Elfen Lied/Headscratchers

• The whole event around that disastrous festival is just... weird. For starters, Kanae sees a little girl shred other people to bloody bits, and then she still has enough composure to tease her cousin at the railway station. She even has somebody else's blood on her, for crying out loud! You'd expect a kid that age to crawl in a corner after what she saw, emotionally scarred for life. That whole bit is acted out like some normal scene from a family outing.
  • To a child's mind, something scary and grim needs to be processed. Maybe the dismissal her claims received kept her from believing it in full.
  • Heck, their father is even calmly reading the newspaper, right after they escaped from what they thought was a bomb attack. That is really stretching the limits of how collected people can be after such an event.
    • Depends. If you look closely at his eyes, you'd notice some unrest. He's actually shivering inside but not showing it for fear his children might notice.
• Why are the station and the train so empty anyway? There is a festival nearby, so you'd expect it to be crowded and it's not like Enoden is a high volume train service. Of course, after what happened you'd perhaps expect the station to be swamped anyway. In any case, there would likely lots of people running and screaming, as they try to get away from the festival terrain.
  • Sunnydale Syndrome, perhaps?
  • Densely populated areas esp. travel areas like subways and airplane are prime targets for bombers due to more damage and greater psychological impact. Perhaps the festival massacre made people paranoid about a bomber hijacking a train so they decided to stay indoors. Yuka's mother expresses concern about Kouta's family traveling after the so-called bombing incident.
    • With panic playing a role here, one would assume that people would just run away or hide and be to panicked to think of that. Plus common sense may come into play and tell you that the trains may not be at the station.
• In the train scene, Kaede is shown releasing her vectors right before Kanae tackles her. Was she really planning to kill Kouta or did she merely plan on scaring him? After killing Kouta's dad and sister, she says that she has no intention of killing him due to their friendship but it sounded more as an afterthought and she wasnt really in a right state of mind up til she left the train.
  • She probably did all she could to not kill him. Kaede would love him enough to not kill him, but Lucy at that point would have had no problem ripping his head off in the heat of the moment.
• The missile scene...just the missile scene. Okay, to start off with, keep in mind that I did not look into this any further than a few articles on The Other Wiki. If I am completely and utterly wrong on this, someone please tell me. Okay, so the organization has decided to try and capture Lucy using Mariko. Fair enough. They apparently have a destroyer on standby if things go wrong. Uh...okay. Things predictably go wrong. The soldiers start to clear the area. The destroyer then launches a freaking missile at Kurama and Mariko. Well, that's one way to deal with the problem; it'll certainly kill. But then the missile hits home and...doesn't explode. Somehow, the missile manages to quite literally land on top of Mariko! And then they launch a second one at Kurama, apparently For the Evulz, and it lands right next to the first one on top of him and also does not explode. Keep in mind that these things are freaking ballistic missiles the size of semis. Now, my knowledge of military technology is marginal at best, but I'm pretty damn sure missiles of such scale are not accurate to the half-meter. And also, judging from the way the soldiers are acting, using two missiles as the biggest arrows in the world was their entire plan. And it still doesn't work. If they had just cleared a wider area and had the damn thing explode, I'm pretty sure that would have finished her off. Or even a smaller one! Do an air-burst before it gets within range of her vectors! The amount of incompetence and sheer stupidity is staggering.
  • They claim some scenes later the missiles got rid of the explosives (without explanation). Your whole reasoning keep standing, though.
  • Ballistic missiles are pretty acurate, up to, and including half a meter. These things aren´t so expensive because they are metal rods with explosives and fuel in them, the targeting and course correction technology in them would afford you a house, a fancy car and maybe a boat too. Sure, the reason why they don´t explode is hand waved at best, what with them being dummy training rounds, but them hitting a human in the head is, while unreasonably unneccesary, totally possible. I can only speculate that they used dummy´s to prevent collateral damage...
  • Agrees with the troper above. The missles being fired are frome the SM series and they are both inexpensive and accurate enough. An empty missle can produce the kinetic energy needed to overcome Lucy's vectors without making people wonder what happened to the neighborhoos some ten meters away next morning.
• One (funny) scene suggests that just groping Yuka's oppai is enought to get her wet. It just doesn't work that way.
  • There is a lot of difference between girls when it comes to that.
    • There is even this illness that can make a girl orgasm from a train simply passing by.
    • Also, Yuka is badly pent up. In reality, she's as horny as Nyu, but as a 'proper' girl she's not *supposed* to be that way. Speculation : Yuka's clingy obsessiveness is a Take That message about the young girl in manga who holds onto the memory of a boy she hasn't seen in forever, rather than moving on.
• Lucy's escape from the Diclonius Research Facility. Supposedly, Lucy is the most powerful diclonius around, with her ability to throw objects like they are bullets, and near the end, she possesses the power to DESTROY THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD. Then before she escaped, Lucy was helpless while wearing a straitjacket in the Diclonius Research Facility, and she needed a chance of luck (the guards' keys in her reach) just to escape. Why didn't she rip apart her straitjacket, kill the guards , and escape from the research center from the very beginning? Did they use one of those "impose excruciating pain to disable their vectors" device that was fitted on Number 28?
  • Lucy grew more powerful as the story progressed, and with that the range of her vectors increased. Notice the cage surrounding her. That wasn't just to keep her restrained. It was to provide other people a radius to stay out of, because at the beginning that was her vectors' maximum reach. By later in the story, she can reach a lot farther with them. Also, when she dialed it Up to Eleven for a global-scale attack, the strain on her body killed her; there's a difference between how far vectors can safely reach without causing strain and damage to the user, and how far they can reach total.
• Why does Lucy tell Kouta to meet her at the stone stairs? It's not that they're some super-secret hideout, considering they are part of one of a well-known temple. Worse, she says it out loud while running away, so you'd at least expect someone else to pick up on it and try to deduct what she means.
  • It was a place they had met so it had sentimental value. And it's a girl meeting with a boy. What is there to deduct?
• "The scene with the puppy". Did Lucy's friend really do that on purpose or was Lucy being an Unreliable Narrator? It seems like the latter.
  • That one is a tough call. It almost seems to be a base splitter, but not a breaker. In one respect, it doesn't matter. Lucy killed four kids over a thoughtless cruel incident. But it is such a visceral moment, its hard to tell. I don't think there are four more hated kids in animanga fandom who are not main or recurring characters. Don't know about Lucy being an unreliable narrator—she tells us flatly that those kids are cruel because of the hopelessness of their lives and need to seek out those sadder than themselves. There is room for doubt with the girl—was she a ditz or a manipulator—but the balance of opinion I've heard seems to be manipulator.
• Lucy's true name : Kaede. Kouta does not learn it until the conclusion. Yet the residents of Maple House include Nana, who at the least is like a daughter to Kurama. Kurama knows Lucy was at the orphanage—no one ever thought to ask or tell this girl's real name? Kurama had to know it wasn't Lucy.
  • Holy sh** thank you for asking this question, or else I wouldn't have figured it out myself. Lucy is a "queen", and therefore can breed other diclonius. Therefore, she is the propagator, and ancestor of the all generations of future diclonius. She is, akin to, LUCY.
  • Kaede let Lucy take over. Of course the people at the Institute most likely wouldn't have cared about what her name was. She's a diclonius so she's lucky to get a name from them at all. Or they realized she was a 'queen' and named her specifically for Lucy, with it sticking. Most other people don't even seem to be aware that Kaede even exists; those who captured her might not have been willing to waste time figuring out a diclonius' birth-name.
• Okay so professor Whatshisname helps the girl he loves like a daughter escape from death, gives here a shit-ton of money and prosthetic limbs for all four of her limbs that were ripped off. He then leaves without explaining what money is, where to buy food, get shelter, or really anything useful. I understand he was probably rushing to get her out, but he has been with her for all of her life, he had to have known she had no outside social skills.
• It is said that Mariko will instinctively kill one human after the other when given the chance, but how the heck do they know that when she has been confined in that apparition since birth?
  • They assume it because they barely gave any diclonius even the smallest amount of love. They only know diclonii as human-killing machines.
• Why does everybody think diclonii are irredeemable killers anyway? Nana proves that they can be just as empathic as normal human beings. Why does nobody think of trying to treat them with anti-psychotic drugs, for instance? Heck, at one point someone even makes a device to make them compliant. Yes, it's rather drastic, but it indicates that there is likely a more humane solution.
  • They are scared. I mean a diclonii are shown from the start to be able to kill VERY easily so they treat them like crap to try and keep them in their place only for it to backfire spectacularly. This applies to everyone who deals with diclonii from early in their lives. Everyone else meets them after their hatred, psychosis, etc. for humanity has set in, by which point they are killing machines killing everyone from those who have done them wrong to the innocent.
• If it just takes pain to prevent a diclonius from using her vectors, why didn't they do this with Mariko? They could have placed electrodes on (or even in) her and give her a massive jolt every time she disobeys. Yes, it's nasty, but it's better than to maim her or blow her up, plus it's more reliable than bombs, which can malfunction or blow up prematurely. If they really had to kill her, they could have just tried to control her with pain first.
  • She could probably take the electrodes out unless they were specifically and painstakingly implanted. Also electrical shocks people can get used to. Bombs, it is kind of hard to.
• Why didn't they use Nana for what she's best at: disabling another diclonius' vectors? Nana actually manages to disable Mariko's during their encounter, which is quite a feat. Think of it: if they would have sent Mariko, together with Nana to control her when she gets out of hand, they would have had a much bigger chance of catching Lucy. Now they had to let the inexperienced Mariko slug it out against the experienced and dangerous Lucy along with Nana. That's just ... so dumb on so many levels!
  • Except they didnt know Nana could do that. The duel b/t Nana & Lucy was the first time they'd seen two diclonii fight against each other so they had no way of knowing that it was possible for a diclonius to disable another's vectors. Remember, they were puzzled when both Lucy and Mariko couldnt attack after their duels with Nana. The reason they sent Nana out was due to her docile personality which meant that they didnt have to worry about her going out after humans after she was released. Once that failed and they became more desperate they picked Mariko who was noted to be more powerful than Lucy to capture her albeit with precautions (implanting remoted-controlled bombs in her body). Im sure if they'd known that Nana had that vector disabling ability then they would've done aforementioned plan. Certainly, Kakuzawa wouldnt have been so quick to order her disposal. Now, why Nana couldnt have mentioned she could do that when she was angsting about how she was no longer useful to her "Papa", I have no idea.
• How do they get away with killing so many babies? The way they go about it would lead to a massive uproar in no time, forcing them to find other solutions to the problem.
  • Also, shouldn't it be able to discover a child will become a diclonius before birth?
    • The bad guys admit that they have the power to change the birth records. Instead of diclonii, the babies will be diagnosed with a fatal mutation. Unless someone researches the period, no one would have the slightest clue. Alternatively, if a significant amount of women were to die with their children, it would be considerably more suspicious. And the doctors wouldn't have reason to differentiate between the two types of babies.
• The devices thought up to control diclonii could easily also be used to control human beings. Did nobody ever think of that?
  • The people who had the devices were the bad guys. If anyone disagreed with them, they wouldn't hesitate to kill them. They don't need the devices to control humans.
• In what time frame does the series take place anyway? Currently no technology exists to replace eyes and limbs with robotic ones, but you don't really get the idea it's set in the future either.
  • There is a trope for this.
• Why can Bando get away with his asocial antics? The military is all about teamwork, where everybody should be able to rely on their squadron members, but here Bando plays the lone cowboy, disobeying orders (or making up his own) and threatening his teammates by pointing guns at them. Such an unreliable individual would be kicked out of service in no time, no matter what a good shot he is.
  • If he gets results they'd keep him. You're probably forgetting the invisible armed diclonii aspect of this story. Even some of the smartest, and/or crazily prepared, are killed off easily. If you have someone that is finally able to be able to somewhat combat them, you'd tolerate lone cowboy and maverick antics, even in the military.
  • His skills are too important to the mission. And then there's the enemy they are facing, and the type of mission. And that he's essentially not military personnel so much as a hired gun for a mainly-private company.
• Why does Kurama have a picture of that clumsy secretary on his desk? Did he have a personal friendship that was explained in the manga? Or was it his wife in highschool, but she just happened to look like her?
  • There was an extreme if platonic level of devotion between the two. Like many other Japanese relationships, it is one of complete and total support. Like as not Kurama looked at Kisaragi as something of a little sister.
• Are Diclonius Exclusively Evil in the end, or is this just caused by their abusive upbringing? It seems like the latter, but the manga apparently implies the former. Is it just their instincts, but they can be trained to act another way and not want to murder humans?
  • Word of God says they are no more murderous than humans. Their treatment is what causes them to go Axe Crazy. Look at Nana she has almost been broken but has for the most part stayed somewhat sane even at the end and for what she's gone through that's saying a lot. Being that they are treated this way plus the fact that they have powers so they don't have to take that crap from people if they don't want to just made them Axe Crazy faster.
• What's a Diclonius? Humans with genetic mutations or a species descended from Oni? If the latter than how can they be born from humans?
  • A seperate species and Lucy can alter a person's genetics. Also, human + diclonii can equal diclonii.
• Will the manga ever be licensed for the west? The anime is really popular, and honestly the manga is a lot better than the anime to this troper. Why isn't it licensed? I've seen more bloody ones licensed.
• What did Yuka mean when she said Lucy didn't look Japanese, when they first found her?
  • Perhaps she was referring to the pink hair, red eyes, and horns growing out of her head, none of which are common traits of the average Japanese.
• So... a .50AE round can punch through a vector at close range? And that .50BMG can punch through it too...but only at close range (ok, a little farther, but still)? I think the authors need to look up the differences in ballistics between those two rounds. That's like saying that a baseball thrown by a professional pitcher (~90MPH) has the same impact as a truck going 90MPH, as long as it's short range. For the sake of argument, if a .50AE busts through vectors at close range, then a .50BMP would bust through at a rather considerable distance. It'd be different if they were even remotely similar, but this is a disparity of almost 13,000 JOULES! Technically speaking, if you only need about 1300-1400 J of force to punch through a vector, you could use a significant number of different small-arms to punch through (although they would be larger calibers). Then again, there's that whole Up to Eleven with Lucy, but how resilient can these vectors get?
  • Lucy later displays the ability to deflect .50AE rounds in the manga, that .50BMG round probably would've killed any other diclonius
• What on earth happened to the police blockade in the finale of the anime? I mean, they set up this big blockade to stop anyone from leaving town or going near the site of the big battle, and then Nana gets past with no trouble and when Kouta gets there he finds them all knocked out and/or dead and runs right by? As things turn south somebody reports via radio that the blockade's been knocked out and there's a gathering of people, but this isn't elaborated on and doesn't really make sense (why were they gathering?). I'm pretty certain Nana didn't go and kill a whole squad of police just to make a path, so what happened?
• So Mayu ran away from home... without stopping to put her skirt back on? Forget "wears the same clothes every day", I'd think "Wearing no pants even in the winter" would tip people off to her status as a runaway pretty fast. And since this is apparently not her first birthday alone she's somehow made it at least a year half dressed.
  • Okamoto-San tells a great story, but timeframes are one of his profound weaknesses, IMHO, so we don't really know just how long Mayu was on her own. Also, many people might have noted Mayu's state of dress. But to some people, doing even the slightest thing about it would make her their responsibility. Better to decry and denounce her behind her back than lift a finger to speed-dial the police or child services. And if you recall, child services in EL has a pretty poor history.
• What are the Diiclonius Hordes (the armies of hooded diclonius at the end)? Are they failed Dicolnius clones, or just Failed Clones of Mariko? Are they disfigured Diicolonii? Are they a mixture of all three? Their vectors all come in different ranges, so perhaps they are a series of all three, or just failed clones.
• How could Kouta and Yuka possibly legally adopt Mayu when they're only 4–5 years older than she is?
  • They are old enough to be considered adults. And you have to remember that adoption laws are different in Japan - they have contacted her birth family and made sure that she is (at this point) an unwanted child, which was enough for them to be able to adopt her, since such adoptions always involve the court and it would be easy for Kouta and Yuka to prove that they can be better family for Mayu than her biological one.