Girls with horns

07Jan09

The feeling  after watching the 13 episodes (plus the OVA interspersed between episodes 10 and 11) of  Elfen Lied (Elven Song)  can not be other than uneasiness. Unlike what happens with Denno Coil, the first Elfen Lied episodes have  a very much lower animation quality than the last ones, and contrary to what happens to Yozakura Quartet, or Michiko To Hatchin, in which some excellent designs are not enough to make of for the lack of a good script,  Elfen Lied has an exciting story, full of explicit and bloody violence scenes, crippled young girls and people with traumatic past, and despite their visual quality is pretty mediocre, and the script is full of gaps (and the failures of both, the drawing and the plot, came from the same source, the comic by Lynn Okamoto, which develops others sub plots and a different ending, but is also a unsuccessful story). Finally, the reason for put up with nearly 5 hours watching the  whole series, is the argument. We would have liked a remake,  well designed and well animated, actually, instead of a TV Series, an animated feature-length film that could be as good as the best films of David Cronemberg or Dario Argento. Elfen Lied has many faults, but also a few virtues, there’s a lot of controvery about the initial 13 minutes in the chapter 1, characterized by the most explicit violence than can be seen in animation, but certainly, the last 13 minutes on chapter 13, are also unforgettable.  And the icing on the cake, in the final episode of Elfen Lied (but not in its final scene):   one of the few animated kisses with some dramatic value (but even this sequence is poorly drawn, what a shame!)

Filed under: animation   |  Leave a Comment