Elfen Lied with 107 chapters.
EL is not to be read in English but German which when translated in English means Elves' Song!
Now you might be thinking why would I be interested in a 'musical' manga and you cannot be more wrong than that in your entire life. [Though I watched such an anime 'Nodame Cantabile' earlier but that was due to entirely different reasons, similar to Sketchbook.]
This manga is not about Music; its about Humans, their lives and how they treat other 'lives' - portrayed with pessimistic point of view (in my opinion) and negative connotations (which is not that far from reality!).
Wikipedia has this to say about the anime which is also more than true of the manga:
Elfen Lied involves themes of social alienation, identity, animal cruelty, revenge, child abuse, jealousy and the value of humanity. The series employs graphic violence and nudity, ...
The original manga did not end now (if my post suggests that!), but the scanlated one did. The original ended in August 2005 nearly 3 years ago... I wonder why the delay in scanlating chapters!
Now I am thinking of what to write about the manga EL. The first manga post was about Inuyasha and I sort of sketched out the last chapter in some detail which was not well-received by my reader. Yes, I have One! The second manga post was about Sketchbook and I wrote about my views of the anime, basically why I enjoyed watching it.
I cannot do any of the above for this one. Why? Because:
- Reviewing the last chapter of EL does not mean much here. In case of Inuyasha, the 'happily ever after' scenario in the last chapter involved (almost) all characters and was meaningful as an end for the story. However, it is not so here. The ending is sort of different in this case and elaborating on it is equivalent to spoiling the ending of a worth-reading story.
- Why I liked EL is again a hard question to answer. One might be tempted to say 'nudity, obviously'! Well, that may be true in one's case or for some other manga like 'Golden Boy' but not so here in my case. And I don't like graphic violence, either. So, the only logical conclusion would be something from the themes.
Indeed, that is so - the interplay between humanity and an 'alien entity'; their views of each other; the value they ascribe to each other - is something that is beautifully depicted in EL. The schizophrenic personality of the main character - 'human side' trying to fit in the human world and 'alien side' (for lack of a better term!) trying to annihilate the entire human civilization - was something that was gripping and probably the main reason why I could not stop reading this manga till it concluded.
Now I think I've rambled enough in this post since I did not have any intention of doing that when I started typing this post. Wow, too many I's in the previous line! OK, so I conclude this post here.
As usual, provided below is the link to more stuff/info so that you can form your own opinions about this series and probably waste some time like I'm doing right now.
