Maybe it's just me, but I was completely satisfied with the ending. I don't know what the clock is supposed to represent, but it's a nice touch.
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
It's hard to sum up the Elfen lied series as being a romantic horror or as a serious comedy. The truth is this series is a combination of all four genres neatly congealed together at the seams with blood, gore and action incedentaly every gothic vampires wet dream.
The story plot lured me into an unshakable state of addiction for about two weeks until finaly after seven cold showers
and going cold turkey from the series for an extra week I was on the road to recovery. The story was uniquely a romantic
tragety about two people resuming what was to be doomed years before in their youth which reminds me of the movie"
a lesson before dying" not so much plot wise but in the way that life changing moments and ideals are created that
completely reinvents a character or characters before the inevitable
"final solution".
What sets the moral makeup of the story apart from others and happens to be one of my favourate traits and that is the
fact that right and wrong are never statue gestures in this genre. Usualy a feel portrayed by the characters or at least
the plot configuration that would give the audience a feel for the writers opinion in the story or stance on certain
scenarios portrayed throughout the storyline. In this way I feel the audience is not so much influenced by right and
wrong through the story but are instead allowed to choose for themselves what is moraly correct on thier own terms
unlike series like Rurouni Kenshin where good and evil / right and wrong are clearly defined, the enemy and the friend
are known and the audience en masse has taken only one side of the conflict. Elfen Lied has no clear defenition, on one
hand for example Lucy is a danger to society and possibly to humanity if she breeds, on the other hand the evils of
humanity such as cruelty and alienation based on Xenophobia commonly found in society and which we have all endulged in
or encountered put her in her predicament so who's to blame? whats the lesser of the two evils?The series makes you
think instead of picking right away.
Elfen lied is my favourate anime and possibly one of the best I've ever seen. In my opinion this series is worthy
of a ten.
Rating:
Art
The art in Elfen Lied was nothing origional in the ways of anime. However I did take a fancy to the gothic style of artwork the writer decided to use encorperated with highly detailed surfaces and surroundings. People where still animated in the same steriotypical fashion most anime characters share.
What hit me most in Elfen Lied was the realizm of the wounds and the bold ability the animator exicuted in his art. Most
anime veer away from showing gore and prefer to show gashes with spurts of blood and pooling around the wound to hide
the detail of the organs involved with the area or an odd angle would be used to hide the carnage completely. The same
cannot be said for the rather gutsy writer that came up with the series. Whenever a limb was torn off or an appendage
severed, bone, fat, muscle and veins never trailed far behind.
Rating:
Sound
Elfen Lied has a well filtered soundtrack with slim to no impurities but nothing astounding to mention. I prefer the non-dubed version since I find english narorration lacks the pazzaz and the flare of emotion the origional script presents. I find this to be of an average audio quality.
Not speaking som much in terms of audio quality but rather in the audio used in all of its limited capacity. There were only maybe a handfull of songs used in the entire plot including the main song which was baisicaly modified to either a lyrical oprah type song or to a music box chyme which is where it apparently origionated in the story or to its most popular form as background music that just drives you up the wall.
Rating:
Presentation
To say the least Elfen Lied comes fresh off the press with its own unique bounce though comprable to other anime this series comes with its own "fragrance" bounding forward with the gore factor of personal long time favourate Berserk and holding steady with the sexual oquardness and comedy of Chobits.
The series takes its own slapstick comedy preformance wich loosely resembles that of the popular hit "evil dead 2" drowning the audience in a scene of sheer unadulterated horror and tragety with quick belts of comic relief to lift the spirits or to put the characters into tense positions.
Though a very addicive story, the series is cut short at only 13 episodes possibly one of its only drawbacks in my opinion. Having such a small period of time for Elfen Lied can leave the crowd wanting more, not like with series such as bleach or inuyasha which have an excess of 50 episodes and over in order to make a grand finally exit. Elfen Lied came to an abrupt end aften what I consider to be a swadow in time.
As if the lack of episodes sent you into early withdrawl the ending will be the final nail in the coffin as it leaves its viewers in a state of wonder. Like a rubex cube, the ending of Elfen Lied makes you want to rip out all of your hair and run up and down your street, smashing windows at three AM till the cops finaly decide to drop your disgruntled ass with a full can of mace after you freakishly threaten to beat your neighbour to death with a dead cat filled with rusty sewing needles. (don't ask how I know)
Rating:
Final Verdict
8.0000 (good)
Reviewed by CrimsonMonk, Oct 16, 2005
Comments
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overkill1024 Oct 17, 2005
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KLY Oct 18, 2005
The clock represented the love between kouta and Nyu (lucy)! It's spoiled when she lost her memory and repaired at the end.. Heheh.. I watched it several times.
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Andulien Nov 08, 2005
It was a really good Anime I liked it :)
Your Review is also very good but I'm not sure why you gave it such a bad rating ? -
sunyano Nov 10, 2005
I just finished watching the first episode..it blew me away.
/me stops watching DearS for good
This show is...incredible. The first 10 or so minutes of it were truly tasteless and unlike anything i'd seen before.
Its like the really brief, gory moments from GITS (movie) and Jin-Roh, but more visible...and 10 minutes of nothing but it.
I haven’t been this giddy and shocked watching an animation since first seeing Evangelion 01 beat the **** out of and dismember the 13th Angel - Bardiel (Angel of Lightning) almost a decade ago.
While I would've liked it if the robot wasn't a retarded cat-like thing, I guess you have to have a certain cute factor for some of the audience. I would've preferred to see some burned, bald monstrosity that sounded like Steven Hawking..but maybe i'm asking too much.
I can't wait for ADV to bring this over here! Here's hoping that they don't edit it (or GANTZ).
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renki Nov 15, 2005
I like this animation.
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chrisrulz555 Mar 10, 2007
Sorry this is a bit late but I just came across this magnificent series and my definition of perfection has been realized. I watched this series in a marathon and felt so depressed when it had ended I watched it all again on the same day. That was three days ago and I still can't stop watching it, this has to be the best anime ever created.
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Warpten29 Oct 18, 2009
Good Review. thanks.
merged: 10-18-2009 ~ 04:48pm
Good Review. thanks.
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