=( Sad to see you giving a low score for this, as for me, I think it's one of the good animes out there. Perhaps you have a different point of view from other people out there. =)
Elfen Lied tv Review
The Diclonius, a mutated homo sapien that is said to be selected by God and will eventually become the destruction of mankind, possesses two horns in their heads, and has a "sixth sense" which gives it telekinetic abilities. Due to this dangerous power, they have been captured and isolated in laboratories by the government. Lucy, a young and psychotic Diclonius, manages to break free of her confines and brutally murder most of the guards in the laboratory, only to get shot in the head as she makes her escape. She survives and manages to drift along to a beach, where two teenagers named Kouta and Yuka discovers her. Having lost her memories, she was named after the only thing that she can now say, "Nyuu," and the two allow her to stay at Kouta's home. However, it appears that the evil "Lucy" is not dead just yet...
Story & Characters
The story is... unusual. A virus is popping up in some locations in Japan, altering human genome into something more sinister, and quite frankly... evil. The offspring of those infected look like devils. Red eyes, red/pink hair, and horns are just a few characteristics. At the age of three they develop the ability to control handlike vectors, which is a biologically appropriate name because the vectors are cabable of spreading the virus. They also develop a blood thirst, and they intinctively know to use their vectors as projectilic weapons. Lucy is the one who stars as the main character in the series, and she feels alienated throughout her life due to the constant torment of others, never being accepted and always reminded: ningenjanai! (you're not human!). She meets a boy named Kouta who is very kind and understanding but not very intelligent. She slowly grows more attached to him, but a misinterpretation of circumstances and a hot temper sends her to kill Kouta's small family and soon Lucy is captured and Kouta loses his memory. Years later, they meet in a "chance encounter" and although Lucy knows who Kouta is, Kouta can't remember Lucy after the murders and Lucy's twin personalities leave no room for her to make explanations.
Rating:
Art
The art is really good, but a lot of the hair is identical in form and everything seems a bit repetative and hackneyed after the story reviews it a dozen times in flashbacks. The art and shallow story is the first indication of a very low budget, a fact I will go into more detail with later. The main setting is a beautiful Japanese traditional inn that Kouta inherits with wood floors and the like, and the entrance and frontyard are there in all their glory, along with an old broken grandfather clock that seems to coincide with the occurances in Kouta's turbulent life (and it starts working when his life seems to fall back into place). I describe the house in so much detail because theres really not much else there. There's a lab, a house, a few town locations, and a beach that keeps reappearing. Not much else really. Gives you such a peninsular feeling if you look at it too hard.
Rating:
Sound
The voices are really good. I love the way they made Lucy sound. "Usotsuki!, Zannendatana!, betsuni." A real character! Too bad the music is so infrequent and so stuccato. There were two short techno segments that appear when lucy is running on a bridge and when Mariko attacks, and they were awful! The lilium song would be a nice ringtone but with the Latin whine it gets really irritating, and they pay it with and without words far too many times to have had any sort of budget whatsoever. Gainax ran out of money and they still had over three orchestrated albums for a soundtrack. This anime has only one song of its own. There is ambient sound, like that in the subway and ocean scenes, but that's it, and the 14th episode only came out as an afterthought when they realized that there simply wasn't enough to the series.
Rating:
Presentation
The series has the typical assortment of bosses and chairmen (saicho) and a sinister corporate operation in the background that has a role of stopping the rampant virus but actually has the intention of allowing it to conquer the Earth. Not very original if you ask me, but the shock value is really good. This is the most violent cartoon I've ever seen, bar none. Roomfuls of blood and malice mean Doom is back, whether you've played it or not. There's a calm scene in a kitchen, and then someone will be decapitated, and Kouta will be cutting carrots, and Lucy will go out for some liver and onions (blood and I don't know if you've ever had Jello, but there's enough B, L, O, O, D in this series to have us all not eating any for a while. Okay, bad joke, but I'm running out of ideas. A lot of sexual comedy is present in this series, and because Lucy's second personality is very naive and infantile, she cannot change herself or remember how to use the toliet when she mentally becomes Nyu. As a result, Kouta gets to see a lot more of Lucy than he really needs to. Yuka (means floor, a connotation like that of the name Gomi (trash), who was my Second Japanese teacher) who likes Kouta but is shy about admitting it does not like what begins to happen between Kouta and Lucy, but the lack of a real conclusion prevents us from disqualifying her final association with Kouta.
Rating:
Final Verdict
6.1667 (average)
Reviewed by ayanamiX, Oct 11, 2005
Comments
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bj0rn Nov 05, 2005
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renki Nov 14, 2005
This animation is impressed very much.
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TEKcamoKEN Dec 11, 2005
haven't seen the anime.and when i look for anime sets to buy, i check reviews.for some reason,i like checking the ones that give low scores.this looks like a decent anime,and i think i'm gonna buy it.lol.
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Warpten29 Oct 18, 2009
Good Review. thanks.
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