to the previously mentioned duel, the upgraded Grewcica uses his sharp, extending fingers to slice a helpless dog to death, with blood and entrails being shed in decent detail. There's fleeting nude and sex scenes involving Dr. Chiren and Mr. Vector, though it's only Chiren's body that's portrayed in the nude.

APPEARANCE

The animation for this is pretty standard for a low budget anime from the early 90's, but I don't have any gripes with this whatsoever because the minor imperfections that exist within the animation give it a charm that anime today horribly lacks. The only real noticeable “cel recycle” is when towards the beginning, when a young woman runs from two cyborg criminals, you see her running and the background looks like its being repeated as she runs. However, I think they partially covered that up by designing that corridor with a semi-repeating structural pattern. The artwork for Battle Angel is quite good since the backgrounds are painted in great detail and accentuate the grittiness of Scrap Iron City. The character art is also well done and makes them very distinct. Another quality product from Japan's greatest animation studio, Madhouse!!

FINAL WORD

My only gripe with Battle Angel is that they could have made it a little longer since all together, this OVA only runs at about 50 minutes. However, what they achieved in that little time is certainly more impressive than most anime titles that have over ten times the running length but pad most of it out with pointless filler (I'm looking at you, Witchblade). If you want some gritty cyberpunk anime that's intelligent and touching, all while being short yet to the point, then Battle Angel will be a great addition to your anime collection.

I first saw Elfen Lied back in May of 2008 because so many anime fans were giving this the highest praises. Despite the gushing praises for EL, I wound up seeing the absolute worst the entire medium of animation (Japanese or not) has to offer. While some hope in anime was restored by looking into the prime works of Studio Ghibli and Satoshi Kon (RIP), other than some anime titles I do like, my interest in anime is practically dead, and it's the raging popularity of titles like this that have made me so disinterested in the genre.

STORY

The plot is that there's a ... mutated race of humans called the Diclonious, which are mostly girls that have horns that look like cat ears and invisible arms called vectors that can tear apart anything. Their goal is to wipe out humanity, many of them are studied in a research facility in Japan. One of them named Lucy breaks out of her cell and begins killing people left and right. A sniper nearly kills her but only winds up shattering her helmet and causing her to plummet hundreds of feet into the sea. Kouta and Yuka find her naked on the beach and decide to take her home. The research facility wants her back and sends assassins, the army, and other Diclonious to get her back or kill her.

CHARACTERS

Elfen Lied's characters are extremely contrived, have no depth, and are totally devoid of subtlety or nuance. On top of these negative qualities, these characters embody practically all of the worst anime cliches known to man.

The best example of these characters acting in such a horribly contrived manner is that the main characters, Kohta and Yuka, are walking around the beach one day and find a stupid, naked girl bumbling around, and take her home without telling anyone about it. You think they would at least take them to the police department or a public shelter. Other examples are with Kohta and Mayu. Mayu for the fact that she's way too upbeat for someone who's been molested by her stepdad and had to live off scraps thrown away by a benevolent baker. Kohta is not only a cliché mousy male that's been done-to-death in harem comedy anime, he doesn't show a single shred of resentment towards Lucy after he finds out she killed his dad and little sister when he was a kid. I wasn't expecting him to go “Rambo” on Lucy, but you think he would at least give her a back-handed slap and scream at her.

Lucy is quite possibly the most abhorrent character in the entire anime genre. She has the extremely cliché split personality in the forms of Lucy and Nyu. Lucy is nothing more than a naked meatgrinder with a melodramatic backstory you'd read in the lyrics of your typical nu-metal song and an extremely uncreative split personality.

We're supposed to see Nana as some sort of tragic figure since she's constantly getting torn up and pummeled but I think it's just her fault since she's so unbelievably passive.

As the cherry on top of the shit sundae, it feels like some college campus third wave feminists and other social justice warriors gave some creative input for these characters. The best example is that nearly all of the male characters who aren't prone to subservience to women are portrayed as cartoonishly evil, such as Bando and the Diclonious company head.

CARELESS GENRE MIXING

It's like the monkeys operating Microsoft Word couldn't decide to write a serious anime loaded with gore and nudity or a silly one with plenty of erotic humor and dumb faces, so they made the most detestable decision and made an anime that had both in great quantities. The truth of the matter is that the extremely serious and extremely silly types of anime have totally different audiences and are just too different from each other to exist in the same anime. I honestly hate the overly silly anime replete with diabetes-inducing cuteness, and that's the last thing I want to see in an anime that's loaded with gore and female nudity. It also doesn't help that Elfen Lied's attempts to be funny are some of the most cringe-inducing in the entire anime genre. Oh look, Yuka is berating her loser male cousin and Nyu is grabbing Yuka's mammary glands and bumbling around naked, how hilarious!!

ABYSMAL WRITING

Right from the beginning, Elfen Lied is asking you to leave your brain at the door prior to watching it. Lucy escapes the research facility as is knocked unconscious by a sniper's bullet striking her helmet and forcing her to fall into the ocean. Aside from not dying on impact from the water (she fell hundreds of feet), how does she not break any bones and not drown? She's unconscious, she can't swim, so how does she survive being in the water?

There's a smorgasbord of other things in this anime that don't make a lick of sense within its own context. It turns out that light caliber firearms are ineffective against Diclonius beings, though grenade launchers and .50 caliber firearms can kill them, so why are the security staff at the research laboratory armed with guns that can't do squat to them? It's also shown that Kohta moved in to the house to where he's at in this series to go to college, yet he's only shown in class ONCE in the whole series. Even worse, given that Kohta and Yuka don't want Lucy/Nyu to be discovered, they take her to class, even though she acts like a complete idiot (and does so in class in a desperate attempt to provide even more terminally-unfunny comedy to the table).

Apparently, EL's theme is that humanity is monstrous to beings it sees as "inhuman," which is supposed to explain the scientists torturing and killing the Dicloniuses. I wouldn't have a problem with that if the message didn't contradict itself. The Dicloniuses kill people on instinct and the head of the company doing these experiments, who turns out to be a Diclonius, WANTS them to kill of humanity. Also, the fact that this guy is a Diclonius doesn't make sense because we're supposed to be more sympathetic to the Diclonious race, yet this revelation about the character not only contradicts its main message, it makes the Dicloniouses look even worse because not only are they homicidal vermin to humans, but also to each other.

EL leaves a lot of things unexplained since it not only reveals that the company head is a Diclonius towards the end, nothing is fleshed out about that afterward. It also has the worst ending I've ever seen in film since NOTHING is explained. I'll leave it at that.

Many fans have tried to defend the painfully incomplete ending by saying you have to read the manga source material to get the whole story. This is the worst defense of bad writing of all time, because that would be like watching Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining, having it suddenly end, and finding out you had to read Stephen King's novel of the same name to get the whole story. The purpose of an adaptation is for a creative mind to not only create their own interpretation of an existing piece of fiction, but also for it to be able to stand out on its own. The fact that you have to read the Elfen Lied manga to understand what should have been fleshed out in the anime adaptation renders the anime adaptation totally worthless.

We're introduced to Lucy as seeing her as a beast, but they later change her a little to make her sympathetic to audiences. Apparently, seeing Lucy as Nyu is supposed to make me like her, they failed miserably. All Nyu does is shamble around naked and say "Nyu" as she breaks things, this is supposed to make me overlook her insatiable blood thirst? It's like they can't decide if they want me to see Lucy as a monster or an infantile bimbo; either way, she's an abhorrent character. There's a lot of "deus ex machina" moments that really kill off any plausibility this might have had like when Bando and his comrade corner Nyu and RIGHT before they kill her, she turns to Lucy and attacks. This is some of the worst writing in animation, period.

SENTIMENTAL GARBAGE

There's plenty of sentimental gunk that would fit right at home with a Lifetime or Hallmark movie. One that immediately sticks out at me is that pukey scene with Mayu's birthday, the baker who gives her unwanted scraps made her a very small birthday cake, and I guess Kohta and Yuka get it before Mayu does, and they throw her a birthday party. I think that scene had Mayu crying and whatnot, and I was groaning at how sappy this was. I thought that scene in Fist of the North Star where one of the female characters finds a flower and cries over “how beautiful it is” was bad, but this was way worse.

Another is towards the end, where Lucy apologizes to Kohta for what she did to him and goes on about how he was the only one who was nice to him. Again, this feels like something right out of a Lifetime movie, except I would feel less cheated in the case of a Lifetime movie because I would know what I was getting into.

APPEARANCE

I hate the way everything looks in Elfen Lied, especially the character designs. The anime is full of gore and female nudity, yet the characters (particularly the female ones) are the archetypal “cutesy” styled characters common in anime like Chobits. Unless if it's for a dark comedy like the “Woodland Critter Christmas” episode of South Park, mixing intense gore with cutesy character designs never pan out. Mixing "cute" with gratuitous violence and nudity is like using 20 year-old motor oil as a condiment for the Classic Italian sandwich at Quiznos. It's certainly different, but it's the polar opposite of good.

The animation and artwork certainly had a lot of effort put behind it, but for an anime that's supposed to be gritty and harsh, the extremely clean imagery totally works against it. I detest the Diclonius designs since they're basically the stereotypical catgirls, despite the fact that this anime's fans will go out of their way to tell you that those are horns on their heads, when it's all too clear they're meant to cater to those who gush over catgirls.

VIOLENCE, NUDITY, AND INCEST

None of the above things offend me whatsoever since I'm not a stranger to any of them. However, these things look like they were shoved in EL to attract fickle anime fans (which it unfortunately has) and to offend anyone who is a "prude." These also aren't really that offensive taken by themselves since they're used so numerously that they no longer have any provocative value to them after about 20 minutes of exposure. For those of you who are claiming that the constant use of these three things is somehow "extreme," go watch Doomed Megalopolis for an excellent horror anime that utilized violence, nudity, and incest to make the overall experience unnerving rather than tedious.

SOUNDTRACK:

It's time to focus on the most overrated anime song ever, "Lilium." Everyone thinks this is such a strong and emotional song, but it's a joke. It's nothing more than extremely boring symphonic music with female vocals and Latin lyrics to make Elfen Lied look "deep" and "artistic." Take a look at Kenji Kawai's dark ambient tracks found on the first Ghost in the Shell soundtrack or Joe Hisashi's music for Grave of the Fireflies for truly chilling and emotional anime music. Also, this type of music fits NOWHERE in this Love Hina-style dramedy disguised as Hostel. Not only does "Lilium" have such a non-existent effect on me, these monkeys with Microsoft Word thought it would be great to put a freakin' J-pop song at the end of each episode, which further nullifies any provocative effect the over abundant violence and nudity might have had in this POS. Also, “Lilium” is played ad nauseam throughout the episodes of this anime, wearing out any artistic credibility it might have had really fast.

SYMBOLISM

When symbolism is incorporated into a movie or series properly, it enhances the viewing experience. With EL, however, the symbolism is carelessly thrown in to make it look "deep" and "intellectual." For one, the clock symbol in EL didn't do anything to make this any better. "Oh look, the broken clock represents Kohta's broken past and at the end it's fixed, and so is he!! How genius!!" Give me a break.

I guess there was also supposed to be a symbolic link between Lucy and that stupid music box, as I think there was supposed to be a moment after that moment in the last episode where we thought that homicidal moppet was killed and the music box stopped working, but again, it's more lazy use of symbolism to cover up deplorable story and character development.

While not really symbolism, I find the use of German names in the series's name and of the names of the episodes to be loathsomely pretentious, and I don't care that this anime is named after a German poem.

ABUSE OF GUSTAV KLIMT'S ARTWORK:

The use of Gustav Klimt's paintings on the opening credits is more examples of self-awarding pretentiousness since the saccharine-looking anime girls simply don't mix with Klimt's art style at all and the mixture looks horribly absurd. If Klimt was alive to see this happen, he'd be highly revolted by this bastardization. This cheap move is just one of the many, many fronts used to cover up the ultimate lack of good story and character development.

Good store and character development are what really matter when making any sort of show or movie because they're far more objective than references to art, literature, and philosophy. You can reference Gustav Klimt and old German poems all you want and it won't change the fact that the final product is a detestable cocktail of various toxic slop. This is like trying to make a giant pile of elephant excrement appetizing by covering it with butter cream frosting, sprinkles, and candles then selling it to an unsuspecting customer as a birthday cake. Smart people would immediately realize what they're really eating is crap, but so many anime fans fool themselves into believing what they're eating is really cake in this case.

FINAL WORD

It's like the people who created Elfen Lied wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. Contrary to what the Elfen Lied fanbase would say, Lynn Okamoto (original author of Elfen Lied) and Mamoru Kanbe (creator of the anime adaptation) aren't people who work to provide artistic merit in their entertainment, they feel more like soulless salespeople who are out to line their pockets by creating cheap entertainment disguised as high art loaded with all the worst anime and manga cliches out there. The more scathing criticism these swindlers get, the better.

I think it's amazing that Hey Arnold, a cartoon mainly geared for children (it's of solid quality overall), had two episodes dealing with the human condition called “Pigeon Man” and “Helga on the Couch,” and despite being labeled “kids' entertainment,” did a far, far superior job of executing its messages than an anime made for adults. Those Hey Arnold episodes had plenty of subtlety, whereas Elfen Lied had less subtlety than a circus train barreling into a sewage truck.

If you're looking for a dark and gritty piece of media dealing with just how awful the human condition can be, read Punisher MAX Vol. 5: The Slavers. That comic is replete with down-to-earth realism in its story and character development that makes it such a masterpiece in graphic novels geared for adults.

If you want anime titles that are much superior, seek out these titles instead.

Grave of the Fireflies
Neo-Tokyo
Perfect Blue
Paprika
Doomed Megalopolis
Akira
Ghost in the Shell
Rin: Daughters of Mneomosyne
Serial Experiments Lain
Battle Angel
Millennium Actress

If you value quality store, character, and theme development in your entertainment, Elfen Lied will be sheer agony for you to endure.