Forum - View topicRe: Nudity in Elfen Lied
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HellKorn
Posts: 1669 Location: Columbus, OH |
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I just can't let things die.
(The origins of this thread can be found here.)
"Aspects of humanity"? Elfen Lied was never meant to be a deep or a serious show. The source material is filled up to the brim with the most amount of fanservice I've seen in any manga that isn't a hentai. The animation studio that did Elfen Lied primarily does hentai. Throw in a heap of "comedy relief" scenes as well as a whole mess load of standards and you have such a definitive example of clichéd harem romance that's it's embarrassing when one sees so many folks going on about how much of a "tear-jerker" the series is. Alright, so, someone who has never watched it or heard much criticism about Elfen Lied reads a synopsis of it. A premise dealing with a new human species that is apparently destined to take over the planet? Sounds interesting. Then we get the opening scene with a shapely young female who is, you guessed it, nude and killing people left and right, with so much blood being cheaply thrown about you wonder if this anime was made just as an excuse to get rid of some extra red paint. Fans of the series like to say something "mature sounding" about how the themes show how "different" of a species the Diclonius are by having all of the members of its race nude during experiments in the lab, or something akin to that. (Did I mention that the ones we do get to see nude or take part in these experiments are only female? Coincidence?) After laughing at the prospect, I have to shake my head because that's straining really hard to find something that's not really there (which a lot of hardcore Evangelion fans get accused of, and more often than naught it's the case there as well). There is so much moe and fanservice present (note that I'm not saying that moe equates to lolicon, so no one has any ground to accuse me for doing so) along with the harem developments that it makes me think, "Well now, so this kind of harem romance with gallons of blood being used and characters with tragic, which pretty much guarantees success and love especially on the Internet, is suddenly able to pull off something "mature" and "thought-provoking?" It's like people who say that they cried in Gantz when spoiler[Kurono returns from the Buddha Temple mission along, everyone else dead,] when there isn't any real substance to the story. Hey, don't get me wrong, I love the Gantz manga because it promises an incredible amount of hyper-violence and T&A and it delivers in spades. But to be so emotionally involved in something that's all style and it's just so amazingly superficial with no real substance to back it up is just stunning. It just further proves that so many people will succumb so easily to the creators obviously attempting to manipulate the audience's emotions, a ridiculously cheap form of storytelling that displays a real lack of skill. And it isn't like I'm alone in my opinions. Others here on ANN share similar sentiments, and this thread on AoD in response to the review of the thinpak also sees Elfen Lied for what it really is. (Andrew Cunningham's first post in that thread made all the pieces fall together.) |
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Mirrinus
 Posts: 230 Location: La Thiene Plateau |
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I'm more inclined to agree with Hellkorn on this issue. I've never really liked the symbolism argument in defense of nudity in media, as I've always thought that there are alternative forms of symbolism that are less controversial yet can probably still get whatever message they want across. I have a rather low tolerance level for ecchi fanservice, I guess, and I still personally have a hard time finding justification for stuff like Elfen Lied.
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darkhunter
 Posts: 2992 Location: Los Angelas |
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The thing is that when you're reading or watching GANTZ, you know it's all about hyper violence and sexual explicited content. Without it, GANTZ wouldn't be as nearly as entertaining as it is.
Elfen Lied is so overrated. I think I have said this in every Elfen Lied thread I've read. Moe and violence. Last edited by darkhunter on Thu May 17, 2007 10:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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DragonsRevenge
 Posts: 1150 |
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You can say it "wasn't ment to arouse," but if it made my little soldier stand to attention, then I'd be inclined to disagree.
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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Sometimes style wins out over substance.
Perhaps that's what happened with 'Elfen Lied.' |
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selenta
 Subscriber Posts: 1774 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Apparently, as we've had this discussion before (or maybe it was a very similar one, now I'm not so sure) in the past. It's all good though.
So... your argument is that because it tries to do too many things, it clearly must not be a serious show? Ok, first of all, the company that creates a project should certainly not be used as an indicator of the inherent quality or worth of the show. This company was produced Kite, which many people (myself included) that it has values far beyond being "just a hentai". While the sex in Kite was made to be arousing, they are extremely different kinds of shows, and I'll get to why it doesn't seem intended as fanservice in Elfen Lied later. Second, while I can see why you would quote the source material, it really isn't always a good way to look at things. Going by that analogy, Kanon, Air and numerous other titles based off of ren'ai games would be automatically assumed to be hentai series (which they most obviously are not). While it may be based off of the manga, if they don't put everything from the manga into the anime, it's not a completely fair comparison. You have to look at what the anime did put in. Third, I fail to see, on any level, how the attempt to interject humor and/or cliche aspects into the show in any way degrades from what it seems to be intending to do. Just take a look at something like FMA or Kanon (particularly KyoAni's version) for a show that tries to throw in some humor despite an almost oppressively heavy atmosphere at times. Now, I'll certainly admit that it didn't work as well in Elfen Lied, and it did come off as a bit of a confused mess at times, but it that really doesn't mean it wasn't intended to be serious and you're making a very obvious mental jump to reach that conclusion.
Now onto the issue of dehumanization, since this is obviously the crux of the argument that you fail to see as I do. Obviously, the whole point of the series was for Lucy to be saved mentally after she hit the bottom, mentally. So first they had to tear her down. A great deal of the show is designed exclusively around showing how insane the circumstances were at the lab. From their willingness to shoot people and lock them away so they would help, to their willingness to kill babies and subject the diclonius to inhumane tests they were a bunch of obviously morally corrupt individuals. While there is a little light shed on them from the doctor's perspective, even then it is still a pretty bleak situation. Imagining what it would have been like to live in a place like that is impossible obviously, as the intended audience would never have been subject to such inhumane, violent, and prolonged treatment. So the show tries to do it as best as it can, by showing various horrific situations and circumstances as often as it can find an excuse to throw them in. The next step was of course to show these subjects at their bottom, it needed to show what happened to individuals that had been subject to such torture and to show what it was like at the bottom; this is so that then audience can then empathize with how hard it would be to break from that pattern, can understand how and why the person might have uncertainties about the change, and what relief it would be to experience a better life. Obviously, this is where the nudity comes in. Finally, the show needed to show them being saved, I don't think I need to explain this one. The nudity fits hand-in-hand with step 2 if you ask me. While there are some people out there who believe they are completely immune to society and believe that they alone determine their values, mannerisms, and lifestyles, I think they're lying. Humans are social creatures, and interacting with society shapes who we are as people. Society at least influences what we eat (how many Americans have eaten horse or rat?), it determines how we talk (I wish it didn't, so I could speak Japanese better or pick up an Australian accent at will  ), but even more fundamentally it determines the methods by which we think. If you grow up to the age of 20 and have never been introduced to numbers before, you will not understand them, even in a most basic sense.
Just as a kid who has grown up never hearing Japanese will not know Japanese, a baby who grew up not wearing clothes will not understand the reasoning or mindset behind wearing clothes aside from warmth. Here's the thing though, clothes don't mean anything to the Diclonius; so it doesn't matter to them if the clothes placed on them fall off, why should they care? Why don't they care though? Clearly, it is because they grew up in an environment where such things didn't matter. It is not just that they grew up in some bizarre environment where people didn't need clothes, they grew up in the hostile and downright cruel environment of step one. The fact that the Diclonius don't even care about what most people consider one of the most basic tenets of society shows their mental situation very clearly. Although I would like to believe that this could have been shown in another way just as succinctly, I can't think of, and have never been offered, another way to do so. What would she do, kill lots of people in gory ways? Well, lots of characters do that, so people might totally misinterpret her as some sort of badass action heroine. Revert back to childhood? Oh wait, she does that too, and one of the ways you know she's reverted back to a more innocent time is through her actions and conceptions of things. Things like how she doesn't know what it means to go to the bathroom, to wear clothes, take a bath, they're all part of the same token in Nyuu form.
This last sentence is ridiculous. MOST anime do this, the question is just how well they do it, and how well it hits you at the time. I've seen things that made me bawl my eyes out the first time I saw them and couldn't bear to sit through them they felt so melodramatic the second, but I've also seen the reverse.
Well, neither are these people. It's not like there's only one of them (to our communal dismay), just because there's people who share your opinions doesn't mean you're inherently right (or wrong). Of course, I can see where people are coming from when they say that Elfen Lied is an thematic mess, and I agree to an extent. I can also believe it when people say that the show simply failed to transmit the character's feelings or situation to the viewer. However, whether it accomplished it or not, the nudity did seem to have a pretty real purpose. |
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dgreater1
 Posts: 307 Location: in the Phillipine's AIR space with Misuzu |
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I'll defend Elfen Lied on this one...
The problem here is that, there are things that is hard to symbolize without violence or nude. And for the people complaining about the first few scene being nude, I don't really see any problem with a naked girl walking out an experimental room. Remember that she's being experimented inhumanly because she's dangerous. Sure they could leave some dress for her to wear, but do you think that wearing something matters to her anymore? Though I have to agree with everyone if you say Nyuu is kinda cute for someone being experimented  Anyway, I didn't really see the nude in Elfen Lied as something perverted, my second head would have risen up from its slumber if I did  Anyway, it's like watching Schindler's List...
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frentymon
Forums Superstar
 Posts: 2362 Location: San Francisco |
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While I'm not particularly a fan of Elfen Lied, I honestly don't think the creators added in the nudity for arousal purposes. While I don't believe the nudity represents some sort of complicated symbolism or holds some sort of deeper meaning, I do think it was created in order to further enhance the image of cruelty against the diclonius race, as brutal torture is much more horrifying when you can directly see the wounds rather than it being shielded by layers of clothing.
Just because you reacted to something in a certain way does not mean that it was created for that purpose. Some opt to laugh at how poorly many hentai titles were produced. Some choose to use game cartridges as coasters for their Pepsi cans. Some choose to use Linux for their hacking endeavors. Does this mean that hentai was necessarily created to make people laugh, game cartridges were meant to be used as coasters, and Linux is stocked on shelves for the purpose of providing hackers the tools they need? Certainly not, and the same applies for Elfen Lied. |
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Sarge-David
Posts: 4 |
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i support the statements that the nudity in Elfen Lied helped support what the creators where trying to get that point across.
from the little that i saw of the show, it was mainly for plot advancement and understanding, i hope someone can find a real good example of abusing nudity in an anime in a few lines of text.... theres mainly just a line that ust says where its to much and its just there to be there
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Zero89
Posts: 147 |
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I just have to ask, where did you come up with this?
Ok... you've named many "reasons" why you think that the show's nudity is there for aesthetic reasons.... problem is, the only reasons you give are that: the source material had a lot of fanservice, the anime studio that created the show primarily dealt with hentai, and that it fits a cliche(?!).... not one of them do I see as a legitimate reason for your assumptions.... For one, are we judging Elfen Lied the anime, or it's source matreial? Something that is based off of another does not need to be an EXACT copy of it's predecessor, there is a reason they often call these trasitions between mediums "adaptations" instead of duplicates.... Secondly, you just can't accurately say that the product of a certain studio is going to be a certain way... For one, not all staff members are the same, which causes new concepts to be implemented into different shows.... Or two, the results the company strive for could simply change... which would be reflected in their latest shows: Himawari, and I's pure-- both of which are definitely NOT hentai. I don't even see how your third statement has any place in this discussion... unless you're just trying to throw in a cheap shot, in an attempt to degrade the show as a whole... There are many shows that CAN fall into cliches, it's how well they do those cliches that counts.... and lastly, you seem to be trapped in the mindset that a show MUST be one dimensional.... There are MANY MANY MANY harem shows that are meant to be "tearjerkers" (kanon, rumbling hearts, shuffle, come to mind...) Saying that a show falls in this cliche, or that cliche does nothing to prove that the show is fanservicy or not. It just serves to highlight the genre's tendencies...
Personally, I don't think that at all, but whatever.... the nudity in the show is mostly there to show how dehumanized the diclonius were... as far as I know, humans are the only animals on the planet that actually wear clothes... and the fact that the diclonius are naked only serves to further the obvious sentiments that the humans had towards the diclonius-- that they weren't human; and as such, didn't treat them that way.... I say mostly, because I do, to a certain extent believe that the nudity in the show was a way for the animators to hit two birds with one stone. By using nudity to emphasize the dehumanized sentiments the humans shared for the diclonius, they not only conveyed what they wanted to show, but also gave some perverts some fanservice... why can't they have been striving for both? Why did they only show women diclonius naked in the show? I'll answer your question with another question. Did they show a man diclonius anywhere in the show? One with vectors, that is....
Please do not compare Elfen Lied with Gantz.... Gantz (the anime) turns pathetic towards the end.... If i remember correctly; because they weren't granted a third season and so had to end the show short... not the case with elfen lied... See the difference? Whose to say that Gantz wasn't at one point going to become a true "tearjerker"? From what I've heard of the manga, it's a chance the anime adaptation was not given...
Are you trying to tell me that a show isn't supposed to manipulate the emotions of it's audience? Why bother watching emotional anime at all if you truly meant that? It's no wonder you don't understand the emotional aspect of Elfen lied. The nudity was needed to best portray the absolutely inhuman conditions in which the diclonius were raised in... This directly deals with the underlying theme of Elfen Lied... that monsters are made, not born... While this could have been shown in various ways, none of them would have been as powerful or as moving as a person stripped of something as rudimentary as their clothes... Since you seem to think that this could have been done better, and that the nudity was excessive, perhaps you could tell me a better way to convey the same message? Last edited by Zero89 on Fri May 18, 2007 1:58 am; edited 1 time in total |
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one3rd
 Posts: 1817 Location: アメリカ |
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It may or may not have been your intent, but the tone of your post seems rather hostile. It is understandable to have strong feelings and opinions about a subject, and indeed there would be no discussion if there were no dissenting opinions, but for the sake of keeping the discussion going down the right path, perhaps it would be best to treat other users and their opinions with a little more respect. |
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Zero89
Posts: 147 |
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Was it the use of profanity? 
yeah, I really didn't mean to come across as "hostile" or anything... it must have been my bent up frustration with people attacking the validity of Elfen Lied's "excessive" nudity seeping through... I mean seriously.... these people always come across as prudes that don't want the use of nudity to be beneficial to the story in any way, even if it's purpose is blatantly obvious to anyone that bothers to look (IMO, of course)... they look for instances where nudity is not necessary (the comedic moments come to mind) and claim the entire anime was just "fanservice".... News flash, fanservice sells... so does good storytelling... I wouldn't mind this nearly as much if they didn't claim things like we (fans) were simply looking for "something that wasn't there"; hypocrites I tell you... but anyway, back on track... yeah, I see where you're coming from and have edited my comment accordingly... and yeah, I'll admit that I don't hold myopic opinions in very high regard.... maybe I'm wrong, but I absolutely hate closed minded opinions.... call it a character quirk...
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Ningensei
 Posts: 333 Location: Seattle, WA |
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I'm going to have to agree with HellKorn on this issue. I know in an earlier thread, we discussed the Elfen Lied manga and anime. I used to be on the other side of the fence on this issue, trying to justify that the anime handled it more "tastefully" and that some of the nudity was "neccessary." However, after rewatching the series more recently and reading the manga as well, I have come to reverse my stand on the issue. I think that it is partly due to the fact that I first watched it when I was just starting to get back into anime, and more recently I have developed a criticism towards excessive fanservice and am more critical of shows that utilize it for no good reason. Now I understand the concept of "fanservice" and it is not supposed to be deep or thought provoking, but I really think that it did Elfen Lied a great disservice because it really has the potential to be a very intersting story and plot, but the fanservice element holds it back.
Now to those who say that it is unfair to compare the anime with the original source material, I am going to have to disagree. I sorry if it seems biased to you, but having knowledge of what the manga/source material is like, I cannot help the fact that it does have an impact on how I view the anime series. There is no separation of the two in my mind, although there are differences and the anime was adapted differently from the manga, if I watch or read one or the other I can't help but make comparisons between the two. This no different than any other anime/manga series counterpart for any genre. I find the Elfen Lied manga disgusting at times, I find the Elfen Lied anime disgusting at times. I chalked my reaction up to perhaps being a female, but I am quite tolerant of most nudity and definitly do not consider myself a "prude." I really enjoy Berserk, but to me that is a Masterpiece while Elfen Lied is ho-hum. I understand that this is just my view and many other people have different opinions, I just want to say that I don't mean to offend anyone at all. I hope my post makes sense, it is pretty late and time for me to sleep! |
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jetz
 Posts: 2148 Location: Manila, Philippines |
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I always thought that they were naked because they might use their clothes for weapons (you can smother/choke someone with a scarf
 ) and not to degrade the diclonius race in anyway. That's why I didn't think that the nudity was meant to arouse (or anything like that) someone.
But aside from the nudity, there are scenes that were nothing but fanservice for me. Like the one where Nyuu started to grope Yuka's breasts, or the part where Kouta was trying to change Nyuu's clothes. There was even that scene where Kouta caught a glimpse of Nyuu's chest because she came in from the rain and you could see through her wet shirt. Anyway, the nudity is just an undertone. At first it kinda surprised me, because Elfen Lied is the first anime I saw with that much nudity, but after the first episode I forgot about it because I didn't think it was that important, the same way most fan service are. Besides, shouldn't we focus on the story more and on the nudity less? |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Fans of the series like to say something "mature sounding" about how the themes show how "different" of a species the Diclonius are by having all of the members of its race nude during experiments in the lab, or something akin to that. (Did I mention that the ones we do get to see nude or take part in these experiments are only female? Coincidence?) After laughing at the prospect, I have to shake my head because that's straining really hard to find something that's not really there (which a lot of hardcore Evangelion fans get accused of, and more often than naught it's the case there as well). There is so much moe and fanservice present (note that I'm not saying that moe equates to lolicon, so no one has any ground to accuse me for doing so) along with the harem developments that it makes me think, "Well now, so this kind of harem romance with gallons of blood being used and characters with tragic, which pretty much guarantees success and love especially on the Internet, is suddenly able to pull off something "mature" and "thought-provoking?"[/quote] This is YOUR opinion, not everyone else's. You obviously seem to have a problem with anyone who does take this show seriously. Why is it such a big deal? Are people not allowed to simply enjoy what they want to watch? Maybe it's not deep or serious to you but guess what, you don't think for everyone now do you? I apologize for myself and all the masses of people who have not seen the light as you have. I'm so sorry us lowly peasants are not as emotionally and intellectually developed as you. Please forgive us for finding a mature meaning in this show. We'll all try harder to think exactly like you from now on. Maybe some people see past the nudity and blood. Perhaps some people simply perceive it differently then you. Why is that such a problem? Maybe the nude aspects of the experiments effect others differently then you. Maybe to some it makes the Diclonius seem more vulnerable and taken advantage of. Regardless, who are you to demean and belittle an entire group of fans because they don't think or feel like you? Whether or not I agree about the show I don't demean what others get from it as laughable because it differs from what I think. Plus, different people have different ideas of what mature is in terms of qualities of a show. It doesn't make one better then another or worse, just different.
So what if people cried or found that part emotional. You seem to have this problem with anyone finding something mature and emotional if you don't agree with it. Again, you may find the show all style and superficial but that's YOU. As you said obviously others agree with that opinion. However, that doesn't mean everyone does and that the people who don't are somehow at fault simply because they don't feel and think the way you do. If you have such a problem with people having their own opinions then go build yourself your own robot minions who you can program to think however you want. |
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