So I went into this with the goal of seeing why for a specific aged group of people this was their break into anime and or still favorite anime. I didn’t go into to see how bad it is or just out of blind curiosity I had a goal in mind. As 25 year old something or other I thought this was pretty good, though lacking in aspects I wanted more fleshing out. Some character choices could have been better or flat out changed to something else entirely and I think it would have been for the better, and that ending feels rushed. (Tho the ending is still better than the manga’s let me make that clear) Those are my thoughts as me now, however I went out of my way to try and systematically ruin my brain by just absorbing everything I could about the “scene kids” era; the music, the vibe, the all around culture because I felt it best fit the same vibe as Elfen Lied. From that mindset this was very enjoyable and I see why it affected so many people especially young women at that time, where the world was so confusing and people just didn’t get the culture shift of the youth (this was just mere years after 9/11 and the “fight back against the grain of our parents generation” was just starting to take off). This would have been monumental for someone like that at that time. As it stands Elfen Lied is a time capsule of that time and era, that vibe and all the heightened emotions of violent, edgy, and deliberate disobedience of authority of the time.
I feel like that was either well spoken for a knuckle dragging idiot like me or it made no sense so the TLDR is I liked it but only really as a time capsule piece rather than it being an all time favorite anime. If someone tells me that it is their favorite I can see why and know that if affected and stuck with them because of the time and place they watched it and I think that’s nice. I feel like everyone has or needs that one piece of media to be their rock more or less, bring them back down to earth when the world feels so uncontrollable and overwhelming.
So I went into this with the goal of seeing why for a specific aged group of people this was their break into anime and or still favorite anime. I didn’t go into to see how bad it is or just out of blind curiosity I had a goal in mind. As 25 year old something or other I thought this was pretty good, though lacking in aspects I wanted more fleshing out. Some character choices could have been better or flat out changed to something else entirely and I think it would have been for the better, and that ending feels rushed. (Tho the ending is still better than the manga’s let me make that clear) Those are my thoughts as me now, however I went out of my way to try and systematically ruin my brain by just absorbing everything I could about the “scene kids” era; the music, the vibe, the all around culture because I felt it best fit the same vibe as Elfen Lied. From that mindset this was very enjoyable and I see why it affected so many people especially young women at that time, where the world was so confusing and people just didn’t get the culture shift of the youth (this was just mere years after 9/11 and the “fight back against the grain of our parents generation” was just starting to take off). This would have been monumental for someone like that at that time. As it stands Elfen Lied is a time capsule of that time and era, that vibe and all the heightened emotions of violent, edgy, and deliberate disobedience of authority of the time.
I feel like that was either well spoken for a knuckle dragging idiot like me or it made no sense so the TLDR is I liked it but only really as a time capsule piece rather than it being an all time favorite anime. If someone tells me that it is their favorite I can see why and know that if affected and stuck with them because of the time and place they watched it and I think that’s nice. I feel like everyone has or needs that one piece of media to be their rock more or less, bring them back down to earth when the world feels so uncontrollable and overwhelming.
