I was drawn in at first mainly because I was looking for dark anime, you know, something a bit bolder and bloodier than just your average Bleach or Naruto or any of that shite. My meticulous research brought me to Elfen Lied, already startling for possessing a German name that bears very little actual relevance to the plot or anything at all, really. I was also helplessly tantalised by the weird, kawaii imagery (particularly on the manga covers) being juxtaposed with descriptions of 'frequent nudity', 'dark subject matter' and 'sadistic, bloody violence'. In all honesty, it's those three things that finally sold it to me and got me firing the motherfucker up on YouTube. The brief synopsis on Wikipedia all sounded very generic anime-style -mutants, sci-fi, girls with animalistic features, etc - but there was no way I expected the thirteen episodes of pure emotional onslaught that was to follow.
Elfen Lied is one seriously harrowing experience, to say the least. On the surface it's all very generic Japanese weirdness - stupid amounts of blood, characters that barely behave like real people, high-pitched girls being both childlike and adorable yet intended as sexually promising, etc, etc, etc - but when you actually knuckle down and watch the whole of the very short thirteen-episode series, you'll find that the experience is so emotionally draining that you'd wished you spent the last six and a half hours watching something a whole lot happier. By the end of the series, when the flashbacks started popping up, nearly every episode was a different experiment in gut-wrenching character-driven misery. Don't let that wide-eyed cute girl on the cover fool you - the entire series is one long wallow in pure nihilistic gloom. And when there isn't gloom, there's shock.
I guess I should run over the story a little bit. Basically, the series revolves around the existence of the Diclonius, a race of all-female mutant people whose characteristics include two nubby horns on their head and the ability to manipulate and cut things with a number of invisible appendages sprouting from their body, which they use almost exclusively to murder human beings, and occasionally each other. These mutants are either killed at birth or, like most superpowered mutant people, imprisoned by the establishment in a top-secret military hideout in order to be cruelly experimented on. Needless to say, one of them escapes, and escapes in style, as the bloody massacre of the series' opening ten minutes shows. This mutant is the series' anti-hero, Lucy, who leaves the research facility injured in such a way that she spends the entire series switching between two personalities - one her usual human-despising, all-powerful and generally stern-looking self, and the other a character that is nothing but the embodiment of fan service, a bit like the girl from Chobits without the ability to take the piss out of itself.
Despite the synopsis' focus on the existence of these mutants, in reality the real soul-charging power of the series comes from much of the actions of humankind. Characters are abused, neglected, raped, abandoned, tortured, and of course brutally murdered. The violence is gratuitous, yes, and at first you feel it exists solely for spectacle, but in actuality the series' shock value comes less from a teenage girl using magic to pull a man's head off, but from the various integrated characters traversing through some sort of painful arc where they end up worse off than they were in the first place. The flashbacks are the show's main points of heartstring tugging - episodes 8 and 9 especially, which concern Lucy's past as a childhood outcast, are particular heartbreakers in the vein of Gobbolino the Witch's Cat meets Carrie. In fact, it's the unnerving combination of dark, dark subject matter with the Japanese's insistence on making everything cute and adorable that makes the more horrific parts of the anime really succeed.
Some of the shallower complaints against the series surround its gratuitous violence and nudity, and boy is there a lot of nudity. However, in all honesty, I was expecting a lot worse. The nudity here isn't all that perverted and tasteless, give or take. There's no graphic sex or anything (the closest it comes is disturbing flashbacks to child rape, but at least that's meant to be disturbing). The West is still finding it hard to get its head around the fact that nudity isn't always sexual and the portrayal of nudity on TV isn't always meant to give its audiences a hardon. Although, when it comes to the various fourteen year old girls bathing together and giggling, there's an inability to deny that this anime like so many others suffers from 'creepy Japanese pedo' disease. There's even a scene where one female character grabs another's breasts for no particular reason than to create nervous laughter. It's true that this anime's strong points are less about its dire attempt at raising a chuckle and more about its bombardment of sorrow. There's also a strange choice of music when it comes to the credits of every episode. While the intro sequence is a beautifully crafted mix of Latin classical music and Klimt paintings, the end credits jump into some shitty J-rock that totally spoils the mood.
The anime-watching community seems divided on Elfen Lied. Some call it a daring masterpiece that questions the value of life and the darker sides of humanity, and some call it ridiculously gratuitous in its X-rated elements and heavy-handed with its repertoire of depressing storylines. I myself think it's genuinely brilliant. It's not perfect in any way, it's all over the place and most of the characters act a little too illogically, especially regarding everyone's acceptance in finding a girl with fucking horns coming out of her head, but when it comes down to it, this morose and melancholy series of tragedies is going to be haunting me for a long, long time to come. It's definitely not for everyone, but if you can stomach the first episode and you felt sad at the end of Of Mice and Men, then you're probably going to enjoy this blood-soaked gem.
No trailer in the world could truly explain this beautiful monstrosity, but click here for a nice try. (In English)
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