I recently watched Gunslinger Girl (2008) and it turned out to be a fantastic surprise. Wanting to find more shows like it, I look up recommendations and came across Elfen Lied (2004). The cross-listing of psychological horror, romance, and science fantasy on the show's Wikipedia page immediately interested me. Now, I've watched a good handful of shows that I've wanted to write about or comment on a particular aspect but never found the time to do so. After finishing Elfen Lied, I decided the show was a fantastically disorganized mess that I had to say something regarding the show, especially seeing the polarizing reviews it received.
The crux of the show's premise lies in the Diclonii race, a mutated form of human beings characterized by horns on temples and the presence of what the show calls vectors. Vectors are invisible, arm-like projections that grants a Diclonius what would appear to ordinary humans to be telekinetic abilities. A Diclonius' vectors are powerful as they are shown to be capable of catapulting its user high into the air as if they were flying, slicing through solid rock, and even deflecting bullets. Diclonii born to humans are captured and experimented on, if not killed outright.
The opening ten minutes of the show are notorious. Lucy, a Diclonius held captive in an island facility, is escaping. Her vectors crush steel and rip armed guards apart effortlessly, preferring decapitation or total bodily bifurcation equally. Naked save for a metal mask over her head, Lucy trudges through the facility killing people in ways that will have you questioning just how much blood human beings have inside of them.
The show has been praised and criticized for its excessive blood and gore. It's fantastically visceral. Dismemberment, decapitation, and grotesque explosions result in rains of blood and flesh. The show is not afraid to expose the guts of hapless victims. It sounds odd, but the killings actually become repetitive. The killings are horrifying but they become a dumb staple for the show to stand on. Every time a minor character is introduced, you can begin a game and ask yourselves "How long until this person gets all their blood drained from them." I'm grateful, to a degree, that the show isn't afraid to depict graphic violence in the magnitude that it does because every splattering death is a kind of spectacle. It's a one-trick pony show but it's a crudely fun one at that.
The most jarring moments in the show and the source of my criticism arise from the absolutely inane writing. Towards the end of her escape, Lucy is shot in the head by a .50 caliber rifle, is miraculously only knocked into a coma, flung off a cliff, and washes up in an empty beach in Japan to be found by college students Kouta and Yuka. For one of the most dangerous specimens known to man, there is very little security detail actually searching for the escaped Diclonius. Kouta and Yuka also seem to have no questions as they take in the bloody and naked girl with horns on her head instead of calling an ambulance. These kinds of disconnects pepper the series. Some might call this a tedious nitpicking at what's supposed to be a work of fantasy, but I point to it as a failure in narrative form. Careful attention to minor details can effectively bolster a work, making the fictitious world pop out and stand for itself. The details in Elfen Lied flow in the most ridiculous fashion, often bypassing any kind of rational thought or logic. Such a mishandling of narrative leaves audiences to question the methods used by the show's creators to tell the story. The show isn't entirely swamped by these moments, but when they do come it only highlights the disjointed and cheap way the story is told.
Director Mamoru Kanabe, in a DVD exclusive interview, supposedly (I got this off Wikipedia) considers the show to be a love story, stating that he wanted "to bring viewers to tears." It's really hard to bring anyone to tears when it's difficult to feel bad about any of the characters. Let me be clear: this isn't a personal lack of empathy. This points to an absolute failure in executing narrative form. The characters themselves are actually from terribly tragic backgrounds: Lucy is the mother of her race and has known only suffering since her birth; Young Kouta witnessed the murder of his father and sister; Mayu is a 14 year old homeless girl who was a victim of sexual abuse by her step-father; you get the idea. However, every character is just about overshadowed by a ridiculous vapidness that permeates the script. Coincidence is the logic of the show and it depicts just how poorly connected the story is. Any semblance of a romantic story is overtaken by how inane and weak the writing is.
If I were to be totally generous, I would say Elfen Lied is more about discrimination than romance, but in a very loose sense. "Hey, discrimination is bad!" the show says, wagging a finger at audiences. Belongingness and prejudice are prominent themes that try to inject some kind of orientation into the series. There's a push from the show to make viewers want to sympathize with the Diclonii because of the unethical experimentation and extermination campaign against them. At the same time, it's really difficult to sympathize with a race of beings that uncontrollably kills humans. Audiences are seemingly expected to absolve Lucy of all her killings because of her doe-eyed love for Kouta. On second thought, maybe this is a story about forgiveness because Kouta seems totally fine with Lucy knowing she slaughtered his sister and father in front of him (This is another fantastically stupid scene. It's from episode 12). "Hey, discrimination is bad!" At the same time though, Lucy represents a complete and absolute threat to humanity with little suggesting any large scale method of co-existence between humans and Diclonii. "But look at how well Kouta gets along with Nyu!" the show retorts. But as Lucy she's killed countless innocent people. She has to own up to that. "She's like a puppy! You don't hate puppies, do you?" Lucy's floated the idea that she kills because she likes it. "Look, now Nyu's naked!" Oh for f-
Natural result of mutation and/or agent of divine punishment unleashed upon humanity, Lucy has rather enigmatic origins, but that's not important (or at least the show thinks so). Her origins aren't as striking as her motivations. Lucy was bullied from a young age because of her horns and decides she will never be accepted by anyone. Lucy's hatred of humanity stems from being called names and having milk spilled on her book bag. To be fair, she does also witness the bullies bludgeoning her puppy to death. Lucy loses control of her budding vectors and kills everyone in her orphanage (Here's an interesting thing: the puppy's death is shown off camera, but the death of the kids is depicted straight up). Audiences later learn that Lucy survives by going house to house, killing its occupants and taking their food and clothes. She's the bewildered other, trying to make sense of the world around her while wrestling with uncontrollable emotions while the world views her with total disdain. Lucy is the show's best effort at producing a complicated character, but that's easy to say when all the other characters have set the bar so low. I believe there's a great story to be told with Lucy, but the show's lack of a unifying direction ultimately squanders any chance of that.
Some viewers have pointed to the artistic qualities of the musical motif (there's only one: an uninspiring Gregorian chant) and imagery in the opening sequence, but it just cemented a feeling that the creators of the show had no idea what they were doing. The still shots in the openings are apparently references to paintings by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. The images are psychedelic, sure, but what links does it produce with the show's thin themes? Many reviews I come across comment on how beautiful the opening is but none of them seem to be able to produce an answer as to how the supposedly artistic opening connects at all with what happens in the show. Then there's the opening theme song itself. It's in Latin and references the Bible, I assume to support the angle that Lucy is some divine agent of punishment. It is terribly boring and devoid of any meaningful purpose and any links or implications are loose at best. Variations of the song play throughout the series in different styles as if in a desperate effort by the creators to find something to connect the scattered focus in the show.
What do we do with a show like this? The Duffer brothers cited the anime as an inspiration for their show Stranger Things, so it isn't as if Elfen Lied has had no impact whatsoever. Upon watching Elfen Lied, I was certain the show was going to have universally negative reviews. A deadpan show with vapid characters, no sense of direction, a psychotic idea of romance, and a struggling sense of artistic connection somehow moved some people to tears, apparently. Elfen Lied is simply deliciously tasteless and interesting for all the wrong reasons. Go check it out.
