By Jonathan Klotz | Published
For a generation Elfen Lied was an introduction to the world of anime, especially because if you can get through the gore, violence, and fan service of this series, you can get through almost any other mainstream anime series. The cute packaging designs and character designs hide the edginess and self-seriousness contained within, which, let’s face it, hasn’t aged well at all. The series’ influence extends beyond the anime world, with the Duffer brothers’ murderous Lucy cited as a direct influence on the design of Stranger Things Eleven.
Telekinetic girl meets naive boy
As soon as you hear that the telekinetic Lucy, who talks about her experience in a secret facility where she lives with other Dicloniuses… Dicloniusi? has been studied for years. Lucy’s escape Elfen Lied is significantly more violent than Elevens in Stranger Things Season 1, with significantly more blood and more corpses used as shields, but each of them is eventually saved by a well-meaning boy who develops a crush on the girl who could kill him with the power of her mind.
Elfen Lied calms down quickly after escaping the lab and soon finds a rhythm that sustains her throughout 13 episodes. Lucy, who loves killing people and finds sadistic pleasure in doing so, is replaced by another personality, Nyu, for most of the series’ runtime. As Nyu, Lucy is kind and innocent and does not wish to harm anyone with her telekinetic powers, which manifest in invisible arms called “vectors”, although she retains the potential to destroy all of humanity.
This is a remarkable achievement Elfen Lied is able to switch between heartfelt drama, coming-of-age romance, and violent slaughter in the course of a single episode. Certain parts have not aged well over the years, namely the fanservice and sometimes gore for gore’s sake, but others, including the surprisingly deep characterizations of what on the surface looks like a schlock-fest, are still relevant today. You just have to get past the bloodshed to find human emotions, even in the inhuman Dicloniuses characters.
Elfenlied is not for everyone
Stranger Things taken from many media, particularly 80s classics including Akirathe groundbreaking sci-fi anime that redefined an entire industry of entertainment Elfen Lieda 2004 release that serves as a blueprint for one of the biggest breakthroughs of the last decade is somewhat surprising. On the other hand, there’s still nothing better than the anime’s unique combination of genres, which is both a great introduction to the anime and a very terrible introduction at the same time. Needless to say, it’s absolutely not for kids, no matter how cute the DVD box art looks.
Elfen Lied wasn’t my introduction to anime; This was the Toonami block on Cartoon Network a decade earlier, but it was one of the first I saw when I picked up the medium again. By now I was used to the gritty gloom and self-seriousness of mainstream 90s comics, which featured the bizarre mix of a harem anime setting, Berserk-esque bloodshed and overly cute characters, exactly the kind of weirdness I needed at the time. It also helps that the music, especially lilyis an absolute blast and every time it plays it will motivate you to keep going with another episode.
Elfen Lied can be streamed on Amazon Prime.