At 4/14/14 09:45 PM, Jackho wrote:
It tries so hard to be messed up that by the halfway point they have to cut a little girl's limbs off and beat a puppy to death to attempt to get a rise out of the viewer.
I'll admit that at some points there were definitely parts that felt they were put in to get a rise out of the viewer, but I personally found they made sense from a narrative point of view. For example, cutting off Nana's limbs set her up for being more vulnerable than the average diclonius under pressure (as she needed to use vectors to control her artificial ones). The puppy was Lucy's breaking point, she was fairly tolerant of humans until they senselessly killed her only friend.
With that list I can see you're fairly inexperienced with anime (and perhaps to serious or "deep" art in general?) so maybe you'll see why Elfen Lied fails to impress most people once you have a better reference point.
I will completely concede this point, until about 6 months ago my only experience with anime was Full Metal Panic!, so I've been trying to absorb as much as I can, and I feel like I'm starting to get into it and appreciate a lot more.
I don't want to keep bashing something you enjoy here, but try watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. A show that, imo, excels everywhere than Elfen Lied falls flat. They're prime targets for comparison (along with Mirai Nikki, which you might like as it's essentially this decade's Elfen Lied) for both being "messed up" with deep characters, but to me Eva is so far ahead of EL in every aspect.
Holy shit I can't believe I forgot to put Evangelion on my list, but I assure you I have seen it, I actually watched it right before Elfen Lied. From a story standpoint I liked the animes about equally, but EL felt like it was so much more open about using devices like nudity and gore (yeah yeah cheesy-ass reasons to like it) to tell the story. Evangelion's scenes with Rei and Shinji on a train are some of my favorite narrative scenes of any media I've consumed and their use of tech intrigued me deeply. However, as generic of a plot device as it is, I found that Kouta from EL uncovering his amnesia made for a really strong vehicle to move the story forward. Evangelion's big overarching "what are Angels/EVAs" was also really good, but not as interesting to me.
It may be because I haven't seen the movies (which I hear tie a lot of stuff together) or read the manga (which would be beneficial for obvious reasons), but I didn't enjoy Evangelion as much as Elfen Lied. Of course, that's not to say I didn't enjoy it because I did thoroughly, but for the reasons outlined above, I found EL to be more to my tastes. I'll also look into Mirai Nikki after I'm done Gantz or something Sense-Offender suggested.
@Sense-Offender
I have looked into Darker than Black, Blue Gender, and Berserk before, I'll have to keep these suggestions in mind. If I get tired of Gantz I'll probably switch onto either one of those or Mirai Nikki.