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Feb 11, 2014
Plot Introduction:
A human mutant race called Diclonius is held captive at top secret research facilities to conducht experiments on them and their vectors. Vectors are their invisible additional arms which are even capable of ripping off body parts with ease. This species is unable to feel mercy and sympathy and kills their human parents at the age of 3, which also is the point where they get discovered by the facilities. So it would be pretty bad if one of those Diclonii got into the real world, right?
And exactly this happens, the Diclonius Lucy gets away due to a guard's mistake, kills a lot of
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guards on her way out, gets shot in head, survives and falls into the sea. After that she is found naked at a beach by Kouta and his cousin Yuka.
But due to the shot to her head she falls into schizophrenia now having a child-like alter ego who is only able to say "Nyu". The cousins feel sympathy towards her and take her with them. Little do they know, that her psychotic and murderous site still sleeps in her just waiting to awaken.
Of course the facility won't hold still and tries to get her back. In addition to that Kouta seems to have a shared past with the murderous Lucy, which he forgot about.
And so one of the most fascinating series I have seen begins.
The most interesting thing about Elfen Lied is probably its diversity. From gory mass murder to peaceful dinner, from pedophilia to romantic love and from animal cruelty to animal loving. Not really much you can not find there. Also does this anime toy with your emotions: You begin to detest Lucy as a brutal killing machine then she turns into her innocent alter ego you can not really blame for this, then she falls back to old behaviour and murders a child but afterwards you learn about her past, which shows that she just projects cruelties done to her onto other persons now. You do not really know how to feel about her. The fact that she rediscovers her love to Kouta from long ago and he answers this feelings does not make decisons any easier either.
Sadly Lucy is the only character with that much depth in this series, the rest is pretty average with not much development but Lucy is enough to fill the voids or at least make those acceptable.
The depicted tragedy and sadness which lies in Lucy's and Kouta's past is excellently reflected in the opening and soundtrack. It is a slow and sad song called Lilium sung in Latin which sets you in to the mood the anime tries to represent right after watching the opening, this song is reproduced throughout the series so it may seem lazy or annoying but I think because it fits the mood so perfectly it is fine this way.
The art though is hardly above average, there is nothing that can be pointed out as special in the artistic way, it just looks dull and too simple at some points.
Elfen Lied is an anime that relies heavily on an emotional connection with the viewer, it is itself nothing really special despite its ability to suck you into a vortex of sadness,romance and tragedy. To me this effect was powerful enough to neglect the flaws it may have, so I am not saying this series is flawless and has a 10/10, I say because you get so sucked into the different extremes and the strong contrasts that you are willing to overloook these flaws for the greater good.
I strongly recommend seeing this, because it is just so unique, so that even if you did not like it, you have made an interesting experience.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 11, 2014
A hundred years ago mankind was close to extinction due to man-eating titans suddenly appearing. As a last resort they built three humongous walls to protect them from these monstrosities. At the time the story takes place mankind lives in peace again, not worrying much about the titans outside of the walls. The military responsible for guarding the walls is slacking off 'cause there is nothing to do and the recon troops who do expeditions into titan-territory are not taken that seriously and are called a waste of resources. In this rather peaceful scenario the unthinkable happens: Titans break the first wall and remind mankind
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of the ancient day's terror. So the batlle for mankind's survival begins anew.
This kind of apocalyptic scenario holds a lot of potential: The struggle of mankind against the nearly unbeatable foe, can we uphold humane acts at the brink of extinction?, can we fight the seemingly unavoidable?.
A story of despair, tragedy and drama is about to unfold.
But it does not quite work. The promising setting gets ruined by its realization.
First of the way of animating seems pretty outdated, everytime a character is supposed to look sad,concerned,serious or angry there are black stripes above his eyes and on his forehead. This does not amplify the impression the situation is supposed to present or depicts a realistic facial feature it just looks bad. In addition to that the supposedly looking nemesis of mankind, the titans, that are meant to look scary and frightening look godawful. One looks like Santa Claus, the other runs like a mentally disabled and so on, rarely any titan fulfills its purpose of being scary, they act more as comic relief and are so destroying the mood that is supposed to be generated.
Next up are the characters and i had a problem with the protagonist Eren Jaeger. He wants to kill every titan and is not afraid of telling everyone but when it actually comes to killing one he is from being capable of doing so but still insists he would be able to. Other than that the characters are okay, some are better developed and implemented some are worse but I missed "special" characters, most of the presented ones are shallow and pretty simple designed with not much of character development.
The story is a tricky point; I really liked the idea behind it but it starts incredibly slow. With "only" 25 episodes at hand there is no time for a slow start like you see in longer anime. This way a lot of the tension, which the scenario and setting in this series heavily relies on, disappears and it gets dull and sadly this happens for me. This results in the real action only starting at the end of this anime leaving you with a lot of unanswered questions and a barely progressed plot. The story also lacks authenticity at some points, i can not go too much into detail because of spoilers but the military strategies and political actions are highly questionable and, in my opinion, irrealistic for this situation the acting persons are in.
I need to praise the soundstrack and openings though, they are fitting perfectly into the mood at the perfect time with the perfect sound, what the story tries to depict gets perfectly presented by the audial effects.
TL;DR: Great idea with great potential but not well enough executed, story has too many flaws and plot does not answer enough questions or has not even really started, perfect soundtrack, pathetic giants totally not presenting what they are supposed to, average charater, mediocre or worse artistic depiction.
I do think though that a secound season with the plot really picking up steam could score a perfect 10, this season/series merely fulfills the role of an exposition.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Feb 11, 2014
Plot overview:
Kouichi Sakakibara is supposed to attend his new Junior High in Yomiyama but he is incabable of doing so because he is hospitalized with a collapsed lung. While at the hospital he gets greeted by the commitee of his future class 3. He furthermore accidentally encounters a girl, called Mei Misaki, from his future class in the hospital's elevator who is bringing a doll "because of a promise" to the morgue.
At his first day at school he gets a warm welcome by everyone and starts to get to know Misaki better. As the other students in his class get wind of this, their
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behaviour changes, they get all mysterious with stuff like "Does he know?" "Should we tell him?". So the question arises: What is the secret behind this mysterious Misaki. Things escalate quickly as one of the students dies by accident. But is it really an accident? The comment "It has begun" proves, it isn't. And so the mission to unravel the class' mysteries begins, students start dying and no one knows why? Or do they?
This is as I think a pretty good setting for a mystery, horror and stuff anime with problems to solve and secrets to disclose. You really keep yourself guessing during the anime "What is behind all this?". The way the hints and little portions of informations are placed is well done to keep the tension high and result in you biting your nails. Assisting this good setting is the sound which sets the right tones at the right moments to amplify the impressions the series wants you to have. The way it is animated also helps with this, stuff looks good and i really liked the way the blood is presented.
But how come this only has a 7/10 with a setting and strong depiction?
There are a few downsides to all this:
First of the chatacters are really shallow, there is nothing really special about them: one is gloomy, one is a troublemaker, another one is the smarty and the protagonist is your Mr. Average. That is pretty much all you can say about them. To be fair it is hard to depict character depth in 12 episodes but there was not done enough in this regard.
Then there is something about the story; dont get me wrong, the story up to episode 10 is marvelous and really well executed but it does not match up towards the end. Everything that was so carefully built up got thrown away. The effort of 10 episodes went to the trash bin in basically 2 sentences. Also the end does not fit very well in my opinion, too many things are left unanswered and unexplained and it leaves a bit of dissatisfaction at the end.
TL;DR:
Great Mystery/Thriller setting and story, shallow characters who can be overlooked due to tension, good art and sound, really keeps the tension at maximum level. The ending just threw most of the good parts away and left a feeling of dissatisfaction and disappointment.
Watching it was still worth it because of the first 10 Episodes which are easily a 9 or 10/10, so get 83% of almost perfect anime and the rest is also survivable.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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