[Anime] Elfen Lied
May. 3rd, 2005 12:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsIf there is one constant in anime, it is that it is relentlessly different from American media. And in anime, there is always the possibility that someone will go too far. Two seasons ago, Elfen Lied was a series that went too far. I'm split between not regretting the four hours it took to watch the series, and wishing I could scrub my brain out with a copper pad.
The premise of Elfen Lied is that some sixteen years ago there emerged a viral strain that causes babies to be born with cranial bulges that look a little like horns or catgirl ears, but that give the children powerful telekinesis. Unfortunately, it also gives them a violent psychopathic tendency, a murderous willingness to kill everyone that is not like them. The term for these creatures is diclonus, or "two horns." There seems to be an imbalance in gender production: more girls than boys develop the condition, and males are more capable of controlling their psychopathy.
I could claim that Elfen Lied is a story about redemption and forgiveness. And it is: the point is about Lucy learning to forgive those who made her, and to redeem herself for her own murderous guilt, and about Kouta learning the truth of his past and forgiving Lucy for it.
But that point is overshadowed by the unending, unremitting violence of the series. Episode one opens with Lucy, the eldest of the diclonus, escaping from the research facility, where she uses her telekinesis to systematically dismember over twenty people, mostly military people but in several cases innocent bystanders who just happened to be in the way, depicted in the most graphically bloody manner possible.
The most powerful, most common, and therefore most militarily useful dicloni are sadistic and psycopathic girls, the eldest of whom is sixteen. This results in over-the-top drive-the-horror-home scenes in which girls whose ages are never revealed but must be somewhere between nine and fifteen viciously brutalize and dismember each other, while slaughtering all the bystanders as well.
I can't recommend Elfen Lied. I'm not a fan of horror. Elfen Lied is not uncanny horror, despite the telekinesis, because it's about the horrors of the human heart, and what we might do (and what others might do to us) if this kind of power landed in our hands. And it's about transcending the horror to show a kind of divine forgiveness. The theme is sadly overshadowed by the violence, however necessary the writers may have felt it to the story, and I can't really claim it had a happy ending.
The premise of Elfen Lied is that some sixteen years ago there emerged a viral strain that causes babies to be born with cranial bulges that look a little like horns or catgirl ears, but that give the children powerful telekinesis. Unfortunately, it also gives them a violent psychopathic tendency, a murderous willingness to kill everyone that is not like them. The term for these creatures is diclonus, or "two horns." There seems to be an imbalance in gender production: more girls than boys develop the condition, and males are more capable of controlling their psychopathy.
I could claim that Elfen Lied is a story about redemption and forgiveness. And it is: the point is about Lucy learning to forgive those who made her, and to redeem herself for her own murderous guilt, and about Kouta learning the truth of his past and forgiving Lucy for it.
But that point is overshadowed by the unending, unremitting violence of the series. Episode one opens with Lucy, the eldest of the diclonus, escaping from the research facility, where she uses her telekinesis to systematically dismember over twenty people, mostly military people but in several cases innocent bystanders who just happened to be in the way, depicted in the most graphically bloody manner possible.
The most powerful, most common, and therefore most militarily useful dicloni are sadistic and psycopathic girls, the eldest of whom is sixteen. This results in over-the-top drive-the-horror-home scenes in which girls whose ages are never revealed but must be somewhere between nine and fifteen viciously brutalize and dismember each other, while slaughtering all the bystanders as well.
I can't recommend Elfen Lied. I'm not a fan of horror. Elfen Lied is not uncanny horror, despite the telekinesis, because it's about the horrors of the human heart, and what we might do (and what others might do to us) if this kind of power landed in our hands. And it's about transcending the horror to show a kind of divine forgiveness. The theme is sadly overshadowed by the violence, however necessary the writers may have felt it to the story, and I can't really claim it had a happy ending.
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Date: 2005-05-04 03:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 04:39 pm (UTC)-D