I first saw Elfen Lied through the ADV DVD box set sometime in the mid 2000’s. A friend from the bookstore I worked at recommended I check it out knowing my penchant for both horror and sleazier things. He was right, I was HOOKED. The thing about Elfen Lied though is while though things might hook a viewer in initially (try not to watch the first 5 minutes of episode 1 with your jaw not on the floor), the show would not be the masterpiece it is and still talked about over a decade plus later, if it didn’t have more to it than splatter and over the top nudity.

The series opens with a naked woman in a helmet breaking out a research facility while being shot at. Anyone who comes remotely close to her gets psychically destroyed, and not just a little destroyed, TORN APART in grotesque ways. As she is about to escape, she is shot in the head splitting her personality in two. The kind seemingly mentally handicapped Nyu and the vicious humanity destroying Lucy.

It is Nyu who happens to make it to a nearby village, and into the home of Kohta, a college student who is trying to live his life. Into this comes Yuki, Kohta’s cousin who has a romantic interest in him. Much to Kohta’s luck he only seemingly meets the Nyu personality, but Lucy is in there waiting to come out, and has the power to seemingly destroy the world.

So the thing is this show has a strong emotional core, and a powerful story to it. The opening of the show gets your attention, and then for the longest time, you have a story about characters and interaction between them, and yeah at times it does play around with harem elements, but it’s so much more than that. Of course, it does use the suspense of the other shoe dropping to great affect as well. I’d also like to point out this is done by Studio Arms Corporation who in the early 2000’s did some crazy sleazy stuff like Kite and Mezzo Forte, so you might want to go in with that in mind.

This is a re-release from Sentai, but looks quite good in a 1080p 16×9 transfer. Detail is excellent, and colors pop. Audio is presented in both English and Japanese 5.1 tracks. Extras include an OVA that fills in character elements, clean opening and closing, character and production artwork. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.