Elfen Lied: Vector One

Review Date: 2005 June 27 18:11

Reviewed by: Spike

Released by: ADV Films

Age Rating: MA

Region: 1 - North America

Volume 1 of 4

Length: 100 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1

Summary

Nyu is a helpless young girl found on the beach by college students Kohta and Yuka, she's unable to communicate other than to say the word 'Nyu' and seems totally innocent, relying on the pair for virtually everything. Lucy, on the other hand, is a merciless killer. Lucy uses an array of psychic arms called 'vectors' to dismember anyone in her path before they have a chance to scream. At first glance these two seem like diametric opposites, however they share the same body, flipping between the two personalities at a moments notice.

Now, as Kohta takes in mutants and runaways into his new rented home, Kaede House, he and Yuka have no idea of the darkness descending around them, or the evil luring in the seemingly helpless Nyu. Outside a battle rages, as the forces that allowed Lucy to escape send soldiers and mutants after her, Kohta and Yuka have no idea that one wrong move could make the difference between living and dying.Now, as Kohta takes in mutants and runaways into his new rented home, Kaede House, he and Yuka have no idea of the darkness descending around them, or the evil luring in the seemingly helpless Nyu. Outside a battle rages, as the forces that allowed Lucy to escape send soldiers and mutants after her, Kohta and Yuka have no idea that one wrong move could make the difference between living and dying.

Review

With this series the first thing to notice is the sheer amount of violence in this series, the first frame, for instance is of a severed arm on the floor of a secret base. From then on whenever the "Lucy" persona is in charge not even traditionally safe characters such as the important or ditzy ones are safe, and are usually ripped apart with savage ferocity. Lucy's other persona "Nyu" however is cute and hapless, aided partially by the fact that triangular horns on top of her head and the fact that all she can say is 'nyu' makes her seem much like the stereotypical catgirl seen in many popular anime. Of the other main characters, Khota is reserved but nice, though he has frequent flashbacks and seems to have something in his past that he can't quite remember, Yuka is energetic and friendly and usually ends up pushing or dragging Khota around. When the group are together and Nyu is around instead of Lucy, the series almost seems to be a light-hearted romantic comedy, with Nyu acting almost like Chii from the Clamp series Chobits and ending up in sexually suggestive positions with Khota just as Yuka walks in (there is quite a bit of nudity), but there is a certain bleak quality to it, almost as if their is no hope of happiness to be found for any of the characters. Through all of this each characters seems to have something dark in their past, something within that seems to eat away at all of them from inside.