Elfen Lied is one of those universal tomes I use to remind myself what anime is, really. Incase I ever get carried away and think that maybe anime is actually awesome, I just renind myself of Elfen Lied and how it's just pulp.
The definition of "pulp fiction", before it was a movie, was to describe something that was written just to satisfy some primal obsession the writer's having. Like a movie about naked girls, or choppin dudes in half. Or an anime about naked girls who chop dudes in half with hand-ghosts, and the guy goes to shoot her but she just like cuts his gun up a million times before he does it.
That's it: That's the point of this anime. It's the point of pretty much most anime; not to explore living characters or to make you think twice about yourself, or to be entertaining in any nutritional way- just to satisfy your thirst for big robots, or punching a dude through a mountain.
If you think there's a worthwhile forest in those trees then you're crazy., but a lot of anime fans do- and are.
So that's why I always keep Elfen Lied in the back of my mind.
Also because that part where she cuts up all those dudes with the pen is fuckin sweet.
VictorVonVice
what a treat to find a DVD of Elfen Lied for 99p. Its definitely one of the anime series I gave a crap about, mostly for the gore and story.