Blu-ray Review: ELFEN LIED Bares Bodies And Souls

(... and often also the insides of both...)

British distributor 101 Films seems to own exactly two anime licenses, and it released one of those a few weeks ago on Blu-ray, in a beautiful shiny steelbook (seen here). I'm talking about the famous and notorious series Elfen Lied.

Based on a popular manga series by Lynn Okamoto and originally aired in 2004, Elfen Lied quickly became known for its strong content. Which is not surprising, considering that the anime combines a typical harem comedy with some extremely violent science fiction, meaning you get jail-bait nudity jokes mixed with decapitation and brutal torture. Wait, what? Time to see what this is all about...


The Story:

In a secret research facility, a girl with horns on her head manages to open her cell, and leaves a massacre in her wake on the way out. Despite incurring a nasty head wound she reaches a small village, and is found by teenage student Kohta, who starts to take care of her. Due to her injury, the girl now has two personalities: the amnesiac Nyu, who behaves like a needy toddler who cannot speak yet, and Lucy, an enraged mass murderer with terrifying supernatural powers, who lives to destroy all non-horned humans.

By chance, Kohta keeps only encountering the Nyu personality, and tries to juggle his student life with taking care of the clearly brain-damaged girl. To complicate matters, his cousin Yuki takes a romantic interest in him and gets increasingly jealous of the attention-grabbing (and often naked) Nyu. The comedy gets convoluted when another two girls arrive at Kohta's home, only to end up living with him as well! Meanwhile, teams of Government assassins keep searching for the lethal Lucy, and a vile plot starts which may result in the end of all mankind...


The Series:

"Shock and Awe" is a strategy, and Elfen Lied isn't afraid to employ it, early and often, though "Awe and Shock" is perhaps a better name for it. the series is rightfully famous for its opening credits, which feature a naked Lucy placed in several paintings inspired by the works of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. This sequence is set to classical-sounding theme by Kondo Yukio, with liturgical Latin lyrics attached. It is quite a stunning opening which brings the awe, but it is followed up immediately by a severed arm spraying a room with blood, which brings the shock.

The first half of the first episode documents Lucy's escape in excruciating bloody detail, and it is one of the strongest starts of an anime I've ever seen, a "Holy shit" opening if there ever was one. As a naked, helmeted Lucy slowly walks to the exit of her prison, people nearing her get literally ripped to shreds by an invisible force surrounding her. When we finally arrive at the introduction of Kohta and his cousin Yukio, the sedate scenes feel hopelessly mundane, and when the couple come upon Lucy on the beach, you can only dread their future.

For most of the series, director Kanbe Mamoru banks on this opening. No matter how silly or naughty the harem shenanigans get at house Kohta, the threat of another massacre is never far away: all that is needed is for Nyu to change into Lucy at an inopportune moment and everyone is dead. Yet when, after some tip-toeing, that moment arrives, the story moves in an unexpected direction.

By now my description may seem very enticing, pointing towards an intelligent series clearly aimed at adults. But be warned: Elfen Lied was made by studio ARMS Corporation, who are known for their ecchi (and sometimes hentai) anime of Kite, Ikkitousen, Mezzo Forte, Queen's Blade and Injuu Gakuen La Blue Girl. As such, do not be surprised when sexual fan-service and exploitation go right through the roof at times. Much of the humorous high-jinx come from the ditsy Nyu embarrassing people by running around in underwear, without underwear, pissing herself, or suddenly grabbing other girls' breasts.

What makes the fanservice slightly more defensible is when you look at Elfen Lied in the context of the harem comedies so popular at the time of its release, like Love: Hina. In those series, a shy and/or lecherous boy is always made to suddenly live surrounded by a group of girls and/or women clamoring for his attention. With its brutal shell of a story Elfen Lied feels like a very mean-spirited parody, especially when considering Kohta, who is neither shy nor lecherous at all. In fact, he is so saintly, he becomes a boring cipher, blown around in the wind of the plot while all eyes are on the far more interesting Lucy.

Sexy fanservice (often involving minors), brutal torture of adults and children alike, potty humor featuring the mentally handicapped... It is a strange mix for sure, and one which frequently distastefully misfires. But near the end of the series, director Kanbe Mamoru does manage to steer things around towards a few moments of true poignancy. In the finale he even explores themes of forgiveness and responsibility with surprising honesty, especially when held against all the exploitation leading up to it, and the series ends on a strangely high, if not necessarily happy, note. It does make me wonder what Kanbe could have done if he had been allowed to make Elfen Lied a 26-episode series instead of a 13-episode one, as he wished...

But even when the series gets somewhat rushed within its13 episodes, it is what it is. Like its own opening credits sequence, Elfen Lied is a hodge-podge of copied art, bad and good. How much enjoyment you will take out of it depends a lot on your abhorrence, immunity or preference towards certain anime tropes.


On to the Discs:

101 Films (here calling themselves "101 Anime") has released Elfen Lied as a two-disc Blu-ray boxset, housed in a very attractive-looking steelbook. You can see a picture gallery of the set's packaging here.

Note that the screenshots on this page were not taken from the Blu-ray but from the earlier DVD release, as the rig I normally use for grabbing Blu shots is currently in repair. These shots do not represent the visual quality of the Blu-ray image, and only serve to show how the series itself looks. The Blu-ray transfer, while not perfect, is thankfully a damn lot better than the DVD was. Its image is noticeably sharper and doesn't suffer the "ghosting" issues the DVD had. In fact, the DVD screenshot below shows six fingers on all hands, as the current image has blurred a bit with the previous image. Rest assured the Blu-ray equivalent shows sharply separated images (with, in this case, five fingers on each hand).

As for audio, the set includes both an English 5.1 and a Japanese 5.1 soundtrack, with very good English subs.

As extras you get the text-less ("clean") opening- and closing credit sequence, and two 16-minute design galleries. There is also a 38-page design booklet in the set.

The biggest scoop over the earlier DVD-releases, however, is the inclusion of the OVA-episode. This was an extra 14th episode, which was made after the original series had aired, and was only available on the Japanese DVD. Fitting between episode 10 and 11, this episode embellishes the backgrounds of two main characters, together with oodles of silly nudity. It doesn't add much to the story, but is definitely a very nice addition for fans of the series.


Conclusion:

Elfen Lied is an anime which most definitely won't be for everyone. In fact I'd call this the opposite of a "threshold" anime, as it is more likely to repel than to attract newcomers, but fans can rejoice in a pretty decent (and decently priced) Blu-ray release.