Elfen Lied – 01 – A Study in Extremis

The haunting opening credits feature Latin vocals and Klimt-inspired art, a blending of the sacred and the profane. A research subject breaks free of her industrial-strength restraints and goes on a harrowing homicidal rampage, lifting neither arm nor finger but utilizing a kind of telekinesis to relieve both guard and functionary of their heads and/or various limbs.

Every effort to stop or slow her steady march ends the same way: an abundance of blood and viscera staining an otherwise cold and sterile environment. She is finally seemingly neutralized by a shot to the head from an anti-tank round, and falls at least fifty feet into the inky ocean. But, of course this isn’t the end of Lucy…it’s only the beginning…of Elfen Lied.

Why am I watching and reviewing this show, which aired fifteen years ago in the season before Bleach premiered? Many reasons: A look at a show I missed because I wasn’t even into anime back then; a means of complementing today’s crisper, cleaner, and overall safer anime; and mere curiosity in a show notorious and controversial for its transgressive content; a show nearly as many people hate as love.

Also, it’s a show that gives you those first ten minutes, then follows it up by switching gears completely. What follows is a mundane, low-key romantic comedy without a hint of the supernatural horror or military intrigue of the prologue. College student Yuka meets up with her same-aged cousin Kouta in Kamakura, and end up on the beach reminiscing about his departed little sister, Kaede.

That’s when Yuka notices something, or rather someone quite out of place: a buck naked woman with pink hair: the research subject Lucy. Due to her head injury, she seems to have reverted to the developmental state of a young child, and can only say one word—nyu—which they eventually decide to name her.

Since Yuka and Kouta are decent folk, they do what anyone would do: offer Nyu clothes and then shelter at the otherwise vacant ten-room inn where Kouta and Yuka will be living. She confirms her developmental state by being unable to adequately communicate she has to use the bathroom, and relieves herself on the floor of the foyer.

As Lucy has profoundly changed and entered a profoundly different world than the lab where she no doubt lived and suffered for quite a while, her handlers are already planning an operation to hunt her down and eliminate her, as the lab’s chief researcher declares that an unbound Lucy in the outside world would spell the “end of mankind”.

Bando, the man they choose to lead the manhunt, is about as heartless and despicable as they come. He’s bored with simulated kills, slaps the shit out of unwitting assistants, and desires nothing but the opportunity to kill without restraint. In effect, he’s a “Lucy” by choice. In any case, he surely won’t hold his fire just because Lucy isn’t quite herself.

After sharing a meal of onigiri with Yuka and Nyu, Kouta takes out a shell that he keeps as a memento of his deceased sister, who died suddenly of an illness. Nyu interprets his connection to the shell as something making him sad (not necessarily wrong) and breaks it into pieces, throwing Kouta into a rage. He shouts and fumes and tells her to get out, and she does.

Returning to the now rain-soaked spot of beach where they found her, Nyu stares out into the ocean and tears start to fall from her eyes, as Bando & Co. close in on her via helicopter. Roll Credits.

* * *

Elfen Lied is a compelling blast from the past with a first episode that packs a vicious punch in its first act before easing into its more domestic latter two. It’s an exploration of extremes, be it between Lucy and Nyu, the research facility and the sleepy Japanese town, the blunt lethality of Bando and innocence of Kouta, and yes, the warmth of human flesh and blood and the chill of metal and concrete.

It sets things up superbly for one hell of a clash of worlds and personalities—between parties that seek to simply live their quiet little lives, and those who seek to end a life, before, as they claim, it threatens to end all life. Having no previous knowledge of Elfen Lied or where it goes, a great start is no indication of a great anime, but most definitely warrants further viewing.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online – 11 – Humvee Jousting

LLENN is initially worried MMTM will kill Pito, but she had nothing to worry about, because Pito confirms that old adage about cornered and wounded being the most dangerous animal.

With a remnant of M’s shield and her Darth Maul-esque double-edged lightsaber, she gruesomely dispatches MMTM one by one. They’re simply outmatched in intensity and insanity. LLENN is finally feeling the weight of promising kill…THAT.

LLENN stays crouched in the brush trying to think of a plan, but coming up empty. Meanwhile, Fuka and SHINC decide the only thing for it is to charge recklessly, which they do, and M and Pito fill them with holes. One by one the Amazons fall, but they fall smiling, figuring that if they were never going to win the SJ at this point, they might as well go out in a blaze.

Fuka, meanwhile, has all her limbs blown off but still won’t give up, irking M and Pito but also making them respect her. Eventually, going over everything that went wrong in this SJ, LLENN has had enough, bursting out of the brush, but away from the cabin, not towards it. Her friends succeeded in unlocking “Psycho LLENN”, the only kind of LLENN who’ll be able to kill the even more psycho Pitohui.

Pito and M give chase in a Humvee, but when they charge her she slides underneath its generous ground clearance, and they crash into a pond. Unfortunately for LLENN it’s a shallow pond.

Pito and LLENN get into a shooting match, and LLENN is hit and almost gives up, but Fuka, her limbs regrown, arrives in another Humvee to rescue her. Turns out she got pretty good at driving from video games as well.

After a brief but thrilling car chase (the lumbering Humvees, while capable, eventually run out of fuel), LLENN is forced to rush at Pito using a willing P-chan as a shield. She stomps Pito in the face and disarms her, putting the two in close quarters with no guns. Pito is grinning ear to ear; LLENN…isn’t.

In the most prestigious tournament of a game about shooting guns, the final showdown may come down to knives, fists, feet…even teeth. That is, unless Pito is hiding other weapons in that suit of hers. The question is, who will be the last woman standing?

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online – 10 – She’s No Gentleman…But She Could Be a Sith

LLENN and Fuka are saved when SHINC opens fire on MMTM, hoping to take them out, but they escape. Eva wants to have a proper duel with LLENN, but Fuka lets slip the reason she can’t: the possibility of Pito dying.

Meanwhile, Pito agrees to a ceasefire with KKHC only to immediately shoot them once they turn their backs, rejecting the fact they had a “gentleman’s agreement” for the simple fact she’s not a gentleman.

Only one KKHC member escapes, whom Pito doesn’t consider a threat because her teammates said she doesn’t like shooting people (one wonders why she’s in a game where that’s the whole point…unless she’s only interested in the tactics). But this green-haired girl decides it’s okay to kill “vermin” like Pitohui who would so heartlessly slaughter her comrades.

SHINC agrees to work with LLENN and Fuka on a pincer attack of PM4. SHINC demonstrates their proficiency with moving to avoid sniper fire, even from a rifle that can shoot from over a kilometer away.

Before M knows it, they’re shooting one of their own in order to use her big body as an immortal pedestal on which to mount an even bigger, more powerful sniper rifle, and anti-tank gun that takes out M’s shield piece by piece and forcing him to retreat to a cabin.

LLENN is standing by not too far from that cabin, and on Eva’s signal, she moves in to kill Pitohui. Only the green-haired girl gets a shot in first, all because Pito didn’t take her seriously as an enemy. She’s shot through the head, and even a curative doesn’t seem able to stop her HP drain.

However, she does not die. She loses it a bit, most likely because she’s using an SAO-era NerveGear and isn’t being automatically logged out due to extreme neurological stress. LLENN kills the green-haired sniper, but her quarry is interfered with once more when MMTM moves back in and raids the cabin.

Believing the end to be near, M (Goushi) leans in to kiss his beloved Pitohui, still recovering from her head wound. But just as MMTM reaches the door to her room, Pito whips out her latest weapon: the same photon sword used by Kirito when he played GGO.

Looking more sinister than ever in the red glow of its blade, and with MMTM eviscerated, Pito looks not-at-all ready to go down easily to our petite pink P90 pusher.

Violet Evergarden – 08

There are no fancy clients or letters written this week, as learning of Gilbert’s death pulls Violet back into her dark past. Though it’s never explained exactly how the girl who Gilbert would come to call Violet was molded into such an efficient killing machine, but one thing is certain: absolutely no care was taken into how her emotional development would suffer from her military duties; at least not until Gilbert took custody of her.

Violet was too valuable an asset for the military to keep on the sidelines, so Gilbert was ordered to put her on the front lines of the war, where she distinguished herself as a fearless weapon. But as he watched her slaughter the enemy without any kind of expression on her face, many a pained look came from the major.

He really didn’t want to contribute any further to this child’s torment, but he had little choice, not being the particularly rebellious type. And so he watches the girl everyone considers nothing but a weapon continue to tear her soul apart as he watches with pity and regret.

When Violet treks (in her memoir doll dress no less) to the Bouganvillea mansion and finds Gilbert’s grave beneath a tree, it may be starting to sink in for her that she’ll never see the major again, but as it’s something she’s never before contemplated—any more than she knew what concepts like “beautiful” or “gratitude” meant before meeting him—she just seems utterly lost without the man whose green eyes match the brooch she had him buy for her, calling those eyes “beautiful from the first time they met.”

Gilbert’s and Violet’s relationship was always an utterly tragic one, with the war dictating how Gilbert had to use her, and Violet never properly growing up or mastering human skills of interaction or self-relfection while Gilbert drew breath.

But thanks to him, she at least had a chance to gradually learn; her exploits with the doll company are proof of that. He was always right about her: she was more than a weapon, she was a human being, and it wasn’t too late for her.

Unfortunately, we learn what causes the wound that leads to Gilbert’s demise, and it’s just a cherry on top of the shit life sundae Violet has been handed. Enemy stragglers shoot him in the eye, using the light of the very flare he sent up to alert ground forces to invade the fortress.

It was the last goddamn battle he and Violet had to fight, and thus the war snatched him away from her when she needed him the most—with peace on the horizon. Will she ever recover from that loss? I would hope so, but she’ll need help from those around her, and she’ll have to want to be helped, as opposed to simply wanting to join the major in death.

Sword Art Online II – 03

After her great victory over Behemoth in GGO, Asada Shino logs off to find herself back in her lonely, tenuous, pitiable existence in the real world. Bullies shaking her down for fare in a dark alley threaten to show her a model gun, and we learn why that’s such a big deal: having put three bullets into a bank robber to save her mom as a small child, Shino now gets intense panic attacks every time she sees or touches a gun.

Shino’s guy friend Shinkawa, who saves her from the bullies, suggested she dive into GGO as “immersive therapy”, and she found she could handle the guns in the virtual world without any issues. In fact, her entire motivation for rising in GGO is so the strength she’s gaining as Sinon will somehow “rub off” into the real world. But that seems like wishful thinking even she can’t always maintain, as she sinks into her bed thinking “Someone, please save me.” The real world is the real world, and GGO is GGO.

Thanks to Death Gun, whom Kirito still hopes is just an urban legend but whom we know exists, those worlds are becoming intertwined. Those he targets in GGO die in the real world. Kirito and Shino’s paths have yet to cross, but now that he’s in GGO it’s only a matter of time, especially since we learn in the end that Sinon needs saving too: she’s Death Gun’s next target, no doubt having gained enough esteem to catch his attention.

Kirito has a nice setup thanks to Kikuoka: a hospital room; the same saucy nurse Aki who took care of him when he was trapped in SAO; constant observation and instrumental monitoring. He’s not going in half-cocked, except for the fact he’s still not convinced the Big Bad is real. So…who is he? Well, we only see part of his face in the end as he strokes a picture of Sinon, but my guess would be Shinkawa. (Note that this is just a guess; no spoilers in the comments, please!)

Their awkward tea revealed some of the inadequacies that could fuel a villain, from daddy issues and being on a path not on his making, to his friend surpassing him in the thing he introduced her to. It’s still unsettling to think he’d resort to murder; perhaps he bears deep psychological scars as Shino does, only his are expressed in violence towards others, particularly those who make him feel inferior, and he can’t stop any more than Shino can keep herself from vomiting. We’ll certainly see.

Sword Art Online II – 02

This week backed up a bit from Sinon’s introductory scene last week, setting up that scene with a bit of team strategizing, and then barreling right into the action, which barely lets up thereafter. The episode is dominated by one big, elaborate, very slickly-animated, thrilling battle. Just two episodes in, and things are looking good here at SAO.

In GGO, Sinon is the sniper in a six-man crew of player-hunters, but their latest prey appear on the horizon with a new face attached to a big, cloaked body. Sinon is uneasy about this unknown, and wants to take him out first to eliminate that unknown, but the team leader Dyne overrules her. Sinon shoots the known Minimi gun-holder first, and can’t take out the stranger after, as he dodges. Then he pulls the cloak off to reveal…a minigun.

Turns out the big man is Behemoth, a noted bodyguard-for-hire whose smile on the battlefield only further fuels Sinon’s intense desire to kill him, proving she’s the strongest on said battlefield. When her team loses a man, Dyne wigs out, but Sinon calms him down and directs everyone to execute a pincer attack. Behemoth still won’t go down, even after Dyne lunges at him with a gutsy suicide attack that buys her time to find a new nest.

But even high up in a huge, awesome half-collapsed skyscraper, as Sinon’s crosshairs focus on Behemoth, his focus on hers, and she loses her leg, dodging a lethal shot only barely. As she plummets to the ground, she executes a number of bullet-dodging acrobatics before finally regaining her bearings and delivering a perfectly timed headshot. Sinon 1, Behemoth 0; Game over. “Sinon” awakes in the real world, unsatisfied. She won, but lost two comrades and a leg. She’s not as strong as she wants to be. Not yet.

The episode could have cut to credits right then and there and I’d have been perfectly happy, but instead we get Bonus SAO, as we check in on Leafa, Liz, and Silica still chillin’ in ALfeim Online, gathering loot. Kirito and Asuna are also there with Yui, happy as clams. Staring up at Aincrad, Kirito ready to discuss something with Asuna—most likely the mission Kikuoka gave him last week. The day he inevitably crosses paths with Sinon should be something to behold.