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[*Contains little to no spoilers*]
I don't usually write reviews, but this time I kinda ended up having commentaries for every episode, so I thought might as well post them here.

First off, the opening and the always-different endings were really fitting and good. I'm not usually a person that gives bonus points for a good soundtrack, but this time the soundtrack was either so good, or the rest was so bad that I think the OST is the best part about the whole anime. Heck, I discovered this anime from listening (and loving) to the ending of the seventh episode called "Too late" by Nene, Inori ... Minase.

Rating this was a pain, since there were different directors and this anime was really "artsy" to me. So my rating is going to be the average of all my ratings for each eipsode combined:

1st ep: 5/10. It's the intro right?

2nd ep: 6.5/10 Damn, nasty follow up. I usually hate splatter but this time it's necessary for the build up. MC seems to get influenced by the girls dreams "vibes". (Or maybe the directors give a shit about some consistency in his "personality"? I don't know.)

3rd ep: 6/10 Decent at least, but at least a complete opposite of the 2nd episode. Maybe it was good, but a bit too clichéd overall.

4th ep: 3/10 What seemed so promising at first ended as absolute garbage. What a shame. It's still a big problem in our society, so they had a solid base to build on. But all that build up so that MC can say 2 sentences and it's all over. I don't expect smart dialogues like Bakemonogatari or something, but please, "Ganbaru-zou" a bit more, will you? Jeez.

5th ep: 7.5/10 That one was good! I mean, everything was pretty OKish, I wish they didn't give part of the end so early in the middle away. Loved the end. Good shock.

6th ep: 2.5/10 Again, even worse than episode 3, they have that (clichéd) but real base theme and do this really cool semi-climax (in the bathroom, that scene, I don't want to spoil, don't even know someone would read this garbage I'm writing here, jeez that's a big ass sentence to fit in parentheses) but they totally ruin the whole thing midway. As if they switched the director to his 7 y.o. son. F.

7th ep: 8/10 Beautiful. Super cool animation. Nice story. Beautiful sleeping beauty. Emotional and truly a fitting "dream". Such a cool end, revealing the stuff and atmosphere in the hospital. THAT ENDING. I LOVE.

8th ep: 7/10 Pretty good. Felt somewhat realistic. We finally get to know about the MC. About time.

9th ep: 3.5/10 OKish base theme, but execution was utter trash.

10th ep: 5/10 They really ran out of money that episode. Jeez, that animation was pretty much at most 3 different pictures a second. Also I don't know if that episode was a bit too smart or a bit too stupid for me.

11th ep: 4.5/10 And I even counted in the bonus points for this weird, cool ending song.

12th ep: 4.5/10 To be honest, I didn't think 18if would give a proper connection to everything that happened. I wanted to know what's the thing about the MC. I don't know how I feel about that "dream in a dream" thing though. Somemight call it creative.

13th ep: 5/10 But the point I want to get to is, I don't know but in the end it really feels like those anime that show that Japan love Christianty (or at least parts of the bible), so much that they need to always rip some loose pieces out of these stories and fuse them into their own. It could end well, but this time I didn't in my opinion. I consider the whole story to be mediocre to even bad.

I would recommend this to someone who cares about a fitting soundtrack and is used to watch weird stuff. If I would have to describe 18if in one sentence, though:

a.k.a. TL;DR:

"All the budget went into lavish 3D affects and good music."


Overall (average rating of all the single episode ratings): 5/10 (Wow, who'd've guessed)

I apologize for this crappy "review". It isn't really a proper one.

Some facts about Elfen Lied:

- The outcome is god. Nothing, NO event at all occurs to make the developent of the story a bit more "realistic" or "spontaneously happening". Everything is determined before it even begins.

- Kohta has probably an IQ equal to 50. No ok, let´s say 51.

- His friends have an IQ of 40. Kohta´s incest cousin has an IQ of 80. But because the story tells her to keep quiet, so that even more people can die, because this is cool you know, she keeps quiet.

- Watching Elfen Lied at 1,5x speed is approximately 12,5% of the speed you should watch the ... show when you don´t want to waste your precious lifetime.

- Watching only the opening and the ending of each episode is probably better than skipping the OPs and EDs, because they´re more fun to watch.

- Forgiving the killer of your whole family in 2 seconds of thinking just because the killer´s a cute horned pink-haired girl is totally O.K. and makes sense.

- The policemen are, in reality, just clones. Because of the intellectual drawbacks dued to the massproduction of human, the policemen aren´t even able to activate their cerebellum, an important part of the brain, which has i.a. the function of activating the vital survival instinct of the living being. That leads to the ineluctable fact that policemen in this anime can´t even draw back when they see their colleagues being slaughtered one by one, not even when they are explictly told not to draw closer to the slaughterer than 3 meters.

This OVA made clear again how each cell of those beings called characters is full of stupitidy.
This OVA made clear again how each cell of my body is filled up with hatred when watching EL.

Ones are cool. I like to rate this one time. One, hahaha. Did you get it?
*smashes head onto the table, multiple times, until bleeding

1/10 would rate again.


(This is just a little joke review which wants to tell that a hated the show. Please don´t judge me just by reading this BS. :) )
...
Now I have to write a bit more because JavaScript tells me to do so. Okay here I go:

Some facts about Elfen Lied:

- The outcome is god. Nothing, NO event at all occurs to make the developent of the story a bit more "realistic" or "spontaneously happening". Everything is determined before it even begins.

- Kohta has probably an IQ equal to 50. No ok, let´s say 51.

- His friends have an IQ of 40. Kohta´s incest cousin has an IQ of 80. But because the story tells her to keep quiet, so that even more people can die, because this is cool you know, she keeps quiet.

- Watching Elfen Lied at 1,5x speed is approximately 12,5% of the speed you should watch the show when you don´t want to waste your precious lifetime.

- Watching only the opening and the ending of each episode is probably better than skipping the OPs and EDs, because they´re more fun to watch.

- Forgiving the killer of your whole family in 2 seconds of thinking just because the killer´s a cute horned pink-haired girl is totally O.K. and makes sense.

- The policemen are, in reality, just clones. Because of the intellectual drawbacks dued to the massproduction of human, the policemen aren´t even able to activate their cerebellum, an important part of the brain, which has i.a. the function of activating the vital survival instinct of the living being. That leads to the ineluctable fact that policemen in this anime can´t even draw back when they see their colleagues being slaughtered one by one, not even when they are explictly told not to draw closer to the slaughterer than 3 meters.

So JavaScript, do you want to let me pass now?
*quits wasting his time writing about time wasting shows

Inside me there´s just empty space.
I NEVER EVER wanted to rate an anime with a 10 AND a 0 more than this one. I don´t know. It feels empty inside me. When I think about the possiblities Sato had at the beginning, a 10 was just certain. But all through the end, every character made the wrong decisions. I just watched the end, and I feel like I played a VN and totally messed up.

!! (Now you could say what follows is a sort of spoiler.) !!

Is it just me or is this ONE kiss scene at the end really NOT necessary? Why a third ... contract? Of course, everybody knows that it´s a happy end for Sato and Misaki. But please, why didn´t you let us see it?

!! (Now there are spoilers for sure) !!

When they were at Misaki´s old house, it was the perfect time.

"Please, tell me something Sato. It doesn´t matter how boring it is. I´ll listen to you."

"I love you."

Is this too much? Is this too romantic? Is the fact, that this was NOT Sato´s answer, the proof that this anime wasn´t going to get a romance at all? Why had those 3 wonderful words to perish in the confusion of a simple discussion? Why were there no feelings? ...Was it just a fake? Was love implemented to show even more sorrow? Just to show the sorrow that brings love with itself?

Would the "meaning" of the story has changed if Sato and Misaki had kissed then? Why the joke at the end? The story was like a perfect empty canvas. They could have painted the most wonderful image of the world on it. But in the end, in the last episode, they made a mistake. It´s not just the missing kiss. I can´t explain exactly what mistake they did.

But one thing´s for sure. I am not happy with the end. Of course that does not mean the outcome of the story. That said, the outcome was pretty predictable. But hell, one kiss and every mistake would have been wiped out. Every single detail I was not happy with would be gone.

But no.
No kiss.

Maybe I am just too spoiled.
Maybe the anime didn´t want to get this romantic.
Maybe they censored the kiss because it would have gotten too mainstream then.
Maybe they wanted to create a conflict between "Éros" and "Agápe"?
Maybe this way they wanted to create some feeling to surpass love itself?

I doubt.

I don´t know.

But there´s one thing I know: No kiss - no 10. No clear mistake - no 0.
I hate numbers.
I hate the end.

Not sure how to end this review. But I won´t let it end with a contract. That´s for sure.

( ˘⌣˘) (˘⌣˘ )