Elfen Lied

Number of Episodes: 13

What Wikipedia Anime News Network says: "The Diclonius, a mutated homo sapien that is said to be selected by God and will eventually become the destruction of mankind, possesses two horns in their heads, and has a "sixth sense" which gives it telekinetic abilities. Due to this dangerous power, they have been captured and isolated in laboratories by the government. Lucy, a young and psychotic Diclonius, manages to break free of her confines and brutally murder most of the guards in the laboratory, only to get shot in the head as she makes her escape. She survives and manages to drift along to a beach, where two teenagers named Kouta and Yuka discovers her. Having lost her memories, she was named after the only thing that she can now say, "Nyuu," and the two allow her to stay at Kouta's home. However, it appears that the evil "Lucy" is not dead just yet... "

What tTPO says: This is an extreme series - extreme violence and gore, nudity, and much victimisation of innocents. This alone is enough to turn many people off, and understandably so. As Koanman points out below, character development is not profound for most and the plot, based on a much longer manga, ends up being hard to follow at times as to everyone's motivations. 

Despite all of these imperfections it is a compelling and thought provoking series that treads similar thematic ground to Shiki in that it questions human nature and asks the same question - who are the monsters here?

How About the Music? I'll let KoanMan talk about this. 

So How Does it End? (Spoiler free): The ending is not made perfectly clear, but it is emotionally satisfactory and surprisingly, just a little optimistic.

Overall Grade: This is an imperfect series, and not an easy ride. But somewhere in there is a story that needed to be told and questions that needed to be asked. Grade B

Addendum by KoanMan: Elfen Lied has loads of cool ideas and concepts, starting with the visuals right from the beginning, and coupled with the hauntingly brilliant choice of theme song by music director Katsunori Shimizu, "Lilium", by Kumico Noma. The closing theme "Be My Girl", by Cheiko Kawabe, is also a good choice, and certainly finishes each episode on a light note.

The plot is interesting, if not somewhat convoluted. This is where the first half of the series feels a little disjointed, and the storyline does not flow well from one scene to the next. Everything is there, but just a bit clunky. The invisible hand thing doesn't really appeal.

Similarly, character development falls short. All the elements are there, however, director Mamoru Kanbe just misses the mark. The main female characters all have plenty of quirks that could have generated legendary status, however, Kouta comes across as plain weak. That said, Yuka comes across weird and jealous, Mayu is a bit of a non-event, and Nana is confused, although with daddy issues, this at least gives her some interest. 

Lucy/Nyu is the only character that really gets development, all the others get attempts at development. Lucy starts as a killing fiend humming a cutesy song, a disturbing blend of efficient murderous innocence. Then, as her dual personality becomes obvious it seems she becomes moody and bitter... No cutesy malevolent humming at all. KoanMan is not sure why she was a innocent and happy cute killing machine at first, then a dark and moody cute killing machine later.

KoanMan really wants to love this series, although it just doesn't quite get there. It is OK, but it could have been so much more- a solid B for this one.