There were many things that I loved about Elfen Lied. It has very good action (lots of crazy blood, gore, and explosions), it has plenty of comedy (in that cute haremish sorta way), and best of all it has characters that actually evolve (without the typical shōjo romance BS). Each character has a background and extenuating circumstances that make him/her unique, most of them tragic. Watching these people grow from the roots of their issues is quite beautiful. The development doesn’t lack in showmanship or emotion and that is what makes Elfen Lied absolutely amazing.

Flaws? Well the art is good, but it’s not phenomenal. The action is depicted rather nicely, but sometimes the pages would be overloaded giving it a very busy appeal. I didn’t really know where to focus my attention at certain points, however. This isn’t a heavily reoccurring thing, so it wasn’t too bad. The character design is nice, but the eyes are so large and similar that it became difficult at times to differentiate the female characters. The male characters all looked vastly different from one another most of the time, so identifying them didn’t require as much effort.

Another flaw that I found with this series was the ecchi (or frivolous perverseness) element was mostly unnecessary. The unrelated sexual innuendos took away from the serious tone that shadowed the plot. I can understand the need for comic relief, especially in a piece like this, but there are other ways to add humour rather than breaking plot to insert stupid sexual dialogue, which seemed like a waste of space given that the women spent eighty five percent of their time in the buff.

Overlooking the crude humour breaks and sometimes brimming art panels, Elfen Lied is a wonderful series that should be read by any fan of manga at least once. The plot is very interesting, especially if you’re into science-fiction and elements that question the term “humanity,” or if you just love to stare at bare breasts. Like I said earlier, the character development is wonderful, done no amends by the anime series in the least. I recommend this with seven out of ten stars.