Elfen Lied

The art was horrible in the beginning, but trust me it gets better as the story continues. This manga is viewed very critically and it seems like a lot of people don't like it, but I actually do. I really liked the worldbuilding, Lucy as the main character and the relationship between Bandou and Mayu which was very flat in the anime. Overall it wasn't as horrible as many people say it is. Sure, a lot of characters are flat (Yuka was annoying af), but it still is a good manga because of the story and worldbuilding. At least that's how I think about it.

Elfen Lied.... Going to make a very short review.

With such a great start, it seems to only go downhill.

Story- Had a ton of potential but nope, flush it all down the toilet. The last chapter didn't feel rewarding at all; it made me feel as though I was wasting my time rooting for Lucy and Kouta.

Art- Nothing to brag about, sometimes the characters look amazing. And others they just look mediocre. Can't complain much because I loved Lucy's character design and Kouta's. Nana and Mayu both look compelling as well most of the time. I however wasn't a fan of Nyu's design, but that's just a personal taste. It was drawn very well. Most of the time it just felt... So empty. That's why I gave it a 6.

Characters- Characters well all around fleshed out and believable. This is where Elfen Lied excels. At least with the main characters. The side characters on the other hand, hell I don't remember one of their names (except for Anna and Wanda), not even Kouta's cousins name. On a sidenote, I doubt many people care but they literally started calling him Kohta at the end of the manga.... Did I miss something? His name was Kouta for like 80+ chapters then they just start calling him Kohta?
Translators come on.

Enjoyment- It was alright, I think it's just the nostalgia that's making me give it a 6, otherwise it'd be lower. [spoiler] I felt like I was reading it to see Lucy and Kouta end up together. I probably was, and when that didn't happen it just made me feel sick. I feel as though I hate the fact that I wasted my time, on the other hand I'm glad I actually got around to reading it. [/spoiler]

Overall- I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I was told the ending is sweet but sad. No, it's just fucking sad. It makes you want to forget you ever read the damn thing. [spoiler] All we wanted was for Kouta to somehow forgive Lucy and end up with her and we got nothing close to it. [/spoiler]

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone sadly because of how.... Appalling the ending was to me. Did the writer think that's the ending that we wanted? That we deserved? Man... I just wish it could have been different. If I had to describe it, I'd say very very bitter, hardly sweet.

I honestly don't care if anyone finds this helpful, I just needed to get that off my chest.

(This is my first manga review, sorry if it's not helpful.)

Elfen Lied, a manga by Lynn Okamoto, published in 2002 to 2005, with twelve volumes collected, with an anime adaptation. It is considered as one of the goriest series of all time. Believe or not, I really enjoyed this series.

I first started out Elfen Lied by the anime, it got me easily hooked by the second episode, and after finishing the anime, I wanted more. I found out it was based on a manga, and the anime and manga are different, which then I immediately started reading it. If I could describe the manga in one sentence, I would say "A rollercoaster of emotion."

Story 10/10
The story got me easily hooked, it's original and well written. The anime ended in a note where many questions were unanswered, however, the manga answers most of them. One thing about the story of the manga however, is the ending, I think the ending was very confusing and I'm still trying to figure it out to this day. The story goes in a bit of a slow pace however.


Art 8/10
A lot of people say the art is not very good, I have to agree around the first volume, the art is not the best. However, around volume 10 till the ending, the art changed, it looks very sci-fi like and it's very detailed. Don't believe me? Compare the art from the volume 1 and volume 12, and tell the differences.

Characters 9/10
Heck, this story when it comes to characters, it does a great job with backstories and why the character acts that way. My favorite character is Lucy, mostly because she's one of the most well written characters I have ever seen. The side characters are also likable (except Yuka), one of them was Nana, she was the comedy relief of the story, and she did handle them well. The side villains such as Kurama or Bando are even likable even if they did horrifying things in their lifes.

Enjoyment 8/10
If you are not okay with people having their limbs torn off or people getting dismembered, then this story will not be the best choice for you. This story has so much gore, I don't think I've read a manga with that much gore. The story has also a lot of nudity, if you dislike seeing cute girls naked, then maybe this won't be your kind of story. There is so much nudity in this, it was pretty close of being a hentai. The story also tackles issues such as pedophilia and how people treat other people due to their differences.

Overall 10/10
I personally enjoyed this manga, I understand there are people who dislike this manga due to its graphic violence and nudity. I liked this story because it's different from other stories I've read in the past. If you're looking for a story that is dark and also has its sad moments, Elfen Lied is perfect for you.

Thanks for reading my review :)

this manga was pretty much really enjoyable, it had abit of humor there abit of romance here and lots of blood, gore & ecchi. not to mention incest too :-)
the story was really great as it's not any cliche storyline i've seen before. it comes on really strong in the start & it only gets better. also, some of the problems faced by the characters in the manga are quite relatable in real life & the manga also ends off quite realistically.
the art is good, not great but it's alright i guess!!
the characters are really cool and their way of thinking is rather realistic & relatable. lucy, is definitely a really strong character with her backstory & even though she may be a out of control killing machine, she still does this cause she's been betrayed in the past & so she has her reason for doing so. kouta, was much better protrayed in the manga than in the anime, in the anime, he just instantly forgives her when he realises lucy was the one that killed his family while in the manga, his thinking is more realistic where he harnesses hate for lucy like anyone would if someone killed your sister and dad. however, there were useless sub characters included & the manga would've just been the same without them.
the manga was overall, pretty enjoyable .

You're probably wondering what I'm doing writing a review about a manga that ran from 2002-2005 in 2019. With my patience for sitting down and watching an anime dwindling, I've been attempt to explore manga and LN's more and more, and Elfen Lied was perhaps the first anime I had ever watched, so it felt natural to try and visit the original manga. Boy was this a mistake.

(Spoilers will be included in this review!)
The manga and anime do not start straying apart by any significant means until volume 5, chapter 43. This chapter introduces a character who's sole purpose is to add in a diaper fetish, and to tie in the iconic song "Lilium," which in the manga is "Elfenlied." Her role is so insignificant that she was easily replaced by a music box in the anime. This is about the point where I knew I was in for a ride that would probably only be going downhill.
Next comes convoluted "this character hasn't died yet" convenience one after another. Remember how in the anime, Kurama comes to understand his sins and his failure as a father to Mariko, and with this he accepts their deaths as he embraces her in his arms? Well... this comes close I guess? They embrace, and a giant non-explosive warhead then comically crushes only Mariko despite them being embraced, before another is fired and crushes Kurama. They're dead, right? Nope! Mariko has somehow saved them both, and is now docile in a "Nyu" like state. Shortly after this, she dies anyways when facing off Lucy, just to have Kurama live in comatose grief for the next 2 years until he gets the perfect conditions to have a happy ending with Nana, which also tries to bait that she's his lover now! Real sweet.. I guess? The count for these ridiculous encounters only increases as the manga goes on, and they're ridiculously predictable, as well as frustrating. Maybe just don't put characters in situations where they should by no means survive if you're not ready to kill them off yet?

The contrived conveniences aren't the end of my frustration with this manga. I guess at some point or another I should address the characters that actually had some purpose.
- Kouta is Kouta, there's nothing to say on him. He's bland, he gets a backbone occasionally, but he doesn't really offer much outside of caring about and protecting his family.
- Yuka is... Yuka. She's basically obsessed with Kouta, can't properly express her feelings, and classic tsundere style punches or kicks Kouta anytime something embarrassing happens. I tried to sympathize with her character more than I have in my previous watchings of Elfen Lied, but I just couldn't. She cares about Kouta remembering her more than she cares about Kouta remembering and coming to terms with the deaths of his father and sister, and sobs about it in every other scene.
- Mayu doesn't really get much further development in the manga, she's probably one of the most stable characters next to Kouta. She's sweet, she cares about her new family, and wants to keep them together and safe. She also... ends up with a crush on Bandou. And kisses him. About 30 minutes after he just got done calling someone else a pedo for nearly raping her.
- Nana is probably one of the most frustrating characters for me. She's adorable, well intentioned, and despite her lack of knowledge does her best to contribute to the Kaede residence. Right up until Kurama disappears after promising her he'd return. Remember how in the anime, Nana learned to live with the grief and move on? In this she becomes borderline obsessed with Kurama, to a point where it seems like she's ready to ditch her closest friends over him without a 2nd thought. It reaches a point where it's all she seems to think or talk about.
- Lucy/Nyu is probably the strongest character of the series much like the anime. She's still intricate, deeply scarred, and ultimately tragic. She is however, robbed of her complexity, and to explain that gripe we're going to move on to the next topic.

The Diclonious virus, the biggest threat of this world and what ties this whole story together. We're often lead to believe in the anime that it is normally not the diclonius children themselves that leads to mass killing and destruction that occurs around them. They have a "killing instinct" of sorts embedded into their DNA, that's often awakened by cruel treatment or the enforced message that there's no possible way diclonii and humans can co-exist, that they are freaks that must be exterminated. Up until the point where it straight up takes control like another personality and forces that character to do harm. Isn't there supposed to be some moral gray in this series? How does this voice become so prominent that it can completely take control of a "host" and force them to be violent and destructive. Diclonii become exactly what the anime seemingly tries to fight the message of: a race that could never co-exist with humans, that will only bring ruin, that is to face genocide. Despite this manga trying desperately to tie the end of every character's story in a pretty bow, this is the fate of the diclonii race.

I could honestly continue ranting for quite some time, so let's try to wrap this up. Elfen Lied is a story with a lot of potential that ends up wasted trying to prove just how """mature""" this series is. I can deal with ecchi, it's not my cup of tea but I can tolerate it. This manga pushes it too far on more than one occasion purely for the sake of it, down to our previously mentioned diaper fetish character. Any mature themes feel like they're muddied down to "this guy good, this guy bad," and despite handling these themes, somehow nearly every character you may root for ends up with a happy ending now matter how contrived the plot got to place them there. The diclonii are now nearly extinct, humanity does not have to answer for it's crimes of mistreatment and experimentation against an entire race, and everyone's happy, yaaay! This manga left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, and I wish the ugly art had been enough to steer me away from it in time.
If you're looking to experience nudity, blood, gore, and darker themes but don't mind them being toned down, just watch the anime. It's better in practically every regard down to the resolution, and while many questions get left unanswered in the anime, it does not create nearly as many that are quite as ridiculous as the manga does.

As you may know, Elfen Lied has lots of gore, nudity and such. But the story line is amazing. I'm not usually one to really read this kind of stuff but... It fascinated me in many ways.
Story; 10: The story is amazing, and very elaborate, it will really get the reader hooked within the first few pages, strength of every action and scene in this made me ready for more!
Art; 8: The art wasn't the best part of the manga, it wasn't really eye catching, but since the storyline was great, the art didn't make a huge deal, though I think everything in this manga is great.
Character; 10: The characters are all amazing, going through individual struggles, and feelings. They just make you feel for them and understand the pain, even if you possibly haven't been through what they have. Their actions are believable because, trust me, if I went through what they did, I would probably react the same way.
Enjoyment; 10: I truly, truly think that this manga was amazing, it is worth more than a thousand words, though, less nudity would be nice, I really enjoyed this manga.
Overall, I believe this is one of the best manga I have read, (I heave read a lot, haha) and I think that the mangaka deserves a round of applause for coming up with such an amazing story. If you read Elfen Lied, I hope you enjoy! (Oh, and if I should make improvments on my reviews please send me a message or something! This is only my second review. thanks!!!)

A beautiful, beautiful piece of work to say the least – a special thank you to the creator: Lynn Okamoto! This manga captured the shocking revelation of a true human society that was thought unknown, whilst still evoking emotion with every blood and tear drop. The manga leaves the reader with an internal conflict, rendering them unable to deduce right from wrong – were the actions of Lucy ever justifiable given her constantly miserable circumstances?

The ending, from what I’ve gathered, has been highly censured; it wasn’t some asinine, outrageous ending, it was just considered… ‘Unpopular’. I, personally, fail to see any alternate ending that’d please the audience whilst maintaining the plot’s integrity and I still believe that the ending was far better than what could’ve been.

I’d recommend this manga to anyone who is interested in the philosophical and morale aspects of life or to anyone who wants to be emotionally moved by such works. It is definitely the best piece of literature that I’d ever read; I was continuously reminded of the times of happiness (and how precious they are), times of sadness, times of pain, times of love, times of loneliness, times of anger, times of fear, times of betrayal, times of confusion, times of blood and times of tears.

I’ve loved every element of this manga, sure I’d change a few things around for my personal benefit however it’s perfect the way it is!

All I can say for this manga is that is sticks to the main storyline and is incredibly gory as well as incredibly perverted.

The manga was better than the anime for sticking to the plot but it really goes overboard with its more than dark themes and off topic conservations between characters. But I found the manga very enjoyable for concluding the story with a somewhat happy ending and keeping attached to the murderous but sexy main character Lucy.

This manga will remain as one of my close but not too close favourites and I recommend to reviewers to read it themselves and give their own review of this unforgettable manga.

It has been a while, so I took the time to sit down a re-read of the Elfen Lied manga since I had recently rewatched the anime and have been on a re-watch binge during the pandemic.

And my reaction is simply "Wow that was a beautiful mess" a beautiful story that has a lot of stuff that undermines how powerful and impactful it could be.

I 100% understand why the anime does a lot of the things it does. I mean I kinda already knew why, but trying to see where the things work and dont, you really see where Lynn Okamoto got totally out of touch in terms of keeping cohesive story.

You can read from volume 1~7 skipping page 203, and then skip to volume 10 Pages 76 to 138, to read the part about Lucy and Aiko, and then skip to the last 5 pages of Volume 11.

All of that stuff that you'd skip is utterly pointless and irrelevant.

Literally none of it matters. It does effectively nothing for the story line.

It only introduces and handles a bunch of largely irrelevant and throw away characters. Has a revival of a character that was appeared to be killed off, and there is some real strange absurdities that just don't have a reasonable foundation.

I think the one good part of the Manga after the 2nd half that really makes it worth reading is the story behind Arakawa, the scientist girl who was the assistant to Prof.Kakuzawa. In the anime she has a noticeable presence, and plays a key role in the ending, but we don't get to see much more than that.

The manga gives her more detail, more personality, and a stronger purpose to play... but that kind of ends up being entirely undermined and pointless. It's worthy reading to get to know the character more, but not much else.

The anime is a lot better by many metrics, and the areas that I highlighted to read basically give the context you need to understand a few details and "plotholes" in the anime. Many things that were changed serve the narrative and philosophical ideas much better. Especially concerning Kaede(Lucy), Nana, and Mariko I completely understand why Nozomi was dropped as well.

From my perspective, Lucy(and Nyuu), Nana, Mariko, Kurama's, and Kouta's place in the story are all more meaningful in the anime than they are in the manga. Especially Mariko and Kurama's. The end and situation they face in the anime is astoundingly profound and powerful. But in the Manga there's a lot less substance and feels more like their lives were tossed away for the sake of just making Lucy feel more evil.

Even more so because the Anime and the Manga end in effectively the same place with only a few minor differences.

The manga is much more cluttered and has a lot of ends that aren't tied up. The first half stands out as fairly good, and well inspired, and serves as a great foundation to the setting and story.

However, there's a lot of meaningless narrative parts in the 2nd half of the manga that do absolutely nothing at all. A lot of it simply feels like Lynn got carried away.

The entire run is loaded with pointless ineffective violence, and panty shots worthy of the shallow and fanservice-y accusations that get tossed at the series that the anime really doesn't do.

There's a lot of things in the entire manga that is ecchi, gratuitously violent, or rapey just to be explicit, but it really just doesn't do much but harm the quality and atmosphere of the manga. So it comes as a pretty reasonable change that the anime toned it down, and then utilized it more for effect and presence. Substance is better than quantity. And the Manga didn't utilize it's violence and adult themes as effectively as it could have. Something the anime exceeded at.

The biggest problem I really have with the manga is that it is not as much of an emotional driver that sinks into your soul like the anime does. The Manga has good emotional moments, but it really does not pull at your heart like the anime does.
The anime just does this exceedingly well, while the manga exceeds at being violent and perverse.

As a first time manga run, it's surprisingly well done, has a lot of recognizable value, and it serves as a fantastic source material for adaption, but standing on it's own, it has a lot of issues that detract from an otherwise beautiful and powerful story.

Elfen Lied is one of those series that you read and question whether or not it was a good series, oh wait, no it isn't. Elfen Lied is an amazingly written series that had a lot of very adult themes. It was the first series that I had ever read that I had come back to at a later age with more education and enjoyed it more due to my expanded knowledge. Whether your a psychologist or a biologist this series has a lot to offer to both different professions. It's less than I can say for Okamato's other work.

Elfen Lied takes a scientific approach to the whole "magical girl" genre, I put that in brackets because they aren't technically magical in this series, they use a force created by their bodies that the humans have taken to calling vectors (one defintion of vector being "an organism that transmits a disease or parasite from one animal or plant to another), which is a sort of way to insult these beings because these arm like appendanges can transmit their DNA into the bodies of humans, meaning that the humans infected with this DNA will give birth to Diclonius children (Diclonius being another insult to them, calling them an animal with horns). What makes this series so interesting to a person who believes in science like me is the fact that they explain everything with science, and very well so. Okamato uses already existing aspects of humanity and amplify them to create the dliclonius as a fictional species and makes it believable. In a strange sort of way, author Lynn Okamato makes it so that this fictional species that has monumental power is decently believable. Then the story of the series is pretty well written as well. For those of you that haven't heard of or prefer to avoid spoilers for series to a massive extent, this series is about a young diclonius woman who falls out of a tower and is found with amnesia on the Kamakura beaches by two other young adults, it follows these people through their experiences that all seem to revolve around the diclonius girl. The manga has a great amount of character development, even for lesser characters and even villains. Even the villains are well written. From an institution director attempting to protect his daughter, to said daughter attempting to protect her father, or even a diclonius man that has endorse humanity viewing his species as monster-like. There isn't a single human character. Though I can't say why the series is called Elfen Lied without spoiling a major plot point. This series also has a knack for portraying very adult themes very maturely while keeping a good amount of levity at nearly all points of the series. The sexual/physical abuse that one of the characters has survived is handled extremely well in a really realistic way. Then you also have a character that has a such a lack of self confidence that she has to wear a diaper because she can't control her bladder due to her lack of self confidence, this is still handled in a very mature way.

But the series is kind of lacking in the means of art. It starts of decently drawn and ends off a bit better, and as this is the authors first manga. His next series, Brynhildr in the Darkness, looks a lot better but of course it does everything else worse.

Age Rating: M for Blood and Gore, Disturbing content, Child Rape/Abuse, Nudity, Adult Themes, Explicit language, Intense Violence, and Incest.

Disclaimer: This is not for the faint of heart or those who are squeamish, there is a lot of mature content that something from North America wouldn't dare touch on. Okamato doesn't censor this series in the slightest.

Overall Rating: 9/10

Elfen Lied is a very well written series with a slight amount of fan service. But in the end it takes its intended audience seriously, which makes it one of the most enjoyable series I have ever seen.