Jesus Christ Almighty do I watch a lot of unspeakable garbage.
The anime series Elfen Lied, if judged entirely by the merits of its first episode, is a lot like a seven-year-old in gang colors. It's trying really, really hard to impress you, maybe even scare you. But the overall effect is just sort of sad and forced, and in the end, you don't really see the kid amounting to much down the road. You just kind of shake your head slowly, and wonder how something so completely bereft of critical self-examination can exist in the modern world. And then you shrug and get a sandwich.
I knew I would hate this series, because everyone in sight was queuing up to take turns masturbating onto its face. Every review I read wasn't just positive; they were gibbering epiphanies. The authors probably had to take breaks between paragraphs. And that's never good.
"ABSURDLY INCONGRUOUS??" WHAT IS THESE WORDS YOU KEEP USING, PLEASE?
To the show's credit, the opening number is mildly interesting, since it's obviously a nod to Gustav Klimt. It would have been nice, if branding didn't require a willowy anime chickie with perfectly spherical tits be crowbarred into every scene to the tune of an inconsolable Latin aria.
Killer floating stabby-stab pen. She does this twice. Someone on the writing staff was clearly very impressed with themselves for coming up with this little trick.
Elfen Lied is, from what I can tell, about an nightmarishly powerful psychic.
Seriously, why are the guards even given guns in the first place? Why did they even hire guards? For the salary of five of 'em they coulda just installed a motion-triggered bomb or poison gas in that head restraint and called it a day.
The first and only episode I've seen documents her escape from her containment facility. There's a lot of psi-chopping involved, and people falling apart, and ballpoint pens in eye sockets, and a security force that seems to be staffed exclusively with pressurized hemophiliacs, who are quickly promoted to blood geysers when our lovely, naked, oddly shiny heroine walks towards them with slow, spooky purpose.
You know she's special cuz she's gotta wear a helmet.
The episode hits an incredibly satisfying high point when Clumsy Girl is abruptly and unceremoniously dismissed from the mortal coil at the hands of Naked Psychic. You know Clumsy Girl, right? She gets a lot of work in anime. She's the cutsey-pie little fuck-up who likes to spill food and look embarrassed and squeak like a chew toy and TRY HER BEST, DESU.
Ha ha.
Naked Psychic, who we learn is named Lucy, chops her head off in front of a bunch of people for no real reason, and then uses her twitching corpse to deflect machine gun fire. I approve of this scene.
Ultimately, Lucy escapes her sooper-sekret facility with nothing more severe than a sniper-placed anti-tank round to the temple, knocking her into the ocean. She washes up the next day on a civilian beach, and the show's meager potential slams into a wall of crap with the force of a bullet train the moment she's spotted by Bland Protagonist.
If you listen closely enough, you can hear the show starting to suck.
She has no memory. She behaves like a three-year-old. And all she can say is "nyuu."
I understand it was an anti-tank round. I do. Really. But what the shit, Japan.
WHAT A PERFECT FREE HOUSE JUST FOR ME HOW VERY UNUSUAL FOR THIS PARTICULAR GENRE OF ENTERTAINMENT
Setting aside the 500-page thesis I could write on Near-Mute Imbecilic Hot Chicks in Anime and the Japanese Male Libido, Lucy the former psychic death machine is taken home by Bland Protagonist. He's obviously not the easily-ruffled type, since it doesn't seem to bother him that his new pet sex object has horns. (Or, uh, cat ears. Or barrettes, or whatever the fuck those are.) It also doesn't occur to him that installing buxom, half-clothed brain-injury victims that don't belong to him as wards of his no-strings-attached Phat Palatial Estate might not be considered the act of charity I'm sure he's convinced himself it is by the local police force, television news crews, or habitual sex offender registries.
Which fetish is this one, again? This is the internet, I'm losing track.
I stopped paying total attention at this point. Lucy pissed the floor around then to highlight her newfound stupidity, and some woman gets slapped right off her feet into a triple lutz by the Evil Special Agent being sent to kill Lucy with such ridiculous force that I giggled, but the rest is really just a blur.
Japan: Keepin' that pimp hand strong.
Verdict? One and a half stars. I would give Elfen Lied two stars out of five, but it loses half a star for having a name that doesn't make sense. I can only assume it sounds cool if you're not a native English-speaker. And keep in mind, I named my website Iron Circus. If I'm talking shit, something must be wrong.
The next time I psychically eviscerate a mob of prison guards, I'm gonna make this face and see how far it gets me.
