Thanks, I am considering an account there...

You may also want to see if Amazon Japan will ship all the CDs you're looking at to America, they ship most of their CD collection, plus they can sometimes have really good sales/discounts on CDs too. Shipping can be a real killer if you're only ordering a couple CDs... so buy more!

I'm a little past halfway and yes, the characters don't have a lot of depth, but it's also a 13 episode show. It won't crack my top 10 list for sure, but it's enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable.

Quote from: CCS on February 28, 2014, 02:37:53 PM

Quote from: mechgamer123 on February 27, 2014, 07:31:40 PM

Yes, it is a good watch. If you're unsatisfied with the anime ending, I'd highly recommend reading the manga though.

You know, I used to like Elfen Lied quite a bit (read the manga) until either another anime fan or a Youtube video (can't remember, it's been a while) pointed out to me that it was derivative of higher quality works such as Evangelion but missed out on what made those works so good in the first place, such as realistic, well-developed characters. Instead, they focus on delivering more action and gore in an attempt to make things edgy or "messed up." For the most part, I would agree with that assessment, and would rather watch something with less generic plot or characters.

Yeah, I remember you used to like it, I believe you actually originally recommended I read the manga after finishing the anime, haha.
Hmm, think you could find a link to that person's full argument? I'd be interested in reading more about it. I can kinda see where they're coming from, but it seems like most if not all media borrow themes from other stories to a certain extent. Evangelion could also be described as a masterpiece level story in some regards, so of course other stories aren't going to always going to match the quality of the original.

I'm not really talking about borrowing themes from Eva. It borrowed characters from Eva (and similar stories), but characterized them in a manner that made them seem "flatter" than the characters in Evangelion. For instance, Lucy was made insane by being bullied as a child and then just starts popping humans as if they're blood balloons. It's hard to relate to her because her mental state seems unrealistic given the relatively minor trauma that she suffered.

We then compare Lucy to Shinji, who went insane for an entirely different reason, and who did not go crazy offscreen, but progressively became that way as a result of the events that had taken place in the story. From the beginning, we already knew that Shinji was somewhat emotionally damaged; he had abandonment issues because his father left him in someone else's care after his mother died. Years later, he's called upon to pilot Eva-01 by his father. He seeks his father's approval, so despite his overwhelming fear in the face of this danger, he jumps into Eva and starts fighting. And he's brutally beaten by the 3rd (I believe) Angel. Unit-01 goes berserk and kills the Angel.

Shinji becomes more capable of piloting the Eva as the show goes on, but he's doing it for the wrong reasons. He's being manipulated by the people around him into using the Eva to wage war on the Angels; Asuka and Rei do the same things and look how they turned out. Basically, Shinji is made insane by fighting a war - where the world is at stake - for his father who doesn't seem to care about him. He watches as his friends are killed or critically injured and continues to fight despite it all. It's not like he hates the world because he was bullied (Lucy); he hates the world because the world is against him for the length of the series.

And of course, Eva was also influenced by many other shows that came before it. The difference is that it did something relatively new with this material and approached its characters and themes in a way that made it powerful. Elfen Lied, on the other hand, is influenced possibly too heavily by other material and it seems to expect its viewers to fill in the blanks a little bit, with regards to characters and themes. Its plot is not particularly bad (in fact, I enjoyed it mostly because of the story it told), but the lack of strong characters and the emphasis on making things as edgy as possible ended up taking away from what Elfen Lied could have been otherwise.

Edit: I think it's a Youtube video that I was watching that brought up some of these problems. I'll try to see if I can find it again.