Elfen Lied

Backlash against things that are popular is pretty much unavoidable, but it’s rare for the reputation of a piece of media to sink so drastically over the years that it becomes difficult to imagine the work in question has been popular at one point in the first place.

Elfen Lied is one such work. Having gained traction for being ultra-violent, bloody but also philosophical and sad, especially at a time where these things have become rarer in anime, it was obvious that many older fans would call these elements into question. The show just being shock value, badly written and faux-deep has become almost the consensus, to a point that having a positive opinion on Elfen Lied will make you look like a fool among the anime community.

And I can totally understand why. As a fan however, I disagree with a lot of these criticisms. Or at the very least, think there is a lot more nuance to the reasons for why the anime is the way that it is. Instead of doing a typical review, I’d like to only examine a lot of the problems people have with the series. I will be doing this partly bit by bit as they get introduced to the viewer in the story, so spoilers will follow.

We start with the opening, Lilium. This is definitely the least controversial part of the show with pretty much universal praise for at least the theme song. The visuals being replicas of famous paintings with “moe” girls, not so much. I like the illustrations of Lucy here but the others don’t work that well in my opinion, though Nana looks kinda cool. What’s more important is the establishing of the intended tone, as it creates a very tragic feeling. Regardless of what manga author Lynn Okamoto’s vision was, the director (Mamoru Kanbe) clearly didn’t want this to be only a fetishistic anime.

This carries throughout the whole show with the opening theme being used as a leitmotif in multiple variations. This is really important to me, as with the following bloody massacre often comes the notion for it being “baby’s first gorefest”. To me this implies similar, better anime with graphic content. But it completely ignores the framing though, which to me is fairly unique. Whether the content of the story is supporting it or not, it has a specific appeal that you cannot simply replace.

It’s not just the music though, the way the gory parts are animated also doesn’t give me the impression it’s just trying to be cool or any crueler than it in reality is, like you’d find in 80s or 90s OVAs. With reality I mean the fact of it happening, not the intricate process that is also never implicitly shown. Like a lot of detractors say, it does have a cartoon-ish element to it. Now for me, this is actually one of the big reasons why I like it so much. Because it is anime, it can tell inherently brutal stories and both heightening the violence for thematic purpose, but also make it way more digestible than it if were live-action.

That said, personally even watching Elfen Lied as a teenager it never was really shocking to me. I very quickly learned to accept the violence as complete abstraction, but I acknowledge there are many people who cannot do that and understand not liking it for that reason. Just as well I can understand not being able to take it serious at all, though I think that one is easier to compensate by giving it a real chance and meeting it on its own terms.

I want to briefly address the production in general. It is by no means outstanding, but I think it gets a bit too much of a bad rep itself. I like how colorful the show looks, and a lot of the backgrounds have nice textures to them. Sometimes it can be quite garish and there are a lot animation errors, but when everything works together it creates some beautiful and memorable scenes. The in-universe invisible vectors that act as extra arms and for attacking have a really cool effect I haven’t quite seen elsewhere too.

Besides the gore, probably the biggest turnoff for most is the protagonist. Kouta is being introduced as your completely average fish out of water character. He is “just a nice a guy”, and his generic design certainly doesn’t help. I can understand the frustration, but I never found this inherently bad. I like seeing nice people who help others, and who can keep it up even when it’s getting more difficult. He feels pretty genuine to me, but I admit he doesn’t have a very exciting personality to watch which I do consider a flaw. Aside from that, I can’t really see much wrong with his backstory and suppressed trauma however.

For his female cousin I don’t have too much to say. She’s a solid support character and I think the way her jealousy is portrayed is pretty good. Maybe it’s just because she’s a college student, and there’s not much room for high school tier melodrama. Regarding the incest.. who the hell cares. Sorry. It really is not relevant at all to the story whether she’s a cousin or just a family acquaintance.

It’s the same with the ecchi humor. I get why it’s bothersome, but it’s just a bit of comedy that I don’t find funny. It shouldn’t be a big deal. I guess I also have to talk about the piss scene though. Yes it is very likely included for fetish fuel. It also made sense why it happened though and reinforced Nyu’s helplessness. Whatever.

Bando is just a bit too over the top at first. He gets a surprisingly high amount of development, and I actually haven’t heard many complains about him.

The rest mostly has to do with preferences in storytelling. I don’t mind contrivances if it brings the characters into interesting situations where they have to make difficult and consequential decisions. From this perspective, Elfen Lied is for my money one of the most effectively written stories ever.

Another reason the show is being called too edgy is a form of supposed “misery porn”. Besides murder and cutting off people’s limbs, it brings up things like torture, child abuse, rape and genocide. In no way do I like to see those things. But hear me out. To me, Elfen Lied is actually about forgiveness and hope.

It crafts this ultimate grim setting to ask if there can still be salvation for humanity despite all of our cruelty, and thematically it does so on both a large and small scale. While there is no definite answer to either, at the end of the anime our main characters did manage to save two seemingly lost causes from their fate and are able to live on.

Call it artificial or cheap, but to me it is effective. Part of the reason we write about bad things to begin with is to make the eventual victory that much more convincing. It makes me hopeful that whatever happens, we can make it through. I understand though that it is difficult to digest and not to view as cynical. There will always be a line for us where beyond it is just not worth it. I for example cannot make it through Oyasumi Punpun. But maybe I could offer a new perspective for this one.

All said and done though, I don’t consider Elfen Lied to be perfect either. The fact the message can be hard to gauge, the unintentional hilarity and some bland characters do drop it down even for me. But after years of thinking about it, I still consider it a favorite.