Mini-review: Elfen Lied, Vol. 1 Posted July 4, 2006 at 10:40 pm
I’ve been jumping all over the place the last few days in terms of content. Anyhow, here’s my take on another anime DVD: Elfen Lied, Vol. 1.
I like to use Netflix to view anime that I either don’t intend to ever buy or haven’t decided. One such series is Elfen Lied. The series managed to garner a lofty #3 ranking of AnimeNfo’s top 200 ranking, which doesn’t really mean a lot, but I’ve found the site useful in the past when selecting new series to watch. After the first disc, I’m not convinced the series is any better than average; maybe slightly above, but that’s about it.
The series has two features that do draw attention: blood and boobs. The first episode opens to an eerie scene where we see a masked, but otherwise fully nude, female figure slowly walking through an unnamed research facility leaving piles of bodies in her wake. We’re led to believe that she’s some sort of weapons research project gone awry, but the details are sparse.
The action is incredibly graphic, with arms, legs, heads, and blood flying everywhere. It’s easily the most graphic depiction of violence I’ve seen in animation. There’s definite visual impact in the presentation, and we quickly get the idea that the figure we see in the opening scene has tremendous destructive power.
On the flipside, Elfen Lied’s got nudity and lots of it. Most of the opening and pretty much all of the closing feature bare-breasted shots of the female protagonist and there’s plenty of the same throughout the first four episodes. Most of it is not overtly sexual, but it’s just there. The female lead, Nyu, is quickly cast as a Chii-like figure (see Chobits) without a shred of world experience or common sense, so I can only presume that we’re supposed to attribute some of the excess to that aspect of her character.
Still, cheap thrills alone won’t sell the series, at least not to me. Disregarding the aforementioned attributes, Elfen Lied doesn’t seem to have a lot to differentiate it from gobs of other series that have come before it. By the end of the fourth episode, we’ve pretty much established the familiar mini-harem scenario with three girls and a boy all living together under one roof. And with the exception of Nyu, most of those characters aren’t very memorable.
I’ll dispense with the negativity at this point. Just suffice it to say that I was expecting and lot and got something less. The animation quality is actually quite good. In particular, the scene where we first meet Yuka has some incredibly fluid cherry blossoms. Still, from what I’ve seen thus far, I couldn’t give Elfen Lied more than a C rating.