Why is elfen lied so popular

She must bear her guilt forever on her own until she can apologize and atone for it. Mentioned above is the hand gesture prevalent throughout all portraits of Lucy.

To show her turmoil more, her body is covered in swirling patterns that shine depending on if the camera has moved over her yet, but at other times, these swirls appear as hair. What she feels is not only evident on her face, but is all over her body, ensnaring her and making escape impossible. With her hand gesture, the tendrils surrounding her, and Lilium , the opening hints to the viewer what Lucy has done and how she feels about it before we even know who she is.

She has sinned horribly, so much so that her remorse is expressed through her actions and a song of prayer to a power higher than herself. The ending credit sequence for Elfen Lied, unlike the opening, consists of a single image.

The only movement is that of the camera, which slowly pans in on Lucy's reclining figure until the last credits roll by and it leaves off on a close up of her face. Many depictions of her were erotic, including the portrait created by Klimt. She would later give birth to Perseus, whose heroic exploits include slaying Medusa the Gorgon and rescuing Princess Andromeda from the serpent Cetus.

Though the ending credits lack as many portraits as the opening, neither the single image nor the song that accompanies it are lacking in meaning. As the first fertile member of the Diclonii, Lucy is the proverbial Eve of an entirely new race of people. It is her possible children who will carry the Diclonius species onward, with their children and their children's children following suit. As the mother of a new race, she could birth the founding heroes of the Diclonii, placing her on a higher pedestal than an unfortunate, tortured, and lonely orphan.

Her dreaming form is the exact opposite of her assumed sleeping form in the opening credits. Instead of tormented and yearning for reprieve, she's peaceful, even smiling. But what could she be dreaming of? Mentioned before, she likens her life to a nightmare in the anime's final episode , but also refers to Kouta as "a happy dream" who made it all bearable.

Before this episode, and her flashback episodes as well, we can only assume by the song's lyrics that she's dreaming of simply being with Kouta. But knowing how important he was to her in her loneliness, it's also highly possible she's dreaming of the days they spent together, the "only good days [she's] ever known. In both the manga and anime, Lucy seems to not know the exact details of Nyuu's daily life, instead only knowing in broad strokes that Nyuu is with Kouta again and letting her live with Kouta in a roundabout way, so when she dreams of those far gone days and the way things could have been, she's left with her own imagination's "what-if" scenarios of the kind of idyllic, warm days she too could have with Kouta and his motley crew of a family if she hadn't been born with horns.

While the opening credits show us Lucy's remorse and inner turmoil, the ending credits leave us with a different view of her pain: one that makes her suffering sadder in a different way than showing her in pain. She peacefully reminisces on the only good days she's ever known; the few, precious, halcyon days spent with her childhood friend, the only comfort she's ever had.

And as the anime goes on, the audience realizes she can never get those days back. Lucy herself can never experience such a happy life without hurting herself and the person she loves most. She can never recreate that happy dream unless she does so through Nyuu. Nyuu lives for her in the real world, and Lucy continues sleeping, never grasping her ideal reality directly.

Elfen Lied Wiki Explore. Elfen Lied. Helping Out. Explore Wikis Community Central. Though the anime ended in Japan in , it didn't blow up in popularity until it reached the States in , ironically the same year the manga ended. While the anime was popular enough in Japan, it received a far bigger reaction overseas.

It's crept into modern pop culture, with The Duffer Brothers citing both Akira and Elfen Lied as an inspiration behind Stranger Things , very directly indicating that Eleven is highly influenced by the character Lucy. They called it an "ultra-violent E. Lucy is the Queen of the Diclonius, a race of human mutations who are identifiable by horns that protrude from their heads. They create supersonic limbs that can interact with the world, often violently. She's kept in a Government facility until, one night, she breaks free.

But in the process, she's shot in the head, scrambling her memory, creating a secondary personality named Nyu. Unlike the overtly malevolent Lucy, Nyu is a childlike innocent. Two cousins, one of whom may have known Lucy in the past, end up finding Nyu and taking care of her, all while the government sends assassins and other Diclonius after Lucy. Elfen Lied is more remembered for its explicit content than its plot. There is so much gore and violence in this anime that it borders on hilarious.

People's limbs are ripped out, heads are peeled off, others are just plain ripped open. One memorable scene features Lucy ripping the head off a passing secretary and using her body as a shield, then throwing a pencil through another guy's head before ripping into his cohorts.

It's telling that the most disturbing act of violence in the whole series is also the least visually explicit. But what makes the violence feel toothless is how little impact it seems to have on people. One Diclonius, Nana, gets her limbs ripped out by Lucy, only to just get new plastic limbs to replace her old ones. A mercenary, Bando, gets similarly maimed and blinded, only to get cybernetics to fix up all those injuries.

None of the violence means anything to the characters, so why should it mean anything to us? But on top of the violence, there's the nudity, much of it involving under-aged characters.

There's a ton of sexual situations that push the envelope, including a possibly incestual relationship between the cousins. One character, Maya, is repeatedly raped by her father, and none of it ever is brought up following the initial moment it's mentioned. Top cast Edit. Sanae Kobayashi Lucy as Lucy …. Chihiro Suzuki Kota as Kota. Mamiko Noto Yuka as Yuka. Cynthia Martinez Mayu as Mayu. Nancy Novotny Yuka as Yuka.

Sam Saletta Kohta as Kohta. Kira Vincent-Davis Lucy as Lucy …. Adam Conlon Kohta as Kohta. Emiko Hagiwara Mayu as Mayu. Yuki Matsuoka Nana as Nana. Hitomi Nabatame Shirakawa as Shirakawa ….

Osamu Hosoi Kurama as Kurama. Masakazu Kohara Researcher as Researcher …. Maria Yamamoto Kanae as Kanae …. Eriko Ishihara Arakawa as Arakawa. Lynn Okamoto. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. University students Kohta and Yuka Kohta's cousin save a Diclonius girl called "Lucy" when they see her naked in a beach.