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Elfen Lied. This was an anime/manga I've been looking forward to completing for quite a while. Now that I'm done, I've decided to give a detailed review on the series. I'm new to reviews, so I hope mine will help with your decision on whether or not to read it.

Story:

I think the overall story was very enthralling. The idea of the diclonius and their powers of invisible arms was a really neat one. The backstories of the characters, particularly Lucy's, are well done and help explain how each character turned out the way they did. The first lab escape scene is enough to get anyone ... hooked. The only real problem I had in the story was how "Nyu" came to be. In the first volume, Lucy gets shot in the head with a bullet and gets amnesia. However, what is never explained is why she reverts to a child-like state, repeating the noise "nyu", and suddenly going back to her first personality whenever she gets a head trauma. Other than that one small problem I had, I think the story was great all the way through.

Rating: 8/10

Characters:

This part of the series had some more flaws than the others. I liked most of the characters, however, the main two were the most problematic to me. Kouta, the male protagonist, had a decent role in Lucy's backstory and the formation of her character, but was mostly just played the role of a stereotypical, bland, "dense" male harem protagonist like so many others. The actual series as a whole wasn't really a "harem" exactly (not all of the female characters liked the main character or served for fanservice), but it did give off those vibes once in a while.

Yuka is the second one I didn't like. She always played the role of the extremely jealous love interest, and was generally unlikeable. Not to mention she'd get emotional so often from any little thing Kouta did.

As for the others, I liked them, some more than others. My personal favorites being Lucy and Nana. Lucy was the most dynamic character in the series and despite being a "villain" in the series, trauma from her past explains her current state of mind, and she's not purely good or evil throughout. Nana, was like a foil for Lucy. Even though she was also experimented on and treated poorly, Professor Kurama served as a loving father figure for her, which resulted in her being more optimistic and "innocent" to a degree. Even though some other reviewers dislike her and say she's "annoying" I think she was a sweet, likeable young girl who also went through a good amount of development throughout the series.

Rating: 6/10

Art:

The art wasn't stellar, but was still fairly good throughout. The anime's art was a bit of an improvement, but the manga still had a decent art style. The character designs were also fairly well done.

Rating: 7/10

Overall thoughts:

I think Elfen Lied was a great manga. It was very enjoyable to read, and I'd recommend it for any science fiction manga fan. It isn't flawless, but I'd say it's an above average series. My overall enjoyment is a 9/10, but in terms of a critical review, I give it a 7/10.

Forgive me if I forget some details. It's been a while since I've watched this anime, and it certainly didn't captivate me:

Zankou No Terror. An anime that I have heard much praise from for its fairly unique take on the sensitive subject of terrorism. At first this anime seemed promising. It had a good starting point, a captivating chase for the terrorists, who are the main characters, and it had me genuinely suspenseful for the first few episodes. But then after episode 4 or so, it went downhill.

The two main characters were a fairly interesting duo to begin with. A charming, intelligent "older brother" type ... leader, "Nine". And a younger partner who seemed more of a follower, "Twelve". Fairly cliche character roles, but it worked well. Unfortunately, the motive they had for their "terrorist attacks" wasn't very well established, which is problematic to enjoying the series. They just had a sad childhood and decided to blow up stuff for fun because they're psychopaths. And their attacks had no casualties, despite destroying entire buildings. That's literally impossible. At least a few people should have been injured, and some killed if this happened in real life.

Anyways, moving one to other characters. One that ended up being a nuisance was "Lisa". She was a generic "Mary Sue" type character and a "damsel in distress" who served no meaningful purpose in the story and just annoyed me. She was always a screw-up who seemed to just be in the way and be a forced love interest for the duo.

I'd say one of the biggest problems that came along was the sudden change in plot. I started to notice many plot ideas stolen from Death Note (which I won't go into too much for spoilers). The duo's back story ended up being generic and as I said before, seemed to take a lot of "inspiration" from "Wammy's House" in the anime Death Note. Another big problem to me was how the series went from the two characters BEING terrorists, to ending up...trying to stop other terrorists? The character "Five" that appears was also from the same setting as them. She's portrayed as being a detective going against them, but is really just another terrorist just like them. Overall, she's a generic antagonist, which makes the plot more confusing. Many parts of this story make very little sense or are ridiculously unrealistic, like the ending, which I won't give away.

Conclusion: If you're looking for a psychological thriller with a deep plot and a well thought out, creative story, go look elsewhere. The first few episodes started off decent, but the episodes after episode 4 or so is when the series started to get worse. Go watch an anime like Death Note or Code Geass instead.