Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Elfen Lied

Name: Elfen Lied
Type: Television Show
Episodes: 13, 1 OVA
Rating: Mature
Runtime Per Episode: 25 min
Director: Kanabe Mamoru
Produced By GENCO VAP
Year Produced: 2004

A Serious Warning:
This is a very graphic anime, no matter what anyone might say, me included.  I may make jokes about situations, but this is not something that should be taken on lightly (unless you're a gore junkey).
There are more than a few things in this anime that are beyond the pail for an average, unprepared viewer, and I implore anyone not 100% sure about it to not take the chance (unless, as I said before, you have a high tolerance for gore, nudity, and other inhumane scenes/implications/situations).

That being said, I'd also like to downright state that this story is something that should be experienced, so if you don't think you handle watching it, then I'd recommend reading it (I'll provide a link or two at the end).  I'm afraid that it's not a story that you can appreciate by looking at a summery on Wikipedia... or here (duh), and because of the overall message that it sends, you'd do well to understand it.  I think I'll read it again too, actually.

Despite what some might call excess blood, gore, and nudity, Elfen Lied is what I call a must-see, and not just that, it's also an absolutely a must-read.  The manga by Okamoto Lynn is extensive and utilizes an art style that is unique and strange for these genres of anime (those being horror and alike).

Now the anime covers about half of the manga, taking bits a pieces out of the later halves, and then resolving with a different ending.

For obvious reasons, the anime was not aired in the U.S. as far as I can tell, despite the fact that there was a strong desire to by the Programming Director (look at Wikipedia or whatever if you want to know more), though it was later released.


In a quiet, island research facility, something terrible has happened.  For some reason, a test subject has gotten free of her restraints... and doesn't seem too happy about being restrained in the first place.


Using some strange kind of power, this test subject, named Lucy, is now roaming through the installation, trying to find her way out.


She's the quiet type, but that doesn't stop her actions from being loud... and... red.

Now I'm no doctor, but that's too much blood to be coming out of three people (trust me, it's three people).

Emotionless and very deadly, the facility's staff use everything they've got to try and stop Lucy, but can't even scratch her as she cuts through them.


When she finally gets to the front door, they box her in, but someone in the control room (also filled with dead bodies for unknown reasons) unlocks some kind of emergency, way too convenient side-doors, and Lucy goes out into the open air.

...What the hell?

... where she is hunted from afar.

Vectors?

The sniping attempt fails to kill Lucy, just blasting the helmet off her head, and her unconscious body falls into the ocean below.

Back on the mainland, a college student named Kouta has just arrived in town.




While walking up some stairs to his favorite place to watch the ocean, he is called to by his cousin Yuka, who's been looking for him at the train station.


As you might have been able to tell, Kouta has been here before, when he was a child, but that hardly matters right now.  What's more important is that Yuka, who's had a crush on him since childhood, drags Kouta down to the beach for a trip down memory lane.
But what they find is a little more interesting than some rather depressing memories of Kouta bulling his younger sister.

... um, hello?

Are those... horns?
Why yes they are!  Not in the conventional devil sense, but rather in the kind of cute, kitten way.  Nyan!

With an obvious head wound, and probably severe trauma, this naked girl was the beginning of a very interesting road for Kouta and Yuka.


Different from what I was expecting it to be, this anime was more than I bargained for, then again, it was my fault for watching it at night.  I just got sucked in and ended up having a monstrous headache from the sound piping into my skull.

The character development took a more hasty approach than I probably would have normally liked, but I knew that they needed to cram a lot of information into a short period of time, so I'll let it slide.
The character development was not so great to one of my favorite characters out of the manga.  In the anime, they only took him a little further than his starting place (I'll tell you who it is during the spoiler part).
That being said, if you go into an anime expecting the in-depth detail you'll get out of the manga, then you'll be disappointed at the least.

The art was a lot different than the manga.  Elfen Lied was Okamoto Lynn's first manga, and it's easy to see his progress as an artist through the story.  The anime had a different approach, it kept the moe-ness that Lynn started off with (one of the things that made this manga unique was it's lighter art style combined with the heavy storyline and scenes).

As far as I'll say, there were at least two animation styles combined into this anime (or at least into scenes of it).  I don't know if it's right to say this, but there you go, I already have.
There was the normal animation style for pretty much everything, but during the fight sequences, there was a special style that was preformed to create the vectors.

You should stay with the Japanese version on this.  Although it managed to get an English cast, it wasn't anything exceptional.
Actually, you should make a point to watch the Japanese version, at least of episode 12.  The creator Okamoto Lynn makes an "appearance" as "Special Guest", whatever the fuck that means.  If you can figure it out please tell me.  The best I can figure is he's the SAT member who actually says something.

I'm betting it's the guy who says this, since he the only irregular in the list of people who spoke during the episode.

The beginning theme was something opera, and therefore, not to my liking.  It was also repeated endlessly through the course of the anime.  It's not a bad song I suppose, the melody's melancholy, but kind of interesting.  I just wasn't thrilled with it, that's all.
Another thing about the opening was that those images are adapted from a painter named Gustav Klimt.  I don't understand the significance of that, so don't ask me.
That being said, I did kind of like the ending theme.  It was a cool riff and stuff like that is usually more important to me than the words.

If you still want to watch this, please do, but refer to the opening section of this post again, just to make sure.

Elfen Lied Minitheatre

Coming up next!


Kai Doh Maru!


Alert!
If you don't like spoilers, or still want to watch the show now, you'd better stop reading!

With no other relevant idea, they take the mysterious girl back to the house (more like mansion) that Kouta's going to be staying in.

What a deal!

It is unanimously decided (and by unanimously, I mean Yuka was the only voter) that the girl, henceforth dubbed and named by Kouta as "Nyu" (or Nyuu, it doesn't really matter) will be staying with him for a while.
When inside, Nyu suddenly has to go to the bathroom, but since she doesn't have a vocabulary beyond "Nyu", she can't relay this information, and since she's basically a child in an adult body, Nyu has an accident.
After Yuka cleans up Nyu (and Kouta cleans up the floor), they sit down and have onigiri, although Nyu can't eat them properly, and when Kouta tries to teach her... he ends up feeding her.

... Cute.

Back at the research facility, things are developing into a rather shitty state of affairs for the entire project that they've been working on.

Oh, but of course... otherwise there wouldn't be a story!

To hunt down the rouge test subject, the staff have been training a group dubbed SAT (yeah, like the test).  The SAT are like most other special weapons teams, but they do have a black sheep in their ranks.


Bandou (that's the guy) is overly violent and extremely sadistic who obviously joined SAT for their access to weapons and situations where extreme or lethal force was permitted.  Similarly, he has no regrets or qualms about striking or even killing women, and is functionally paranoid of his surroundings (meaning that he's got "Soldier's Intuition" or whatever you want to call it).

Specially selected by Chief Kurama, the only explicit survivor of the "Lucy Incident", Bandou and his SAT buddies are sent out to track down and kill Lucy.

"Explicit" because Lucy obviously had the chance to kill him.

At the mansion, Kouta is pulling stuff out of his bag when he comes across a shell that his little sister Kanae found on the beach (after finding all of those regular ones).  Recalling Kanae at that time made Kouta nostalgic and a little sad at her departure.  When he mentions that it Kanae died of a disease, Yuka is confused.
Nyu takes the shell away from Kouta and then breaks it.


Kouta flies into a rage and orders her to leave, and even though Yuka tries to stop him, Nyu begins to cry and runs out of the house into the rain.
As Yuka reflects on what happened, she voices the fact that Nyu probably broke the shell because it seemed to cause Kouta pain, and she wanted to help.  Yuka leaves to go and search for Nyu, leaving Kouta behind at the house.

There is a chopper flying down towards the mainland from the facility.  The helicopter is full of SAT members, including Bandou, who's getting bored with the ride.

Nyu is back down on the beach where she met Kouta and Yuka.  She's digging through the sand looking for something as the waves wash up the beach.

After exchanging a few words with the mission commander, Bandou orders the helicopter to land so he can go out and hunt down Lucy already.

Back at the house, Kouta's waiting for Yuka and Nyu to return, and when there is a knocking at the door, Kouta is surprised to see two "police" officers asking about a young girl with long, pink hair and horns.

Kouta lies to them, telling them that he does not know her, and they leave quietly.  Kouta patience with waiting for Yuka to return and heads out on his own.

As Yuka and Kouta are running around town looking for Nyu, Bandou and some subordinate are searching the beach.
On the very same beach, Nyu has found what she's looking for.

Yuka, while searching through the town passes by the police station.  When she goes inside, she passes the two men who visited Kouta, who are passing around the picture again.

Kouta has found Nyu on the beach, and as he tries to help her up, Bandou cracks him on the back of the head with his rifle.  Kouta tries to protect Nyu, but is eventually beaten down, and Nyu is kidnapped by Bandou, who's looking for some "fun".  Please bear in mind that his definition of fun and yours... are probably lethally different.

Yuka, back at the police station remembers a place where she might find Nyu and hurries back there, only to find Kouta unconscious on the sand.  When he tries to get up to search for Nyu again, be (probably) blacks out and Yuka is forced to call an ambulance.

Nyu is dragged into a secluded part of the beach, and once there, Bandou tries to get her to fight him, but only ends up scaring her into trying to run away.  When Bandou sees her try and hide something, he hits her on the head, knocking her unconscious on the ground.
Bored with the event, Bandou orders his subordinate to kill her, but before he can, something blasts a hole through the soldier's chest, and then slices off his arm and head.

Ow is an understatement.

Bandou opens fire on Nyu... no, Lucy, but all of his attacks are useless before her invisible defense.  As Bandou tries to kill Lucy, she slices a boat in half and then something (that Bandou probably can't see) comes out of her back.  Things that look like hands.

Vectors.

They smash the ground and smash his helmet, and when he gets behind cover, begin to throw shit at him.
Lucy's vectors (or Ultimate Weapon as far as Bandou is concerned) have a 2 meter radius, but even so, they can still throw a pen hard enough to spear through someone's neck (it was actually a guards back at HQ).  They can also throw boats.  Fun.

At least Bandou thinks so.  I don't know about you, but when something that I can't technically see starts throwing shards of wood and boats at me, I'd be a little scared.

All the commotion outside wakes up a runaway girl and her dog, who are hiding inside... somewhere.

As he hides, Bandou formulates a surefire, do-or-die strategy to defeat Lucy.  He'll shoot the frag grenade on his dead partner's belt when Lucy steps close enough.  Bandou listens to Lucy's footsteps, and when he hears the decisive footstep, he comes back up.

Well spoken.

Too bad Lucy's picked up Bandou's partner's gun.

Everybody else's got this picture, so I figure I'll conform.

You wouldn't think so, would you?

Lucy guns down Bandou and proceeds to slice off his right arm, and break his left, and when he threatens to hunt her down afterworlds, Lucy gouges out his eyes.  Lucy then claims that Bandou is no fun anymore and starts to choke him with her vectors.
As Bandou begins to flail around, he brushes her hand which is holding the thing that she (she being Nyu) was searching for in the sand and protected against Bandou.  When Lucy sees what was in her hand, she has a breakdown, and Lucy regresses while Nyu resurfaces.


Frightened at the sight of Bandou's defeated (and pissed) state, Nyu gets scared and runs away, running past the little girl who was hiding from the rain.


The girl's name is Mayu, and when she looks over and spots Bandou, she (being a good and caring person) dashes over to help the... flailing, decapitated, bloody, and very pissed Bandou.  What is she, on crack?!
She treats his wounds and then calls an ambulance for him.

Kouta wakes up in the local hospital with Yuka watching over him.  As he regains consciousness, Kouta is welcomed back into the world of the living by Yuka... and those two "police officers", who shunt Yuka out the room and have a chat with
Kouta about his experience on the beach.
Kouta tells them what happened to him, but they seem less than willing to believe him, and when Kouta asks them what happened to Nyu (though not in those words), he is answered with a chilly and pretty creepy answer.

... Yeah, sure, if you says so, Mister.

Kouta gets discharged, and he and Yuka take a cab back to Kouta's house.  Along the way there, Yuka notices that Kouta's having a real problem accepting the current situation.

The cab drops Kouta off, and then leaves, Yuka promising to return the next day.  When Kouta arrives at the top of the stairs, he finds Nyu waiting for him at the front gate.
She opens her hand and presents what she was searching so hard for on the beach.


Kouta takes the shell and thanks Nyu.

In the cab on it's way to her house, Yuka remembers her last meeting with Kouta, the same one before his sister died, eight years ago.  In the memory, Kouta promises to return to the town next summer, saying that he likes Yuka.
For some reason, she suddenly remembers that she spaced out and forgot to give Kouta his key (or spare key or whatever) to the house, and she asks the cab driver to turn back around.

Back at the house, Kouta is searching through his bag for something, and when he gets to thinking about it, he makes a moral declaration.

And good luck with that.

Kouta and Nyu have run into another problem.  Nyu's clothes are soaked, and she's probably going to catch a cold.  Since Yuka (being a girl) had been there, changing Nyu wasn't a problem, but Kouta, being a gentleman (though he is lacking in more than a few areas), is faced with the dilemma of changing Nyu's clothes.
He surprisingly manages to get Nyu half into a new shirt using a rather retarded method, but when he gets to the pants, he runs into another problem.

Uh... hello.

I'm assuming that the following scene was too bloody to be recorded even in anime.

At the facility, Kurama has been informed of the SAT failure, and has decided on another course.  He arrives at the holding are of Number Seven, a.k.a. "Nana" (seven in Japanese).  Inside, he finds another test subject.


Nana begins calling Kurama "Papa", which he seems fine with.  He asks her to head out to find Lucy, calling her "another Diclonius", which means that whatever this Diclonius is, Nana's the same.  Actually, she's got the horns too, so duh.

After seeing Kouta with Nyu, Yuka begins to leave the house, and when Kouta catches her, she asks him if he remembers the festival from eight years ago.  When he more or less blows off the question, she becomes very angry and slaps him, leaving the house.
At home, Yuka pulls out a box of...


... okay, I don't know what these are, but they're apparently some kind of summer festival game where you carve them out of a plate using a needle.


Back at the house, Kouta's caught a cold, and Nyu's intent on helping him, though she doesn't manage to bring him exactly what he needs.
Like, he asks for water, and Nyu brings him...


... this.  Though her heart is in the right place.
Yuka returns to the house with groceries, but can't bring herself to go back inside, and when Nyu comes dashing out looking for water, Yuka is dragged back into the house and ends up caring for Kouta.

When Kouta tells her that he can't remember much of that entire summer that they spent together eight years ago, he also tells her that it's probably because of the trauma of losing both his father and his sister in such a short amount of time.
When Kouta again mentions that his sister fell to disease, Yuka leaves the room, stopping by the sink in confusion.

This is important, you should probably take note.

Kurama visits Bandou in the facility's hospital room.  Bandou is told that unless he gets a castration surgery, he'll die in that room, probably meaning that he'll be put down (like a dog).
Bandou goes quiet and then asks Kurama what he had fought against, and Kurama proceeds to explain to him about the Diclonius.  When the subject gets around to vectors, Kurama tells him that they are not just weapons, but rather were probably mutated for a different reason.


When Kouta wakes up again, he and Yuka end up having a talk about Nyu.  Kouta is resistant to the idea of taking her to the police (because of their performance in the last incident), and he instead invites Nyu to stay with him in the house.  Yuka, who's been doing some thinking of her own, decides that it's not a good idea to leave Kouta alone with a woman.  Two women would be much better.


And so Yuka moves in.

Kurama sees Nana off, promising to fulfill her request for a pat on the head if she does well.

In the house, Yuka's settled into one of the vacant rooms, and in the course of unpacking, she's come across something that she's brought from her house to give to Kouta.

In the main hallway, Kouta is cleaning the floor while Nyu watches him, and Kouta begins to reflect on the joy of having women in the same house as him.

... Well it is going harem.

When Nyu voices her desire to help Kouta clean the floor, Yuka leaves to get her a rag.  As Nyu moves in to get a closer look at what Kouta's doing, he accidentally brushes her chest with his elbow, and Nyu is sexually aroused and decides to go with it, taking Kouta's hand and putting it back on her breast.  Kouta is caught and slapped before he can go too far though.

After Yuka left to get some groceries, Mayu, the young girl who saved Bandou comes to the front door, carrying the umbrella that she found on the beach.  She is dragged into the house to talk about what she saw on the beach that night.

Yuka returns to the house and is slightly mortified that Kouta has attracted yet another girl to the house, but when Kouta tells her that Mayu saw what happened that night, Yuka calms down.

As Mayu is telling them what happened, Nyu is happily cleaning the floor.  She pauses and finds the box that Yuka was going to give to Kouta, and she starts fiddling around with it, trying to see what it does.
As she is walking around thinking, Nyu slips on her cleaning rag and falls on her head.  Nyu undergoes her transformation to Lucy, who attacks Kouta, but stops when she has a memory of some little boy screaming at her to stop.


Lucy turns around and leaves the house, and Yuka picks up the music box, but when she asks Kouta if he remembers anything about it, he has trouble with his memories again, and can't, and Yuka gets depressed again.

As Lucy sits on the steps alongside a road, Nana walks down to her side.  She asks Lucy why she didn't run or something when she sensed Nana coming, but Lucy just gets up and starts walking away, telling Nana that she won't kill her because they are of the same breed, that being Diclonius.
When Nana tries to convince her to come back peacefully, Lucy sticks a bunch of vectors into Nana, claiming that if she moves, Lucy will kill her.

As Nana tries one last time to convince Lucy to stay, Lucy smacks her into the wall.  Nana gets back up and attacks Lucy, throwing her into a cemetery.  Lucy notices that Nana's vector's are surprisingly long, longer than hers, which means that Nana actually kind of has an advantage.


Back at the house, Kouta decides to head out to look for Nyu, and when he says that, Yuka starts shouting at Kouta for always worrying about Nyu, even though she's been waiting for him for a long time.  Yuka hits Kouta when he tries to comfort her, and then runs away.
As Yuka is walking down the street, she remembers being at the funeral for Kouta's father and little sister.  She remembers everything that the people around her were saying, including the fact that Kouta was in the hospital and unable to even talk after the trauma.  Yuka tells reminds herself that it's Kouta who's been having the hardest time, but Yuka can't help feeling the way she does.

Back in the cemetery, Lucy is being choked by Nana's longer vector's, but Lucy's vectors are much stronger, and as such, she manages to break out of the hold and then they face off again.

On her way through town, Yuka runs into Mayu walking out of the bakery, holding bread scraps.  When Yuka tries to talk to her again, Mayu runs off, leaving Yuka even more confused.

As Lucy and Nana fight, Lucy's strength proves to get the better of Nana's reach, and Nana can barely cope with the pressure.


Back down on the steps, Mayu is eating some of the bread, but when she hears and explosion from the cemetery, she goes to investigate.
After being beaten down, Nana and Lucy square off again, and Nana uses her advantage to get a vector in Lucy's leg, and is about to severe a nerve when Mayu comes running in, begging them to not fight, and when Nana tries to stop her from entering the combat area, Lucy takes the advantage and pretty much slices Nana up, very sadistically.

Amazingly, she's still conscious.

When Mayu starts screaming, Lucy chucks her off into a tree and then walks over to deliver the finishing blow to Nana, but she is stopped by a bullet hitting a tombstone behind her.

Kurama walks up to the cemetery entrance, finding Nana and Lucy.  As Lucy is distracted by this, Nana takes the opportunity and sticks a vector into Lucy's forehead.
Lucy recovers from the attack and then tries to kill Nana, but no matter how hard she tries, she can't summon her vectors.

Kurama defies the 2-meter rule and walks over to Nana, then, in what counts as a rage for Kurama, he slaps Lucy, who, still unable to hit back, runs away.

Yuka has had a talk with the lady at the bread shop, who voices the idea that, since Mayu comes in the same clothes everyday, she might be a runaway.  As Yuka is thinking about this, she notices something to her side, and when she turns her head, she finds Nyu, on the verge of tears.  Yuka takes care of a small cut that Nyu's got on her arm, and then decides to take her back to the house.

As Kouta is waiting for someone to come back, he gets a phone call from the hospital.  It's about Mayu, who was found along the road with a slight head wound.  Kouta signs her out of the hospital and takes her back to the house to get something to eat.

Back at the house, Kouta is greeted by Yuka, who recognizes Mayu, and then Nyu, who's recognized by Mayu, but when Nyu looks at Mayu, her personality is too different from Lucy for Mayu to actually accuse her of anything.  Mayu writes off the event that she saw that afternoon as some kind of weird dream.

 After dinner, Mayu and Nyu take a bath while Yuka and Kouta talk about Mayu's situation.  They decide to let Mayu stay with them (at least for the night).  Kouta decides to tell Yuka everything about what's been happening to him the past couple of days, and apologizes to her for not telling her, because he didn't want to cause her any unnecessary worry.  Nyu manages to interrupt their conversation.

Grand Entrance!

While escorting Nyu back to the bath, Yuka tells Mayu to stay with them for the night, and Mayu agrees.

In the Director's office at the research facility, Kurama has been summoned after the Nana incident.  He is then ordered to kill Nana, ordered in the form of blackmail, more or less.


Kurama visits Nana in her hospital room, and oversees her injection.

The next morning, Yuka brings Kouta a letter that Mayu wrote before she left.  Kouta and Yuka head out into town to search for her as you learn about Mayu's past.


Sick ass fucker.  I would purge his twisted existence in a second.

After putting up with it longer than any normal human being, Mayu runs away from home, eventually finding herself on the beach, where she (I assume) tries to kill herself, but the barking of a stray dog, Wanta, brought her back to shore, where she's been staying since then.

Back in the current time, as Mayu is watching the waves and talking to Wanta, a woman comes by, and takes Wanta, calling him James.  Mayu is rejected when she asks if she can visit "James" in the future, but tries to be happy for him anyway.

That night, as Mayu tries not to cry, she is discovered by a couple of cops, and she runs to avoid being brought back to her family.  When she reaches the ramp, she is met by Kouta and Yuka who take responsibility for her and take her back to the house where they have a birthday party for her, and Wanta comes back too.

Some time in the near future, Mayu's going back to school, as are Kouta and Yuka.  Kouta's rather disturbed by how fast Mayu's mother turned custody of Mayu over to them, but there you go.

To keep her from causing havoc at home alone, Kouta and Yuka bring Nyu along with them to college, where they teach her how to say "Yes" to keep her from sounding like a total weirdo, but they suddenly realize that if she can say "Yes" in the middle of class, they can get into a lot of trouble.  A problem they figure out about three seconds too late, because Nyu volunteers to answer a question.

The professor, named Kakuzawa, is a little weird by anyone's standards at this school, and he knows something more than most people about Diclonius, and he recognizes Lucy from somewhere.  Kakuzawa tells the three of them to stay after class.

Yeah, I'll bet.

He then threatens to take them to the police for kidnapping, but if they just leave Nyu with him, then he'll forget everything, and with no other obvious choice, Kouta accepts Kakuzawa's terms, turning to leave.
When Nyu tries to follow, Kouta says goodbye, and as he's leaving the room, Nyu calls out to him.

... and it's Kouta, there is no standalone H in Japanese.

Torn up by Nyu's desperate calls, Kouta and Yuka leave the campus, and eventually end up crying on the stairs beside the road.

Back in Kakuzawa's lab, Nyu's tied up to the ceiling naked, and Kakuzawa reveals his master plan for kidnapping Nyu/Lucy.

How about no.

He then injects her with some shit.

Kouta and Yuka are unusually quiet during dinner, not to mention the fact that there is no Nyu.  Yuka voices the fact that the events of the day were strange, and then, after another awkward pause, asks Kouta if he would cry for her if she were to leave suddenly like Nyu.  Unable to answer, Kouta brushes off the question and leaves the room.

As Kakuzawa is getting ready for... ahem, he suddenly realizes that Lucy's body is gone.  When he looks around for it, he finds her awake, only not the passive one that he caught, but rather the cohesive Lucy.


That's Kakuzawa, and he's also a Diclonius, only not an awesome one.  For various reasons, he doesn't have vectors, just these horns.  Using his species as a platform, he renews his argument, but it doesn't get him anywhere with Lucy (who's got her vectors back).


Bandou's at the doctor's.  He's agreed to the castration surgery, and in exchange, he's gotten new eyes and a new arm, for free because when the doctor tries to give him some pills. Bandou punches him out and escapes to go hunt down Lucy again.

Kouta decides to go out to talk to Kakuzawa, and when Yuka tries to come with him, he tells her that it's okay, then heads out.
Kouta arrives at Kakuzawa's office and meets his research assistant.  When he asks where to find the professor, she leads him down to the underground lab.  Along the way, Kouta tells her about the circumstances, and the woman replies that Kakuzawa doesn't have any siblings, and Kouta fully realizes that he's been totally tricked.

Inside the lab, they find the corpse of Kakuzawa, but Lucy's gone, out on the streets somewhere.  The assistant tells Kouta to go home, and he semi-reluctantly agrees, leaving her alone to clean up the mess.

Out on the street, Lucy tries out her vectors on some passerby and is unsatisfied with the results, continuing on leaving the corpse on the street.

The next morning, Kouta decides to head out, and this time when Yuka asks to come along, he agrees, and Mayu then offers to go as well.

As Mayu is searching the beach, she runs into Bandou, who, after recognizing her, grudgingly asks her how he can repay the favor, and when she can't give him an answer, he gives her a little slip with his number on it, kind of like a coupon.


As Mayu is leaving, Bandou remembers why he's on the beach in the first place and asks her if she's seen anyone with horns around.  When Mayu mentions Nyu, Bandou flies off the handle, grabbing her and almost beating the information out of her until...

... Owned.

Bandou throws her aside and stalks away, telling her to never show her face around him again.

Kouta and Yuka are searching some kind of shrine area/cemetery or something when it starts raining.  They find a small house and use the porch as an escape from the rain.
When Kouta notices that Yuka's shivering, he grabs her and puts her on his lap to try help her warm up.  Overwhelmed by the romantic aura around her, Yuka ends up asking Kouta if he likes her.
When Kouta apologizes for being unable to remember much about that summer eight years ago, Yuka gives in to her emotions and kisses Kouta.


After a couple of minutes of making out, the rain clears up and Yuka tries to get up again, but ends up slipping and falling off Kouta's lap.

A bit of fan service for those of you who don't like straight-out nudity.

As they head down the stairs again, Lucy comes up from behind them, and has a memory of that little kid again.  As she turns to go, Kouta notices her and chases her.
When he tries to get her to come back to the house, she refuses using words other than "Nyu".
Surprised by her eloquence, Kouta is rather confused at what to do, and when Yuka takes Kouta's hand, Lucy smacks her, confusing everyone.  When Kouta pets Yuka's head, Lucy remembers something from the past, that little kid petting someone's head... augh, I give up!
It's obviously Kouta petting Yuka's head.  That and the fact that Yuka's wearing a yukata means that it must have been at the festival that they attended together eight years ago before the accident and Kouta lost all his memories!  The boy from all those other times was Kouta too.

Back on track, remembering this, Lucy is on the verge of tears and turns to leave again, and Kouta catches her, but Lucy still refuses to go home with him and Yuka.


As Lucy breaks down and starts to cry, something happens to her again, and she reverts back to Nyu, and she's learned a new word!


God knows where she picked this one up, but there you go.

Back down on the beach, a pod thing has washed up on shore.  Inside it is Nana, outfitted with new limbs, and a bunch of money.  Kurama organized her escape when he was ordered to kill her, and set her up with enough cash to live for a while.  He writes to her, telling her to leave town and go somewhere far away and not make any trouble.  He asks promises that if she is good, he'll come and see her.
But that entire plan seems useless, because Bandou has just found her, and isn't too please with the horns on her head.
When Nana tries to not fight Bandou, he uses his new toy, what Jules Winnfield would call a "hand cannon" (.50 cal.) and tells Nana to give up Lucy's location.
When Nana again refuses, Bandou leads her down the logic path that humans and Diclonius can't live in the same world together, and tells her that he's going to kill her, exterminating a pest, if she doesn't tell him what she knows about Lucy.

Upon hearing this, Nana loses any cool she had, and goes into killing mode, chasing Bandou down the beach, and eventually getting to the point where she busts...

Rocket Punch!

Bandou is again laid out on his back with someone standing over him, but when Nana tells him that he's done for since he doesn't have his gun any more, Bandou whips out his other gun with his mechanical hand, but the blowback destroys the mechanisms, and he only barely grazes Nana, but the hit is enough to make her come back.
Eventually, Bandou and Nana make an agreement that Nana will call him if she sense Lucy again.

As Nana heads into town, she is ruined by the fact that she doesn't understand money, and therefore is pretty much starving, and eventually hides in the cemetery.


Mayu, who's taking Wanta on a walk, comes across Nana and recognizes her from the bout she had with Lucy, but when she sees that Nana's got all her limbs, she dismisses that thought again.


When Mayu wakes up again, she and Nana have a talk, during which Nana eventually asks Mayu to be her friend.  After seeing that Nana's burning money, Mayu tells her about Nyu, and then agrees to take Nana back to her house.

Outside, Nana is perplexed by the fact that she can't sense Lucy anywhere, and just as she's bout to leave, Kouta comes out of the house, and invites Nana inside after seeing her horns.
When Nyu comes to the door as Kouta opens it, Nana recognizes her body and attacks her, throwing her around a bit until Mayu defends her, causing Nana to stop.  Kouta slaps Nana for attacking Nyu, and then Nana, feeling persecuted for trying to help them, runs away.

Mayu chases after and gives her bag back to her.  Nana explains that she's not the one who's wrong, then she tells Mayu about Lucy (not Nyu).

Kakuzawa's research assistant has flown in to the research facility to deliver her boss's head to his father, the Director, and is then shot because she saw Kakuzawa's head, and most importantly the horns.  She was only grazed though, and she is put to work finding the man who came to visit Kakuzawa, the one who had an interest in Lucy.

Back at the house, Nyu hasn't woken up since Nana threw her around, and as Kouta and Yuka debate what to do, Nyu stirs, and then Lucy wakes up (this is kind of tiring).
Recognizing the aura from Lucy, Nana perks up and then dashes off to the house, with Mayu trailing after her.

Lucy gets up and staggers down the hallway towards the door, but she eventually falls down, and Kouta takes her back to the futon.  Yuka leaves to get some medicine and Kouta stays with Lucy.
As she lays there, Lucy begins to have a flashback of her childhood.

She was abandoned in the woods, and picked up by an orphanage filled with sadistic, mentally-disturbed kids.


"Gifted" with her vectors since an early age, she didn't know what they were or how to control them.  Needless to say, they scared the shit out of her.

She was picked on every day for her horns, and was down to one friend left in the world, a small dog outside of the orphanage walls.  She would feed it and talk with it, but eventually, she didn't have enough food for herself and the dog.

One day, as she was being bullied, another girl around her age intervened and stopped the others, and told Lucy that if she ever wanted to talk or whatever, that she could come to her.  Lucy eventually told the girl about her dog, and the girl volunteered to give half of her lunch as well.

The next day, while Lucy was trying to ignore another flurry of insults, they bullies brought in the dog, which Lucy's "friend" had "accidentally" told them about.

Conniving little bitch!

The other delinquents beat the dog to death, and Lucy finally lost it, giving into her basic instinct, and letting her vectors go.

Sorry, but I was happy.

Lucy buried the dog, apologizing for what happened to it, and she suddenly realized that someone was behind her.


Kouta is on a trip with his family, and even though he is a little weird, he finds Lucy's horns fascinating and very cool, asking her to be his friend.  Though she refuses, he insists that he'll be at that spot the next day, and asks her to come too.

That night, Lucy breaks into another family's house and kills them, using their house as her for the night.

The next day, Lucy goes back to the grave, but Kouta's not there.  Convincing herself that she came to see the the dog, she sits in the rain for a while with nowhere to go.
Suddenly, someone jams a hat on her head, and she looks up to see Kouta, who sneaked out of the house to see her.  His father didn't want him to be going out because of the murderer (actually Lucy).

Kouta shows her a picture of the mountains, and then his music box, the same one that he ended up leaving at Yuka's house.  He ends up scooting up closer to her to ward off the cold of rain.

That night, Kouta asks Lucy if he'll play with him again tomorrow, and Lucy agrees.  Lucy goes off and kills another family, taking their home for that night.

The next day, she meets Kouta, who tells her that he's leaving the next day, so he takes her to the zoo for the rest of the day.  They look at the elephants and giraffes, and eat ice shave.  When Lucy asks Kouta when he's leaving the next day, he tells her that it's probably at night, since their leaving after going to a festival with his cousin.

While Kouta is looking for something else to do, someone nearby mentions the second family killing, and Lucy is horrified to find herself thinking about killing someone else.  Lucy has a slight internal argument with some weird mummies, and when Kouta asks her what's wrong, she says she's fine.
They eventually go to a creek, and end up splashing around until their clothes get totally soaked.
As they are waiting for their clothes to dry, Lucy thanks Kouta and tells him that that day was the most fun she's had in her life.

On the ride back, Lucy asks if it would be too much of a problem if she were to come with him to the festival, but Kouta says that he's already promised his cousin.

While Lucy is thinking about this again, those mummies make a comeback and tell her to just kill him, but Lucy denies them, but when she comes back to her senses, she's choking the life out of Kouta.  She lets go and starts crying.
As Kouta tries to console her, Lucy turns to him and asks him that, if she should ever start to kill many people, if he would...

Not quite as relevant in the anime.

When the finally part that night, Lucy asks Kouta if his cousin is a girl, he pauses and then tells her it's a guy.  With that, Lucy is very happy and tells him that she'll see him off the next day.

The next day, Lucy decides to go to the festival to look for Kouta and tell him how she feels, but when she does, she finds his "guy" cousin clinging to him, sobbing, and then Kouta petting her head.
Overwhelmed with feelings of sorrow and betrayal, and then a whole bunch of anger, Lucy willingly gives into those mummy guys, and then proceeds to slaughter half of the festival's attendance.

Kouta and his family go to the train station and are sent off by Yuka, who Kanae does not like, especially when Kouta tells her that he likes her.

Lucy comes out of her dream and gets up, leaving the room while Kouta and Yuka are out doing different stuff.

As Nana and Mayu arrive at the house, Lucy opens the door and sees Nana.  When Mayu tries to say something, Lucy swats her back, and Nana gets angry, yelling at Lucy, but Lucy just laughs at her, since Nana doesn't really have much of a chance against Lucy.  Despite this, she throws Lucy across the courtyard into the side of the house.

Lucy and Nana square off, and as the vectors start flying, Mayu throws herself into the middle of the conflict, and almost get sheered in half, but it stops the fighting.
When Mayu begs Lucy to stop, she has a flashback of Kouta again, and then goes into relapse as Kouta and Yuka come out.
Nyu flings herself over Kouta, telling him that she likes him, which depresses Yuka.

Every ends up sitting down to dinner, during which Nana eats like a horse, and when Nyu offers Nana her bowl, Nana apologizes for attacked her (Nyu, not Lucy), and everyone finally agrees to let Nana stay.

Back at the facility, you finally figure out about Kurama's past.  Basically, he was a researcher at the facility for a long time along with Kakuzawa.  The facility was created to house Diclonius, and run tests on them involving hurling a lead ball at them at a certain joules rate (look it up, it's a physics term).


Needless to say theses tests were inhumane and very cruel by anyone's standards, but they were probably allowed because Diclonius weren't technically humans anymore.
These tests were performed to determine the strength of the vectors.

One day, the Diclonius in that picture broke out of her cell using disproportionately powerful vectors and slaughtered everyone on her way to find Kurama, the only person who showed any remorse for the actions of the scientists.

Before killing anyone else, the little girl stuck a vector into his forehead, and the forehead of his other research partner, then thanked him before she was shot by Kakuzawa.  It was determined that she faked her power all along to get this chance.

When Kurama's research partner had a child, the child was born with horns, and it was ordered that it be terminated, and Kurama was selected for the job.
Over the next couple of years, Kurama performed the same task numerous times, until he finally had a child of his own.


This was the time when they discovered that there was a virus in the vectors that infected anyone who came into contact with them.  The infected can only give birth to horned children, Diclonius.

Kurama then proceeded to kill his daughter, but he was ultimately interrupted by his ailing wife, who had ripped her stitches when she came to stop him, and she quickly bled out and died after making Kurama promise that he wouldn't hate their child.

Kurama made arrangements to have his child's life spared, and the Director held the life of his child over him for the next decade or whatever.  Kurama never remarried or had other kids, in fact, he seems to take some kind of demented satisfaction from telling people the abridged version of his married life.

Now that child, named Mariko, is now called Number 35 in the facility.



In the possession of 26 vectors with a maximum range of 11 meters, she's theoretically the strongest Diclonius, and would be in reality if it weren't for Lucy.  I suppose Mariko is more like a black sheep or something.

Either way, the facility had decided to mobilize her to hunt down and capture Lucy.  They have devised a fool-proof way of controlling her.


Kurama up and leaves when the Director tells him all of this, but he shows up back on the beach where he finds Bandou, and ends up enlisting his help after fixing his busted mechanical arm.  In exchange for that repair job, Kurama wants Bandou to kill a Diclonius that will be arriving soon, namely 35.

Back at the house, Nana, who's be unable to do anything else to earn her keep, has been chosen to take care of Wanta's meals.  As they are discussing this, Nana notices the picture of Kanae, and Kouta explains to them that he said something awful to her before she died, something that he wishes he could apologize for, but she died before he could say anything else.

Seeing Kouta's face, Nyu tells him not to cry, and when he tries to explain what's going on, Nyu grabs a pair of scissors and dashes out of the house.
When Kouta finds her again, Nyu's cut her long hair and done up what's left with a ribbon like Kanae.


Becoming Kanae for the minute, Nyu forgives Kouta, but then begins to apologize to him.  Kouta thinks it's for the shell that she broke back when she got there, but Nyu's not exactly talking about that.  When she has a flashback attack, Kouta hugs her and says that he feels like he's known her for a long time... which he has!
Outside the doors, Yuka has been watching, and when she saw Kouta's look, she became very sad and ran away, leaving the groceries.

As Kurama's assistant flies with 35 to Kanagawa (that's where this has all been happening), she's trying to get a hold of Kurama, but no such luck.  She also has a nice chat with 35 about Nana, consisting on 35 saying something.  And that's it.


Back down on the ground, Nana sense the overwhelming presence of 35, and decides to sally forth on her own to meet 35, promising that she'd be back for dinner.

When Nana arrives, she finds 35 and a squad of SAT members.  Nana is instantly outclassed by the totally sadistic 35, what with those 11 meters, it was pretty much over before Nana even left the freaking house.

Kouta becomes very worried about what's going on after talking with Mayu and decides to chase after Nana, and Nyu decides to follow him, against his wishes.  When they get to a roadblock set up, Kouta somehow manages to get past while Nyu gets stranded on the other side.

After 35 is finally bored with tormenting Nana, she decides to kill her, but Kouta comes before anything can happen, and Nana begs them not to hurt Kouta, but 35 is infuriated by the fact that Nana has a friend while she can't, and so tries to kill her, but just before she can deliver the final blow to Nana, Nana uses her classic trick and shuts down 35's vectors, but then falls over the railing into the ocean.

As Kouta is reeling from the experience, Nyu, who's somehow managed to get past the blockade, is dashing towards him.  As Kouta tries to go out to meet her, Kurama's assistant tries to restrain him, and the leader of SAT orders 35 to kill Lucy, but 35 refuses to, saying that the girl there is not Lucy.
Shortly after refusing, 35 realizes that she can't use her vectors, and she is reclaimed by the SAT.
With no other choice, the bomb monitor for 35 orders the SAT forces to open fire on Lucy, which they do, scattering warning shots around Nyu and Kouta.
They take lethal aim and Kouta pushes Nyu away, shielding her from the bullets, only Nyu suddenly changes to Lucy and just catches the bullets instead.

Kurama's assistant steps forward to tell Kouta what Lucy is exactly, but she takes too many steps and Lucy cuts her in half.
Seeing this, Kouta has a severe flashback attack, seeing the assistant being sliced in half brought up memories.

Lucy leaps over a divider, and the SAT squad opens fire on her, but she leaps into the middle of them and kills them all.  Meanwhile, Kouta has his active flashback.


Kouta and Yuka are at the festival 8 years ago.  They visit that carving game thing...


Yuka breaks down at the thought of Kouta leaving, and he comforts her, patting her on the head.
As they walk through the festival looking for Kanae, they hear some screaming behind them, and see people fleeing the area.  Rumors of a bomb going off are everywhere, and Kouta's father finds them, telling them that they are leaving.  After a couple of seconds of looking, they find Kanae, who's got a little blood on her face, and apparently saw what happened.

On the train ride, the subject of a "bomb" going off in the middle of a crowd at the festival is brought up, but Kanae, who saw everything, tells them that it was a little girl with horns.


Recognizing the description, Kouta becomes angry with Kanae for "lying", but Kanae sticks by her original story.  While Kanae's emphatically stating her experience, she stumbles past Lucy, who hid herself on the train when it left.

When Kouta runs up to greet Lucy, she goes to attack him for lying to her, but Kanae pushes her down and tries to tell Kouta to run, but he slaps her for doing something like that.  Then he tells Kanae that he hates her, the think that Kanae fears more than anything.  As she is trying to beg Kouta to not hate her, she is sliced in half.


Horrified, Kouta screams, and his father gets up to see what's going on, but is killed quickly.
When Kouta asks Lucy why she did it, why she killed them when she and Kouta were friends, she tells him that she didn't kill him because they were friends.  She then turns around and starts walking away, stating that her next target is "that girl", here meaning Yuka.
When Kouta realizes this, he leaps on Lucy, tackling her to the ground and shaking her until she escapes from the train, leaving him alone.

Back in the present, Kouta and Lucy look at each other.  Kouta asks Lucy what she is, but Lucy doesn't tell him, because it doesn't have anything to do with him.  Kouta says it does because she killed his family, and just as somethings about to happen, Kouta tackles Lucy again as a bullet ricochets off the railing.

Bandou's finally found Lucy again, and Lucy kicks Kouta away, drawing Bandou off and telling Kouta to meet her on the stairs that night.

It's night time and Kurama's managed to pull Nana out of the water.  She tells Kurama that 35 is in the city, and that it was her that owned her.  Kurama's quiet on the subject, stating only that he has to kill her.  Nana doesn't understand why, and then Kurama tells her that it's because 35's his real daughter Mariko. Bandou's lost... again, poor guy.  But Lucy doesn't kill him, just tells him that he won't see her again, then leaves.

35's been put back in a hospital room to recover, which she does in record time, killing her guards and rolling out to meet her handler.  She tells him that Lucy's on her way to the hospital, and with that, all three Diclonius assemble in place, and no, I don't know where.  A roof somewhere.

Lucy and Mariko face off, but Mariko's obvious superiority in reach and numbers in a stable environment outclasses Lucy's ingenuity and skill, and Lucy is eventually thrown into a railing and beaten until one of her horns snaps and she passes out (well think about it, having a tough, external bone broken off, it's got to really hurt).

Before Mariko can kill Lucy, Kurama makes his appearance, and Mariko is overjoyed to see her father, and tries to walk to be with him, but ultimately falls down.
When Kurama points his gun at Mariko, she starts crying, telling him that she's been looking forward to seeing him.
When Nana calls Kurama "Papa", Mariko flips out and pins her down, choking her, asking Kurama if he'll be sad if she were to die.  After a couple of seconds, Kurama drops his gun and instead walks over to Mariko and hugs her.


Kurama apologizes to Mariko for everything and then picks her up, carrying her out to the bridge when the bomb in her stomach is activated.


After that, 35's former handler attempts to kill Nana, but Lucy, who's managed to haul herself down, cuts his head off, then leaves, telling Nana to go and live with Kouta in the house, to do what she could not.

On the stairs, Kouta and Lucy meet again, and Lucy explains what she is to him.  She tearfully apologizes to him, and gets up to leave, but is stopped by Kouta.


Unable to forgive her, but unable to let her go, Kouta is obviously in a strange kind of love with Lucy/Nyu.


Together, they share a strange bond of sorrow, and thus are able to better understand each other's pain.  It's romantic in a demented kind of way.  Awesome.

Lucy leaves and is eventually cornered by the SAT, and in a flurry of gunfire, she loses her other horn.

A while later, everything is back to almost normal.  Nana's living in the house with everybody else (save Nyu), and things are going normally.  One day, they have an unexpected guest.


Now it is never explained who this person is, but being the hopeless die-hard romantic kind of guy that I am online, I like to think that it was Lucy, but you can never know.
If it was, then it would have a link back to the manga, which had a rebirth kind of ending.  Not rebirth in the immediate sense, but rebirth in a second generation sense, where the main character's won't get together unless the guy's a pedophile, and if he is, then you're not exactly rooting for him to get the girl anymore.

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