Elfen Lied

I, too, thought I was into cool shit as a teenager

Elfen Lied's animation can be slightly awkward at times. The voice acting is below subpar. Nyu is pretty annoying. And an ending that has few loose strings. BUT Elfen Lied left me in shock multiple times as I wondered "can they get away with that?". It is extremely dark twisted and violent but each episode kept pulling me back in. Dealing with themes like sexual abuse of a child, mass genocide discrimination and pure evil meeting pure good shown in detail. Topped with a beautiful opening song.

The opening scene is a beautiful display of brutality and intrigue which only leads into one of the most juvenile series I've watched. The series is built upon shock value at its core, and generally this is used to justify heinously stupid plot beats where characters act cruel and irrational for no logical reason. Making a lot of deprived shit happen in a story is not bad storytelling, but Elfen Lied mostly uses its devices to justify torturing characters with no real purpose beyond that.

Merely cheap shock value at first glance, and yet there's something beyond that. Something in the honesty of the extreme scenarios, which pull no punches at all and show you everything -- nudity, gore, mutilation, child rape, it's all here. And that's just the physical stuff -- the psychological side is even worse. And yet, it feels like an honest attempt to make a meaningful story and not just for creating controversy or for making money. I don't know why it works, but it works.

i didnt mind their extra hentai shit cuz they were just doing what all animes do but with nudity. sometimes it got too fetishized/pedophilic though lol. it starts good, dips around the middle and ends good. i wish kouta and nyu had a longer and more developed childhood friendship/romance. i wish 35 was the voice in her head. i liked the clock ending, i'd love seeing a sequel. and it was cool to realize this influenced Stranger Things and wonder if the 2nd season will take more from it

worth a watch

*Japanese executive chomps on a cigar, swings a baseball bat* boys, how do we combine anime's two greatest assets: childlike female sex objects and copious amounts of sadistically spilled blood. an enterprising young trio named (looks down) Mamoru Kande, Lynn Okamoto and Takao Yoshioka came up with a solution, and 13 episodes and years later I'm giving it a terrible review

x0

"you've had many sad experiences too, haven't you?" a work which despises this world that preys on innocence, and offers sanctuary and compassion to those bound together by trauma and abandonment. kissing the girl who destroyed your universe, because you understand the terrible loneliness that made her do it. "you were a brief dream that suddenly appeared in front of me in this hell". a beautiful melody.