Elfen Lied

The opening scene is a beautiful display of brutality and intrigue which only leads into one of the most juvenile series I've watched. The series is built upon shock value at its core, and generally this is used to justify heinously stupid plot beats where characters act cruel and irrational for no logical reason. Making a lot of deprived shit happen in a story is not bad storytelling, but Elfen Lied mostly uses its devices to justify torturing characters with no real purpose beyond that.

I, too, thought I was into cool shit as a teenager

If you're young and this is one of your first anime's then you'll be blown away. If you've watched a lot of things before this then you'll see it's many glaring faults. When I first watched it I was the previous and I loved it and because of that it gets a way higher rating than it probably deserves. Side note: The manga is godawful and I get why they didn't adapt further despite the success of the anime.

As many reviewers below have said I too watched this at a younger age and thought it was fantastic, now I'm not so sure, what it does have is an undefinable something, there was an OVA produced later ( 2005???) that is poorly done,avoid that.

Great premise, horrible execution. I love how the opening track and first scene of the anime is really really cool, and then we got incest cousins in their boring plotline. At least the gore was decent.

Merely cheap shock value at first glance, and yet there's something beyond that. Something in the honesty of the extreme scenarios, which pull no punches at all and show you everything -- nudity, gore, mutilation, child rape, it's all here. And that's just the physical stuff -- the psychological side is even worse. And yet, it feels like an honest attempt to make a meaningful story and not just for creating controversy or for making money. I don't know why it works, but it works.

i didnt mind their extra hentai shit cuz they were just doing what all animes do but with nudity. sometimes it got too fetishized/pedophilic though lol. it starts good, dips around the middle and ends good. i wish kouta and nyu had a longer and more developed childhood friendship/romance. i wish 35 was the voice in her head. i liked the clock ending, i'd love seeing a sequel. and it was cool to realize this influenced Stranger Things and wonder if the 2nd season will take more from it

worth a watch

*Japanese executive chomps on a cigar, swings a baseball bat* boys, how do we combine anime's two greatest assets: childlike female sex objects and copious amounts of sadistically spilled blood. an enterprising young trio named (looks down) Mamoru Kande, Lynn Okamoto and Takao Yoshioka came up with a solution, and 13 episodes and years later I'm giving it a terrible review

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