Elfen Lied: An Anime You Must Watch

If you like action/horror anime, Elfen Lied is a must own. Based on the manga by Lynn Okamoto, Elfen Lied (German for "Elf Song") is a 13 episode action/horror/romance anime that stays fairly canonical to the first 6 volumes of the manga for the first 11 episodes and then diverges to tie up loose ends for the final two episodes.

A pink haired Diclonius named Lucy breaks free from her confinement, wrecks havoc on the facility's staff, and escapes. The next day, two college-aged cousins, Yuka and Kouta, discover the girl on the beach, but her personality was transformed from a menacing killer to that of an innocent and virtually helpless child. Not sure what to do, the cousins take her home with them and become intertwined in the government's attempt to retrieve one of its deadliest weapons.

Lucy/Nyu is a Diclonius, a genetically altered human with a deadly set of extra hands (or vectors) that can vibrate at high frequencies and cut through just about anything like it was butter. Visually, what sets Diclonius apart from normal humans is a set of horns, that almost look like cat ears, growing atop their head.

As Nyu adjusts to her new life with the cousins, trouble is brewing in the form of a Diclonius named Nana who is put in charge of retrieving her rival. After a showdown between the two Diconius, Nana becomes the next member of Kouta's residence. When Kouta takes in a teenage homeless girl named Mayu, who ran away because her stepfather abused her, their small family is complete.

Elfen Lied does a fantastic job of balancing the romantic tension between Kouta and his girls with the menacing violence the Diclonius are capable of and engage in. The transition from the loveable Nyu to the chilling Lucy is well done - whenever Lucy emerges, you see a single, glaring eye emerging from behind her hair - and the gore, while explicit, is not overly done.

Elfen Lied also has a fantastic musical score, starting with "Lilium," which almost sounds like a Church hymn and is sung in Latin. The theme is interspersed throughout the anime at key points, sometimes as an instrumental piece, other times with a Gregorian chorus. Must of the score is instrumental which can be gentle or intense depending on the scene. Finally, the closing theme, "Be Your Girl" is an upbeat, J-pop/punk tune.

I highly recommend this anime. Though it's a bit of an emotional roller coaster - I was in tears through the final episode, and I rarely cry while watching anime - it has some of the most interesting characters, fantastic artwork, a beautiful score, and a compelling plot.

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