Warning: this review contains spoilers.

First impressions:
So, we got a mutant race of humans coming into existence, and humans are trying to kill them. Sounds interesting enough, what could go wrong?

Story: 4/10
Elfen Lied is about a race of mutated humans called the diclonius, that instinctively kill humans and who are captured by the government and placed in a top secret base, to be experimented on. The main focus is an escapee diclonius named Lucy who gets shot in the head, causing her to have amnesia and a split personality called Nyu, who washes up on a shore, where she’s found and taken in by our primary protagonist, Kouta, together with his cousin.

Elfen Lied is trying to be this socio-political drama about the diclonius, who are discriminated against by humans, and are usually killed on sight. It does this by asking questions like “Can humans and diclonius co-exist?” and “Are diclonius born to kill humans or is it because of human’s treatment of them, that they are the way they are?”. On paper, this sounds like a really interesting (if a bit tired) idea, but the problem is that the presentation and execution of this concept are very poor and lackluster, to say the least. This holds especially true because the ending doesn't even begin to answer the questions that are set up, and any hint of an answer is told very vaguely.

The story itself suffers from the biggest case of tonal-whiplash that I’ve seen in quite a while. This is because even though this series is trying to be dark and serious, with its socio-political themes of society’s moral hypocrisy and alienation of out groups, it just doesn't really work, when it relies so much on cheap, emotionally-manipulative shock factor, instead of something of actual substance. An example of this is in a scene where a group of psychotic little kids beat a puppy to death, while grinning from ear to ear. Besides that, you’ve got at least one fanservice scene in almost every chapter, some examples of which being the time Lucy/Nyu needs help getting dressed, the time(s) the main character’s cousin wants to bang him and the time Lucy/Nyu gropes and makes out with people, just ‘cause. To top it all off, the plot becomes silly, in how dark and serious it's trying to be with the execution of its themes, all of which basically boil down to “humanity does fucked up things”. Now just to be clear, I don’t mind when manga take a more naturalistic approach with their storytelling. The problem with Elfen Lied, though, is that not only can it not pick an appropriate tone, both overall and in the individual scenes, but also that it goes so unnecessarily over the top, so that it just ends up coming across as cartoony and falling flat on its face.

The storyline itself is a whole other beast, which I’ll talk about now. I don't mind the slice-of-life moments, as they allow for some levity, but also give you the time to get to care about the characters, and actually feel bad for them when the shit hits the fan. I find it jarring, though, that it turns into a harem, because as the story continues, Kouta picks up a new loli or a new diclonius to live with him because [insert tragic reason here]. Also, there are some narrative choices that are so ridiculous, that I almost cry tears of laughter when reading them, because of how over-the-top they are. For example, when Lucy kills Kouta’s father and sister, that was basically kick-started by a misunderstanding, because his cousin was getting a little too close to him, she decides she likes Kouta too, and goes yandere on his ass. I find that entire series of events funny as hell, and to add more to my comedy, it turns around and frames it as tragic, but to my mind, it’s just forced melodrama. This series’ tendency to force drama is only escalated when it turns out that Kouta and Lucy conveniently meet again years later, around the same time period when Lucy escapes and Kouta comes to live in the town where he and Lucy met and played together as children. It's there that Kouta conveniently doesn't remember what happened in his past, and Lucy conveniently exhibits the cognitive ability of a four year old. Did the planets just align for this one monument or is Kouta just a loli magnet? I can probably name a few more examples of in-series, off-screen godly intervention, for the sake of drama, but I digress. In all honestly though, if this were to happen in real life, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. The inhuman experiments, the double moral standards and the comically evil psychopaths in power; all of these are visible a mile away, yet this story showcases them like this is some sort of new concept that hasn't been explored before, even though it has been, but much better elsewhere.

Characters: 4/10
Our lead protagonist, Kouta, is pretty much bland-as-toast, due to how passive he is. Even if personality-wise, he’s a good, if not conflicted guy, he just isn't used to his full effect. This is rather bothersome, as he has major roles to play in the story. I like the fact that they tried to add more depth to him, by giving him some history with Lucy before the start of the main story, adding a good amount of conflicts stemming from that, later on in the story. At the end of the day though, it doesn't really amount to much in the grand scheme of things. It flip-flops between “I hate you” and “I love you” way too much, making it feel cheap, and I stopped caring after the first so many times. Fortunately, to balance out Kouta’s blandness, we have our secondary protagonist, Lucy/Nyu, who’s a little better written and offering a far greater level of intrigue than Kouta, besides the whole split personality thing. The thing that I find to be the most interesting about her is her inner conflict, as on the one hand, she hates humanity and has a natural instinct to kill all humans, but on the other hand, there’s also the part of her that just wants to live a peaceful life with Kouta and extras, despite her guilt towards him. This duality that’s presented in her character is much more interesting than a one dimensional, sadistic attitude of “kill all humans, cause humans are bad, m’kay”.

The side characters are just as bland and lacking in both depth and character development as the leads. The only characters that actually stood out for having something more to them were Nana and doctor Kurama. Nana, because she’s one of a few diclonius that are actually kept alive for experiments and has been stuck in a lab for most of her life, yet doesn't have any hostility towards humans, besides for self-defense. Even in those cases though, humans are generally still alive after the encounter, as she actively chooses to spare them, despite the fact that diclonius are supposed to instinctively want to kill humans. Relative to Nana though, doctor Kurama is an entirely different breed of interesting. On the outside, he seems like a very cold and cruel man, to humans and diclonius alike. Despite this though, he seems to have this very odd father-daughter relationship with Nana, even though his real biological daughter is another diclonius, that’s kept at the base. The main appeal of his character is his dual nature, where on the one hand, he’ll kill both humans and diclonius without a second thought, but on the other hand, will express clear feelings of affection (paternal, not romantic) towards Nana. This is exemplified when Nana was badly injured and was going to be put down for failing her mission, but he went out his way to help fix her up and even gave her massive amounts of money, to help her start a new life. His backstory was also pretty well done, as in it, he was presented with this very interesting moral dilemma, where he happened to find out his baby daughter was a diclonius. The result of this revelation was, of course, that he received an order from his superiors to kill his daughter, which made him heavily conflicted. On the one hand, his child would most likely be a threat to humanity, one day, but on the other hand, it was his baby daughter, who hadn’t harmed anyone. So to make a long story short, he tried to go through with it, but in the process his wife saw him and killed herself, but then his daughter ended up in the lab on the base where he works, and he is forced to live with guilt for his actions. On another note, the villains in this story are very cartoonishly evil, as they just do their thing, because they can. They're just evil for the sake of being evil and are used as a poor excuse to hammer in the message, which is that humans do fucked up things.

Art: 5/10
Where do I begin with this? The artwork is really ugly and the backgrounds look really shitty. As for the artstyle, it has this moe/cartoony aesthetic that really doesn't fit with the dark tone of the series. The character designs are probably some of the ugliest things I’ve ever had to look at, especially when it comes to the characters’ eyes. They’re drawn huge, even by manga standards and look like they came from the anime for clannad, except without Kyoani’s standard high level of detail.

Enjoyment: 6/10
Now I know I’ve been somewhat negative about Elfen Lied throughout this review, but there are a few parts I liked. I liked the gory fights, where people get ripped apart and even some of the fan service, jarring as it was.

Overall: 4/10

Conclusion:
Elfen Lied is a cluster fuck of ideas that by themselves are good, but which are badly implemented by an incompetent writer, who doesn't know how to use them to their full effect, and instead substitutes proper writing for cheap drama and shallow thematic development to get a rise out of people. That is Elfen Lied’s biggest trap, and it’s main tactic, that it uses to get you to care and invest emotions in its narrative, that even I myself fell into it. Once you get off its emotional roller coaster though, and regain the use of your brain, you see it for what it is. If you’re looking for a gore fest, then Elfen Lied is the manga for you. However, if you're not looking for a gore fest, then you’ll be unimpressed by its poorly written characters and generally lazy writing. On the bright side, if you like this concept and wish it were executed better, then I recommend you read Parasyte or Ajin (or even Tokyo Ghoul, if you’ve really exhausted all other options, and feel you can’t live without more).

Special credit to my unpaid and slightly pissed editor, Lonecrit.