Elfen Lied Omnibus Volume 1 Paperback – June 4, 2019

So, I recently re-watched the Elfen Lied anime, and to be honest, it's not that great. What I saw in it was the core of a good story, but that popcorn kernel never blossoms into a delicious morsel. The nudity and violence in the anime feel gratuitous and exploitative because there isn't a whole lot of story to justify it, so it feels like a cheap horror film. Teen tits, cousin incest, urination, and treating a nonverbal mentally challenged girl as "cute" and sexualizing her, and you could say it even feels like a hentai with the actual sex scenes taken out.The manga is, however, on another level. Without the pretentiousness of the opening title sequence, it also doesn't feel like it's pretending to be more than it is. Although, it is kind of weird how it has a "cute girls doing cute things" type of cover, when the content is actually much darker. I'd say this manga is charming and intriguing, and that you care more about the emotions of the characters. You get more story, obviously. This means there's more time for building up character relationships, explaining back stories (the homeless girl's past is revealed more, for example), and they can do more exposition. In the anime, it often seemed like stuff just happened out of nowhere. Motivations for characters didn't seem built up over time, they just popped up like whack-a-mole. The pacing problems caused by the anime being only 13 episodes are fixed, and this book's story goes much further than the "ending" of the anime. So if you're like me and you watched the anime, thinking "this has such potential, but it's wasted, and I don't understand why things are happening the way they are", this manga will definitely be a more enjoyable experience than the anime.I also want to disagree with a different reviewer who made it seem like this would be rife with errors just because he was able to screen shot one spelling error where they spelled "Kamakura" wrong - the book, other than that typo, is actually very well-written. Every book will have like 1-3 errors in it. This book only has that one that I've seen so far, although I'm not done reading it. Anyway, I'd definitely call this manga the definitive way to experience the Elfen Lied story. There's so much more here!

While for a single paperback volume it does have a very thick appearance, that doesn't hinder the story, and Miso's review is more of a blind one, and should be taken with a grain of salt. This manga is finally in English in an official capacity, where US fans of the anime based off this from 2004 were stuck with fan translations, this series is much darker and more depressing than it's anime counterpart, and has a few differences from the anime.I initially discovered the anime and loved it. And keeping myself intentionally blind about the manga for so long in the hope this would be out finally, has definitely paid off. In the manga they definitely show how she escaped by herself before the first scene in the anime, and the flow of the manga is a little more broken up, but that's to be expected from multiple perspectives in a graphic novel format. If you want to challenge yourself about what it means to be human, this series is definitely worth a read. My educated guess however, is that Vol 1 and 2 (only ones announced for this year) basically sum up the anime (as the anime runs about the first half of the manga series) so if you're expecting lots of new content if you came from the anime, you may be disappointed a bit, but the difference in the story's flow may be enough of a refreshing experience. I know it is.

I got really into the anime of Elfen Lied late in 2018, but was interested to hear that the manga tells the story a bit differently and is overall much better. So I was very excited to hear that the manga (which had never been released in the states before) was going to be released in a series of collections and of course I preordered the first. I'm very happy that I made that purchase. While I have yet to see what makes it better than it's small screen counterpart (though I'm sure that's coming in the later issues), I really enjoy the original presentation and look forward to reading more. This collection also includes a few unrelated short stories in addition to the main narrative, which is what elevated it to a five star review.If you're an Elfen Lied fan, who had never read the manga like myself however, this one is still recommended highly,

At first, when I heard Dark Horse got the rights to do an English release of the Elfen Lied manga, I was both excited and nervous. I had read fan scanlations before and was worried the release would be heavily censored. Let me tell you, Dark Horse delivered. The gore, the profanity, and the manga's general "more--f-ed--up--ery" are all there. If you're only familiar with the anime, There are a few things you should know first. 1) Okamoto's art is not great - especially early on. 2) The manga has a true ending in Omni Vol 4 as opposed to the anime. 3) more characters are introduced and I really only dislike one of them. 4) these releases are omnibus - 3 in 1 volumes. This is important to mention because they will be more prone to creasing on the spine.The anime was pretty well done, but you know you're interested in what happened next.