Elfen Lied Summary (Episode 1)

For most anime, this summary will be much shorter, though for some particularly complex anime (like Elfen Lied), I will be breaking the summary down into blocks of one or more episodes.  Elfen Lied in particular is extremely complex, with foreshadowing everywhere.  Well, with that, let us begin.

The anime begins with the title sequence, which is truly beautiful.  The artwork is based on the pictures of Gustav Klimt, who was a notable symbolist painter during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though with the homogenous style broken up through the replacement of an anime-styled character (who we will learn later is Lucy) for one of the stylistic characters.

Art work of Gustav Klimt (Left) and the Elfen Lied Adaptation (Right)

The music is original to the anime, called "Lilium" but is based on both Biblical passages in Psalms and the Epistle of James, and on the hymn "Ave Mundi Spes Maria".  If you haven't heard Lilium, Google it.  It's really beautiful and haunting, and there are like a gajillion hits on youtube for it.

So, now we start into the anime proper, and the imagery jackknifes.  Instead of the semi-erotic, semi-abstract artwork, it moves to the image of a dismembered arm lying in a pool of blood, still twitching.  Some horrified guards stand around, staring at a figure in a full-body straight jacket, metal helmet, and strapped to a giant metal contraption.

The figure turns to look at one of the guards, and his head explodes.  The other guard can only look on in horror as the figure takes a key off the dead guard.  He shoots a handgun several times, but we see no effect come from it, as the figure drops from the structure, and the steel girders collapse and fold under some invisible force.  We don't see what happens to the man, but it isn't hard to guess.

Another man watches this happen on some security monitors.  A dead security guard on the floor suggests that, shall we say, the man isn't the proper individual to be watching for trouble.

The large doors keeping the room closed open slowly, revealing the figure, now totally nude except for the metal helmet, surrounded by twisted metal and the dismembered bodies of the two guards.  As the camera moves to front, it is obvious that the figure is female, and she drops a dismembered head she holds in her hand.

She begins walking forward, as the only sound is that of her footfalls, and her humming "Lilium", twisted and haunting through the iron mask.

My essay on nudity covers this further, but it's very symbolic that this unhindered monster, as far as the audience can tell, is entirely nude, except for the mask, which both hides her face, the last vestige of humanity, behind a mask that bears markings that appear to be like the jagged interlocking teeth of a wild beast.

And now it's an average day at the office, though in an office that bears a similar metal architecture to the interior we saw.  A bunch of secretaries are talking, and the one working for a 'Kurama' is being asked about her particular boss.  It appears that, (1) this Kurama guy is a hard ass, and (2) the secretary is a bit of a klutz.

We now flash back to an armory where guards are handing out fire arms, as emergency klaxons blare.  Assault rifles are locked and loaded, set to automatic fire, as we see klutz girl barely manage to not drop a cup of coffee.

In less well lit areas, guards are attempting to hold the line.  Either they're really bad shots, or the implacable figure appears to be immune to bullets.  One makes a comment that they should be fine as long as they're more than 2 meters away, but then she chucks a pen through his face just to make a point.  As she slowly advances, through hall and elevator, nothing can stop her, and all who she encounters die gruesomely.

As she rises from an elevator, it becomes apparent that she is stopping the bullets.  And we see a blood-soaked hand print pull a lever.  She shows no remorse, killing even those who don't shoot or try to flee.

As she moves through a door, this point is emphasized as an entire squad of soldiers and a man in a suit stand in her way.  Just then, klutz girl trips into the scene, spilling the coffee, and face planting in front of the figure.  The man in the suit is addressed as 'Director Kurama'.  The girl's name is Kisaragi, though this doesn't matter a lot as she has her head torn off a few seconds later, just to demonstrate how indiscriminately the figure, apparently called 'Lucy', kills.

Note Kurama being held in the background

Despite the attitudes of the secretaries before, we get a glimpse into Kurama here, having to be restrained bodily by guards to stop him from rushing futilely to Kisaragi's aid.  He also doesn't authorize the guards to fire until after Lucy kills the poor girl.

Lucy simply uses the dead girl's body as a shield, which does suggest a limit to her ability to block bullets, but the guards expend all their ammo before the corpse-shield fails.  Here she leaves Kurama alive, though, for an unknown reason, also leaving the majority of the guards (those not directly attacking her or in her way) alive.

After passing Kurama's position, she's trapped behind multiple bulkheads, but the figure in the control room/video feed room opens a door to the outside for her.

In a final bid to stop Lucy, they attempt to shoot her with a .50 caliber anti-tank rifle, delivered via sniper rifle to her head.  She turns at the last minute, and either the metal mask, her telekinetic abilities, or both, stop it from being a lethal shot.  The mask shatters, and blood is visible at her temple, as she falls off a cliff into the sea below.

We now transition to very Japanese scenery, including the cherry blossoms falling, as a girl waits at a train station for someone.  The setting is probably Japan, late spring or early summer, then.  Moving away from the station, she finds a young man.

Exposition time!  The exposition indicates that his name is Kouta, and she's his cousin, Yuka.  They're about to go to college, but they were apparently very close when they were younger.  There's some suggestion that Kouta's younger sister died at some point in the past while the two of them are reminiscing on the beach.

Suddenly, they see Lucy, entirely nude, right in front of them.  This is also the first time the audience sees her horns.  From her mien, it's obvious that she isn't the same Lucy from before.  She seems very scared, very confused, and no longer possesses the menace from before.  The head wound, hair color, and eye color (as well as story structure) all suggest that this is the same individual we just saw slaughtering guards, but it is apparent that some sort of amnesia has occurred.

At Yuka's urging, Kouta gives this not-Lucy his over shirt (which is plenty long enough to cover her completely.  I'll focus on these actions more in my essay on nudity, but here they find her, and one of the first actions they do is to acknowledge her as a person, and give her clothes.

It's now that they find out three important things.  They find that (1) she doesn't speak anything except for saying 'nyu', (2) she has horns (they think at first that they are some kind of hair decoration), and (3) she has a head injury.

The revelation that she has horns sends Kouta into some flashback, where he sees the outline of what looks like a young girl who acuses him of being a liar.  He kind of spazzes out for a minute, but Yuka brings him out of it.

They decide that the best thing to do is to take not-Lucy to Kouta's new home here.

Add some more peaceful Japanese imagery to emphasize that this is a peaceful time.

It turns out that the place he's been given is an old inn, with ten rooms in it.  Good news is that means there's plenty of room to keep not-Lucy for a while, though that also means that Kouta has that much more he has to clean.

The enter, and Kouta admires an old broken grandfather clock.  Not-Lucy is visibly distressed, though they can't figure out why.  Turns out she needed to pee.  And with amnesia of apparently even basic considerations, she pees right on the floor.

It comes down to Kouta to clean it, while Yuka bathes the girl.  And furthering the symbolism, they provide her with a full set of basic clothing, both a top and some shorts, showing how they are slowly working with her, and accepting her despite her oddities.

And flash now back to the facility where Lucy was kept, to remind us of what this now-innocent individual had just done.  The bent and broken metal, and blood spread out as if thrown by an explosion... 


It turns out Kurama and the other members of the organization have no idea why the security door opened, which means the audience actually likely has a better idea than they do.  Kurama, however, prioritizes finding and destroying Lucy.  He authorizes sending the "Special Division" after her, since he says that if they don't detain Lucy, it would be "the end of man kind".  Additional drips of blood from the twisted metal serve to illustrate the point.

Move now to follow a soldier of this "Special Division".  We learn quickly that his name is Bando.  It's up to personal opinion if he's a Badass or a Dumbass, but what is clear, is that he's definitely an ass.

Bando:  Bad- or Dumb-, he's definitely an ass

We meet him in a simulation, where he handily guns down targets while avoiding their 'hostages'.  Impressive speed and accuracy, though he quickly starts shooting the random 'civilians' around out of boredom, commenting to the effect that it isn't fun when they don't fight back.  He wants to shoot real people.  Again, Badass or Dumbass, you decide.

He's then given the task (with the rest of a squad) to take down Lucy, though he's simply told that she's an assassin.  He then slugs a secretary for 'sneaking up on him'.  Yup, he's an ass.  Though he shows some sign of being sorry.

Flipping back to Yuka, Kouta, and not-Lucy, the two cousins try to decide what to do with not-Lucy.  They decide that they're going to have to talk to the police (to see if there's a missing person's report out on her or whatever), though not-Lucy then finds a seashell given to Kouta by his sister.

It turns out that his sister, Kanae, died to a disease, likely shortly after that event.  Not-Lucy then proceeds to break the shell.  Needless to say, Kouta's pissed off at this.   He over-reacts a bit, but it's to be expected from someone who obviously still misses someone that was very close.

Despite Yuka, trying to calm him down, his yelling makes not-Lucy run out of the house.  Yuka points out that he looked sad looking at the shell, and that not-Lucy was probably just trying to get rid of something that appeared to be a bad thing.

Flip back to Bando, as he demonstrates once again that he's an ass, even among other people in his unit.

The episode closes out with not-Lucy crying on the beach in the rain.