Elfen Lied

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Elfen Lied must be one of the most controversial manga/anime, however it is one of my favorite stories.

What I like most about Elfen Lied are the stories of the characters and how they show those emotions through those stories. Many characters show a duality in their feelings, actions and purposes. The biggest example would be Lucy (who is an amazing character and her story is very tragic but beautiful at the same time) but other characters also have this kind of development which really makes this story overall amazing, interesting and very emotional.

For me the strongest point of Elfen Lied is the drama but if ... we add to that that it also has an excellent romance, a good dose of action and horror, it's something incredible, it's a masterpiece.

The art of the manga is not its strongest point but it's fine, and as the story goes on it gets better and better.

In conclusion I really enjoyed reading this manga, to define in a few words is a unique and very emotional story.

A story full of interesting ideas and a few great moments smeared with fanservice, WTF scenes, ok writing and questionable storybeats. Still, for all its flaws, one thing you can’t deny is that Okamoto Lynn gave it his all to make an interesting manga. That is the TL;DR of this review.

By the way, if you come from the anime there are 2 things you need to know:
Manga Lucy and anime Lucy are NOT the same character. Everyone has their differences between the two versions but Lucy has the most differences. So if she is your favorite character and only reason to read the manga, be ... prepared to be disappointed.
If you want to read from the point the anime ends, check around chapter 72 to 75. Having said that, there are plenty of differences, especially the closer the anime gets to its ending, so be prepared to be very lost if you do that. For this reason I recommend reading from the beginning.

With that done, let's start for real:
Story:
The story of Elfen Lied is simultaneously one its greatest strengths and one of its greatest weaknesses. The idea of these beautiful mostly human beings tormented by a violent psychosis which could be nurture or could be nature and the ability to pretty much kill anyone in the most violent ways sounds amazing. And beyond that, it has several moments where it deals beautifully with heavy and meaningful topics like sexual assault, isolation of people with disabilities, mental illness or loss.
Then you are hit by incest scenes that seem written for a hentai rather than a dramatic series. The sexualization of a 12 year old sexual assault victim that just a scene earlier was treated in a sympathetic tone. A random room filled with heads still connected to their spines and never reference it at all. A giant psychic meat baby. The technological jump from flip phones to mind control devices and gigantic psychic energy controlling machines.
In short it is all over the palace, as if the author snorted a bunch of crack after reading Love Hina and Gneocyber and decided to make a manga mix about both of them. If you are interested in the drama of the main character, it is possible to focus on that and let the rest be noise. But if you want a holistic coherent story plot, this aint it chief.
TW: Just in case I have not been clear this manga deals with pretty much any Trigger Warning you can think of. Many, if not most of the times, not in a sensible way. Even if it starts treating a topic with respect it might exploit it in the next scene if the author thinks it makes the story more dramatic.

Characters:
Again all over the palace (even more if you compare them to their anime versions). Some characters are mostly coherent across their story arcs while others might as well not exist.
And I have to insist, the good moments are really good. For example, the ending of the story of Lucy and what it means for her and the other character present is among the best scenes plot wise and character wise that I have seen in media.
But then, almost everyone has moments that are such low points that they might spoil the character for you, many of these moments being their character endings.
An important mention to the overall treatment women receive. Beyond the fanservice which is a personal taste factor, the story will bend over backwards to sexualize women even if it doesn’t add anything to the story, goes against their character or even against the themes that were just being developed. For me it is more bizarre than anything, as Okamoto Lynn clearly likes his strong female characters but can’t help but indulge in his love for ecchi manga.

Art:
It works for its story and I honestly believe most people will find it aesthetically pleasing. The women are cute although all of them have the same face with just different hairstyles. Men are more varied, with the evil ones having very expressive faces that communicate their intentions very well.
A very interesting detail is that there are several scenes where they feel like the mangaka went full artistically expressive and experimental over focusing on cute and beautiful people. Every time Lucy’s power gets out of control. The previously mentioned ending of Lucy’s story. Number 28’s vision for Nana. All of these are what comes to my mind when I think about this manga.

Overall, this is a hard manga to recommend, not because it is fundamentally bad but because it has so many things that can be a strong turn-off for many people. If after reading the pros and cons you still think it sounds interesting I suggest you give it a try.

You know, maybe I gotta bump up my rating for the anime, this was abysmal.

Talk about a fantastic idea. Humanity is faced with another evolution which threatens the current one, and we explore themes of nature vs. nurture, specially with characters who forgot the most important parts of their lives. What a premise! So sad this manga was so bad! I didn't even have the greatest expectations, since it comes from the gory schlock that was the anime adaptation. So many claimed the manga was great, but dear God it wasn't.

To start off, the manga has many issues with its nudity, and its ... fetishes displayed. The author was not disguising his diaper fetish, the born yesterday trope, the way every woman is just sexually abused all the time as a form of “character development”. That or edgy stuff like animal abuse, childhood murder. It's all about impregnation, and not used as a true fear that peers into life as a surprise, you just know a dude enters a scene, and he's going to do some heinous act against the girl again, or try. That, or logic just falls out of the damn window all the time.

It's a story that perpetuates itself by characters being so utterly stupid, so utterly oblivious, which is somehow better in the anime than here, and there it's so stupid too. Incest between cousins, which is treated as a serious romance, and I don't think they ever take that as potentially wrong. “Different country different values”, don't care, it was disgusting. The diaper girl character feels so improper for a manga like this. Her only need in this story was the song that appears at the end, and you can tell she wasn't necessary, since they cut her entirely out of the anime. If you want to put your fetishes in a manga, at least add them with compelling importance, not just the usual “oh their Dad hit them”, and what do you mean “he actually loved you a lot, he just hit you because your Mom died because of singing”, like WHAT?

So many things which could've been tightened, or reworked. No subtlety, nothing to chew on, and that's why I actually finished reading it because it was so easy to follow, it allowed nothing to be thought about, it told ALL OF IT, while showing NOTHING. Only flashbacks to hammer a point which I already know. I wish I skipped pages upon pages of exposition because I already had the point of them.

I genuinely understand why it's so popular, but if you aren't in tune with anime in general, or have seen several, and you read the manga, you'd not finish it at all. It's a disgusting, stupid, nonsensical, happy ending schlock that doesn't justify itself with anything. It refuses to commit to any choices, it doesn't kill any important character, or it has them coming back for NO REASON. There's literally no explanation as to HOW, HOW DID THEY COME BACK WHAT IN THE HELL?

Unfiltered ass of a manga, uncompromisingly bad, uncaringly fetishistic and disgusting. The anime is a gem in comparison, and it's still BAD. I don't understand how a person can get such a long serialization while writing something THIS BAD. The times do not justify this, this manga started and ended while 20th Century Boys was coming out. The art is terrible, although I feel bad because the author seems like he genuinely thought he'd get axed fast in some of the Q/As, but Christ, the art is just terrible.

There's nothing in this manga to grasp onto, but the idea is so good, and that's the only potential reason this managed to get a miracle of a director. If this was the first thing I saw of Elfen Lied, I'd believe it was one of the worst things I've ever read.

1.7/10. I'm still glad I finished it and gave myself the gladness to never have to return to it. Don't read it, it's legitimately bad.