The Mirror - Elfen Lied

I dreamt I had found a new job as a security guard. This is not unfeasible, I have worked many jobs in my life, and I am a pretty cagy guy, I would probably make a pretty good security guard. However this dream was a little different. Of course it was. 

Deep within an office building’s basement, past a long winding hallway, completely unlike any real life office building, I was ordered to keep watch over a mirror. That’s right a mirror, a mirror that had a sink in front of it, and a two door floor cabinet beneath it. It looked very much like a bathroom sink, counter and mirror only it was placed on the far wall of a large office room. This looked very much like one of those open office rooms, not completely unlike the one I work in right now. The first thing to note about this office was the room was a mess. Tables and chairs were knocked over and various stationary was scattered about the floor. More alarming was the gouges in the wall and floor and how the concentration of such seemed to center around the mirror, the very thing I was being instructed to watch over.

Now this whole situation is strange, but that is the thing about dreams they only seem strange when you wake up. My instructions were simple, and cryptic, if anything unusual happens around the mirror I was to report it right away, and also no one was to enter this room without very specification authorization from people I never bothered to learn the names of. So basically I was going to be spending some alone time in front of the mirror, or I would have been if I was not told to stay at least two meters away from the mirror at all times, and to also beware broken glass being thrown at me. Also I was told it was unwise to talk to “her” because she had a temper.

Again this seems strange but I took it in stride. I just assume some kind of phantom, demon, ghost, something was trapped in the mirror and it had a maximum range of physical presence of two meters. Why not? I’ve had stranger jobs.

Time flies in dreams, and after the first few months, of working this boring job, I began to hope I could finally get hired by one of the accounting firms in the city (this is actual true of my real life), however I liked the pay to watch the listless mirror, and the very day I started to complain to myself about it I started hearing her voice.

“Let me out,” a woman’s voice quietly echoed from the mirror.

Now this seems very strange in retrospect, but again I took it in stride. I sat down in front of the mirror in one of the discarded chairs, at a distance of about three meters and began to ask casual questions like “who are you?” and “are you trapped in the mirror?” Before I knew it broken glass was being thrown at me. They were right she did have a temper. After a while she appeared in the broken mirror, a haggard young girl, her hair a mess and dark circles around her eyes. She probably would have been pretty if she was cleaned up.

This is around the time my suspensions of disbelief started to overcome me, and not because of the fantastic elements involved in the dream were impossible and strange, but rather because the fantastic elements involved in the dream were far too familiar, I was dealing with Lucy from “Elfen Leid.”

I have not watched much anime in the past ten years. What was once an exciting export of cartoon violence and nudity with mature subject matter and crazy Japanese storylines had become dominated by commercial tactics appealing to the most general audience. Storylines were contrived; characters had become androgynous, and worst of all the mature subject matter had been mostly replaced with teenage melodrama. Now my complaints are only generally true, not absolutely, but with a busy schedule and a worn out patience I no longer had the willingness to investigate the now oversaturated market of anime to find something I like. I watched “Elfen Lied” by chance.

Whilst youtube surfing I came across a “violent anime clip collection,” and not having any reason to not watch a bunch of violence I sat back and enjoyed myself. I recognized Guts from “Berserker,” chopping people in half, and Alucard from “Hellsing,” shooting people up, but I did not recognize naked pink haired girl tearing men to pieces. At first, it looked like a homage to Tetsuo’s escape scene in Akira where he rips a bunch of dudes to pieces while stumbling down the hallway, but no, it got worse (or better depending on your point of view), there were visuals of a younger pink haired girl getting her leg graphically torn off and her finger tips severed as she fell from her sudden dismemberment; that was the scene that really caught my attention. I thought “wow that anime isn’t holding anything back, that young girl is getting gruesomely murdered.” Since I did not have anything better to do with my weekend I looked up the series “Elfen Lied,” and watched all thirteen episodes in two days.

Nyu the childlike half of Lucy's personality.  Reminds me of an ex.

"Elfen Leid,” is about a young girl named Lucy. She has a rare birth defect that has given her horns that look a lot like cat ears, oh Japan, anyway they call her kind Dicloniis. Also she has physic powers; she can control four invisible physic arms with tremendous strength. The opening scene in “Elfen Lied,” is Lucy escaping from the lab where she has been kept hostage. Wearing only some strange helmet she walks down the hall slaughtering everyone she encounters, even the innocent, albeit it stupid and clumsy, secretary, Lucy tears the poor girls head off and uses the headless corpse as a human shield to block the barrage of bullets being fired at her, which seems needless since her arms proved more than capable of repelling any such attack   repeatedly seconds earlier. She escapes but suffers a nearly fatal gunshot wound from a sniper, then she is found by cousins Kohta and Yuka, and she is reduced to an ignorant childlike state where she can only say the word “nyu.” Kohta and Yuka decide to take her in and they name her Nyu. Oh Japan, I’ve never understood the sexual interest in ignorant childlike girls, effectively Nyu’s personality and mental capacity is that of a mentally challenged person, and I fail to see why that is either cute or sexy. Also no other review mentions the oddness that Kohta and Yuka, who are love interests to each other, are cousins, and hey, incest, is no one going to say anything? So yeah this whole love triangle didn’t work for me at all.

There are two primary perspectives about the character Lucy/Nyu we are witness to, we see Lucy as a terrible force of murder and destruction, and we also get to see her as a tragic romantic figure. Lucy goes on multiple berserk murdering sprees, but at the same time she lives a life of misfortune. If we look at the list of murders Lucy commits over the course of the series we can see how the story sets her up a dangerous entity.

When Lucy is a child she first kills when three bullies tease her and kill a stray puppy dog she found, arguably the three bullies had what was coming to them though I doubt anyone who actually believe that three out of control children deserve to be brutally murdered, but in addition to these three deaths Lucy also kills her friend who happens to be in the room. I suppose we could write these four murders off as a fit of anger from a child who did not understand her powers.

Next Lucy kills her own family. This happens off screen so we do not get any insight into what caused her to snap, but it is suggest to us in a prior scene that her family treats her like she is a black sheep, so perhaps it could be argued that this is yet again another outburst from a young girl that resulted in unintentional mass murder.

Lucy murders a random family so she has somewhere to sleep for the night. The only member of the family we actually see Lucy kill is the father of the family when he gets home from work, or something. This is really bad, it cannot be suggested that Lucy killed them out of necessity or a child’s misdirected self preservation. Lucy has killed multiple innocent people at this point.

Lucy then murders additional random and presumably innocent people as a festival, and following this even kills Kohta’s sister and father out of jealousy, for his affections for his cousin Yuka. A selfish motivation and more accounts of first degree murder.

As an adult Lucy kills multiple people while breaking free of her captivity, including the innocent secretary, and men running away from her and those begging for mercy.  She has been essentially tortured and this is her anger unleashed so no one was safe once she got loose.

Lucy kills again when the organization responsibly for her captivity come after her. A few more kills in self defense.

Lucy kills a college professor after being raped by him (this is a dark series), which is understandable. While walking home Lucy casually kills a random woman walking by primarily out of curiosity. 

Poor Nana, you are actually a good person.

Lucy brutally dismembers Nana a fellow Diclonii. While Nana does survive the incident, Lucy does enjoy torturing her in this scene, and this is after Nana makes it clear she will not hurt Lucy if she does not have too, and she will not kill her under any circumstance. The only reason Lucy is able to do this terrible thing to Nana is because Nana shows her mercy.

Lucy fights off an army of soldiers who come for her in the end. She also kills an innocent scientist who poses no threat to her. 

That is the list and it is an impressive one, and it well accomplishes the goal of establishing Lucy as an incredibly dangerous person. What I liked about Lucy is that her powers were finite and there could be a way to defeat her with or without powers similar to her own. The intrigue to most creature feature horror movies is trying to figure out how the characters are going to overcome the monster, and “Elfen Lied,” did a great job of making me think about how were they going to bring down Lucy. These murders by Lucy also did a great job of making me feel that she must be destroyed.

This is where “Elfen Lied” fails as a story. It is not impossible to have a character who is both dangerous/evil and a victim/good, this is clearly what “Elfen Lied,” is trying to accomplish but fails to do so. The extremes of Lucy’s wrong doings far exceed any believability of her innocence as a forced victim. She has killed multiple innocent people in multiple situations under a variety of emotional conditions and circumstances. She kills innocent people without mercy and even tortures for fun, and this is not a onetime mistake but an ongoing problem, Lucy at no point ever stops killing people. Any sort of redemption that could be tangible for Lucy is washed away by the flood of blood she produces over the course of the series.

It could be argued that the duality of Lucy’s character still works since her powers do incur a sort of demonic possession. It is told to us the viewers that all Dicloniis end up merciless killers. We see demons in Lucy’s mind urging her to kill and slaughter. We see other examples of Dicloniis going on murdering sprees. This is a satisfactory explanation, or it would be if not for Nana.

All Dicloniis go crazy and start killing people... except Nana. Nana is a Diclonii with all the powers and everything but she never goes on a killing spree, she never hurts anyone, in fact when she is asked to help kill Lucy she out right refuses to do so, stating she would never kill anyone, which shows a lot of character on Nana’s behalf since at this point in the series it is very evident that Lucy must die. Nana shows high moral qualities and never exhibits any of the rage or lust to kill that Lucy does.

I liked Nana. She was one of the only characters I was rooting for in “Elfen Lied,” which is unfortunate because her mere existences makes the entire plot of “Elfen Lied,” a self defeating one. Lucy is crazy because of her powers only that doesn’t work because Nana is not crazy and she has the same powers. Lucy is tragic because all her emotional outbursts resulting in death and destruction are a result of living a painful life, only they are her fault, because Nana lived no less a painful life and yet she has never killed anyone. Lucy, as a young woman, is aware of her powers and feels guilt for her terrible deeds yet makes no effort to stop killing innocent people. I could not help but notice that a lot of people really bought into this character and really liked Lucy but while watching "Elfen Lied," I was assuming the conclusion of this story must be her death, a very necessary and well deserved death.

She killed your family and a whole bunch of other people's
families but that's okay because you love her... wait what?

Spoiler she does not die, and we are suppose to feel bad for her, and we are suppose to love her because Kohta does... even though she murdered his family... and she is not done murdering people and shows no intention of stopping. This does not work, Kohta forgiveness (he says he can't forgive her, but he basically does) of Lucy is too farfetched, and it is should be obvious to everyone that Lucy is an evil person who must be stopped. The series probably should have ended with Kohta strangling Lucy to death, and Lucy letting him do it because she is overwhelmed with guilt. It would have been a very sad ending but the entire series was dark, this would have been a good ending.  

Now this may sound unsettling, but I really enjoy graphic violence. I am not some sadist that revels in misery of others, nor am I some sycophant with a twisted blood lust, I like extreme and intense drama and excitement, and there within lies my love of graphic violence. The two things that are most interesting to us humans is love and death as I have talked about in so many essays, which is only natural since we see love as the greatest of beginnings and death as the greatest end. But death can be peaceful and quiet and frankly not so scary or terrible, or it can be hideous and painful and consequentially terrifying. Violence in war is not as unsettling as violence at home, and violence against men is not as unsettling as violence against women. Soldiers are prepared to die even gruesomely, men comprise the vast majority of soldiers throughout the history of the world but also even the average male is often thought of as a protector and fighter, this going back all the way to the days of hunter gatherers. The sad truth about being male is that we are disposable. One bull can impregnate many cows, and this is true of humans as well (while not to the same degree) and this is why the population of the human race has always been a slight majority female. We call them the fairer sex for a reason, not only is the average female less physically equipped to deal with a violent confrontation, but their life is typically more precious. I do not intend to ramble on any further about gender differences here; I just want to break down our mental disposition about why seeing a female die horribly is so much more shocking than watching a man die the same death.

Adults are much more mentally and physically prepared for violent encounters than children, this a much easier detail of discomfort to explain, in fact I don’t even feel the need to bother. Seeing young people die is more terrible then watching the old perish.

Given these two details watching Lucy dismember Nana in “Elfen Lied,” is the scene that sticks with us the most. Fans of “Elfen Lied,” may not even be aware of it, but what made “Elfen Lied,” so memorable, among other things, was the violence against young female characters. But this makes “Elfen Lied,” a little unnerving. I would like to assume the reason for this is to shock us at just bad the Dicloniis are, that they would even kill women and children, and yes, that works, but the direction of the animation gave me pause. A lot of men are killed in “Elfen Lied” but their deaths are rarely graphic. The male deaths are plenty violent, there is blood everywhere and everything but the attention to detail is typically vague while the deaths of women are routinely showcased with full exposure of the violence set upon them.

Examples, when Bando gets his arm ripped off, we see a spray of blood, and where his arm once was there is now a torn sleeve of his shirt and a blood stain, while in contrast, when Nana is dismembered we see the skin stretch, tear and snap every time one of her limps is removed and we see the exposed wounds in all their gory details, we can see the severed muscle tissue and the broken bones. In the opening scene when Lucy is killing a massive number of soldiers many are torn in half but we never see innards or bones exposed, just big sprays of blood, however when the secretary gets her head ripped off we see everything. We do see a man get his heart torn out and thrown onto another soldier, that’s something, but we also see a woman torn in half later in the series and we see her innards and broken ribs tear through her torso as it happens. Another reason this is worrisome is that violence against women appears to be a reoccurring theme in anime now. Claymore was about a bunch of blonde haired demon warrior women fighting demons and sometimes each other, and it was a very violent show. Higurashi, is about a group of friends losing their minds and turning on each other and killing each other, and five of the six friends were female. But in both Claymore and Higurashi they just happen to star a cast of characters that are predominately female so the eventual violence that happens to them seems more like part of the overall story and not a sick indulgence. Furthermore the attention to detail in both Claymore and Higurashi is consistent throughout the series, everyone dies with a similar degree of showcased violence. In fact Higurashi which is definitely my favorite of the three almost always shied away from the violence, because it was not the violence that made that show interesting, it was the insanity and paranoia the characters were experiencing that was intense and exciting. Once the plot collapsed in “Elfen Lied,” I made the sad realization that I had just watched murder porn. The self defeating plot of “Elfen Lied,” is just a poorly written excuse for to see young girls naked and brutally killed.

While I was very disappointed by the gapping plot hole that was Nana’s sweet kind innocence among other less important inconsistencies, I did find the concept of Dicloniis and Lucy very interesting. “Elfen Lied,” did not know what it wanted to be, you know other than female murder porn, it succeeded in setting up the dark side of Lucy but failed to win me over to feeling any sympathy for her. I guess the best thing about “Eflen Lied,” is that it was an original idea and even with its shortcomings it managed to capture my imagination, so much so I dreamt about it, but you know in that dream the primary intrigue was trying to find a way to destroy the evil of the girl behind the mirror, or at least to avoid her dangerous attacks.

In the manga, which I have not read, it looks like they address my concerns regarding Lucy’s unforgivable acts of violence and the ending not holding up. At least it looks that way.

Lucy dying a gruesome and well deserved death.
I actually feel bad for her now.