About

Nana · Trimis: 25/11/2007 00:56 Titlul subiectului: About

Elfen Lied is the title of a Japanese manga series originally created by Japanese author Lynn Okamoto as well as a TV anime series based on it. Elfen Lied focuses on a mysterious and deadly breed of horned humans called "diclonius", and the havoc they wreak upon humanity. The title Elfen Lied is German for "Elf Song" (see Lied), and pronounced approximately [ˈɛlfən liːd], although the correct German spelling would be "Elfenlied".

Elfen Lied first began as a manga series, serialized in the magazine Weekly Young Jump and published in Japan by Shueisha, ending at the completion of the twelfth volume. An anime adaptation began airing in Japan on July 25, 2004 while the unfinished manga was still in production. This caused the anime plot to differ in some ways from the manga plot. A bonus OVA episode was released on April 21, 2005 giving some more background information.

So far, only the thirteen-episode anime series has been licensed in the United States, by ADV Films. ADV Films said the series was one of their bestselling and "most notorious"releases of 2005.

ABOUT

The story begins with a young girl named Lucy escaping under odd circumstances from an insular research facility off the coast of Kamakura in the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan. Lucy manages to nonchalantly dismember and slay a fair number of the staff and guards with a form of seemingly supernatural power and gets outside. A sniper is seen trying to shoot her, only managing to ricochet a bullet off her metal helmet. Lucy then falls off a cliff into the sea, bleeding from her head but ultimately surviving and evading the research staff.

Lucy is not a normal human but rather a diclonius: a mutant variant of humans with two small horns on their heads (hence the name diclonius) that resemble cat ears. The diclonius race possesses telekinetic powers through use of their "vectors", long arms that resonate at a speed that causes them to be undetectable by sight. The number and reach of the vectors depend on the diclonius. All diclonius seem to be girls only. Male diclonius are rare throughout the whole series (first one being the Professor at Kohta's school as seen in the manga), and they refer to themselves using "watashi" (私, "watashi"?), the genderless form of "I" in Japanese. They also all have pink eyes and hair unlike regular humans who have brown, black, blonde, and red hair.

The day after Lucy's escape, a boy named Kohta arrives at Kamakura to meet his cousin Yuka. Kohta has come to study at the local university and has been given lodging at an old, family-owned inn, the "Maple (楓, Kaede?) Inn", provided he acts as the caretaker. After meeting with Yuka, they go for a visit to the beach and find Lucy washed up on the shore, still naked and bleeding from her head. The head trauma Lucy experienced causes her to develop a split personality. In stark contrast to the cold and sadistic Lucy, this personality is completely docile, harmless and is incapable at first of saying anything other than "Nyu". Not knowing what to do with her, Kohta and Yuka take her back to the inn to look after her and name her "Nyu". Yuka quickly decides that it will be best that she also live at the inn.

Kohta, Nyu, and Yuka begin settling into their life at the inn and Nyu begins to dredge up painful repressed memories from Kohta's past. Meanwhile, the researchers from the laboratory where Lucy was held begin searching for her, dispatching both human and diclonius agents to hunt her down.

Main characters

Lucy is a teenage diclonius girl around 18 years old. In the anime, she has four vectors with a limited range of two metres, however in the manga, she appears to have many more vectors with greater range. Wihin her two-metre range, she can be swift and lethal, and will use any nearby objects as high velocity projectiles to kill at greater distances. She is also capable of stopping or deflecting most standard ammunition when she concentrates on the task. Lucy has developed strong emotions of hatred and vengeance towards the human mainly because of how she was treated by her fellow humans as a child, who claimed that "she is not human; this world is only for humans". Consequently, she discounts non-diclonii, claiming they are not real people. She seems to lack empathy, kills without much concern, and acts somewhat sadistically. Despite this lack of concern for human life she will not harm Kohta.
Nyuu is a split personality of Lucy that developed after a .50 BMG round ricocheted off a metallic helmet encasing her head. Nyu has a childlike personality and infantile knowledge of the world, forgetting even that she is a diclonius and how to use or manifest her vectors leaving her a human with horns. She initially lacks spoken language skills; however, she eventually learns a handful of words and phrases. Nyu is innocent and incapable of violent acts, a foil to the normally cold and sadistic Lucy; she is the manifestation of her "good side". When Nyu is attacked violently (or hit on the head), she regresses into Lucy; likewise, when Lucy is treated with love and kindness, she will uncontrollably switch back into Nyu.

Kouta is around 19 years old and enters the story when his cousin's family allows him to move in to their closed down restaurant in exchange for maintenance while he goes to a local university. Kouta has repressed traumatic memories of his father's and sister's deaths during his childhood at Lucy's hands. Because of his repressing his memories, Kouta does not remember Lucy from when he met her earlier as a child. Due in part to his loss, he has a soft spot for girls in trouble and is extremely generous and protective to the girls around him. He is more forgiving in the anime, but in the manga when he gets his memories back he truly is unforgiving about Lucy killing his father and sister.

Yuka is Kouta's cousin. She is also around 19 years old and planning to attend the same university as Kouta. She moves in with him at the inn after having not seen him in many years. Having had a crush on Kouta since childhood, she is in love with him, and is therefore jealous of Kouta's attention to Nyu, to the point of being very irrational.