The title is actually based on an old German poem about an elf exploring a village. If I remember correctly, the creator of the anime wanted to get across the message that we are all monsters in our own way.
@@ibrahimihsan2090that’s the crazy part. It’s so clearly meant for adults but it sounds like everyone that viewed it were in middle school. I def watched this is 6th grade
@@ibrahimihsan2090 Funnily enough, the age restriction on an Elfen Lied video is what prompted me to create my RUclips account way back. And yes, I was in middle school and just discovered a liking for edgy stuff, lmao.
@@backparker9264 I remember so many Elfen Lied profile pictures being used in forums back then. It was basically regarded as this deep adult anime by countless nerdy and edgy teens.
there are anime and manga i've seen sometimes that do go into the nitty gritty of you being torn apart. Fate/Type redline has injuries in it that are metal as hell, like the top half of someones hand getting sliced off, or a shoulder being cleaved and getting stuck halfway.
I actually know a person who had a traumatic experience as a child and has neither any memories of it nor any memories of the following three or so weeks of her life, she was told by her therapist that this does happen to people sometimes. Memory repression is a real thing.
@@TheThreatenedSwan No, it's actually not uncommon to remember CSA as a teenager or an adult. That's like saying disassociation as a response to trauma isn't a thing.
Came to comment this. Memory repression is definitely real albeit usually not as extreme as the show presented it (although definitely can and has been that bad irl).
@@probablypositivity8918 You can look into it yourself, but there are not repressed memories outside of that just being a colloquialism for vague/poorly formed memories. It's just not how memory works, and all these non-scientific theories that were very popular among psychologists in the 19th and 20th century have been discredited
@@TheThreatenedSwan dissociative amnesia is 100% real. It is also known as dissociative memory disorder. You may not be able to literally lose memories like socks in a dryer, but the human brain can absolutely suppress traumatic memories as a survival mechanism. Sometimes people never recover the memories. They stayed stored away forever. Other times they do and it’s so overwhelming it can drive people to suicide. The memories are there, merely inaccessible to the conscious mind. This is a real thing that happens to real people and is diagnosable. I’m not sure if you were being deliberately facetious or you were merely misinformed, but there is still ongoing debate and research being done around this phenomenon. It is still included in the DSM-5 as a diagnosable condition as well.
@@zooemperor3954Is it really? It’s been a while since I read it, but I seem to remember the violence and nudity being even more gratuitous and excessive in the manga. Like the scene where the cousins kiss, in the manga she almost starts humping his leg. And then there’s a character exclusive to the manga I can only describe as ”Rapey the Murderous Molester”. Not to mention the story going completely off the rails towards the end, and Lucy literally melting in the climax. The only thing I can remember it doing better than the anime is giving cyborg dude an actual character, and a genuinely touching scene where he’s honestly surprised and happy that someone would mourn his death. And for what it’s worth, the puppy’s death is over in two quick panels rather than drawn out to almost a full minute. Like I said, I may be remembering it wrong, it’s been a few years since I read it.
Reason the anime feels unfinish is because.... well it is thing is Elfen Lied is originally a manga and the show only adapt the first part of the manga and the ending is mostly invented for the anime, the manga goes further and even have a time skip, and as a result many characters get their moment in the second half which was never adapted in anime.
Yeah same thing happened to the Gantz adaptation. Well, actually all the adaptations are like that. For example, the anime has a weird unresolved ending and the movie Gantz:0 is completely nonsensical without having read a good portion of the manga beforehand. Oh and don't even get me started on the live action movies that were attempted lol
tbh, i'm pretty glad how the anime turned out... Reading the manga just gives you 7 buckets filled with weird feish fuel and the actual end feels just as empty as an all of a sudden working grandfathers clock... Elfen Lied kinda opened my entry into anime and Manga but hell it is a horrible piece of art and i do wonder how in the seven hells it got even an anime adaptation.
"I suppose falling in love with the person who murdered your family is still a step up from your cousin." That is a sentence that should not ever need to be said LMAO
Hysterical Amnesia is rare, but PTSD is the most common way for it to happen. What happened with Kouta usually happens most often to soldiers and victims of severe domestic abuse.
Yeah, it absolutely can happen... However in my experience with suppressed memories, things linked to the suppressed memories still cause emotional responses, even if you don't consciously remember the traumatic event. I don't think it makes sense for Kouta to fall in love with Nyuu.
Gotta agree with this one. I also have memory issues regarding trauma. And while i dont know what happened and was too young and everyone else is lying about it. I still have very intense emotional responses to things that i have no memory to connect to. Its more likely that kouta would struggle with having a relationship with nyuu, because he cant remember what happened but his body is having a terrible feeling. "She seems harmless and it would feel odd to leave this pitiful person out on their own."
Trauma can for sure play with your memories. Especially as a child. The police wouldn’t keep talking to you through adulthood, neither would psychologists if they could find a way to stabilise a child so they could live a normal life. His brain would’ve filled in the parts that it wanted to suppress. Dying of a disease makes much more sense to a child than being sliced in half. I don’t know if you’d forget the killer but I would suspect you could. Same way the Lucy brain creates an Alter, Nyu who resembles a little to help her cope with trauma.
Regarding Lucy’s unnatural hostility, I don’t remember if the anime mentioned it, but in the manga it was mentioned that the horned girls were more prone to being violent and murderous. Such has her casually mentioning murdering a family to sleep in their house, which does end up shocking her when she realized what she just thought about doing like it was nothing. Nana is actually a rare case due to her being more friendly to the point of almost being completely tame. Also I do wanna mention that the anime went for an original ending, so if you wanna see how the manga truly ends, you should read it, it’s been years since I saw the anime, but I think it was like halfway that it started to do its own thing. The manga is significantly longer than the anime.
They do mention them beinc more violent yes, but tbh that does really not take into account how the girls are treated which probably nurtured the violent tendencies.
The anime does mention their unnatural hostility against other people but also their extreme friendliness towards animals as it show how one of them killed a guy walking his dog, but not harming the dog even though it was aggressive and even biting.
I remember that the manga was - for some weird reason - available in our school's library and it was a part of a "game" to dare to rent and read it, because it was so violent, graphic and contained all those scenes with nudity.
There is an additional insert episode of Elfen Lied that shows more flashbacks to Lucy's childhood, explains how she got captured, and adds more fuel to her hatred of humans.
@@AA-ed6ekwhat are you talking about, they were talking about how the puppy scene was hard to watch, which it is. But you agree with people calling them sick for that. Also from your other replies, I can tell you get mad at other’s opinions and try and start something.
I remember seeing that scene as well. From a YTP of all things. I looked up the original scene and found it disturbing and sad. And it’s what introduced me to Elfen Lied.
@@ursidae97 It is in a sense, but not for the virtuous victim identity reasons the average person would think. Just look at the people who are seen as low status and are society's punching bags vs who is actually high in psychopathology/disagreeable. There is a bizarre pattern where in the public sphere the salt of the earth are seen as evil and shallow virtue signaling people are seen as good even though in everyone's interpersonal interactions they know who is nicer
16:50 "he kinda forgot" you'd be surprised, it really does. if theres one thing this very fantasy-esque world gets right, it's how the human brain deals with trauma. people who experienced extreme levels of trauma as a child can basically entirely forget the memory as they grow. their mind LITERALLY prevents you from "seeing" it again. this is a symptom of people who have childhood trauma related disorders, like schizophrenia, MPD, CPTSD, and other psychological conditions that affect mood and memory. not hate, just informing!
And just to inform you, these cases are extremely rare. Not to mention those cases deal with sexual trauma growing up, such as child SA and incest. Kouta saw his father and sister being killed right before his eyes. That type of trauma works differently than sexual trauma. Kouta would FOR SURE remember that Lucy killed his dad and sister. He just forgot because the plot demanded it. Like you, not hating, just informing. :)
@hybrid_hawkins7206 fair enough! ive met a few people/friends who have repressed memories (they, as adults, dont entirely remember the situation(s) but know what the memories entailed) who had non-sexual related trauma 'blocked' ALONGSIDE sexual trauma as well (like actions from an abuser that were non-sexual). i like the give the benefit of the doubt when it came to remembering lucy, as there was probably just the idea that there was " no way " that could have been her etc etc yada yada
@@Natant I think in this case, the issue is that it's not just 'repressed' memory, it is that he invented false memories. In the case of sexual trauma, it can be easy to just block it out. There's no memory you have to implant. That doesn't exactly work for trauma relating to the murder of family members, as saying 'I was never sexually abused' can be mentally unfalsifiable, but 'my family was never killed' can't. Facing the reality that he doesn't have a family anymore means he has to fill in the gap of what happened somehow, and his brain apparently just made up an incredibly specific story of how each of them died, which is... bizarre. We can misremember horrible events but not usually to that specific of an extent. Repressed memories can stay repressed for so long because you don't have to engage with them and evidence of them don't tend to exist beyond the confines of your memories, but that simply cannot happen with events that have tangible and observable consequences that you engage with on a regular basis, like the lack of any living family, for example
@@owenlindkvist5355 I'd say it depends on the person. I grew up with moderate verbal and emotional abuse from one person in the household, and I repressed most of the memories. In general, it doesn't take much for me to repress things, but I'm aware other people experience things differently. The main part of the pain for me is to not KNOW what actually happened, because I can't remember.
@@klaushassen3954 You’re comparing berserk to elfen Lied and I’m saying that while berserk has disturbing elements too it’s an amazing story unlike elfen lied which is edgy middle school nonsense
The puppy scene was severely traumatizing i stg. Despite all the violence, nudity and effed up shit that happened in this series it remains the most disturbing part of Elfen Lied to me
To me it was in the manga. Spoilers They have a scene where all these kids are slaughtered in detail. It was a good story but man alive I've never had trouble with a manga. I had to hide what I was reading a lot.
it is more of a social thing like nudity since marrying your cousin and having children will not mentally impair the child to a noticable degree unless it happens multiple generations in a row. the USA is actually in the minority amongst the west for having it illegal. its still icky even for places where its legal, but people wont be as disgusted by it.
I am pretty sure Hellsing Ultimate is just a re-adaptation of the manga. In this case, the manga is appearently even more nonsensical than the anime somehow. At least according to a few people in this comment section who read it.
Here's what I don't see anybody mentioning at some point you see Lucy fixing the clock in the house but it has never worked but it only starts to chime when she came back to the house at the end
Maybe I need to refresh my recollection (it's been 15 years since I've watched the anime) but the way I remember the ending it was heavily implied Lucy actually died after the final fight, and the clock chiming was a manifestation of her soul coming back home.
The ending was cut short, and differentiated from the manga. Want the true story, plow through that manga, because there's much more there than what's in the anime.
When I was a child my grandfather died. I've been told by everyone in my family that we were inseparable. Shortly after he died though(at age 7), I lost a lot of memory. It's so bad that my earliest memory is when I was about 11, and a single memory at that. Everything else starts at 14. On top of that the only thing I know about him is that we have pictures of his face. So either my entire family has lied to me or, it's possible what happened to Kouta. Don't know about the memory fabrication though.
I have seen at least four corpses one way or another from age 12 to 17 and have joined several funerals. To be honest, I never really felt so much about people dying, and usually I never see them die in front of me. I just get told they died and then see people mourn while looking at said person's corpse covered in cloth with only their faces visible. I'm not sure whether I ever feel true grief, just upset that I don't get to visit them again. Thankfully, most of them died naturally but I did lose a relative to Covid 19 which made life rather more inconvenient for my aunt and her children and I think a cousin died long ago from an injury.
the memory fabrication is a real thing, some of my memories as a child were completely different than what actually happened. intel i started thinking about them more, the memories unwinded and i now remember them how they were originally.
About the bullying and the torture-murder of the puppy... I met several bullies that evil in late-elementary and middle school growing up. Kids can be just as evil or good as adults.
My family being avid beach goers until the 2000s... lost the count how many times we had to avert stupid brats from poking harmless sand crabs with sticks, throwing them around for some unfathomable reason, trying to pluck out their legs and so on
This is exactly what I was saying! does he really not know how kids act? bullies and some kids would literally disable/cut off pieces of insects/worms just for fun in my secondary school to basically torture it. even if its not quite a big mammal, Its still messed up and not far off worse stuff. considering how bad other schools are, the scene feels like it could be real.
You didn't even go into detail about just how cruel Kouta's sister's death was. IIrc, she pushed Lucy (aware that she's killing everyone) while trying to protect Kouta. To which, he slapped her (I think) and then yelled at her and told her that he'll never speak to her again if she doesn't apologize to Lucy. Devastated, she begs Kouta to forgive her, and before she could even finish her sentence, Lucy killed her abruptly. That death, as well as the dog's death, always stuck with me because of how cruel it was.
Don't worry, we've all been there. At around 13 I thought this was the kind of shows that adults would watch normally. Now I'm an adult and realize this show is appealing to adolescents but really just kinda weird and offputting for adults lmao
I thought it was shining a light on how obscenely cruel ones birth circumstances are or could be. The randomness of violence how pointlessness it is. Why you should be kind to strangers/kids. All of the themes kind of directly translate to whats going on with human trafficking. Not that i made that connection when i was a kid i just thought how the world was so cruel and lucys crimes were so bad she wanted to be lobotomized.
All of my friends at the time who watched it recommended it like it was the best series out there. Unfortunately, I don’t usually do what I am strongly recommended, so I didn’t give it a shot and stayed that way until I was 25 or even older. Boy, should I had stayed that way. I tried to watch it as an adult and it was such an awful experience that I dropped it after the first episode. I still wanted to see if it wad any good so I decided to read the manga (just to not have to hear another “nyuu”) and… it was also incredibly bad. It was pure gore rubbish pretending to be oH So dEep. I couldn’t finish it no matter how much I tried. Teen me was right when she decided to not watch it or read it. It’s highly flammable garbage.
16:28 okay, no. A lot of people make this mistake. And to be fair, I only know what actually happened because my mother taught me human psychology when I was ten. When Lucy sees Kouta with Yuka, some drunk knocks her down and cusses her out. We then see her picturing Kouta saying those words before transforming into a headless Tomoo(the head bully who killed the dog) and a bunch of other crazy shit that translates to a real life phenomenon called 'pushing buttons' When Kouta lied, it pushed a button. The next button in the sequence is the puppy dying followed by Lucy turning the instigator into salsa. So Lucy's thought process was 'A(lie) just happened, B(puppy murder) is going to happen, but if I go straight to C(people murder) then I can skip B and I won't have to suffer like that again.' This is also why some victims of Child Abuse will abuse their children in the same manner for the same reason. The 'winner' was doing the beating. This is all lizard brain stuff.
Thank you! This was one of the two things I scrolled down in hopes of seeing, and I cannot tell you how relieved I was to see this (and moreover how glad I was to see it explained so well!) 😅
@@submariNervous I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks this "needlessly cruel gore porn" is more philosophical than people give it credit for.
I killed my lizard brain long ago. Soon, I'll kill EVERYONE'S lizard brains! BY FUSING ALL OF HUMANITY INTO ONE!!! (Alondro was Gendo Ikari all along....)
@@danielasarmiento3101 yeah, but the issue with the manga is it didn't kill ffffffFFFFUUUUCKING KURAMAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!! Words alone cannot describe how much I fucking hate that bastard.
@@arielruh7773 If this is the only thing keeping you from watching Elfen Lied, then you should watch it lol. It's one scene that honestly could be skipped even though it is important for the main character and their backstory but if its that bad for you it only shows up once. Honestly I feel like there is a lot darker things that happen in the show but thats just me so either way this show may or may not be for you but I would suggest giving it a try. The dog thing doesn't happen till about halfway through so you get a gist of what the show is in the first couple of episodes.
0:03 Anime is not a genre. It's a medium. There are tons if genres within anime. For example, Pokemon is an adventure kodomo, anime geared at kids, and Dragonball Z is an action shonen, shonene being geared primarily at boys. Calling anime a genre is like calling animation a genre, which is just wrong. That would mean The Little Mermaid and Family Guy are the same genre.
Two things: 1. Source material (manga) has different finale (that tries to make more sense), but it's more suitable than a "ring bell". 2. You really NEED to look into Serial Experiment Lain! Its quite dark, but additional philosophical and waaay before its time.
This anime also fits the "born sexy yesterday" troupe of an adult woman with a mind of a child. It is an interesting anime to say the least. I would also recommend Akira if you haven't checked that out. And the director also did Steamboy which that one is fun. And not as crazy, a bit dark. But not anywhere near Akira or this anime. Lol
Lucy isn't adult either in physical or mental age. It's said in the story itself and clearly visible onscreen (they are all teenagers). And her naive, childish personnality is due to her having mental problems due to the bullet she get at the beginning of the story. Often switching beteen her normal, original, mature personnality and thus childish one. With memories witnessed in each phases not been really mixed togethers, until a certain point where her mental problem kind get resolved, and as such don't know what happen to her when she is in either phases.
memory suppression due to trauma is a very documented thing. it's very common for humans to repress memories of extremely traumatic events in order to cope with the mental, emotional, and physical damage. a young child seeing both his father and sister getting ripped into bloody pieces right in front of him would absolutely cause him to repress those memories. in fact it's more likely that he would repress him just because he's a child, his mind cannot handle that level of emotional damage and is simply storing away the memories. it's common for people to forget things when they're children and recall them when they're adults because they often have the skills to handle the trauma when they're older. ptsd, did, osdd, and many more mental disorders all have the criteria of having repressed, fuzzy, or generally poor memory due to trauma. in fact just from your summary it seems like nyuu and lucy seem to be plural, with lucy only fronting and showing herself in moments of extreme trauma and danger that nyuu finds herself in. i'm not going to say that it was intentional, since the concept of the "evil" alter is still a very common and very prevalent thing and lucy herself seems to fit this trope perfectly, especially considering the other comments i've read about how the horned people are more prone towards violence. though considering none of the other horned people show the same "evil person switching in to kill" i'm more tempted to say that nyuu and lucy are plural, with nyuu taking the role of the host (the main fronter) and lucy taking the role of either the protector or the persecutor. nyuu having no memory of lucy whatsoever is also further evidence for this, as most hosts will often have no memory of what the other alters are up to because of how plurality forms. it comes from extreme trauma during childhood causing no single stable individual to form mentally, thus creating multiple people inside a single body/mind. again plurality, either did or osdd, are characterised by dissociation and extreme memory loss. so yeah.... this show might be bad, or at the very least a gore party, but it's very correct in terms of how human memory and minds are affected by trauma.
You would just not remember things in the same mechanism that you don't remember other things. There is no "repression" where you actually do remember in your subconscious and are "storing away the memories." That is not real and completely discredited. DID is also not real and you cannot have multiple personalities in a proper sense. And children are just worse at remembering things
@@oxfordcommaisthegreatest What he meant was that it doesn't exist in the "split personality" or "multiple people in one person" way. Just like the name of the disorder suggests, disassociative identity disorder is a dissociative disorder. The individuals personality is theoretically one, whilst their identity is fragmented through disassociation. The disordered individual is convinced that they didn't experience the trauma, and that one of their identities did instead. Or that the other "personality" is responsible for some of their actions, it's all a matter of the headspace they place themselves into when experiencing life, which they then assign identity to as a means to cope. They semi-intentionally repress their traumatic memories, it has nothing to do with real memory suppression. Most people exposed to trauma experience fragmentation to some extent, for example it's typical for victims of sa to fully dissasociate from their body, feeling like they aren't one, even though it's obviously not true.
@@MforMovesets I don't know any anime willing to go this hard today, instead a few such as "redo of a healer" becoming "shocking" by just being fetish hentai
I found this anime at the perfect time in my life. My parents were going through a divorce, I was starting out in a new school...I was pissed. I NEEDED this anime when I found it.
this anime was also my first REAL anime introduction mind you I had seen parts of inuyasha but this was the first anime I finished annnnd I am now into moe slice of life romance anime and also psychological horror 😅😂
@@user-10021 Having only gotten in to anime at 17, guess thats why Ive never watched it. The must brutal Ive seen is Akame ga Kill which is quite mundane really, altho my favorite anime is Hyperdimension Neptunia with no blood what so ever.
The main problem I have with Elfen Lied is that it tries so hard to be dark, brutal and shocking that it becomes almost comical. I'm not saying that you can't have disturbing imagery, gore or dark themes in your story. I think Attack On Titan, Berserk and Grave of the Fireflies are pretty good examples on how having brutal scenes can be handled well and serve a point, while also handling serious and dark subject matter with respect and care But with Elfen Lied it falls into the trap a lot of 'adult' shows fall into, where it thinks being brutal and shocking makes it mature and in general feels like something a edgy teenager would write to come across as cool. The dog scene is a good example of this, is it brutal and really hard to watch? Yes absolutely, but it's clear that it was only made to drag on and be so brutal for shock value, as well as trying to lazily make us feel bad for Lucy. Just because you have a character who constantly suffers doesn't automatically make them a well written character, it instead comes across as lazy, manipulative and gross Also with how many scenes there are of Nyuu/Lucy as well as other characters are unnecessary naked, abused, or put into uncomfortable positions, it feels almost like the writers are putting their barely disguised fetishes in the show. Like I said it's not like you can't show nudity, but it pretty obvious when it's only added for shock value/fan service. It's especially gross knowing that not only are most of the girls are underage, but as well as Mayu being a victim of SA
i honestly think thats why it works. this anime feels like a diary entry, and this was THE THING that an edgy teenager would REPLICATE to come across as cool. this was the blueprint! theres a lot of really intense feelings behind this series that feel really personal and self-expressionate. i honestly like it more because of the excessive [and sometimes poorly done] shock, because it...really hadnt been done before
This is exactly why I hate the show and why I dropped it. It's so over the top that it's comical, like you said. I never understood why anyone recommended that show back in the early 2000's!
@@Natant I was an edgy teen and I did not for one second, think this was cool. I legit thought exactly what's stated in the video, way too over the top with pointless scenes. If you thought that show was edgy, you're too sheltered.
Especially if you know the author celebrates rape, mistreatment of women and girls, harems, you name it. The manga is such a shitshow and has several pedophilic scenes.
Aside from the infamy this anime gets with its gore, the OST soundtracks are just gorgeous. They stayed with me since I watched it as a 12 year old up to now and is a fair contender against the best in that category for me across all anime.
Yes, the OST is beautiful. Also, the opening animation inspired by the paintings by Gustav Klimt is a little work of art by itself. I also remember a couple of really good AMVs - for example the one to the theme of "Rosemary's Baby". Last time I checked it was still on YT, check it out if you haven't seen it.
18:02 when I was younger I once wrote an MHA fanfic and had the take of explaining convenient amnesia and memory suppression. I decided since MHA is basically a sci fi that certain characters should have memory suppression chips installed in the backs of their skulls that are wired to the brains memory center, analyzing when signs of distress are associated with a certain memory and learning to prevent that memory from being loaded. This allowed for very convenient memory loss without compromising the integrity of the story. It also allowed one character to have a failing MSC that would cause them to randomly remember horrible things that happened to them, and eventually a whole question about the morality of such a device. This is basically a sci fi, it could’ve done the same thing as fourteen or fifteen year old me
Man, this would really be something most would see in a sci fi book, the fanfic opening doors for 14 year olds to be writers in the future is crazy. If you remember or haven't deleted it, could you tell me the name of your fanfic?
@@quinnhost4341 The working title was AHA (Alternate Hero Academia) because it was an AU. If I ever upload it somewhere it it'll probably be called something like My Hero Academia XL (if that isn't already taken). Never put it out there
US: we traumatized children with puppets on sesame street talking about divorce UK: How many ways can we make fluffy rabbtis suffer as graphically as possible. Japan: ...................................define traumatizing
Thing about Hellsing though is that in effect it is very much an eastern written Gothic Horror and Action manga that pretty much told us. "Yeah, this guy understands western monsters." I didn't think of Elefn Lied but it did bring me back to John Carpenter Movies and naturally the 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula.
Yeah, my face literally twitches every time I hear it mispronounced like that. And it's literally there in the clips, you can hear it pronounced correctly in the background. Like dude, why? 😭
@@VocalovelyI feel like video narrators do that on purpose for some kind of edge but it just pisses me off. Like, if you’re going to put the time and effort into writing a script and edit a video, you’d think you’d learn how to say the protagonist’s name properly. Madoka gets pronounced maDOHkuh, sayaka gets saYAHkuu, asuka gets aSOOkuh Jeez
I do feel as if the series had an incredible potential to be competent in its maturity, but the original manga and poor handling of the adaptation’s dub work really hindered it. The original manga was also incredibly flimsy with its story and handling of sensitive topics, but it was the anime that had the opportunity to improve upon it and introduce it to a wider audience while addressing those issues in a respectful way, even if it did need to diverge from the source material. While it did leave out a good portion of the manga, (including and entire character critical to Lucy’s backstory that was later only addressed in a special released after the series’ conclusion,) it didn’t bother to do so, which really upsets me, because from an art and music standpoint, I think Elfen Lied is beautiful. The opening alone is so rich with symbolism, references, and historical parallels that make it breathtaking all on it’s own. The idea of using Gustav Klimt’s works as a reference for this specific kind of story was a good call, and it just pains me to know that the story and writing it’s attached to just stuck to edge for the sake of edge. The potential was clearly there, but it was sorely missed. TLDR, the Elfen Lied manga did not handle the mature topics it wanted to very well, and the anime missed out on a major opportunity to cut them out or address them in a respectful manner.
The author went on to do Brynhild in the darkness which is an even worse version of EL. Many of the weaker aspect of EL are in that series while the storytelling never elevates itself.
@@Kiba151 That's pretty dumb, just because you don't understand the maturity needed to deal with serious/dark topics, doesn't mean it's a bad argument. It just shows that you yourself aren't mature enough to consume them in the first place.
@@Yuki_Seraphim didn't ask if you thought it was a bad take or not. Asked why does a mature topic have to be handled in a respectful manner. If you don't know the answer that's all you had to say.
the intro theme, Lilium, is such a perfect tune for this series... sounds perfectly calm and soft and relaxing, and the you watch it, and it makes you think about what the Eff is going on....
That is possible but you can't forget stuff that specific and that memorable some things get burned into your mind even if its suppressed this should most definitely be one of those situations especially since the fact that no one followed up or talked about what happened that just makes it dumber
About the "convenient" memory loss: Lucy suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. DID is a psychological response to severe trauma. Symptoms include: - At the core is dissociation. This is about disconnecting from reality as a way to cope with trauma, to escape stressful situations or overwhelming emotions. - Two or more distinct identities (Alters) that have their own unique behaviours, characteristics and memories. The transision between Alters is called "switching" and can happen suddenly. DID Switch can be triggered by various things including stress, or something that reminds the person of the trauma. - Amnesia. Gaps in memory, around daily actions, identity, and especially around traumatic events.
I remember back in the early 2010s Elfenlied was on youtube. Uncensored, all of it. Nowdays that's hard to imagine but because of that it was one of the first anime I've ever seen (at 12 or 13) and I've talked to many people who share the same expirience.
I only read the first part of your comment when I replied, it's only now that I read about many sharing that experience. I remember literally being so traumatized by the Nana scene. Literally felt teary and I remember the mental image of the scene feel like an intrusive thought a whole day after watching
I watched it like 2 or 3 years ago on youtube, also completly uncensored. So it has been on there for quite a while. Unless someone reposted it back then ofcourse
@SteveReviews- You should watch Wolf's Rain; personally my favorite anime. Its another very depressing yet beautiful anime with one of the best musical soundtracks I've ever heard.
It's also good to note that: the anime was airing whilst the manga was ongoing, causing the anime to end abruptly with a lot of the end portions being anime-only details, hence the rushed plot and loose story threads near the end of the series
@@pinkfakecheez So the people who told you this lied (😂) to you. The manga is of approximative equal quality than the anime. With more shenanigans stuff, anything just even more exagerated, and it just go too complex and hard to follow and understand. With also things that don't made sense. And also poor writted stuff here too. And the end of it is among the ones that at the end you don't even know what to think about it, either bad or good. The anime end in a more simple and correct way. It like that : Bad Guys are defeated for good, no more threat for the characters, the whole group including the boy, his cousin, the little girl, her dog, and the two pink haired girls can now live togethers and forever normally. That enough both for the story and us as an ending and we get what we want and wishes for the characters.
Elfen Lied and King Ramses from Courage The Cowardly Dog in one video? You're really bringing back that childhood sense of dread for me in this moment.
It seems to me that the creators of Stranger Things were inspired by this show. Damaged and dangerous psychic girl escaped from a shadowy research installation.
@@redgrave4492Fan-made. And the fan made one was real screwed up so much so, that other fans had to go create a whole sequence where Nana was alive and had a happy life after everything else
yes, it was more interesting then this anime too, it’s from Clone.manga it’s still about torture, but it’s still more interesting bc they don’t hide it’s “torture” and not “oh it’s for the science” convenient plot
16:45 Actually, that IS how mental traumas work. Your mind supressed horrifying details to protect you, you'll misremember, and nothing makes sense; but once those memories start to resurface, causing a whole multitude of issues, that's when you got yourself the everlasting case of PTSD. Oh, and why did not one talk to Kouta about the deaths of his dad and sister? Japan has a HUGE taboo against death and pain. So much so that even the number 4 is removed from many places, because it is pronouced the same as "death" (shi)
While that does indeed happen, it ever truly does to a certain extent. You would never experience a traumatic experience so impactful that you completely forgot it ever happened to begin with, because that's just not how it work; at the very most, you can just suppress a few details here and there, and it also highly depends on the kind of Trauma. Seeing your entire family get brutally slaughtered right in front of your very eyes isn't something you can just completely forget about, period.
I remember that One Piece film. Baron Omatsuri and the secret island. It has been considered the darkest in the One Piece movies. It legit went from a silly pirate movie to a psychological horror. Would love to see a review on that if you ever get into One Piece
Imagine if they ever released the 2nd season with the continuation with the whole "i am the mother of everything" plotline and the people melting into pure DNA ... xD
Brynhildr in the Darkness, that one had powered up girls that melted. Then it's Parallel Paradise which had to mate with men, or they melted after they reached a certain age. This author just seems to recycle that specifically while his works lean more towards hentai. If anything, Elfen Lied veiled more the kink factor of his later works.
This anime is not for everyone, but it only shows what kind of medium it can be - adjusted for everyone and not just kids. Although to be fair toward Elfen Lied - anime never finished the story. If you want to see how it really ends you need to read the manga.
@@MASTEROFEVIL Dark Horse Comics released the entire series in four omnibuses. In the couple bookstores I go to, they're around but kinda hidden inbetween everything else. They're easily available on Amazon though so yeah
Strangely enough, I watched this anime on RUclips back in 2006. Back when you could only do 10 min long videos and could watch episodes in 3 parts. My opinion has changed greatly on this show and I should review it sometime in the future. Great Review Steve!
I haven’t seen this show for atleast 10 years but even to this day I listen to the opening theme atleast 3 times a week on one of my playlists, it’s such a beautiful piece of music and it’s always stuck with me
And that’s without mentioning how the anime didn’t cover like half of the manga. And man don’t get me started on the series the author did after, it’s… something.
@@dollmaker6599 I had no idea that _Parallel Paradise_ was made by the same author. I haven't read that story since chapter 50 or so. I don't remember it fondly.
@@OkamiLyra yeah, it’s not even good at what’s meant to be. It’s basically just raving horny characters and not much else. It ended up boring me after a while and dropped it. Like there’s been ecchi series that are far more enjoyable than that.
I think the 'plot convenience of 'Nyuu' was done so often and so blatantly to try and make it obvious that she was completely faking it the entire time, if I'm being honest. It would make more sense in almost every situation of convenience if she was simply faking it all. No idea though.
She wasn't faking in the manga it states due to the severe head trauma she suffered she regressed into childlike amnesiac and when ever she is in genuine trouble she will revert into her violent persona and when she suffers head injuries she revert to Nyuu , to the point where Nyuu becomes an entirely person different sharing the same body
@@danielasarmiento3101Yes and No. So about what you said and how she swap of phases/personnality, it's okay. But about that end up into 2 differents apart persons sharing a same body. Not so. In fact, on of the points the original manga completely miss and put even more confusion is justly to consider a personnality of a person/soul as being this said person/soul. While actually, it's two non-synonymous, non-mixable, apart things. Personnality=\= Person/Soul A person/soul is an self-aware living entity which inhabit a physical body. A personnality is the temperament/behavior that this said entity will have, develop and adopt, mostly instinctively and unawarely, defined from birth. This can be even called a phase/state in which a person remain and have its whole life. One person only have one personnality. And only having more due to mental problems. Here, with Lucy, it one single person which sadly is subjected to mental problems and possess and switch frequently between two personalities/phases/states, without true control over it. There the illusion there two persons, but actually, it well only one. But the manga don't really bother to respect this for a reason or another and just said its own definition of these things that are personalities and persons/souls. And it considering and deciding that end up the same and display things as such. But a story or manga shouldn't or cannot just because it want or something else decide to not folllow and redefined the definition of a given term/thing from our reality for its own setting. Especially if the said thing in its original, base real-life definition is something complex and somewhat potentially difficult to understand.
It's is confirmed she fake in the anime or that just something implied ? Because I don't see why she would fake and be good at it due to her normal mature, serious personnality. You cannot fake as easily and as if that was nothing a personnality at the opposite of your normal, current one.
Steve, don’t worry. Elfen Lied has a manga, and I hear that it’s better than the anime and that it actually better explains stuff and has a real ending. I think that the only reason that all of it wasn’t adapted was because they wanted the manga to sell better on its own. You can find and get all 4 of the omnibus volumes. Also, Lynn Okamoto, Elfen Lied’s author, has another anime and manga called Brynhildr In The Darkness which some people even claim is an Elfen Lied clone, and… I haven’t finished that anime yet, but even right now, I can kind of see why some people might think that. It’s still a great read and/or watch, though.
Well tbh. In the anime, they never told the male character anything about his dad's and sister's death due to the family fearing he'll have a severe mental breakdown so they had to keep it heavily a secret from him. Even the cops can't even speak to him due to being classified information. And it's possible to forget very traumatic memories. Like it's very strange because I do this severely that I breakdown severely like brain damaging tbh. The human brain is weird tbh since women who give birth, the brain will make them forget the painful experience so they can force women to continue giving birth. Not everyone is the same for mental health situations so it's understandable to him. But perhaps his family members lied to him about his missing family members dying from a sickness or car accident to hide the true fact to avoid his mental breakdown since he was severely shocked that took him months to snap out
I watched this many years ago, and seeing this in my sub feed I was thinking, "I don't remember it being THAT bad." Boy was I misremembering. I forgot many of these scenes, probably for good reason lmao
New Idea Update for you Steve reviews Ideas for your next video: 1. Peter and The Wolf 2006 2. Hellsing 2001 and Hellsing Ultimate 3. Hannah Barbera’s Dino Boy in the Lost Valley 4. Silly symphony The Flying Mouse 5. The Guardians of Gahoole 6. Bartok the Magnificent 1999 7. Dragon’s Lair Trilogy 8. Tom Sawyer 2000 9. Turok son of stone 10. Dead Space Downfall 11. Who Framed Roger Rabbit 12. The Silly Symphony Collection Disney 13. Shakespeare The Animated Series 14. Batman The Animated Series 15. H.O.T.D. High School of the Dead 16. Netflix The Monkey King
ngl I I'm not sure he could get away with uploading anything about HOTD (either the main series OR the OVA) without getting in hot water with RUclips. 🤣
I think the main reason Elfen Lied comes up as disturbing in forums is bc a lot of us first saw this anime accidentally as kids, and then tricked our friends into watching it 😬
That's funny, because in the german dub, she is a very understanding person, always explaining the motives of one character to the others with a nice, calm voice (I mean, she still beats up the guy, because you can't change animation, but her character that is displayed due to her lines and his lines is more like a companion that gets used and tossed aside and is always facing false promisses and is just sad and desperate)
why despise her and not the author who wrote her to be one dimensional and poorly written?? also why hate her for incest but not Kuta who chose to do it too?
@@cxireen2193 Well Elfen Lied Is Just One Of Those Anime That Almost Everyone Knows. Otaku Or NonOtaku, Someone You Might Know Might Have Seen It Somehow. Whether It Be The Whole Thing Or Even Just A Few Seconds Or Minutes Of It.
For some reason I always thought the head chief and his son used science to become more like a Diclonius. Now watching this vid and doing some research on the internet I found out they were actually born with horns, but simply never had the same powers as Lucy and the other Diclonius and were considered to be the "pre versions" of the Diclonius
I don't know where it was explained, but I remember reading that male Diclonius can exist, but they're powerless, as the Diclonius species is more on the matriarchal side. In the manga there's a third male Diclonius, a teenager, who doesn't have vectors and doesn't attack any human, nor shows hostility towards anyone.
16:51 if u look up regression therapy, technically it's a real thing. The body can recognize when it can't handle the trauma and will lock it away until replicated, triggered, or deems you ready to remember. I hate to say it but it happened to me and my trauma unlocked once I got over a different big trauma that was happening current day while that person who caused my childhood trauma sat there with a smile on their face like nothing happened years ago. Once the family found out it was torn apart and they person still denies what they did was wrong. But ig they're just as sick in the head. if not more.
To address the very close cousin thing, even though Elfen Lied’s manga came out in 2002 and it’s anime in 2004, I think that the story itself is set between the 1980s and early 1990s, so that might explain it a bit.
Stranger Things creator's were evidently big fans of Elfin Lied. In all honesty, even though it's an aquired taste, I feel like Elfen Lied is way better than people give it credit for, especially the manga- it's really a shame they had to end the anime when they did.
Elfen Lied, millennial's first R-rated anime kit. It was edgy for the sake of edgy, and I liked it as a teenager, but it hasn't aged well as an adult. There was a sort of spiritual sequel called, "Brynhildur in the Darkness". It was just Elfen Lied but with more moments of levity.
This could've been a better story. If it was normal amnesia, not the toddler personality, and the character finds herself hunted mercilessly. She manages to save herself each time even though she struggles to control the powers, and she tries to figure out what she is and how she lost her memories. Because she falls in love with the boy, she is horrified to learn that she killed his sister.
If it wasn't for the cousin thing Elfen Lied would be better. But it is comparing apples to oranges. One is the best horror in anime the other is a multi genre bending show.
Sorry for the Bad english I come from Germany: I saw the series for the first time when I was 8 years old, was completely disturbed and then didn't watch it again for years because I was afraid. Over the years, I have become a big lover of disturbing media, especially when it explores deeper views on topics such as humanity, morality or politics. And of course I wanted to give “Elfen Lied” another chance, as many say that the series should be more than just blunt shock. Unfortunately, when I watched it again, I found the series to be even worse than I remembered. At that time it was just a shock series for me that disturbed me. Nowadays for me it's a shock series that tries so hard to shock that it honestly became boring. Interesting approaches that were never really thought through because we have to get back to violence and hatred of people as quickly as possible. I'm really sorry for my wife, who was very emotionally affected by the series, but unfortunately I really didn't like the series. But the Opening is a masterpiece!!🎶🎵
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Cool hi
My first comment
@@XxS1llyP1nkCatxXnobody gives a fuck bro 💀
Do attack on titan
There is another anime like this, specially, the dog part but not sure about the name of it
The title is actually based on an old German poem about an elf exploring a village. If I remember correctly, the creator of the anime wanted to get across the message that we are all monsters in our own way.
3:58
It's briefly mentioned in the video
@@sonicfanboy3375 oh yeah, I don't know why I didn't notice that
Is that why everyone and their mother pronounces this anime as Elfen lead instead of lied (as in lie, fib, falsehood, etc)?
@@Numbers_Game Well, it's not English. That's the correct German pronounciation.
@@Numbers_Gameyes, everyone and their mother is pronouncing it correctly^^
I've always referred this as one of those "middle school" animes... cause everyone remembers their edgy phase.
I did watch this in middle school, and yes I thought I was edgy and not like the other girls, well at lest I learned English thanks to the subtitles 😅
Ironically, this is most definitely 18+.
@@ibrahimihsan2090that’s the crazy part. It’s so clearly meant for adults but it sounds like everyone that viewed it were in middle school. I def watched this is 6th grade
@@ibrahimihsan2090 Funnily enough, the age restriction on an Elfen Lied video is what prompted me to create my RUclips account way back.
And yes, I was in middle school and just discovered a liking for edgy stuff, lmao.
@@backparker9264 I remember so many Elfen Lied profile pictures being used in forums back then.
It was basically regarded as this deep adult anime by countless nerdy and edgy teens.
Seems like all anime characters are just water balloons filled with blood; no connective tissue, no fat, barely any organs; just blood.
I mean, isn't that the same with violent TV shows in general?
Also, organs are shown especially if they wanna get super brutal.
No, they show the organs. Steve just didn't show those scenes because he would have had to censor everything.
That’s The Boys
there are anime and manga i've seen sometimes that do go into the nitty gritty of you being torn apart. Fate/Type redline has injuries in it that are metal as hell, like the top half of someones hand getting sliced off, or a shoulder being cleaved and getting stuck halfway.
it shows the bone and muscle underneath.
I actually know a person who had a traumatic experience as a child and has neither any memories of it nor any memories of the following three or so weeks of her life, she was told by her therapist that this does happen to people sometimes. Memory repression is a real thing.
"Memory repression" is just not remembering things. Theories around repressed memories are largely pseudo science
@@TheThreatenedSwan No, it's actually not uncommon to remember CSA as a teenager or an adult. That's like saying disassociation as a response to trauma isn't a thing.
Came to comment this. Memory repression is definitely real albeit usually not as extreme as the show presented it (although definitely can and has been that bad irl).
@@probablypositivity8918 You can look into it yourself, but there are not repressed memories outside of that just being a colloquialism for vague/poorly formed memories. It's just not how memory works, and all these non-scientific theories that were very popular among psychologists in the 19th and 20th century have been discredited
@@TheThreatenedSwan dissociative amnesia is 100% real. It is also known as dissociative memory disorder. You may not be able to literally lose memories like socks in a dryer, but the human brain can absolutely suppress traumatic memories as a survival mechanism. Sometimes people never recover the memories. They stayed stored away forever. Other times they do and it’s so overwhelming it can drive people to suicide. The memories are there, merely inaccessible to the conscious mind. This is a real thing that happens to real people and is diagnosable. I’m not sure if you were being deliberately facetious or you were merely misinformed, but there is still ongoing debate and research being done around this phenomenon. It is still included in the DSM-5 as a diagnosable condition as well.
John Wick and Lucy make a great team. They hate puppy killers.
Oh they absolutely would.
Soooo is the manga actually good then?
@@strzygon5426 it is.
@@zooemperor3954Is it really? It’s been a while since I read it, but I seem to remember the violence and nudity being even more gratuitous and excessive in the manga. Like the scene where the cousins kiss, in the manga she almost starts humping his leg. And then there’s a character exclusive to the manga I can only describe as ”Rapey the Murderous Molester”. Not to mention the story going completely off the rails towards the end, and Lucy literally melting in the climax.
The only thing I can remember it doing better than the anime is giving cyborg dude an actual character, and a genuinely touching scene where he’s honestly surprised and happy that someone would mourn his death. And for what it’s worth, the puppy’s death is over in two quick panels rather than drawn out to almost a full minute.
Like I said, I may be remembering it wrong, it’s been a few years since I read it.
Don't forget about many jojo's across history
Reason the anime feels unfinish is because.... well it is thing is Elfen Lied is originally a manga and the show only adapt the first part of the manga and the ending is mostly invented for the anime, the manga goes further and even have a time skip, and as a result many characters get their moment in the second half which was never adapted in anime.
Yeah same thing happened to the Gantz adaptation. Well, actually all the adaptations are like that. For example, the anime has a weird unresolved ending and the movie Gantz:0 is completely nonsensical without having read a good portion of the manga beforehand. Oh and don't even get me started on the live action movies that were attempted lol
@@subtledemisefox Same with trigun
Ah a classic Akira situation
tbh, i'm pretty glad how the anime turned out... Reading the manga just gives you 7 buckets filled with weird feish fuel and the actual end feels just as empty as an all of a sudden working grandfathers clock...
Elfen Lied kinda opened my entry into anime and Manga but hell it is a horrible piece of art and i do wonder how in the seven hells it got even an anime adaptation.
Still a shit story tbh
"I suppose falling in love with the person who murdered your family is still a step up from your cousin."
That is a sentence that should not ever need to be said LMAO
She had been a child and he was mature enough to see it?
...No?
@@1999yasin no bro..
Maybe
Hysterical Amnesia is rare, but PTSD is the most common way for it to happen. What happened with Kouta usually happens most often to soldiers and victims of severe domestic abuse.
Can confirm as someone who's had trauma related amnesia as a child
Yeah, it absolutely can happen... However in my experience with suppressed memories, things linked to the suppressed memories still cause emotional responses, even if you don't consciously remember the traumatic event.
I don't think it makes sense for Kouta to fall in love with Nyuu.
Can confirm. It's awful to experience too.
Spoonies tell me it happens all the time and everything is trauma and ptsd
Gotta agree with this one. I also have memory issues regarding trauma. And while i dont know what happened and was too young and everyone else is lying about it. I still have very intense emotional responses to things that i have no memory to connect to. Its more likely that kouta would struggle with having a relationship with nyuu, because he cant remember what happened but his body is having a terrible feeling. "She seems harmless and it would feel odd to leave this pitiful person out on their own."
Trauma can for sure play with your memories. Especially as a child. The police wouldn’t keep talking to you through adulthood, neither would psychologists if they could find a way to stabilise a child so they could live a normal life. His brain would’ve filled in the parts that it wanted to suppress. Dying of a disease makes much more sense to a child than being sliced in half. I don’t know if you’d forget the killer but I would suspect you could. Same way the Lucy brain creates an Alter, Nyu who resembles a little to help her cope with trauma.
Regarding Lucy’s unnatural hostility, I don’t remember if the anime mentioned it, but in the manga it was mentioned that the horned girls were more prone to being violent and murderous.
Such has her casually mentioning murdering a family to sleep in their house, which does end up shocking her when she realized what she just thought about doing like it was nothing.
Nana is actually a rare case due to her being more friendly to the point of almost being completely tame.
Also I do wanna mention that the anime went for an original ending, so if you wanna see how the manga truly ends, you should read it, it’s been years since I saw the anime, but I think it was like halfway that it started to do its own thing.
The manga is significantly longer than the anime.
Yeah, pretty much.
It's about 90-100 chapters
They do mention them beinc more violent yes, but tbh that does really not take into account how the girls are treated which probably nurtured the violent tendencies.
The anime does mention their unnatural hostility against other people but also their extreme friendliness towards animals as it show how one of them killed a guy walking his dog, but not harming the dog even though it was aggressive and even biting.
It's shown in the anime that their bloodlust towards humans has to be triggered by humans first. They'd be normal if their trigger is never hit.
I remember that the manga was - for some weird reason - available in our school's library and it was a part of a "game" to dare to rent and read it, because it was so violent, graphic and contained all those scenes with nudity.
Man, your school must have been oblivious...
Ours had Hellsing (Manga) in tbe library lol
fuckin boomers thinking anything in a non ultra realistic style has to be for children
My school had Rosario Vampire lol
My school had both Fullmetal alchemist and one piece
There is an additional insert episode of Elfen Lied that shows more flashbacks to Lucy's childhood, explains how she got captured, and adds more fuel to her hatred of humans.
The puppy being beaten to death was the hardest scene to watch and that scene was the first time I ever saw the show when I saw the clip on RUclips
@@AA-ed6ekwhat are you talking about, they were talking about how the puppy scene was hard to watch, which it is. But you agree with people calling them sick for that. Also from your other replies, I can tell you get mad at other’s opinions and try and start something.
It was like a Scene of Chapter Black (Yu Yu hakusho)
I remember seeing that scene as well. From a YTP of all things. I looked up the original scene and found it disturbing and sad. And it’s what introduced me to Elfen Lied.
@@AA-ed6ekQuit trying to demonize others for no reason. Especially of it’s over fictional content of all things. It’s really annoying.
Just like in tender is the flesh
Given Lucy's past, I'm not surprised she turned out to be a mass murdering psychopath.
She needs a hug.
She's not even human. She doesn't have the same empathy we do.
@@MobilesuitBigOExcept it's shown that her species is capable of not being nearly as crazy as her.
@@PeruvianPotato that's an abnormality not a possibility. Sadly they are just aggressive by nature.
Lucy is human; her mother was too and the source of the mutation that made her a diclonius.
"... the more pure and innocent you are, the more cruelly you're treated..."
Hey, man, that's just reality. Except without the invisible arms.
It's really not
@@ursidae97 It is in a sense, but not for the virtuous victim identity reasons the average person would think. Just look at the people who are seen as low status and are society's punching bags vs who is actually high in psychopathology/disagreeable. There is a bizarre pattern where in the public sphere the salt of the earth are seen as evil and shallow virtue signaling people are seen as good even though in everyone's interpersonal interactions they know who is nicer
@@TheThreatenedSwan No I don't think any of that is accurate
@@ursidae97 Chad response
@ursidae97 in my country, there is saying, 'the kind ones dies early and the evil ones live longer' 'being kind is being stupid'...
16:50 "he kinda forgot"
you'd be surprised, it really does. if theres one thing this very fantasy-esque world gets right, it's how the human brain deals with trauma.
people who experienced extreme levels of trauma as a child can basically entirely forget the memory as they grow. their mind LITERALLY prevents you from "seeing" it again. this is a symptom of people who have childhood trauma related disorders, like schizophrenia, MPD, CPTSD, and other psychological conditions that affect mood and memory.
not hate, just informing!
And just to inform you, these cases are extremely rare. Not to mention those cases deal with sexual trauma growing up, such as child SA and incest. Kouta saw his father and sister being killed right before his eyes. That type of trauma works differently than sexual trauma. Kouta would FOR SURE remember that Lucy killed his dad and sister. He just forgot because the plot demanded it.
Like you, not hating, just informing. :)
@hybrid_hawkins7206 fair enough! ive met a few people/friends who have repressed memories (they, as adults, dont entirely remember the situation(s) but know what the memories entailed) who had non-sexual related trauma 'blocked' ALONGSIDE sexual trauma as well (like actions from an abuser that were non-sexual). i like the give the benefit of the doubt when it came to remembering lucy, as there was probably just the idea that there was " no way " that could have been her etc etc yada yada
@@Natant I think in this case, the issue is that it's not just 'repressed' memory, it is that he invented false memories. In the case of sexual trauma, it can be easy to just block it out. There's no memory you have to implant. That doesn't exactly work for trauma relating to the murder of family members, as saying 'I was never sexually abused' can be mentally unfalsifiable, but 'my family was never killed' can't. Facing the reality that he doesn't have a family anymore means he has to fill in the gap of what happened somehow, and his brain apparently just made up an incredibly specific story of how each of them died, which is... bizarre. We can misremember horrible events but not usually to that specific of an extent. Repressed memories can stay repressed for so long because you don't have to engage with them and evidence of them don't tend to exist beyond the confines of your memories, but that simply cannot happen with events that have tangible and observable consequences that you engage with on a regular basis, like the lack of any living family, for example
As a person with CPTSD, I strongly refute your claim as being conjecture at best. Part of our pain is remembering EVERYTHING.
@@owenlindkvist5355 I'd say it depends on the person. I grew up with moderate verbal and emotional abuse from one person in the household, and I repressed most of the memories. In general, it doesn't take much for me to repress things, but I'm aware other people experience things differently. The main part of the pain for me is to not KNOW what actually happened, because I can't remember.
*sees that Steve Reviews is getting into anime*
“Oh cool I wonder which series he’s gonna pick as his introduction!”
*sees thumbnail”
“Oh shit”
Imagine his reaction to Berserk 97
@@klaushassen3954he should read the manga😂
@@klaushassen3954hey berserk is actually good though. Elfen lied is edgy nonsense
@@danielclark653 the hell you on about?
@@klaushassen3954 You’re comparing berserk to elfen Lied and I’m saying that while berserk has disturbing elements too it’s an amazing story unlike elfen lied which is edgy middle school nonsense
The puppy scene was severely traumatizing i stg. Despite all the violence, nudity and effed up shit that happened in this series it remains the most disturbing part of Elfen Lied to me
To me it was in the manga. Spoilers
They have a scene where all these kids are slaughtered in detail. It was a good story but man alive I've never had trouble with a manga. I had to hide what I was reading a lot.
Good story? Maybe if you’re an immature edgelord it is. It’s just tasteless trash that has as much depth as an emo kid’s dumbass writings of the world
The explosion death genuinely made me cry when I I saw it the first time...
100% that hit hard...
Yeah, same. That and, of course, the puppy scene
me too I was bawling my eyes out
I do remember a Japanese student in one of my college classes thinking it was weird that marrying your cousin is so taboo here.
A lot of people are married to their distant cousin without knowing it.
it is more of a social thing like nudity since marrying your cousin and having children will not mentally impair the child to a noticable degree unless it happens multiple generations in a row.
the USA is actually in the minority amongst the west for having it illegal.
its still icky even for places where its legal, but people wont be as disgusted by it.
Japan had a much more recent and less turbulent transition from rural agriculture society to industrial urban society. Also Shinto vs Christianity.
Albert Einstein married his cousin.....
@@mushyroom9569 more I learn about Shinto faith, it seems to have all of the same flaws of Christianity with fewer perks
I think Elfen Lied could benefit from a Hellsing Ultimate styled remake which would fix most of the weak parts of the original anime.
Oh God, I actually adore Hellsing Ultimate despite finding most of this anime shows pretentious and superficial.
@@kacklina It's in the percent of anime I enjoy
Honestly, I don't think this anime could be made today.
I am pretty sure Hellsing Ultimate is just a re-adaptation of the manga. In this case, the manga is appearently even more nonsensical than the anime somehow. At least according to a few people in this comment section who read it.
Please, just keep their clothes on ffs…
Here's what I don't see anybody mentioning at some point you see Lucy fixing the clock in the house but it has never worked but it only starts to chime when she came back to the house at the end
Maybe I need to refresh my recollection (it's been 15 years since I've watched the anime) but the way I remember the ending it was heavily implied Lucy actually died after the final fight, and the clock chiming was a manifestation of her soul coming back home.
The ending was cut short, and differentiated from the manga. Want the true story, plow through that manga, because there's much more there than what's in the anime.
When I was a child my grandfather died. I've been told by everyone in my family that we were inseparable. Shortly after he died though(at age 7), I lost a lot of memory. It's so bad that my earliest memory is when I was about 11, and a single memory at that. Everything else starts at 14. On top of that the only thing I know about him is that we have pictures of his face. So either my entire family has lied to me or, it's possible what happened to Kouta. Don't know about the memory fabrication though.
Were you in an accident or something that caused such major memory loss?
I have seen at least four corpses one way or another from age 12 to 17 and have joined several funerals.
To be honest, I never really felt so much about people dying, and usually I never see them die in front of me. I just get told they died and then see people mourn while looking at said person's corpse covered in cloth with only their faces visible.
I'm not sure whether I ever feel true grief, just upset that I don't get to visit them again.
Thankfully, most of them died naturally but I did lose a relative to Covid 19 which made life rather more inconvenient for my aunt and her children and I think a cousin died long ago from an injury.
the memory fabrication is a real thing, some of my memories as a child were completely different than what actually happened. intel i started thinking about them more, the memories unwinded and i now remember them how they were originally.
About the bullying and the torture-murder of the puppy... I met several bullies that evil in late-elementary and middle school growing up. Kids can be just as evil or good as adults.
My family being avid beach goers until the 2000s... lost the count how many times we had to avert stupid brats from poking harmless sand crabs with sticks, throwing them around for some unfathomable reason, trying to pluck out their legs and so on
This is exactly what I was saying! does he really not know how kids act? bullies and some kids would literally disable/cut off pieces of insects/worms just for fun in my secondary school to basically torture it. even if its not quite a big mammal, Its still messed up and not far off worse stuff. considering how bad other schools are, the scene feels like it could be real.
You didn't even go into detail about just how cruel Kouta's sister's death was. IIrc, she pushed Lucy (aware that she's killing everyone) while trying to protect Kouta. To which, he slapped her (I think) and then yelled at her and told her that he'll never speak to her again if she doesn't apologize to Lucy. Devastated, she begs Kouta to forgive her, and before she could even finish her sentence, Lucy killed her abruptly. That death, as well as the dog's death, always stuck with me because of how cruel it was.
I can't believe my 12 year old self thought this anime was so deep and mature just because of the mindless gore and the opening
Don't worry, we've all been there. At around 13 I thought this was the kind of shows that adults would watch normally. Now I'm an adult and realize this show is appealing to adolescents but really just kinda weird and offputting for adults lmao
I thought it was shining a light on how obscenely cruel ones birth circumstances are or could be. The randomness of violence how pointlessness it is. Why you should be kind to strangers/kids.
All of the themes kind of directly translate to whats going on with human trafficking. Not that i made that connection when i was a kid i just thought how the world was so cruel and lucys crimes were so bad she wanted to be lobotomized.
All of my friends at the time who watched it recommended it like it was the best series out there. Unfortunately, I don’t usually do what I am strongly recommended, so I didn’t give it a shot and stayed that way until I was 25 or even older. Boy, should I had stayed that way. I tried to watch it as an adult and it was such an awful experience that I dropped it after the first episode. I still wanted to see if it wad any good so I decided to read the manga (just to not have to hear another “nyuu”) and… it was also incredibly bad. It was pure gore rubbish pretending to be oH So dEep. I couldn’t finish it no matter how much I tried.
Teen me was right when she decided to not watch it or read it. It’s highly flammable garbage.
Let's be honest, we only liked this show because we were fucking edgy and tried to be "mature".
the thing is it was deep, even deeper in the manga, had a lot of psychology stuff
16:28 okay, no. A lot of people make this mistake. And to be fair, I only know what actually happened because my mother taught me human psychology when I was ten.
When Lucy sees Kouta with Yuka, some drunk knocks her down and cusses her out. We then see her picturing Kouta saying those words before transforming into a headless Tomoo(the head bully who killed the dog) and a bunch of other crazy shit that translates to a real life phenomenon called 'pushing buttons'
When Kouta lied, it pushed a button. The next button in the sequence is the puppy dying followed by Lucy turning the instigator into salsa.
So Lucy's thought process was 'A(lie) just happened, B(puppy murder) is going to happen, but if I go straight to C(people murder) then I can skip B and I won't have to suffer like that again.'
This is also why some victims of Child Abuse will abuse their children in the same manner for the same reason. The 'winner' was doing the beating.
This is all lizard brain stuff.
Thank you! This was one of the two things I scrolled down in hopes of seeing, and I cannot tell you how relieved I was to see this (and moreover how glad I was to see it explained so well!) 😅
@@submariNervous I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks this "needlessly cruel gore porn" is more philosophical than people give it credit for.
@supersaiyandiclonius3056 the issue with the anime was that it cut a lot of the philosophical stuff from the manga
I killed my lizard brain long ago. Soon, I'll kill EVERYONE'S lizard brains! BY FUSING ALL OF HUMANITY INTO ONE!!! (Alondro was Gendo Ikari all along....)
@@danielasarmiento3101 yeah, but the issue with the manga is it didn't kill ffffffFFFFUUUUCKING KURAMAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!
Words alone cannot describe how much I fucking hate that bastard.
Elfen lied being the most disturbing anime is definetly something you would read on reddit
The last time I watched this anime was when I was with my friends. They liked it but I thought it was weird
The puppy deserved better! 😢😢😢😢
I've noticed this when writing bullies is if you make a bully too extreme you're writing a murderer not someone who makes quick mean comments or jabs
Yes it did that's the only reason why I won't watch elfen lied
@@arielruh7773 If this is the only thing keeping you from watching Elfen Lied, then you should watch it lol. It's one scene that honestly could be skipped even though it is important for the main character and their backstory but if its that bad for you it only shows up once. Honestly I feel like there is a lot darker things that happen in the show but thats just me so either way this show may or may not be for you but I would suggest giving it a try. The dog thing doesn't happen till about halfway through so you get a gist of what the show is in the first couple of episodes.
At least it isn't Mayu's dog?
Everyone in this deserved better
You would be AMAZED at the level of trauma that the brain can completely block out as a survival tactic!!
0:03 Anime is not a genre. It's a medium. There are tons if genres within anime. For example, Pokemon is an adventure kodomo, anime geared at kids, and Dragonball Z is an action shonen, shonene being geared primarily at boys.
Calling anime a genre is like calling animation a genre, which is just wrong. That would mean The Little Mermaid and Family Guy are the same genre.
Two things:
1. Source material (manga) has different finale (that tries to make more sense), but it's more suitable than a "ring bell".
2. You really NEED to look into Serial Experiment Lain! Its quite dark, but additional philosophical and waaay before its time.
This anime also fits the "born sexy yesterday" troupe of an adult woman with a mind of a child. It is an interesting anime to say the least.
I would also recommend Akira if you haven't checked that out. And the director also did Steamboy which that one is fun. And not as crazy, a bit dark. But not anywhere near Akira or this anime. Lol
He did cover Akira long ago.
PHENOMENAL film from ‘88.
Lucy isn't adult either in physical or mental age.
It's said in the story itself and clearly visible onscreen (they are all teenagers).
And her naive, childish personnality is due to her having mental problems due to the bullet she get at the beginning of the story.
Often switching beteen her normal, original, mature personnality and thus childish one.
With memories witnessed in each phases not been really mixed togethers, until a certain point where her mental problem kind get resolved, and as such don't know what happen to her when she is in either phases.
Born sexy yesterday? Didn't POOR THINGS do this or SPLICE? SPLICE to me is a live-action ELFEN LIED.
memory suppression due to trauma is a very documented thing. it's very common for humans to repress memories of extremely traumatic events in order to cope with the mental, emotional, and physical damage. a young child seeing both his father and sister getting ripped into bloody pieces right in front of him would absolutely cause him to repress those memories. in fact it's more likely that he would repress him just because he's a child, his mind cannot handle that level of emotional damage and is simply storing away the memories. it's common for people to forget things when they're children and recall them when they're adults because they often have the skills to handle the trauma when they're older. ptsd, did, osdd, and many more mental disorders all have the criteria of having repressed, fuzzy, or generally poor memory due to trauma.
in fact just from your summary it seems like nyuu and lucy seem to be plural, with lucy only fronting and showing herself in moments of extreme trauma and danger that nyuu finds herself in. i'm not going to say that it was intentional, since the concept of the "evil" alter is still a very common and very prevalent thing and lucy herself seems to fit this trope perfectly, especially considering the other comments i've read about how the horned people are more prone towards violence. though considering none of the other horned people show the same "evil person switching in to kill" i'm more tempted to say that nyuu and lucy are plural, with nyuu taking the role of the host (the main fronter) and lucy taking the role of either the protector or the persecutor. nyuu having no memory of lucy whatsoever is also further evidence for this, as most hosts will often have no memory of what the other alters are up to because of how plurality forms. it comes from extreme trauma during childhood causing no single stable individual to form mentally, thus creating multiple people inside a single body/mind. again plurality, either did or osdd, are characterised by dissociation and extreme memory loss.
so yeah.... this show might be bad, or at the very least a gore party, but it's very correct in terms of how human memory and minds are affected by trauma.
You would just not remember things in the same mechanism that you don't remember other things. There is no "repression" where you actually do remember in your subconscious and are "storing away the memories." That is not real and completely discredited. DID is also not real and you cannot have multiple personalities in a proper sense. And children are just worse at remembering things
@@TheThreatenedSwan"DID is not real"
Unserious opinion
@@TheThreatenedSwandissociative Identity disorder is in the DSM-5. You're not real.😂
@@TheThreatenedSwanSays *who*? Besides yourself, obviously.
@@oxfordcommaisthegreatest What he meant was that it doesn't exist in the "split personality" or "multiple people in one person" way. Just like the name of the disorder suggests, disassociative identity disorder is a dissociative disorder. The individuals personality is theoretically one, whilst their identity is fragmented through disassociation. The disordered individual is convinced that they didn't experience the trauma, and that one of their identities did instead. Or that the other "personality" is responsible for some of their actions, it's all a matter of the headspace they place themselves into when experiencing life, which they then assign identity to as a means to cope. They semi-intentionally repress their traumatic memories, it has nothing to do with real memory suppression. Most people exposed to trauma experience fragmentation to some extent, for example it's typical for victims of sa to fully dissasociate from their body, feeling like they aren't one, even though it's obviously not true.
*Vietnam Flashbacks* …. That poor puppy…
John wick is so gonna be all over their asses
Yeah this is some sick junk. Or how I call it: The entire genre of modern anime.
@@MforMovesets I don't know any anime willing to go this hard today,
instead a few such as "redo of a healer" becoming "shocking" by just being fetish hentai
@@christianweibrecht6555 I meant it more in a way that all regular animes are borderline porn now. And way more incestuous than this one.
@@MforMovesets oh I agree with you
adopted teens on Crunchyroll are now more likely to engage in incest than those on Pornhub
I found this anime at the perfect time in my life. My parents were going through a divorce, I was starting out in a new school...I was pissed. I NEEDED this anime when I found it.
123 👍
elfen lied was my first anime at 9 y/o bc it was free on YT back then 😭😭 man how the times have changed
When I was a young teen Elfed lied was actually the first anime I actually saw and holy shit it was crazy and it has a special place in my heart.
Most of us watched it as kids! Universal experience haha
Yeah it was for me too I also in that time listen to the song and my parents really loved it
Never question from where it was 😂
this anime was also my first REAL anime introduction mind you I had seen parts of inuyasha but this was the first anime I finished annnnd I am now into moe slice of life romance anime and also psychological horror 😅😂
Same 💀 watched Death Note right after it
@@user-10021 Having only gotten in to anime at 17, guess thats why Ive never watched it. The must brutal Ive seen is Akame ga Kill which is quite mundane really, altho my favorite anime is Hyperdimension Neptunia with no blood what so ever.
Don't worry the manga reverses almost everything and they all live happy ever after
Not to mention, in the manga Lucy wasn’t even the evil one, it’s actually a third split personality.
@@veronicapiccinini7956 yeah the anime was strange thinking back on it.
@@veronicapiccinini7956 There a reliable place I can find a complete english scan of the manga if it does exist?
Well Lucy doesn't..
I prefer the ending of the manga anyway, I hate cliffhangers.
And not to mention, we get Bandou vs Lucy part 2 in the manga.
This show is the embodiment of “This is definitely some guys fetish.”
I can suspend my disbelief.
The main problem I have with Elfen Lied is that it tries so hard to be dark, brutal and shocking that it becomes almost comical. I'm not saying that you can't have disturbing imagery, gore or dark themes in your story. I think Attack On Titan, Berserk and Grave of the Fireflies are pretty good examples on how having brutal scenes can be handled well and serve a point, while also handling serious and dark subject matter with respect and care
But with Elfen Lied it falls into the trap a lot of 'adult' shows fall into, where it thinks being brutal and shocking makes it mature and in general feels like something a edgy teenager would write to come across as cool. The dog scene is a good example of this, is it brutal and really hard to watch? Yes absolutely, but it's clear that it was only made to drag on and be so brutal for shock value, as well as trying to lazily make us feel bad for Lucy. Just because you have a character who constantly suffers doesn't automatically make them a well written character, it instead comes across as lazy, manipulative and gross
Also with how many scenes there are of Nyuu/Lucy as well as other characters are unnecessary naked, abused, or put into uncomfortable positions, it feels almost like the writers are putting their barely disguised fetishes in the show. Like I said it's not like you can't show nudity, but it pretty obvious when it's only added for shock value/fan service. It's especially gross knowing that not only are most of the girls are underage, but as well as Mayu being a victim of SA
i honestly think thats why it works. this anime feels like a diary entry, and this was THE THING that an edgy teenager would REPLICATE to come across as cool. this was the blueprint! theres a lot of really intense feelings behind this series that feel really personal and self-expressionate. i honestly like it more because of the excessive [and sometimes poorly done] shock, because it...really hadnt been done before
This is exactly why I hate the show and why I dropped it. It's so over the top that it's comical, like you said. I never understood why anyone recommended that show back in the early 2000's!
I'd honestly recommend reading the manga . While it is as brutal as the series, it does actually handle it's subject matters better in my opinion
@@Natant I was an edgy teen and I did not for one second, think this was cool. I legit thought exactly what's stated in the video, way too over the top with pointless scenes. If you thought that show was edgy, you're too sheltered.
@@Natantthis
This whole anime screams, "I am 14 and this is deep".
Sounds like you are just pseudo intellectual turbo virgin.
Especially if you know the author celebrates rape, mistreatment of women and girls, harems, you name it. The manga is such a shitshow and has several pedophilic scenes.
LITERALLY
That's every anime. Even the super serious "classics" like Death Note.
Thing is, this is 18+.
I accidentally found this anime when I was 12 and haven't been the same since
I'm still convinced they misspelled "Leid" (German word for Pain) with Lied (Song in German).
No, it's based on a poem by Eduard Mörike. The poem is called "Elfen Lied" (song of the elves).
@@deniseb.4656 It still would have been a neat pun
Ah, not quite. "Leid" means suffering. "Schmerzen" would be the german word for pain.
Sorry, I can't help myself being a smarty pants. 😅
@@highlyopinionated5611 "Leid" can also mean pain, ache or even disease. Especially in old novels or poems.
@@deniseb.4656 👍
Aside from the infamy this anime gets with its gore, the OST soundtracks are just gorgeous. They stayed with me since I watched it as a 12 year old up to now and is a fair contender against the best in that category for me across all anime.
Yes, the OST is beautiful. Also, the opening animation inspired by the paintings by Gustav Klimt is a little work of art by itself.
I also remember a couple of really good AMVs - for example the one to the theme of "Rosemary's Baby". Last time I checked it was still on YT, check it out if you haven't seen it.
18:02 when I was younger I once wrote an MHA fanfic and had the take of explaining convenient amnesia and memory suppression. I decided since MHA is basically a sci fi that certain characters should have memory suppression chips installed in the backs of their skulls that are wired to the brains memory center, analyzing when signs of distress are associated with a certain memory and learning to prevent that memory from being loaded. This allowed for very convenient memory loss without compromising the integrity of the story. It also allowed one character to have a failing MSC that would cause them to randomly remember horrible things that happened to them, and eventually a whole question about the morality of such a device. This is basically a sci fi, it could’ve done the same thing as fourteen or fifteen year old me
Man, this would really be something most would see in a sci fi book, the fanfic opening doors for 14 year olds to be writers in the future is crazy. If you remember or haven't deleted it, could you tell me the name of your fanfic?
@@quinnhost4341 The working title was AHA (Alternate Hero Academia) because it was an AU. If I ever upload it somewhere it it'll probably be called something like My Hero Academia XL (if that isn't already taken). Never put it out there
Does msc mean memory suppression chip? IF so good to know also that is a very cool concept my guy. @@wieldylattice3015
@@wieldylattice3015msc memory suppression chip. Cool concept youtube deleted my previous comment.
I didn’t expect you to cover this anime
Same
He’s done Akira and blue eye samurai and some other one that’s about earthquakes and Princess Mononoke and spirited away
@@silashurd3597 well those are ones everyone covers this was one I never expected him to
I actually didn't expect you to do anime.
Elfen Lied is underrated and is the perfect title to really tell the audience we are gonna be breaking through into more mediums more frequently
You make the argument that there’s no way he could forget about his trauma. Yet I forget about this anime till you made this video. So thanks.
US: we traumatized children with puppets on sesame street talking about divorce
UK: How many ways can we make fluffy rabbtis suffer as graphically as possible.
Japan: ...................................define traumatizing
You should definitely check out Naoki Urasawa's "Monster." It's a more grounded anime, and has one of the best villains in all of anime/manga.
Also, in Elfen Lied's defense, it inspired Hellsing in the east and Stranger Things in the west.
Like how Wicked City inspired Spawn?
@@Vvonter the creators of Stranger Things even went on record to name Lucy as inspiration for Eleven.
The Scene of Dr Doom in the last Terrible Fantastic Four movie seems to be based on it too.
Thing about Hellsing though is that in effect it is very much an eastern written Gothic Horror and Action manga that pretty much told us. "Yeah, this guy understands western monsters." I didn't think of Elefn Lied but it did bring me back to John Carpenter Movies and naturally the 1992 movie Bram Stoker's Dracula.
@@WeirdTale Seras Victoria seems like a cross between Lucy and Nana, and when Alucard killed Rip Van Winkle, he very clearly sprouted vectors.
“KUU-TUH.”
*bro my soul I can’t*
“KOH-tah.”
Yeah, my face literally twitches every time I hear it mispronounced like that. And it's literally there in the clips, you can hear it pronounced correctly in the background. Like dude, why? 😭
Was looking for this, thank you.
God same, glad somebody said it. Like dude you watched the show, you should know how to say the name
@@VocalovelyI feel like video narrators do that on purpose for some kind of edge but it just pisses me off. Like, if you’re going to put the time and effort into writing a script and edit a video, you’d think you’d learn how to say the protagonist’s name properly. Madoka gets pronounced maDOHkuh, sayaka gets saYAHkuu, asuka gets aSOOkuh
Jeez
I do feel as if the series had an incredible potential to be competent in its maturity, but the original manga and poor handling of the adaptation’s dub work really hindered it. The original manga was also incredibly flimsy with its story and handling of sensitive topics, but it was the anime that had the opportunity to improve upon it and introduce it to a wider audience while addressing those issues in a respectful way, even if it did need to diverge from the source material.
While it did leave out a good portion of the manga, (including and entire character critical to Lucy’s backstory that was later only addressed in a special released after the series’ conclusion,) it didn’t bother to do so, which really upsets me, because from an art and music standpoint, I think Elfen Lied is beautiful. The opening alone is so rich with symbolism, references, and historical parallels that make it breathtaking all on it’s own. The idea of using Gustav Klimt’s works as a reference for this specific kind of story was a good call, and it just pains me to know that the story and writing it’s attached to just stuck to edge for the sake of edge. The potential was clearly there, but it was sorely missed.
TLDR, the Elfen Lied manga did not handle the mature topics it wanted to very well, and the anime missed out on a major opportunity to cut them out or address them in a respectful manner.
I have not read the manga, but I second, third, and fourth this statement.
The author went on to do Brynhild in the darkness which is an even worse version of EL. Many of the weaker aspect of EL are in that series while the storytelling never elevates itself.
I never get this argument why must/should try to "handle mature topics respectfully?" Sometimes a dark theme is just that.
@@Kiba151 That's pretty dumb, just because you don't understand the maturity needed to deal with serious/dark topics, doesn't mean it's a bad argument. It just shows that you yourself aren't mature enough to consume them in the first place.
@@Yuki_Seraphim didn't ask if you thought it was a bad take or not. Asked why does a mature topic have to be handled in a respectful manner. If you don't know the answer that's all you had to say.
*sees title of video*
Repressed memories as a 14 year old on RUclips: “oh god… the dog scene”
Oh my god, you too? I saw it when I was 12 though…
I saw it when I was 7 🤣
the intro theme, Lilium, is such a perfect tune for this series... sounds perfectly calm and soft and relaxing, and the you watch it, and it makes you think about what the Eff is going on....
9:07 i remember Nana amputation scene was the first traumatising anime scene i watched when i was a kid
that's one hell of a thing to watch as a kid.
Trauma making people forget things thats documented and widelly known it happens - Steve - oh no thats not how trauma works- ... what the hell Steve
Me when I make assumptions about things I don't know about
Seriously, Steve is SOOOOO confidently incorrect there.
Someone in the replies to a similar comment has explained, that this can't be the case with the specific trauma, mc has.
@@marseillejoh It is though???
That is possible but you can't forget stuff that specific and that memorable some things get burned into your mind even if its suppressed this should most definitely be one of those situations especially since the fact that no one followed up or talked about what happened that just makes it dumber
About the "convenient" memory loss: Lucy suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. DID is a psychological response to severe trauma. Symptoms include:
- At the core is dissociation. This is about disconnecting from reality as a way to cope with trauma, to escape stressful situations or overwhelming emotions.
- Two or more distinct identities (Alters) that have their own unique behaviours, characteristics and memories. The transision between Alters is called "switching" and can happen suddenly. DID Switch can be triggered by various things including stress, or something that reminds the person of the trauma.
- Amnesia. Gaps in memory, around daily actions, identity, and especially around traumatic events.
I remember back in the early 2010s Elfenlied was on youtube. Uncensored, all of it. Nowdays that's hard to imagine but because of that it was one of the first anime I've ever seen (at 12 or 13) and I've talked to many people who share the same expirience.
Heyy the way I discovered elfen leid is almost exactly the same way. Early 2010s, I was 13. I saw a thumbnail of Nana's fingers cut in early RUclips
I only read the first part of your comment when I replied, it's only now that I read about many sharing that experience. I remember literally being so traumatized by the Nana scene. Literally felt teary and I remember the mental image of the scene feel like an intrusive thought a whole day after watching
I watched it like 2 or 3 years ago on youtube, also completly uncensored. So it has been on there for quite a while. Unless someone reposted it back then ofcourse
I saw it back then, too! I remember wanting to be turned on by the gratuitous nudity, but the context in which it was done usually turned me off!
14:39
THIS IS THAT SHOW!!
I remember seeing that scene of the bullies killing the dog on a RUclips compilation "Bullies getting what they deserve" 😭🙏
@SteveReviews- You should watch Wolf's Rain; personally my favorite anime. Its another very depressing yet beautiful anime with one of the best musical soundtracks I've ever heard.
It's also good to note that: the anime was airing whilst the manga was ongoing, causing the anime to end abruptly with a lot of the end portions being anime-only details, hence the rushed plot and loose story threads near the end of the series
the manga isn't a tightly written piece of media either, I think the criticisms he made in this video hold true for the manga too.
@@mantra-hf6ej seconding this, i only ever read the manga as i was told it was better than the anime 🙃
@@pinkfakecheez So the people who told you this lied (😂) to you.
The manga is of approximative equal quality than the anime. With more shenanigans stuff, anything just even more exagerated, and it just go too complex and hard to follow and understand. With also things that don't made sense. And also poor writted stuff here too.
And the end of it is among the ones that at the end you don't even know what to think about it, either bad or good.
The anime end in a more simple and correct way.
It like that :
Bad Guys are defeated for good, no more threat for the characters, the whole group including the boy, his cousin, the little girl, her dog, and the two pink haired girls can now live togethers and forever normally.
That enough both for the story and us as an ending and we get what we want and wishes for the characters.
Elfen Lied and King Ramses from Courage The Cowardly Dog in one video? You're really bringing back that childhood sense of dread for me in this moment.
It seems to me that the creators of Stranger Things were inspired by this show. Damaged and dangerous psychic girl escaped from a shadowy research installation.
Elfen tried, I was halfway crucified
I was on the other side
@@angelbasiliorodriguezbusto2065Of no tomorrow
Do anyone remember the web comic "Nana's everyday life" where it ALSO ended with her dying after months of suffering?
Good times.
What the heck, the title makes it sound like a cheerful spinoff 😭. Was it official or fan made?
I sure do, it was screwed up. So much so, that someone had to go and write a whole other story to have Nana have a better life.
@@redgrave4492Fan-made. And the fan made one was real screwed up so much so, that other fans had to go create a whole sequence where Nana was alive and had a happy life after everything else
yes, it was more interesting then this anime too,
it’s from Clone.manga
it’s still about torture,
but it’s still more interesting bc they don’t hide it’s “torture” and not “oh it’s for the science” convenient plot
@@dangeldoll Someone got filtered.
16:45
Actually, that IS how mental traumas work.
Your mind supressed horrifying details to protect you, you'll misremember, and nothing makes sense; but once those memories start to resurface, causing a whole multitude of issues, that's when you got yourself the everlasting case of PTSD.
Oh, and why did not one talk to Kouta about the deaths of his dad and sister?
Japan has a HUGE taboo against death and pain. So much so that even the number 4 is removed from many places, because it is pronouced the same as "death" (shi)
While that does indeed happen, it ever truly does to a certain extent. You would never experience a traumatic experience so impactful that you completely forgot it ever happened to begin with, because that's just not how it work; at the very most, you can just suppress a few details here and there, and it also highly depends on the kind of Trauma. Seeing your entire family get brutally slaughtered right in front of your very eyes isn't something you can just completely forget about, period.
I remember that One Piece film. Baron Omatsuri and the secret island. It has been considered the darkest in the One Piece movies. It legit went from a silly pirate movie to a psychological horror.
Would love to see a review on that if you ever get into One Piece
Imagine if they ever released the 2nd season with the continuation with the whole "i am the mother of everything" plotline and the people melting into pure DNA ... xD
Brynhildr in the Darkness, that one had powered up girls that melted. Then it's Parallel Paradise which had to mate with men, or they melted after they reached a certain age.
This author just seems to recycle that specifically while his works lean more towards hentai. If anything, Elfen Lied veiled more the kink factor of his later works.
@@Vvonter Ill check them out I saw Brynhildr has an anime. So Ill watch it.
Reminds me of Parasite Eve
I'd watch that
@@dragonlordpeter9006 the manga gets hella weird towards the end. very much like the ending of evangelion
This anime caused me to count sheep backwards 😢
This anime is not for everyone, but it only shows what kind of medium it can be - adjusted for everyone and not just kids.
Although to be fair toward Elfen Lied - anime never finished the story. If you want to see how it really ends you need to read the manga.
Sorry to say, but it is just boring after the 2nd episode, it's violence and blood desensitized as time goes on.
Are they in English?
@@MASTEROFEVIL Dark Horse Comics released the entire series in four omnibuses. In the couple bookstores I go to, they're around but kinda hidden inbetween everything else. They're easily available on Amazon though so yeah
Strangely enough, I watched this anime on RUclips back in 2006. Back when you could only do 10 min long videos and could watch episodes in 3 parts. My opinion has changed greatly on this show and I should review it sometime in the future. Great Review Steve!
I haven’t seen this show for atleast 10 years but even to this day I listen to the opening theme atleast 3 times a week on one of my playlists, it’s such a beautiful piece of music and it’s always stuck with me
And that’s without mentioning how the anime didn’t cover like half of the manga.
And man don’t get me started on the series the author did after, it’s… something.
Bryhindr?
@@koweedate Parallel Paradise
@@dollmaker6599
I had no idea that _Parallel Paradise_ was made by the same author. I haven't read that story since chapter 50 or so. I don't remember it fondly.
@@dollmaker6599 Just looked that up and man, I feel weirdly disappointed in the author lmao. How do you go from Elfen Lied to that sludge, wtf.
@@OkamiLyra yeah, it’s not even good at what’s meant to be.
It’s basically just raving horny characters and not much else.
It ended up boring me after a while and dropped it.
Like there’s been ecchi series that are far more enjoyable than that.
Ah yes The anime that fcked up my life
I find this unlikely.
@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714
Yeah, what life?
what was they life wearing?
Was it begging for it?
This and shuffle and when they cry are my childhood scars
Nah, I watched it. It's actually awful and just cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
My sister would watch this In front of me and showed it to me as well
Idk why but this anime I still kind of watch once in a great while
Oh man, this barely scratches the surface of the gore and insanity that continues in the manga.
I think the 'plot convenience of 'Nyuu' was done so often and so blatantly to try and make it obvious that she was completely faking it the entire time, if I'm being honest. It would make more sense in almost every situation of convenience if she was simply faking it all. No idea though.
I also kind of remember that she was faking it... or thinking that she was at least.
She wasn't faking in the manga it states due to the severe head trauma she suffered she regressed into childlike amnesiac and when ever she is in genuine trouble she will revert into her violent persona and when she suffers head injuries she revert to Nyuu , to the point where Nyuu becomes an entirely person different sharing the same body
@@danielasarmiento3101Yes and No.
So about what you said and how she swap of phases/personnality, it's okay.
But about that end up into 2 differents apart persons sharing a same body. Not so.
In fact, on of the points the original manga completely miss and put even more confusion is justly to consider a personnality of a person/soul as being this said person/soul.
While actually, it's two non-synonymous, non-mixable, apart things.
Personnality=\= Person/Soul
A person/soul is an self-aware living entity which inhabit a physical body.
A personnality is the temperament/behavior that this said entity will have, develop and adopt, mostly instinctively and unawarely, defined from birth.
This can be even called a phase/state in which a person remain and have its whole life.
One person only have one personnality.
And only having more due to mental problems.
Here, with Lucy, it one single person which sadly is subjected to mental problems and possess and switch frequently between two personalities/phases/states, without true control over it.
There the illusion there two persons, but actually, it well only one.
But the manga don't really bother to respect this for a reason or another and just said its own definition of these things that are personalities and persons/souls.
And it considering and deciding that end up the same and display things as such.
But a story or manga shouldn't or cannot just because it want or something else decide to not folllow and redefined the definition of a given term/thing from our reality for its own setting.
Especially if the said thing in its original, base real-life definition is something complex and somewhat potentially difficult to understand.
It's is confirmed she fake in the anime or that just something implied ?
Because I don't see why she would fake and be good at it due to her normal mature, serious personnality.
You cannot fake as easily and as if that was nothing a personnality at the opposite of your normal, current one.
@@danielasarmiento3101also had 3 personalities rather than 2
Steve, don’t worry.
Elfen Lied has a manga, and I hear that it’s better than the anime and that it actually better explains stuff and has a real ending.
I think that the only reason that all of it wasn’t adapted was because they wanted the manga to sell better on its own.
You can find and get all 4 of the omnibus volumes.
Also, Lynn Okamoto, Elfen Lied’s author, has another anime and manga called Brynhildr In The Darkness which some people even claim is an Elfen Lied clone, and… I haven’t finished that anime yet, but even right now, I can kind of see why some people might think that.
It’s still a great read and/or watch, though.
Yes! Finally! My Comment Is Alive! RUclips Didn’t Take It Down Again! Woo Hoo!
Well tbh. In the anime, they never told the male character anything about his dad's and sister's death due to the family fearing he'll have a severe mental breakdown so they had to keep it heavily a secret from him. Even the cops can't even speak to him due to being classified information. And it's possible to forget very traumatic memories. Like it's very strange because I do this severely that I breakdown severely like brain damaging tbh. The human brain is weird tbh since women who give birth, the brain will make them forget the painful experience so they can force women to continue giving birth. Not everyone is the same for mental health situations so it's understandable to him. But perhaps his family members lied to him about his missing family members dying from a sickness or car accident to hide the true fact to avoid his mental breakdown since he was severely shocked that took him months to snap out
I watched this many years ago, and seeing this in my sub feed I was thinking, "I don't remember it being THAT bad." Boy was I misremembering. I forgot many of these scenes, probably for good reason lmao
New Idea Update for you
Steve reviews Ideas for your next video:
1. Peter and The Wolf 2006
2. Hellsing 2001 and Hellsing Ultimate
3. Hannah Barbera’s Dino Boy in the Lost Valley
4. Silly symphony The Flying Mouse
5. The Guardians of Gahoole
6. Bartok the Magnificent 1999
7. Dragon’s Lair Trilogy
8. Tom Sawyer 2000
9. Turok son of stone
10. Dead Space Downfall
11. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
12. The Silly Symphony Collection Disney
13. Shakespeare The Animated Series
14. Batman The Animated Series
15. H.O.T.D. High School of the Dead
16. Netflix The Monkey King
ngl I I'm not sure he could get away with uploading anything about HOTD (either the main series OR the OVA) without getting in hot water with RUclips. 🤣
@@submariNervous I mean some got away, even in the past, RackaRacka, Mondo Media, Happy Tree Friends, early 2010s.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit would definitely be up Steve's alley; it gets dark in places and could be absolute nightmare fuel.
I think the main reason Elfen Lied comes up as disturbing in forums is bc a lot of us first saw this anime accidentally as kids, and then tricked our friends into watching it 😬
I love it but the problem is that cousin that gets mad and jealous seriously she really is horrible person and never understands what is happening.
Spoiler: the manga, they end up together and having a kid. Japan really has no boundaries.
@@berniekatzroy So gross that's why I despies her because so gross.
That's funny, because in the german dub, she is a very understanding person, always explaining the motives of one character to the others with a nice, calm voice (I mean, she still beats up the guy, because you can't change animation, but her character that is displayed due to her lines and his lines is more like a companion that gets used and tossed aside and is always facing false promisses and is just sad and desperate)
@@kanna231 I mean it takes two to tango and let's be honest manga/anime edging or a actually doing full blown incest isn't anything new.
why despise her and not the author who wrote her to be one dimensional and poorly written?? also why hate her for incest but not Kuta who chose to do it too?
That dog scene still haunts me...
Same
So 'stranger things' kind of stole half the premise of elfen lied?
I....was not expecting him to review this in a thousand years...
Me Neither. I Didn’t Think That Steve Had It In Him. Nonetheless I’m Glad That He Did.
@@TamarahTalksTV Knowing his channel I'm not surprised he does review it. But I didn't think he knew this once in a lifetime anime existed..
@@cxireen2193 Well Elfen Lied Is Just One Of Those Anime That Almost Everyone Knows.
Otaku Or NonOtaku, Someone You Might Know Might Have Seen It Somehow.
Whether It Be The Whole Thing Or Even Just A Few Seconds Or Minutes Of It.
@@cxireen2193Bro everyone, even non-anime fans knows what Elfen Lied is, it’s not that deep 💀
@@alysssabear I thought it was one of those obscure anime. I don't hear people talking about it much
For some reason I always thought the head chief and his son used science to become more like a Diclonius. Now watching this vid and doing some research on the internet I found out they were actually born with horns, but simply never had the same powers as Lucy and the other Diclonius and were considered to be the "pre versions" of the Diclonius
I don't know where it was explained, but I remember reading that male Diclonius can exist, but they're powerless, as the Diclonius species is more on the matriarchal side. In the manga there's a third male Diclonius, a teenager, who doesn't have vectors and doesn't attack any human, nor shows hostility towards anyone.
@@Zilkenian_Davenport I'm starting to wonder if the moral of the story is: Don't mess with women
@@sjonnoh Or maybe just "don't mess with anyone, you never know what kind of enemy you're creating for yourself".
16:51 if u look up regression therapy, technically it's a real thing. The body can recognize when it can't handle the trauma and will lock it away until replicated, triggered, or deems you ready to remember.
I hate to say it but it happened to me and my trauma unlocked once I got over a different big trauma that was happening current day while that person who caused my childhood trauma sat there with a smile on their face like nothing happened years ago. Once the family found out it was torn apart and they person still denies what they did was wrong. But ig they're just as sick in the head. if not more.
IMO, this anime was a mixed bag filled with squandered potential
decided to watch it after Lucy was featured in "Death Battle"
To address the very close cousin thing, even though Elfen Lied’s manga came out in 2002 and it’s anime in 2004, I think that the story itself is set between the 1980s and early 1990s, so that might explain it a bit.
No, several characters had flip phones on them.
Stranger Things creator's were evidently big fans of Elfin Lied. In all honesty, even though it's an aquired taste, I feel like Elfen Lied is way better than people give it credit for, especially the manga- it's really a shame they had to end the anime when they did.
Elfen Lied, millennial's first R-rated anime kit.
It was edgy for the sake of edgy, and I liked it as a teenager, but it hasn't aged well as an adult.
There was a sort of spiritual sequel called, "Brynhildur in the Darkness". It was just Elfen Lied but with more moments of levity.
Grave of the Fireflies is the most beautiful, and heartbreaking movies I've ever seen
This could've been a better story. If it was normal amnesia, not the toddler personality, and the character finds herself hunted mercilessly. She manages to save herself each time even though she struggles to control the powers, and she tries to figure out what she is and how she lost her memories. Because she falls in love with the boy, she is horrified to learn that she killed his sister.
I... had completely forgotten this anime existed. Damn you for making me remember!!
Give Higarashi a try. Also known as When They Cry.
If it wasn't for the cousin thing Elfen Lied would be better.
But it is comparing apples to oranges. One is the best horror in anime the other is a multi genre bending show.
Maybe avoid the anime and read the visual novel instead, or the manga if you don't have a lot of free times.
You should review Now and Then, Here and There. An anime series that's twice as disturbing than the puppy murder scene.
Sorry for the Bad english I come from Germany:
I saw the series for the first time when I was 8 years old, was completely disturbed and then didn't watch it again for years because I was afraid. Over the years, I have become a big lover of disturbing media, especially when it explores deeper views on topics such as humanity, morality or politics. And of course I wanted to give “Elfen Lied” another chance, as many say that the series should be more than just blunt shock. Unfortunately, when I watched it again, I found the series to be even worse than I remembered. At that time it was just a shock series for me that disturbed me. Nowadays for me it's a shock series that tries so hard to shock that it honestly became boring. Interesting approaches that were never really thought through because we have to get back to violence and hatred of people as quickly as possible. I'm really sorry for my wife, who was very emotionally affected by the series, but unfortunately I really didn't like the series.
But the Opening is a masterpiece!!🎶🎵