Characters / Elfen Lied: Lucy

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Lucy (& Nyu)

Voiced by: Sanae Kobayashi (JP), Kira Vincent-Davis (EN, series), Carli Mosier (EN, OVA), Alondra Hidalgo (Latin American Spanish)

The main character of the series.

In General

General tropes

• Adaptation Dye-Job: Somewhat. In the manga her hair is bright pink, but the anime has it as a notably darker shade of pink. Also, in the manga she has green eyes, while the anime gives her red ones.
• Animal Motifs: Bovines. Nyū sounds similar to gyūnyū, which is milk in Japanese. An alternative word for the Japanese word ushi (meaning cow) is gyū, which Nyū's name also sounds similar to, and milk comes from cows. Being that it's also a slang word for breasts, this also alludes to Nyū's tendency to grope people's breasts, and her often appearing full-frontal naked. Additionally, during her childhood, the bullies would call her an ox due to her horns. It's also worth noting that that Satan is typically depicted as having red skin and bovine features, and is also the patron demon of the Sin of Wrath, which its representative animal is the bull.
• Artistic License – Biology: Lucy/Nyu's nipples are placed very inconsistently; they're always somewhere on her breast, but "where" depends on the artist.
• Betty and Veronica: Veronica (darker, dangerously unstable, and telekinetic mutant) to Yuka's Betty (lighter, sane, and normal human). Kouta has feelings for both, but he could never hope to have a normal, peaceful romance with Lucy/Nyu, unlike with Yuka.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: In the manga, she's the redhead (although her hair is closer to pink) to Mariko's blonde and Nana's brunette (purple hair).
• Body Horror: Towards the end of the manga, her body starts decomposing due to overusing her powers. Before Kouta kills her, she has been reduced to a pile of goo.
• Cute Monster Girl: Her horns look like cute cat ears. Tragically deconstructed.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Kouta initially met her in his childhood after she killed her first victims. Unlike everyone else, he found her horns fascinating and forged a strong bond of friendship with her, thus keeping her murderous Diclonius instincts repressed. However, he erased her from his memory after she brutally killed his father and sister right in front of him because he neglected to specify his cousin's gender.
• Godiva Hair: Her hair is sometimes depicted this way.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Near the end of the manga, Lucy vehemently rejects the advice of her DNA personality, who has been suggesting to her to exterminate humanity since she was a child. She even states that subconsciously, Nyu has been telling her they can live peacefully with humans ever since Nyu was first created as a personality.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Just contrast the innocent Nyu persona's wide, bubbly eyes with the narrow, hateful, tortured eyes of the Lucy persona. It's notable that Lucy's often drawn with nearly the same soft, cutesy expression as Nyu when she's around Kouta, at which point the audience (and Kouta) can only figure out that something's up when Nyu suddenly starts speaking coherent sentences.
• Hide Your Otherness: She's occasionally given a head accessory like a hat or ribbons to hide her horns.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Toward the end of the manga, the Lucy/Kaede and Nyu personalities beg Kouta to kill her now that her homicidal Diclonius instincts personality — or possibly just an even more cruel and self-centered alter also resulting from her trauma, it's ambiguous — has finally taken over, and she must depart their ruined body, leaving the DNA voice in control, not to mention agony.
• Important Haircut: Lucy/Nyu chops off her hair in order to impersonate Kouta's younger sister Kanae, which signifies Lucy's guilt over murdering her. Coincidentally, it also makes her resemble her younger self.
• Interspecies Romance: She is a Diclonius and Kouta is a human.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Nyu is the Light Feminine (innocent, childlike, and cheerful), Lucy is the Dark Feminine (cynical, cold, and murderous).
• Literal Split Personality: At the end of the manga, the Lucy and Nyu personalities appear to become two separate people after reincarnating, as it's implied they're the twins Kouta's daughter is friends with.
• Monster Roommate: A mass murdering superhuman with horns and invisible telekinetic Combat Tentacles ends up crashing at a random family inn owned by Kouta and Yuka, although they aren't made aware of it at first.
• Ms. Fanservice: Just about every other scene has her showing off her fairly toned figure.
• Naked First Impression: Kouta and Yuka find Nyu naked on a beach. This is averted for Kouta, however, as he first met Lucy when they were younger.
• Naked on Arrival: She's completely naked save for a helmet as the series opens.
• Only Known By Her Nickname: The names "Lucy" and "Nyu" were given to her by other people. It's until the end of the manga that we find out her real name; Kaede.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Manga only. After the Time Skip, Nyu has shoulder-length hair. The first time Lucy awakens after the Time Skip, her hair grows and reaches her back. It stays at this length for the rest of the series.
• Reincarnation: In the manga epilogue, it's implied Lucy/Kaede and Nyu are eventually reborn as twins and reunite with Kouta years later.
• Split Personality: One has the mental capacities of a small child, the other's an insanely powerful killer out to take out a significant portion of humanity. She holds the current page image. There's a third personality that acts as a personification of her basic, murderous instincts[[maybethe manga tends to be deeply ambiguous over whether these instincts are a real thing, or it's just the aftereffects of trauma and abuse[[/maybe]] which was named The Voice by Lucy.]]
• Split-Personality Switch Trigger: The switch between Lucy and Nyu and back is triggered by either a nasty injury (usually a blow to the head) or a very traumatic memory.
• Split-Personality Takeover: The shift between Lucy and Nyu; Lucy knows when Nyu has been in control, but doesn't try to stop it from happening. Add in Kaede, her original personality, and the DNA Voice, which only takes over at the end.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: She and Kouta have... so many issues between them that it's a miracle they still love each other at all.
• Tragic Dream: Her love for Kouta extended to wanting to marry him, which Kouta only finds out towards the end of the final chapter years after her death in the letter she left for him.

Warning! Unmarked spoilers from this point onward!

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Lucy

Lucy

Lucy has 4 vectors in the anime and around 12-15 (though one panel near the end shows her with 28) in the manga with a limited range of two meters. However, she demonstrates prodigious control over her vectors and can be swift and lethal within that range in addition to being able to use nearby objects as high velocity projectiles to kill at greater distances. She is also capable of stopping or deflecting most standard ammunition. Her great skill and murderous intent have caused her to be regarded as the most dangerous of the Diclonius.

Lucy hates humans mainly because of how she was treated by her human peers as a child. Consequently, she discounts non-Diclonii, claiming they are not real people, to the point of stating that she has "not killed anyone yet". She seems to lack empathy, kills without much concern, and acts sadistically. Despite this lack of concern for human life she will not harm Kouta, as he was her only childhood friend.

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• Adaptational Badass: Played with. While certainly powerful and competent, Lucy in the manga is as likely to kick ass as she is to get her own ass kicked and usually relies on clever tricks or diversions to get the upper hand. Her anime counterpart however seems to bulldoze through everyone casually without the slightest bit of effort, only meeting her match with Mariko. The difference is that most of her anime counterpart foes end up being a lot weaker or less competent than their manga counterparts and the fact that even before her vectors get longer, manga Lucy has shown more vectors and a much more vicious and merciless nature.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Heavily Downplayed. While still a murderous Villain Protagonist, Lucy is considerably less sadistic and Ax-Crazy in the anime than in the manga, where she was prone to Evil Laughs and Slasher Smiles while literally tearing people to shreds.
• Aloof Big Sister: She kills her half-brother along with his father, Director Kakuzawa. It's a Mercy Kill, since her brother was born specially for impregnating her and he's controlled by Director Kakuzawa. She does express remorse over killing him.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Inverted, Lucy does it to the antagonist and Kouta.
  • Played with early on when Lucy comes across Mayu's little dog, Wanta. She looks down at the dog, which is barking frantically at her but unable to run away because it's tied to a leash, and we're treated to what seems like a Gory Discretion Shot as we hear Lucy use her powers. When Mayu comes outside, the audience's expectations are subverted when it's revealed that Lucy actually cut the dog's leash. It's our first hint that Lucy's not as bad as she seems, or at the very least, sees lines that she absolutely will not cross.
• Animal Lover: She rarely shows open affection to humans or animals, but will absolutely not kill the latter; her personal tragedy with her own puppy in childhood likely reinforces this trope for her.
• The Antichrist: A near-literal example because of her horns and her name being the female version of Lucifer, a demon.
• Anti-Hero: Part of her Character Development involves graduating into one, both in the anime and manga. Says a lot about the series that being an Anti-Hero is preferable to what she used to be at the beginning.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Subverted with Nana when the latter tries taking her back to the research facility. She admits that she didn't really want to kill another Diclonius and tried to simply let her off with a warning, but that goes out the window when Nana refuses to back down, and she ends up gleefully turning poor Nana into a quadruple amputee and only stops short of killing her thanks to outside interference. Since every Diclonius she fights (including Nana) is working for people trying to recapture her, this reluctance never really comes into play.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Toward the end of the manga, her homicidal Diclonius instincts personality finally takes over and starts killing humans everywhere on the world at rates that would make the deadliest WMDs look like mere fireworks in an attempt to destroy humanity in a spiteful decision that since Diclonii, and mainly her, can't rule the world, she'll destroy it.
• Arch-Enemy: To Kurama. At first, he (reluctantly) follows orders to have her recaptured by the facility rather than killed, but that changes pretty soon. Partially to end the threat he recognizes that she poses to the world, but also because Lucy is paying him back in blood for Aiko's death, killing his secretary, dismembering and almost killing his adopted daughter, and (in the manga) being the reason for Mariko's death, and then directly killing two of her clones in front of him.
• The Atoner: As things go along, you'll find that Lucy really does regret her actions, and she tries her damnedest to make amends for it several points in her history, because ultimately, she's content to live with Kouta and would rather stop killing (hence why she doesn't do so in front of him). Unfortunately, this being Elfen Lied, fate just keeps trying to pull the rug under her feet anyway. At the very end, when she has her Superpower Meltdown, she atones in the only way she can - by convincing a very reluctant Kouta to Mercy Kill her.
• Ax-Crazy: In the manga, Lucy doesn't just nonchalantly tear people to pieces, she does it with a huge grin on her face and a really Evil Laugh.
  • A point could be made that Lucy is simultaneously more and less unstable than she was in the past. While she now takes obvious joy in slaughtering humans, she doesn't randomly kill everyone she comes across unless they've actually wronged her.
• Badass Adorable: When she starts defrosting, she builds up an immense reservoir of cuteness. And at the same time, she - at her weakest - is considered a terrifying killer capable of killing dozens of armed guards with nothing on. By the end of the manga she's capable of destroying islands, cities, and nearly taking out the entire planet.
• Barbarian Long Hair: Meant to emphasize on how tough, murderous, antisocial and uncontrollable she is.
• The Baroness: The Sexpot type but with the fear factor of the Rosa Klebb type.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Kouta was the first person to treat her kindly and befriend her despite knowing she's different. Her days with him are her only happy memories, which is why Lucy fell deeply in love with him and he's the only human she refuses to harm.
• Beleaguered Childhood Friend: She and Kouta were very close friends when they were kids. In the present, he has conflicting feelings about her since she's now a mass murdering sociopath in the run not to mention she's responsible for the deaths of his father and sister. In the end, he has to reconcile his lack of ability to forgive her with his lack of ability to hate her (no matter how much he says otherwise).
• Blank White Eyes: In the anime, when her right horn gets ripped off during the fight with Mariko. She appears to be in shock or comatose for several minutes.
• Blessed with Suck: She has powers far beyond that of any ordinary human, which unfortunately has made her a popular target for those who see her as nothing more than a monster to be slaughtered. As a child she hated her horns for making others view her as a freak of nature, and when pushed too far she let go of all reservations in using her unique abilities to kill anyone who dared to cross her. Unfortunately, this also had the dual effect of costing her the trust of the one person to treat her with genuine kindness, which leads to her single biggest regret in life. Suffice to say, even though she's a sadistic killer, Lucy hates what she was born in to.
• Blood from the Mouth: The initial signs of her Superpower Meltdown before she literally starts melting.
• Blood Is the New Black: Frequently ends up being covered in blood after attacking people with her psychic powers.
• Broken Bird: Treated like crap by most humans, bullied relentlessly during her childhood... yeah, Lucy's about as broken as it's possible to get.
• Byronic Heroine: Morally neutral, to put it mildly. She's also largely concerned with personal interests, disrespectful of common authority, defined by conflict, and is a cynical, jaded, brooding, spiteful loner who has intense passions that drive the story.
• Childhood Friend Romance: She has been in love with Kouta since her childhood.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed, surprisingly. Shortly after we see the flashback where she dips into mass murder out of jealousy, she smacks a vector in Yuka's face (probably the least harmful form of aggression she can display with her vectors) in response to seeing Kouta and Yuka holding hands, and when Kouta expresses concern for Yuka appearing to just fly backward for no reason, Lucy calmly accepts that he's "taken" and never even considers laying a finger (visible or invisible) on Yuka again.
• Combat Pragmatist: Her vectors can't reach beyond two meters... so she'll just throw a boat at you, as Bando learned the hard way. Not to mention stealing the gun off of a dead soldier when he tries to shoot her from a safe distance, after which he looks like a deer caught in the headlights before she shoots him.
• The Comically Serious: Some of her funniest moments involve her saying something either really snarky or really odd while in a complete deadpan. Some of it is played for Black Comedy.
• Contralto of Strength: In her Nyu persona, she is like an innocent young girl. When she switches to her Lucy persona, she has a much lower voice to match her dangerous and threatening nature.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Any "fight" she takes part in, although this is reversed in the battle between Lucy and Mariko, but only in the Anime. And also completely Inverted in her second fight with Bando in the Manga. Averted by her duel with Nana, which is more or less an even match; Nana gets the advantage, but Lucy wins because she's far more willing to hurt Nana than vice versa.
• Dark Action Girl: Fits both the "dark" and the "action" parts with emphasis.
• Dark Is Evil: In the only other outfit she's most seen in, she wears a black teddy. Spells out that she's not a pleasant person.
• Deadpan Snarker: A particularly cruel snarker. This exchange stands out:
  Nana: I'm not scared of you! It doesn't hurt at all!
  (Lucy rips off one of her arms, Nana screams in agony)
  Lucy: So does it hurt now?
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Magical Girlfriend and Cute Monster Girl. For the former, her powers are negative in nature, being that they can dismember, infect humans, and nearly destroy the planet, and they also add to her ax-craziness. For the latter, her being different from the humans was what caused her to be persecuted, and said persecution ultimately drove her insane and made her into a killer.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Most of her arc in the anime. "Defrosting" also includes being slightly less murderous.
• Desperately Craves Affection: It's her greatest strength and her Fatal Flaw, because it pushes her to commit atrocities if she felt betrayed.
• Determinator: No matter how many people oppose her. She will find Kouta and she will apologize to him, and anyone who gets in her way will die. Horribly. Also, if your name is Kurama, don't ever let your loved ones near her. She will kill every last one of them. And there's nothing you can do to stop her.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Lucy "single"-handedly took out the giant precog monster Director Kakuzawa made Anna into.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: In her first meeting with Nana, Lucy initially doesn't want to fight her and tries to just scare her off, telling her to go home. When Nana persists, Lucy gives in and attacks.
  Lucy: I was going to let you go. After all, there aren't many of us out there. But you're just such a pain in the ass.
• The Dreaded: Being a mass murdering girl who can rip apart armed soldiers and wants 99% of the people she sees dead will do that. Practically the only people who don't end up wetting themselves when she's near is Kakuzawa Senior who gets his head ripped off and Bando who gets mutilated. Though Bando at least is capable of putting up a good fight the second time.
• Duality Motif: Another sign of when Lucy is in control; Nyuu's bangs tend to be parted whereas Lucy's tend to almost completely cover her eyes, taking on a dagger-like appearance as they conceal her face.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: A trademark identifier of Lucy, in contrast to Nyu, is her dim and narrow eyes sadness.
• The Eeyore: Particularly in the anime, where damn-near every moment of screen time has her as a Perpetual Frowner.
• Escaped from the Lab: She escapes from the lab in first episode, taking out 23 guards in the process.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She has no qualms against killing... but avoids committing such acts in front of Kouta as much as possible. She also doesn't harm animals, as seen in her interactions with Wanta.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When she faces Nana for the second time, she is genuinely confused when Mayu hugs her in a desperate attempt to stop her from harming Nana, during which she pleads for "Nyuu" to stop fighting. It only stops her momentarily, but she at least does not harm Mayu for it. When she tries again to confront Nana, Mayu screams for her to stop, causing Lucy to revert back to Nyuu.
• Evil Is Hammy: Loves setting up cruel Mood Whiplashes in particularly creepy ways, to the point where she may even be Trolling the readers. Loves laughing on the dead bodies of her victims. Always boasts and taunts about her power whenever she meets a foe she hates. And yet can somehow find a reservoir of cuteness whenever she's near Kouta and boast about why she loves him.
• Evil Laugh: Manga-only. On some pages, it is rendered with an extremely thick font.
• Evil Redhead: Though she is more specifically a hot-pink head, and it's more specifically her DNA Voice that's truly evil.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Lucy's voice is low, deep, and quite ominous in comparison to Nyu's chirpy, childish, high-pitched voice.
• Face Death with Dignity: In the anime finale, she shares a Last Kiss with Kouta before calmly going to face a Bolivian Army Ending, though the final scene implies she survived.
• Fatal Flaw: Her desperate need for affection. She wants someone to love her so badly that if she even suspects a betrayal, heads will literally roll.
• Fiery Redhead: She is one you would not want to provoke, or you would be dead.
• Friendless Background: She spent her childhood in an Orphanage of Fear where she had no friends and was frequently bullied by the other children for her horns and emotionlessness. The one person who it seemed like she was gonna become friends with at the orphanage later betrayed her and sold her out to the boys that had been bullying her. She then made two more attempts to reach out to someone else and become their friend. The first ends with her feeling betrayed once again, while the second ends in her new friend being killed and her being captured. After that it's sort of understandable why she stopped trying.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: In the backstory, she was a shy, kind-hearted Diclonii who lived in an Orphanage of Fear. Then, she eventually became a human-hating killer after her Start of Darkness.
• Full-Frontal Assault: The fact that Lucy has nothing on but a helmet in the first scene of the anime does not stop her from taking on and killing dozens of soldiers as she fights her way free from a military facility.
• Ground Punch: The manga has Lucy using her vectors to strike the ground in order to jump long distances, they even leave hand marks and small craters behind.
• The Heavy: The DNA Voice, which cannot directly posses her, is the one who commands her, but she is the one directly killing people.
• Hellish Pupils: Only in the manga, but she does not have them always.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Well, not exactly a hero, but she clearly has a soft spot for dogs. It was the brutal murder of a puppy that she cared for that finally made her snap.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Villainous version. She puts herself down very often, usually when it involves Kouta.
• Hidden Eyes: Quite often, although very prominent when she's just reverted back to Lucy.
• Human Shield: Used a poor office girl at the laboratory as one when she escaped. The girl didn't even know what was going on before Lucy ripped her head off.
• Implacable Woman: Go ahead. Keep throwing shit at her. She will always plow through it to get to you.
• The Juggernaut: Lucy's vectors can be used for defense and are capable of stopping really intense firepower. What's more, they are invisible at all but the highest frequency, so she can slowly stalk her latest target despite them emptying clip after clip against her.
• Kick the Dog: A lot, really.
  • Slicing off Nana's limbs after the threat she posed was completely neutralized.
  • Trying to kill Mayu after Mayu tried to help her. However, this is partially negated by Lucy's own regret at even considering it.
  • Killing an entire family in a house, both so she could crash for the night and because she was jealous at how the family was having a happy life. This event was meant to really show just how bitter the world made her.
  • She keeps attacking Alicia and Barbara who are trying to save Nousou while they are helpless and she kills one of them. It's not like they didn't see it coming, since they took her home.
• Kill All Humans: If it wasn't for Kouta, she would've done this long ago.
• The Last Dance: Kouta has a fatal gunshot wound, Lucy's body is already at limits from a abortive attempt at avenging the aforementioned fact on a global scale, and JSDF air and maritime forces are already scrambling to take her out with their full firepower. What does Lucy do? She proceeds to sing the Elfen Lied poem while patching up Kouta's body on a cellular level and blasting the JSDF forces out of both sky and sea, simultaneously. She knows full well that she's going to end up with a fatal Superpower Meltdown.
• Last Kiss: In the anime, Lucy kisses Kouta shortly before confronting the soldiers who have been assigned to kill her. Her fate, however, is left ambiguous.
• Limp and Livid: Quite a lot. Whenever Nyu flips over to Lucy her head drops so her hair covers/shades her eyes.
• Love Martyr: For starters, it was her love of Aiko that made Lucy subject herself to years of human experimentation - tantamount to a living hell, yet she was fine with it as long as Aiko survived... and when she was told Aiko didn't survive, Lucy was crushed. When she gets free, she spends the rest of her life trying to find Kouta so she could apologize for what she did to his family, even though she knows she can't atone for it. When that happens, and he flat out says that he hates her for what she did to his family, she still embraces him when he accepts her into his house in exchange for not killing anymore. When he takes the bullet for her from Kurama, it was her love of Kouta that drove her to heal him at the cost of a Superpower Meltdown.
• Made of Iron: She survives taking an anti-tank slug to the head in the first episode. To be fair, though, the thing barely grazes her, she's wearing a helmet, and she has her vectors to protect her. She still does survive falling hundreds of feet off a cliff into the ocean without drowning immediately afterwards though.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: On the occasions that Lucy feels like being subtle, she simply pops a vessel in the victim's brain or heart. However, her flashback with Aiko shows that Kurama was still able to track her down when an area had too many deaths by sudden heart attacks or cerebral hemorrhaging to be a coincidence.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Can be seen alternatively as a female version of Lucifer (the devil, which fits her role as an evil mass-murderer), and also sounds like "lucid," which could refer to Nyu only initially talking in full sentences when Lucy is at the wheel.
  • Lucy is also the name of a protohomonid skeleton with an upright gait and small brain capacity, suggesting a missing link between the great apes and modern humans. Lucy, being the first of her kind capable of "proper" reproduction, could also potentially serve as a missing link between humans and some future Diclonius race.
• Memento MacGuffin: Lucy's letter to Kouta. It also reveals her true name.
• Monster Progenitor:
  • She's not the first diclonius by a long shot, but her vectors are capable of spreading the diclonius condition to the gametes of humans she touches with them.
  • And how can we forget that she's the only fertile female of her species.
• More than Mind Control: Turns out Lucy was Driven to Murder in part, by the manipulations of an Omnicidal Maniac Split Personality within her (born from either snapping at the constant abuse, her own genetic drive to Kill All Humans, or both).
• Murder Is the Best Solution: If you even slightly irritate or wrong her in any way, shape, or form, you're dead. Justified to a degree, as her... not-so-happy life prompted this as a defense mechanism for her.
• My Greatest Failure: Killing Kouta's father and little sister is perhaps the one murder she feels any guilt over, and clearly hates herself for the grief she caused him. She knows she cannot truly earn forgiveness for her actions no matter what she does, and indeed is brought to tears when confronted with this fact.
• Mysterious Waif: It's what got Kouta and Yuka to adopt her into the family at first.
• Naked Nutter: She's frequently naked, and is quite evidently off the deep end well before even the start of the story.
• Nominal Hero: Given how completely messed up and outright evil many of the characters are and the fact that she is one of the main characters, Lucy can be seen as heroic at times. However, all she cares about is going to Kouta attempting to seek forgiveness from him (which fails) and although Kouta can maintain her somewhat stable when he's near her, she's perfectly willing to do horrible things to those who get in her way.
• Not So Stoic: In the manga, whenever she's on a killing spree, she's happier than a kid high on weed.
• Off with His Head!: More precisely, "Off With Their Heads!". Decapitation is her preferred method of killing people she hates. It's swift, fast, bloodless, and efficient. Everyone else (including Bando) fall under Ludicrous Gibs.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Understandable, since she had been put through so much abuse that she gave in to the DNA Voice's orders to butcher all humans.
• One-Woman Army: She's known for gaining a massive headcount.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Downplayed. Though she is more sadistic towards people who deserve it. She'll kill anyone, but she'll torture people like Bando half to death.
• Perpetual Frowner: In stark contrast to Nyu, Lucy almost always has a sullen and menacing frown unless she's with Kouta. An exception is reserved for when everybody else is unhappy.
• Person of Mass Destruction:
  • An order of magnitude more dangerous than the other Diclonii, due to being fertile.
  • She also has the power to destroy the Earth. At the cost of her own life. Not that she matters much by the time she wants to put it into effect.
• Pet the Dog: Her moments of compassion are rare, but very poignant, because it shows that she still has some humanity left in her fractured mind. As time goes on, both in the anime and the manga, the more these moments pile on, the more humanity ultimately returns to her.
  • The first instance that shows she still has a heart came in the form of her meeting Mayu's dog in a cage. While it looks like she killed the puppy, it turns out that she actually cut the rope that kept him restrained and allowed him to reunite with Mayu.
  • Lucy actually took the time to protect Mayu from a fight with another Diclonius, and that was when they first met. She literally had no reason to even acknowledge Mayu's existence, but she went out of her way to protect her anyway.
  • She may be a mass murdering sociopath fueled by her hatred of humans, but her ability to love is powerful. The shit that she allows herself to suffer through, purely for the sake of her loved ones, is her single greatest trait. See Undying Loyalty below.
  • Nothing will excuse her Kick the Dog moments, but she has shown that she can (and does) learn from her mistakes if given a chance. In particular, after the incident with Kouta's family, she refuses to kill Aiko's asshole dad purely because she'd rather not make Aiko sad; she encourages and actively tries to get Aiko to reunite with her mother; she offers to take the blame after Aiko accidentally killed her father; she doesn't commit infanticide after what happened with Kanae (and feels bad about trying it with Mayu so Kouta wouldn't have to relive his memories of Kanae); and she refrains from killing anyone in Kouta's presence, no matter how much she personally hates her targets.
  • She was surprisingly regretful at the idea of killing Mayu (most likely an attempt to keep Mayu from triggering Kouta's own memories as a result).
  • She hated her mother for all her life... but when she finds out the truth of what her mother went through, Lucy forgives her.
  • She clearly doesn't think much of Yuka, and would've killed her years ago if Kouta hadn't begged her to stop. When she and Kouta hold hands as she expresses concern over Nyuu's well-being, Lucy smacks her across the face with her vectors. Kouta helps her back to her feet and Lucy recognizes Kouta's love for his cousin, and from then on we don't see her ever try to harm Yuka again under any circumstances.
  • Her genuine grief over her murders of Kouta's father and sister. That was awful, but it was nice to see Lucy herself show remorse for once. She knows she can't fully atone for it, but she still wants to atone anyway, which says a lot about how much it was eating her up inside.
  • When she accepts his offer to stay with him on the condition that she doesn't kill again, it shows that, yes, she really would rather just stop killing altogether if it meant living a normal life.
  • When the Maple House is attacked, and Nyu holds off much of the invasion force, Lucy wakes up, and notices that Kouta had regained his memories of her killing his family. Perhaps resigned to the fact that she and Kouta could never be together, the first thing Lucy does... is to ask Nana to care for the Maple House and its residents. Furthermore, she even asks Yuka to take care of Kouta.
  • In the anime, after Kurama and Mariko's suicide, she tells Nana to live with Kouta, an act that leaves Nana completely baffled but nonetheless grateful. Somehow, Lucy found it in herself to abandon her animosity towards Nana, recognizing what she had come to mean to Kouta and expressing the hope that Nana, who was now without a home would be better family to him than she could ever be. Nana then becomes a permanent resident of the Maple House.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Lucy is a powerful Dark Action Girl who's around 162 cm, or about 5'3''.
• The Power of Love: At the very end, it is her love of Kouta that eventually enables her to beat her Enemy Within.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Before killing Tomoo and the orphanage boys in the backstory, Lucy says, "You know who's not human...? You know who's not human?! PEOPLE LIKE YOU!"
• The Promise: Lucy and Kouta agree to meet at the stone behind the festival terrain on the last day of the summer festival.

• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": Whenever she's butchering someone, she's always cackling.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the anime. In the manga, they're green according to the cover art.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: It could be said that she's a rather extremely dark take on the archetype. She has pale skin, unnatural hair and (in the anime) eye color, indeterminate origins, isn't entirely human, has a very cold demeanor (even after defrosting) unless she's killing someone, serves as a Love Interest to the main male lead Kouta, and is single-mindedly devoted to him. However, her single-minded devotion to Kouta had lead to deadly consequences for everyone involved. She also suffers a significant injury by getting shot in the head in the beginning, is the key to the Big Bad's plans, and, closer to the original take, serves as an Apocalypse Maiden in the climax. Will all of those facts, she's one of the few examples who actually stays true to the original character's Unbuilt Trope nature.
• Retired Monster: Yes and no. By the time the series starts, Lucy has murder as the only option regarding humans, but she seems to limit her present-day killings to unsavory people. She does get better, though, ala Defrosting Ice Queen.
• Sanity Slippage: A chapter dedicated to her childhood shows she got so unstable and murderous through this trope.
• Satanic Archetype: She was considered a social outcast, having been abandoned by her parents since birth and born a diclonius and subsequently ostracized by many because of it, not unlike Lucifer being cast from the heavens. She is also the first and the Queen of her species, further strengthening her association with Satan. She even has the Biblical Motifs to go with it, such as being shot in the head but surviving parallelling the mortal wound to the head the Beast survived in the Book of Revelation. Aside from that, she has the pink hair, her name is Lucy, and she wants to rebel and destroy humanity. Even her Animal Motif goes hand-in-hand, as her representative animal (bovines) are used in contemporary depictions of Satan, and the bull is the representative animal of the Deadly Sin of Wrath, whose patron demon is Satan.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: When Bando decides to kill Lucy by shooting the grenade next to his dead teammate, he forgot an important object: the teammate's automatic machine rifle. It went to hell from there.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Before her capture (sometime after she killed Kouta's father and sister), she turns herself in as a final attempt to give humanity a chance and to save her new friend, Aiko's life. She later finds out when being bound in the very place first seen that Aiko died from her wounds and that practically drove Lucy to cross the Despair Event Horizon. The epilogue reveals that Aiko survived all along, which means Kurama had lied to Lucy and they were going to experiment her anyway.
• Serial Killer: She's killed people ever since she was young, ranging from having a place to eat and sleep for a couple of nights to the person looking at her the wrong way. The news reports even label her as such.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Lucy seems to embody them, as part of her being the series' squivalent of The Antichrist.
  • Wrath: Lucy is defined by her Unstoppable Rage, being hellbent on Kill All Humans.
  • Envy: Lucy has displayed intensely jealous behavior towards Kouta, and murders his father and sister to spite him for having seemingly left her for Yuka, and has contemplated murdering Yuka. Additionally, Lucy has killed numerous families because she was jealous at how they were living a happy lives while she was ostracized for her powers and appearance.
  • Greed: Lucy has killed numerous families so she can have a place to stay.
  • Gluttony: Lucy has murdered people excessively, well beyond her supposed targets.
  • Sloth: Lucy rarely does any work in the Maple Inn and is usually seen loafing around, instead having Nyu do the work.
  • Pride: Sees herself as superior to humans, and DNA Voice believes it has the right to lord over everyone else.
  • Lust: Lucy has shown to enjoy murdering and torturing her opponents far more than she lets on.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Unlike Nyu, she does know that being naked is a problem, but she often has other things on her mind. Her conversation with Director Kakuzawa is the only time that she showed the urge to cover herself.
• Shoot the Dog: It isn't clear if she truly meant to kill Mayu or if it was a fakeout by the author, but her closeness to Mayu after fighting Bando a second time suggests she meant to kill her.
• Sibling Murder: In the manga, she has a younger half-brother, the first male Diclonius. Upon meeting each other, she kills him. She doesn't hate him, but she did it because their kind can't exist anymore and the fact he was being controlled by Kakuzawa, making it a Mercy Kill.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She falls for Kouta because he is the first person to be genuinely kind to her and not shun her because she is different (he even finds her horns cool). Even though she gets, to say the least, deranged and murderous later in life, she continues loving Kouta for his virtues and refuses to harm him.
• Slasher Smile: When she's killing folks, but only in the manga.
• Sociopathic Hero: She does show lack of regard for human life and has shown empathy for other people (namely Aiko) in the past, but by the time Elfen Lied starts, she's too far gone in her hatred of humans.
• The Stoic: When outside of a fight, but mostly in the anime which takes away her Slasher Smile.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Tends to have this appearance whenever she reverts back to her Lucy persona from her Nyu persona.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Cold and deeply cynical, but only because she's been hurt so badly every time she lets her guard down. She can be very genuinely caring and insanely loyal towards those she becomes attached to. She may slaughter humans without hesitation or remorse, but her capacity for love is still very real.
• Super-Strength: In the manga, she rips Kisaragi's head effortlessly with her bare hands.
• Superpowered Evil Side: She's it, except there's an even more evil side that's essentially her basic instincts.
• Superpower Meltdown: Toward the end of the manga, Lucy goes into a literal meltdown due to abusing of her telekinetic powers while destroying some planes and then for saving Kouta.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Even being a mass murderer with a penchant for Slasher Smiles and Cold-Blooded Torture isn't enough to keep her from being sympathetic; her backstory is just that crappy.
• Tears of Remorse: In the final volume, she can finally apologize to Kouta for killing his father and sister. Her tears show her regret is genuine.
• Theme Music Power-Up: In the manga, Lucy sings the German song "Elfenlied" while taking on an entire army from thousands of kilometers away. Apparently, the more thematic the song, the bigger the powerup.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: She's a member of a race genetically predisposed towards the destruction of the human race. Which was only ever triggered because the humans she met all treated her like shit. Nice going there.
• Token Evil Teammate: In the main cast (consisting of herself, Kouta, Nana, Yuka, and Mayu), she's easily the most unhinged and villainous of the bunch.
• Tortured Monster: Yes, she's a bitter, mass murdering bulldozer, but she went through some serious tragedy in her life that she'd done nothing to deserve.
• Tragic Bigot: Lucy strongly believes Humans Are the Real Monsters, and considering all she'd been through because of humans' cruelty, one can't honestly blame her.
• Tragic Villain: A very tragic one at that. A broken little girl who became a murderous monster after she snapped at the world's relentless cruelty and her own budding insanity.
• Tranquil Fury: In the anime, where she kills without a change in her facial expressions.
• Transhuman Treachery: Is a Diclonius, gets treated horrible because of that, and becomes a homicidal maniac and hates humans as a result.
• Tsurime Eyes: Her eyes are narrow, tortured and focused, in contrast to Nyu's bright and happy Tareme Eyes.
• Uncertain Doom: In the anime, Lucy most likely survived the officers shooting at her but she loses one of her horns in the process.
• Undying Loyalty: If her Fatal Flaw is that she Desperately Craves Affection, then her greatest quality is her insane devotion to the people she loves. In fact, her loyalty is arguably greater than her desire for affection, because she willingly puts herself in harm's way for the people she cares about, frequently sacrifices her own betterment in exchange for theirs and absolutely refuses to abandon them or hate them even if they treat her badly.
• The Unfettered:
  • She will find Kouta, and she will express how awful she feels about killing his family. No way you'll ever stop her from doing that. No way she'll let you stop her from that single goal.
• Ungrateful Bitch:
  • It is implied she once tried to kill Mayu right after Mayu saved her from being killed, but it isn't clear whether she truly intended to kill her or if it was just a fakeout. Granted, Lucy did have her vectors close to Mayu after she dealt with Bando (who tried to save Mayu as a result), so one could argue this was at least partially attributed to her being a Combat Pragmatist.
  • She also dislikes Yuka, who she hoped to kill in the past after taking her jealous rage out on Kouta's family, an act she abandoned only after a traumatized Kouta begged her to stop. In the present Yuka gives Nyu constant care and affection in spite of her jealousy of Nyu, but this doesn't stop Lucy from slapping her down with her vectors when she sees her and Kouta hold hands, and this was when they were searching for her after she vanished from Professor Kakazawa's lab. However upon seeing how much Yuka means to Kouta, Lucy never tries to harm her again.
• Unstoppable Rage: About ninety percent of the time. Even trained assassins, other diclonii, and an army of soldiers can't so much as lay a hand on her when she wants them dead and she's pissed off.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: She started out as a kind-hearted, but shy little girl, but through enough torment, crippling loneliness, and a psychotic inner voice, became an Ax-Crazy mass murderer bent on killing all humans.
• Villain Protagonist: She has killed armed men and innocent children, for reasons ranging from "trying to kill me" to "You killed my dog" to "I envy your happy, normal life, and I need a place to crash" to "It Amused Me" to "I'm going to destroy the world because I'm about to die."
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: If she sees you as a threat to Kouta, you will die. Period.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: During her breakdown at the summer festival we hear her vomit with the back to the audience (Strangely, tons of severed heads and oceans of spilt blood are not as bad as a small pool of vomit).
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • She's actually not that powerful compared to some of the other diclonii; Nana has longer vectors and can hold her at bay, while Mariko is an outright nuke. Lucy is a far more experienced killer, and when Nana tries to go easy on her, Lucy rips her limbs off.
  • Subverted in the end of the manga where her vectors can split islands and have a reach of at least hundreds of kilometers.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Several characters think that it's her natural instinct to eradicate humanity, but given her past, her experiences alone would be enough to make her what she is. She truly believes that she's doing all those atrocities out of instinct, so if we look at the nurture aspect, we come to the conclusion that she Mind Raped herself (with a little help from nearly everyone around her and an inner voice/alternate personality that wants to eradicate all life) into believing that she was, in her own words, "born to wipe out mankind".
• Would Hurt a Child: Would kill them, actually.
• Your Head A-Splode: She goes for this when she wants to make a quick kill. But she has other ways of torturing you if she really wants to make you suffer.

Nyu

Nyu

Not a separate character in the strictly technical sense, Nyu is the split personality of Lucy that developed after a .50 BMG round grazed the metallic helmet protecting her head. Nyu has a childlike personality, an infantile knowledge of the world, and lacks spoken language skills, only able to say "Nyu" and "Kouta" most of the time. Nyu is innocent and incapable of violent acts, a foil to the normally cold and sadistic Lucy; she is the manifestation of Lucy's "good side".

When Nyu is attacked violently, she regresses into Lucy; likewise, when Lucy is treated with love and kindness or wants to hide herself from Kouta, she will switch back into Nyu. While Nyu exists first due to trauma, it is believed that Lucy subconsciously encourages her presence due to her feelings of guilt towards Kouta.

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• All-Loving Heroine: Nyuu doesn't seem to hate anyone, and loves all around her.
• Alternate Identity Amnesia: She has no memories of her past or what her Lucy side does.
• Ambiguously Bi: She loves Kouta, but that doesn't keep her from groping other girls. Even after she becomes intelligent, she wonders why she wants to Skinship Grope Yuka, likely due to her former self's influence.
• Amnesiacs are Innocent: Because she can't remember all the awful things that happened to her, Nyu is sweet and trusts others.
• The Atoner: In the anime, as she starts seeing more of Lucy's memories, she feels great regret for her other self's actions. In one scene, she impersonates Kouta's sister Kanae so she can forgive him for the things he said before she was murdered, apologizing profusely for said murder before she reverts back to her usual state.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Let's just say that putting her in danger, hitting her on the head hard enough, or getting her drunk or drugged will make her revert to her Lucy persona.
• Big Bad Friend: To Nana, in a sense - Nana hates Lucy, but is good friends with Nyu, even though they are two different personas of the same person.
• Blank Slate: She has no useful speech abilities, latches emotionally on to the first people she meets, and frequently doesn't seem to understand what's going on. The anime cuts off before Lucy is reduced to an extended coma and Nyu is allowed to develop. She is even able to talk in full sentences, and is, at that point, a full personality that directly contrasts Lucy perfectly. She still keeps her Verbal Tic, though.
• Bungled Suicide: She tries to cut her wrist when she learns of her Lucy personality and gets terrified that her other self has been killing people.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Nyu likes groping bigger breasts and is disappointed of Mayu's small ones.
• Covert Pervert: She prefers groping bigger boobs than small ones like Mayu's. She also does not grope Kouta because she explains that men have no boobs. Though, she prefers that he would grope her.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: She is constantly molesting the other girls that live at the inn. She isn't portrayed as a disgusting creep because she doesn't understand the gravity of her actions, and is only (for the most part) copying things that she's seen others doing.
• Driven to Suicide: In the manga, when she finds out that she's a mass murderer, she tries to kill herself, but cannot do it.
• Dumbass No More: In the manga, Nyu develops average intelligence and speech after the six-month Time Skip. She gets embarrassed when her friends talk about how she behaved like a toddler before.
• Forced Kiss: She steals a kiss from Yuka and Nozomi.
• Genki Girl: Much more prominent in the manga. After being able to form sentences, she has such a happy personality that the manga looks like a Reconstruction of an Unwanted Harem anime.
• Helpless Good Side: Lucy is a psychotic murderer. Her other personality Nyu is an innocent amnesiac girl who initially doesn't even know how to use a restroom. She's not so helpless when she's able to use her vectors herself.
• I Am a Monster: In the manga, when she finds out she's actually a dangerous Serial Killer, she reacts to the truth about as well as you'd expect, and nearly kills herself for it.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: She's frequently seen naked or in partial dress, usually due to her childlike personality. That said, she has no concept of privacy or modesty, and it takes some effort before she figures out how to dress herself properly.
• Innocently Insensitive: She cheerfully breaks the seashell Kanae gave to Kouta, which greatly infuriates him. Yuka tries to defend Nyu, saying that maybe she broke the seashell because she thought it made Kouta sad.
• Instant Expert: When Nozomi teaches Nyu how to sing, she chooses her favorite song Elfenlied, a German song in old German. Nyu is able to sing it fine and has no trouble with the language at all.
• Mysterious Waif: Unlike most examples, we more-or-less know from the beginning how she ended up on a beach.
• Nice Girl: One of the biggest contrasts to her alter ego is her kindness and friendliness.
• No Sense of Personal Space: She constantly glomps Kouta, and fondles Yuka's breasts on more than one occasion. Not to menton Nozomi's crotch.
• One-Word Vocabulary: She initially has a very limited vocabulary with "Nyu" being the only word she can say. She slowly learns to say more words. After the 6-month Time Skip in the manga, Nyu can speak full sentences.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Whenever Nyuu speaks in coherent sentences, it usually indicates something far more serious is going on.
• Potty Failure: When Kouta and Yuka first bring her to their house, Nyu wets herself because her toddler mentality prevents her from knowing how to use the bathroom.
• The Prankster: In the manga, she tries to play a prank on Kouta as revenge for scolding at her (and maybe for stopping her Attempted Rape on Nozomi) by surprising him. The timing of her prank is really bad, as the person she surprise turns out not to be Kouta, but Nana, who attacks her because of Lucy dismembering her.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: She's innocent, cheery and optimistic in contrast to Evil Redhead Lucy.
• Skinship Grope: She enjoys groping the breasts of the other women at the inn. She recognizes this behavior as unacceptable due to Kouta's mishap.
• Suddenly Bilingual: Nyu has no trouble to sing the German song "Elfenlied" for the first time.
• Tareme Eyes: A contrast to Lucy's Tsurime Eyes, Nyu's eyes are bigger and rounder to make them look cuter.
• Verbal Tic Name: When Kouta and Yuka find her, she can only say "Nyu" due to the brain damage caused by a bullet to the head. Kouta then names her after the only word she can speak at first.
• Womanchild: Nyu is essentially an infant in an adult body. Averted later on in the manga.

Kaede

Kaede

Sure, she's sweet and innocent at the moment...

Kaede is the original personality of Lucy and Nyu. She was once a gentle soul who never knew her parents but had some hopes for the world. That changed when some kids at her orphanage decided to bully her...

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• Blessed with Suck: She was born with powers well beyond anything a normal human can counter, manifested in her distinctive horns. She clearly despises them for all the abuse and mockery thrown in her direction because of her appearance, and her innate hatred for humans has made her cold and distant to most, which only earned her more unwanted attention. That's to say nothing of the absolute hell she endures after killing her best friend's family...
• Bloodbath Villain Origin: After she snaps and commits her first murder, the room she's in is almost totally covered with the blood of her victims.
• Bully Magnet: She was relentlessly bullied by the other children at the orphanage due to her emotionless demeanor and her horns.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In the most frightening way imaginable. Her jealousy involves murdering Kouta's family because he went to the festival with Yuka instead of her. She spared Yuka's life only because Kouta would hate her if she killed her.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She killed Kouta's little sister Kanae and his father in cold blood because he lied to her about the gender of his cousin Yuka. She was eventually aware of this.
• The Dog Bites Back: She snaps and slaughters her bullies after they take the puppy she'd been caring for and beat it to death right in front of her.
• Enfant Terrible: She began her killing spree at a young age.
• Forced to Watch: Her Start of Darkness was when a group of bullies beat the puppy she had started caring for to death while making her watch. They don't survive the consequences.
• Freakiness Shame: She hated her horns since she was bullied because of them. Kouta was the only kid who thought her horns are cool.
• Freudian Excuse: Lucy's Kill All Humans mentality began because of the loss of Kaede's puppy at the hands of some very cruel kids, got worse when she felt betrayed by Kouta later on, and practically crossed the Despair Event Horizon after finding out that the human she tried to spare when she turned herself in dies from her wounds.
• Good Girl Gone Bad: She was a good girl, until a group of orphans beat her puppy to death, the only being in the world she actually cared about. They found out about it from a girl who pretended to be her friend, the first human she was beginning to trust. That's when her murder spree began, although it was put down eventually thanks to Kouta. However, after he lies about his cousin's gender and she finds out the truth, she's gone for good.

• Hide Your Otherness: Kouta gave her a watch cap to hide her horns because she told him she hated them.
• Kick the Dog: A lot, really, but a few examples stand out.
  • When she goes on her rampage in the festival, she kills a woman because she showed concern for her. In this case, however, it's slightly justified in that Kaede was... not exactly in her right mind at the time.
  • Brutally murdering Kouta's father and little sister without any provocation was so horrible and over the top that that even Kaede herself agreed that there was no atonement for that.
  • Doing Cold-Blooded Torture on Nana even after her fight with her was over.
• Lost Pet Grievance: She got emotionally attached to a little puppy. Said puppy was practically her Only Friend due to how all the other kids bullied her because of her horns. When the other kids find out about the puppy, they beat it to death and forced her to watch, causing Lucy to reach her Rage Breaking Point and slaughter all of the kids in the orphanage.
• Meaningful Name: Kaede refers to a kind of Japanese maple tree, and the Latin Acer is the name for the genus of maples to which it belongs. Acer means "sharp" or "piercing," referring to the bladelike leaves of the maple tree. Fitting given Lucy's personality and her...well, tendency to slice things up.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: A subverted example. Though she plots to murder her love rival Yuka, Kouta tearfully begs her not to kill more of his loved ones.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Her murders of Kouta's father and little sister. They're the only kills she actually feels any remorse over.
• Orphan's Ordeal: She grew up in an Orphanage of Fear where the kids treated her like freak because she isn't human.
• Start of Darkness: Episodes 8 & 9 show Lucy's backstory as Kaede, along with the only happy day she spent while with Kouta when they were kids. The manga does this sooner, at the time of episode 6.
• The Stoic: She shut off her emotions in order to deny her tormentors the joy of seeing her in pain, which then became another reason why she was despised, reinforcing the original bigotry and egging to make her react.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Her vectors first activated after the bullies at the orphanage killed her puppy and made her watch.
• Tsundere: She pretended she didn't care about Kouta and didn't want to be friends with him or anything, but she still felt happy and blushed when he came to play with her.
• Walking Spoiler: Her existence revolves around Lucy/Nyu's backstory.
• Woman Scorned: She killed Kouta's father and sister right in front of him because he took another girl to the festival. She would have killed Yuka too if Kouta haven't begged her to stop.
• Yandere: She killed Kouta's father and sister because she was angry at Kouta for going to a festival with Yuka instead of her. Disproportionate Retribution at the worst, although she seriously regretted it later, to the point that the thought of eventually apologizing to him gave her the will to survive.

Diclonius DNA Voice

Diclonius DNA Voice

”You should know by now, that it is my destiny to take human life.”

A fourth, hidden personality within the protagonist, she is the one who drives Lucy to murder. She is the reason that Diclonii are driven to kill humans, and she has the ultimate goal of replacing humanity with her species.

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• Apocalypse Maiden: Towards the end of the manga, she finally takes over and starts killing humans everywhere on the world at rates that would make the deadliest WMDs look like mere fireworks in an attempt to destroy humanity in a spiteful decision that since Diclonii, and mainly her, can't rule the world, she'll destroy it.
• Big Bad: At the end of the series, she takes over as the main antagonist after decapitating Kakuzawa.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: The voice teams up with Kakuzawa to destroy all humanity.
• The Corrupter: To Lucy and possibly the other Diclonii.
• Cute Is Evil: More so than any other character.
• Enemy Within: Lucy has a pretty complicated mindset. Ultimately, however, it is the voice, the embodiment of her basic instincts, that is the undisputed, unambiguous villain who pushes her to do everything horrific onscreen.
• Final Boss: After killing Kakuzawa, she becomes the main threat to Kouta and his friends.
• Greater-Scope Villain: She is the overarching antagonist, influencing Lucy from within. Ironically, she shares this status with Tomoo, the very human who started her desire to Kill All Humans.
• The Heartless: She's the result of all the abuse Kaede suffered.
• Hive Queen: Implied to be influencing all the diclonii, not just Lucy.

• Manipulative Bitch: She plays on Lucy’s insecurities and fears to get her to kill.
• More than Mind Control: Inflicts this on Lucy and possibly the other Diclonii by influencing them to kill humans.
• Non-Action Big Bad: She’s the one trying to destroy humanity, but as pointed out, she cannot directly posses a body- hence she has to rely on Lucy and the other Diclonii to do the killing. Subverted in the finale when she finally does seize control of Lucy.
• Non-Indicative Name: She's named for the supposed innate genetic instinct of Dicloniii to kill or subjugate humanity. The only problem is that there's roughly zero evidence this is a thing that actually exists rather than being a form of victim-blaming intended to excuse the cruelty they're subjected to as self-defense, and her existence is more plausibly explained as being a result of Kaede's massive trauma. Still, she does act like this likely-fictitious drive is supposed to, so the name sticks.
• Satanic Archetype: Even more so than Lucy, as she has everything Lucy does and is the one corrupting her.
• Split Personality: The hidden fourth one, who manages to be worse than Lucy.
• Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: Towards the end of the manga, she takes over after realizing that she and the Diclonii can't rule the world so she will kill as many humans as she can before she finally expires.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Even more so than Lucy.
• Taking You with Me: She decides to do this to the entire world once she can’t rule it.
• The Unfettered: She has no reservations about doing anything in her considerable amount of power to kill all the humans and replace them with her species.
• Walking Spoiler: Her mere existence is a major reveal.
• Woman Behind the Woman: To Lucy; she’s the one telling her to kill people.

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