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.