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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Elfen Lied

  
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
23:14 / 02.09.06
Thirteen episodes of melodrama and ultra-ultraviolence and more melodrama. There's a lot of the heavy-handed emotional-shortcut "little kid crying" trauma-drama that I find crops up in everyting from Evangelion to Hikuro no Go, but some really... resonant stuff about guilt and redemption and family and forgiveness.

But man, man oh holy crap, boy howdy, is it ever... extreme. The first five minutes of the first episode is the first cartoon that's ever had me scrambling backwards across the room from my computer (watching .avi files) going JEEEEEEEZ AAAAAH STOP THAT.

There's a chunk of oogy semi-sexual stuff in there (semi in that nobody's actually HAVING sex, but a lot of very suggestive and exploitative situations), especially when you consider that all of the main characters are supposed to be in their early teens.

So...

(a) anyone else seen this? Analysis/thoughts? I'm a bit surprised it's not threaded here already, but I swear I searched it all Google-like.

(SEMI-SPOILERS)

(b) if you have seen it... I'm feeling pretty conflicted about the level of violence and teenxploitation in the series. I can't decide if the level of graphic violence is pure blood porn meant to titillate the jaded anime fan, or if all of the resonance I found in the serious wouldn't be there if the world the show protrayed wasn't so starkly horrible. I mean, in one episode a group of eight-year-old boys savagely beat a puppy to death, and that was just a minor character note. But I don't know if any of the bits of hope and messed-up love you can pull away from the end would be worthwhile without the stark unrelenting misery that surrounds the characters for the second half of the series.

(END OF SPOILERS)

So, er, Elfen Lied. Anyone else seen it?
 
 
Hieronymus
00:09 / 03.09.06
I think I tripped over... maybe the first episode or so?... at Guba.com.

And yeah, it looked just bugfuck crazy violent. Unfortunately I never caught more than that first episode and have really been a bit curious in seeing more of them.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
05:47 / 03.09.06
I've seen the first few episodes of this show on a rental and I'd agree that on the strength of those, it is every bit as jaw-flooringly violent and sexually squirmy as MattShepherd describes. Of course if you've seen the entire show you have the advantage of me, but the early episodes contained plenty of potential for uncomfortable viewing - in particular the character of the little homeless girl whose backstory no doubt contains all sorts of nastiness, and the relationship between the chief scientist and his mutant girls, which seems like a deliberate attempt by the creators to delve into the incestuous exploitativeness that could only be hinted at with the Gendo/Rei material in Evangelion.

One thing I want to mention is that I rented this show on the strength of recommendations by two (female) magazine reviewers, neither of whom quite made it clear that it contains this level of emotional trauma and sexualised violence (I'm sorry if the latter comment doesn't stand up to closer examination, but that's what it sure seemed like to me on first viewing - although perhaps we should make it clear to non-viewers that we're not talking about Overfiend-style demonic-rape-as-entertainment here - Elfen Lied on DVD has a 15 certificate here in the UK after all, approximately equivalent to the USA's NC-17 rating.) Either the writers in question didn't think the content was sufficiently objectionable to plaster big red warnings over their reviews, or they, but not yet I, have become thoroughly desensitized to "exploitative" material by having to watch other ultra-violent anime like Gantz.
 
 
The Strobe
14:21 / 03.09.06
Elfen Lied on DVD has a 15 certificate here in the UK after all, approximately equivalent to the USA's NC-17 rating.

To clarify: this isn't true. Elfen Lied has a 15 certificate on DVD in the UK which is, in fact, approximately equivalent to an R certificate. NC-17 rated movies invariably end up as 18-rated films in the UK. R-rated films tend to split between 15 and 18; the "adults only" category tends to contain more explicit violence, and often sexual violence. The 15 category is becoming more lenient and wider, but encompasses a good 50-75% of movies the MPAA would give an R to. Also, the BBFC is more relaxed on sex than the MPAA, but a bit sterner around violence.

(Note also that the "15" and "18" certificates in the UK require you to be above that age to watch a film, wheras the "R" in the US just requires you to be with someone above the age of 17).

So in short: regardless of content, the BBFC have deemed Elfen Lied as suitable for audiences 15 and up, which is not the most severe classifcation, and, unlike an NC-17, not aimed at a solely adult audience.

Sorry, bit of a BBFC nerd, but just wanted to clarify.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
17:28 / 03.09.06
Oh, okay - thanks for clearing that up. I had checked out a Wikipedia entry on different film rating systems prior to writing my last post, but it appears that in true Scott Pilgrim fashion, I didn't read that page very carefully. Apologies for any misconceptions I may have inspired in this thread's North American readers.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
10:18 / 06.06.07
If you want to watch this show, have access to Sky TV in the UK, are free on Sunday evenings and can put up with English dubbing, Propeller TV (Sky channel 195) have just begun a collaboration with Anime Network airing two hours of anime between 8-10pm. The other shows in the slot are Coyote Ragtime Show (very stupid but fun, and you can't argue with an armed gang of Elegant Gothic Lolita androids named after the months of the year), Guyver: Bioboosted Armour (not seen it yet) and the show that got me back into anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Elfen Lied airs last and appears to be uncut. Enjoy the pain!
 
 
Nocturne
19:17 / 07.06.07
I hated the male lead in Elfin Leid. Mostly because he never properly straightened out the whole love triangle thingummy, and he should have.

Lots of blood. Lots and lots and lots of blood. And nudity. Absoloutely no sex though. I thought Elfin Lied was much older than Gantz, but animenfo says they're both from 2004. I like to show this anime to people who insist anime is gay. Then I watch their faces go pale and their stomachs turn at the sight of Lucy ripping people's hearts out of their chest and dropping them on the floor. It's really fun.

Showing this right after Evangelion on TV? Are they insane? Maybe the viewers will be, after watching it.
 
 
MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!
19:40 / 07.06.07
Urgh. I'd advise you not to waste time on anyone who says anything is "gay," really.

My reason for starting the thread was wondering if perhaps the series' creators had made the show as ... visceral... as it is to really try to throw harsh light on the concept that even the smallest gain of happiness is wonderful if the surrounding circumstances are harsh enough, or if I was trying too hard to like something that is at heart just Mountain Dew eXXXTreeem! with a bit of psycho-pap to gloss it over.

If its chief purpose is now to be used to show people that anime is totally not "gay," I guess I'm tending towards the latter.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
19:53 / 07.06.07
Yes, I would rather not put words in Nocturne's mouth, but I hope and presume he/she is referring to the meat-headed attitudes of his friends rather than holding up EL as an example of cast-iron proof that anime is not "gay" (meaning, in this context, childish, weak and feminine) because it can be violent, bloody and sexual. Of course, I'd really wish that this kind of thinking had long since been left in the dust altogether.

As the show itself is moderately interesting, meanwhile, I think I'll watch it in full as I did not manage to do previously and see what I can say about it that's worth posting here.
 
 
Nocturne
23:59 / 09.06.07
Yes, she was referring to the meat headedness of aquaintances. She comes from a small town where meat headedness is a common disease. She is very happy to have left said town. Now she can talk about Elfin Leid and Evangelion and Ergo Proxy with her friends without getting weird looks from them. And when her friends haven't seen it yet, she can always count on Barbelith <3 Thank you!

When I saw it, I thought the main point of Elfin Leid was to shock and disturb the audience. It may simply be that I was too shocked and disturbed at the time to notice if anything else was going on. Maybe a re-watch is in order. Maybe.
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
19:32 / 27.08.07
Dear god that was harrowing. I suppose I enjoyed it quite a lot really, in a painful, not exactly pleasant sort of a way, but fucking hell it was dark. I'd say the sheer brutal horror of the violence probably was necessary for the story being told - if the sheer fragility of life, and finality of violence hadn't been so harshly established I don't think the story would have worked. The sense of hopelesness, and the knife edge tension of every scene in which Lucy/Nyu appeared was well served by the horrendousness of the violent scences - I felt that every character was teetering on the edge of oblivion in effectively every scene, and I suppose that was the desired effect. I was honestly surprised that the somewhat downbeat ending wasn't far more dark and awful than it finally was.

With regards to the sexual stuff - I think there was some ickyness there, although contrary to MattS's interpretation I was under the impression that Kouta and Yuka at least are around 18 or 19, since they were attending college - although for all I know that might make them much younger in Japan than they would be in England. That still doesn't do much to counter the ickyness of some of the semi-sexual scences with Nyuu of course, since she seems in most ways to have a mental age of no more than about 2.

So yes, dark, unpleasant, incredibly violent, probably innapropriately sexual, but far from being without worth as a piece of work.

Now I have to go and try to sleep having spent the last half a day watching the whole thing.......wish me luck!
 
 
Shiny: Well Over Thirty
06:31 / 28.08.07
Having had a few hours a little bit of sleep since watching the show now, one thing I'm quite interested in, if I'm not alone in the intersection of the venn diagram for people who have watched Elfen Lied, read Miracleman, and who still post on Barbelith is if anyone else noticed any similarities between parts of EL and Johnny Bates storyline in Miracleman. There's enough there to make me wonder if the creators of the original Manga form of EL had read and been influenced by parts of Miracleman.

Potential Spoilers for both EL and Miracleman will follow
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Okay there's a number of points of similarity I noticed

1) Starting with the obvious aesthetic point - the large numbers of graphically illustrated dismembered limbs depicted in the series is quite reminiscent of Bates final rampage in Miracleman.

2) Lucy's brutal killing of the seemingly harmless female character during her escape, which was perhaps one of the most unpleasant moments of the show reminded me of Bates murder of his assistant during his first conflict with Miracleman - and served I suspect a similar narrative purpose, showing us that it's not just armed soldiers who present an imminent threat to her that Lucy is quite happy to murder.

3) Lucy's slaughter at the children's home, and the events leading up to it at the children's home, are very similar to the events kicking of Kid Miracleman's escape and his rampage. Even similar on the point of both Lucy and Bates murdering the one person in their institutions who was nice to them as well.

4) Slightly less solidly the general sense of impending doom when Lucy has become Nyu seems a bit similar to the mental hospital scenes in which Kid Miracleman is imprisoned, but in which the painful awareness that the horrible thing is going to get out and kill and kill and kill continues to build.

5) The general theme of terrible, murderous power in the hands of someone who is essentially a psychopathic child is also fairly similar, so it perhaps no surprise that the story hits many of the same beats.

So if I'm not alone at the intersection I'd be interested in anyone else comments on this. I'm not aware if even the most well thought of western comics are widely read by Manga creators, but there does seem to be enough similarity there to infer that in this case there might have been some influence.
 
  
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