These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
YMMV: Elfen Lied
Adaptation Displacement: At least in the U.S., what with the manga not being licensed there.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Practically every single character is left slightly insane from their troubled pasts, or completely evil. Often it's very hard to keep them apart.
Humans Are Bastards needs to be taken with at least a grain of salt; The researchers and staff on the island definitely call their essential Humanity into serious question. But the vast majority of people in Japan and on Earth had no say in how these girls were treated, and never even heard of them until the war Kouta describes in the manga finale took place. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the age these girls get their powers makes their misuse inevitable. So, while prejudice must be condemned, the first time people even hear about Diclonius is when their neighbors' three-year olds kill them. Much like in X-Men or the various Devilman series, ordinary Humans aren't offered a lot of choice on how to view their potential replacements. This said, many non-Kakuzawa-employed Humans in the series do not acquit themselves terribly well.
Even some of the researchers get called into question. Several signed up because the Diiclonius births killed family, or rendered them unable to bear children. Some go For Science!, like Nousou, and quite a few don't want to disappoint The Director. The Operative at the end clearly hates Lucy for killing those near to him.
Saito in the Manga, did she really love Mariko? She manipulated her into thinking her father hated her, but before that, she repeatedly expressed excitement over finally seeing her, after speaking to her for years and helping to raise and educate her, she admits to feeling a sort of bond with the girl.
The Other Facility, because we know so little about it. Of the Four characters we meet from there, only Shirakawa is named, The Agent and the two Operatives go unnamed. We know its purpose is vector research, and they're monitored more closely by the Japanese Government, but we don't know if they have an agenda, want to save the world, or solve the problem to prevent Japan's implication in dooming the planet.
Broken Base: Oh, God, the Fan Dumb. Oh, God, the Hate Dumb. The sane part of the audience probably won't make 50%.
The "Unknown Man" in the manga. In order to find our protagonist, he crafted a radar system made from a silpelit who was still alive, by cutting her lower half. In order to make sure that she wouldn't use her powers against him, he also built a tank for her which would keep her in a constant state of excruciating pain. He also felt it would be a shame to let said diclonius' body go to waste, so he, in no grey terms, raped her before he cut her legs. Finally, just when you think this guy couldn't get any more repulsive, he attempts to rape Mayu.
Mayu's stepfather. He is a child molester who loved to sexually humiliate her, and it's shown he went as far as to sodomize her. He gets no comeuppance for this, as he's only shown in flashbacks.
The Lucy hatedom gets pretty rabid too, but how much of this is Die for Our Ship and how much is simply hating Lucy because she's a villain is completely impossible to determine.
Ear Worm: The opening is probably one of the biggest Ear Worms in anime history.
Ensemble Darkhorse: You'd think such a series has no fan favourite character, considering everyone is either mentally broken or outright villainous but nope, one of the most popular characters outside the main cast is Kurama. Suprisingly, about as much liked is his daughter. Yes, the psychotic tragic villain Mariko.
Esoteric Happy Ending: The final chapter of the manga clearly states that the World Health Organization "forbade" the birth of Diclonii worldwide until they discovered a vaccine capable of preventing their conception. Red tape and technobabble aside, the term for this is genocide.
Fanon: The Unknown Man is thought to be a Kakuzawa and thus is related to the Director. They do know each other, and the Unknown man does seem to know and support the Direcotor's agenda. However, they are never confirmed to be related, and it's unknown if the Unknown man wears a Hairpiece to disguise little horns on his head.
Fridge Brilliance: Lucy frees Mayu's puppy because her puppy was beaten to death when she was younger.
This is a more minor case, but Mariko's four viable clones are named Alicia, Barbara, Cynthia, and Diana.
Lucy's real name is Kaede. It was right in front of us the whole time: The main characters live at the Maple Inn.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show didn't get very far in Japan (partly due to being hardcore enough that it couldn't be broadcast on-air even in Japan), but was a major Sleeper Hit in America through DVD sales. Same for the actual Germans.
Hype Backlash: It's one of the few series 4chan users refuse to talk about due to this reason.
Internet Backdraft: This seems to be one of the few series that 4chan seems to legitimately hate.
As said before, Nyuu is a girl with the body of a 18 year old and the mind of a 2 year old and as a result has no inhibitions at all. Kouta knows how to keep her in check quite well, but when he's not around she practically sexually assaults a number of the other girls in the house.
Later in the manga, after being Nyu for a long time, Lucy at one point looks at Yuka and is puzzled why she is feeling compelled to grope her.
Nyu. She loses some of these traits in the manga when she learns to speak and behave properly.
Nana too, in her own way.
Mayu.
Moral Event Horizon: Lucy's bullies when they murder her dog. Lucy when she murders Kouta's family. Mayu's stepfather and mother. Anything the Unknown Man does.
Narm: Almost all of the gory scenes wind up being this due to the art and how over-the-top it is.
The constant nudity and Fanservice can turn otherwise serious scenes into this.
This whole series is supposed to be a sort-of lecture on how "Humans Are Bastards". Only that the "humans" (save for Kouta and his family, Mayu, Yuka, Kurama and later Bando, and in the past Hiromi) tend to be so obviously, ridiculously, flatly and STUPIDLY evil that the emotional impact is completely gone.
Ship-to-Ship Combat/Armed With Canon: Between the anime and the manga, if you can believe it. The manga all but explicitly states Kouta and Yuka are the Official Couple, but the anime seems to ship Kouta with Lucy. The anime also attempts to make Lucy more sympathetic by removing Lucy's tendency to laugh maniacally while killing people (which to be fair does remove a plot where she does and Evil Laugh and Kouta doesn't seem to notice) and Flanderizes Yuka's Clingy Jealous Girl moments.
Tear Jerker: Especially the manga. Nana gets a lot of this.
Toy Ship: NanaxMayu to some fans, despite there being no hints of this in the main series.
Unfortunate Implications: Apparently, a seventeen-year-old girl who has no sense of modesty and acts like a toddler is supposed to be cute and/or hilarious!
The Scrappy: Tomoo is the most hated character in the series. A Deviantart user even created a contest asking for people to draw him dying in some way.
The Inner voice is also subject to this, is it the root of her DNA speaking to her? Is it another personality that formed through all of the abuse breaking her? Is she the Embodiment of the Diiclonii? Or is she some combination of all three.
Now, this was completely deliberate on the writers' part, since Evil Is Sexy and Lucy is one of the most sympathetic mass murderers in anime history with a genuinely powerful, and surprisingly well-executed Freudian Excuse, but regardless: to hear her fanboys (and more than one fangirl) talk, you'd think that she had never done anything wrong and just needed a hug to be turned into an angel of sweetness and light, never mind the fact that she started off the series freely killing any human except for Kouta who ever crossed her path. Her romantic rival, Unlucky Childhood Friend Yuka, is turned into Ron the Death Eater, and her Clingy Jealous Girl tendencies are Flanderized to the point that the Lucy fandom often gleefully wish for Lucy to dismember Yuka. Lucy is not only a Clingy Jealous Girl, but a Yandere and Cute and Psycho who slaughtered a carnival full of innocent people when Kouta snubbed her, as well as wanting to eradicate mankind... but don't tell that to her fans, or they'll tell you that they all deserved it.
Brutally murdering Kouta's father and little sister without any provocation was so horrible and over the top that, even when Lucy became The Atoner, plenty of fans thought that there was no atonement for that.
Others also add slicing off Nana's limbsafter the threat she posed was completely neutralized.
And for some, trying to kill Mayu after Mayu tried to help her.
Ron the Death Eater: Now, Lucy is clearly not innocent by any measure. However, to go along with the Fan Dumb, there's the Hate Dumb that think of her as nothing but a pure evil person who would always kill others For the Evulz as soon as something goes wrong. Now granted, she certainly has shown this behavior early in the series (examples shown above), but as the story goes on (and definitely more prominent in the manga) it shows that she does feel guilt, remorse, and regret for killing, and does try her best to NOT kill anymore and would've been content to live with Kouta and her friends with no longer having to kill. However, the people of the Diclonius Research Facility always keep screwing her over and over, and forcing her back into killing people, making it difficult to nearly impossible for her to atone and any hope she can find in humanity and a better future grow dimmer each time. And she's being manipulated by a Split Personality that represents her innate diclonius instincts, which she first tried to suppress. Seriously, the girl just can't win.
Yuka
Angst Dissonance: One of the biggest non-shipping reasons for her becoming The Scrappy, being one of the most well-off characters in the series, but complaining about her unfortunate circumstances more than any of them.
Lucy/Kouta fans LOVE to bash Yuka for being clingy, despite Lucy also being clingy in other (and scarier) ways. It makes you wonder if those fans really appreciate the Lucy/Kouta pairing for how screwed-up it actually is in canon...
People in the West bash her since they're both cousins, and incest of any kind is largely taboo and considered "disgusting".
Wangst: See Wangst entry and Angst Dissonance. How dare she be... NORMAL! And not know what Lucy had been through!
Nana
TheWoobie: In a series full of woobies, Nana takes the cake. Everyone loves Nana. She get's pushed around so much. Poor Nana, indeed.
There's a doujinshi dedicated to making her even more of a Woobie.
Mayu
Hollywood Homely: When she's first introduced she is described as looking like the homeless child she has been for perhaps several weeks at that point. Problem is, virtually nothing about her physical appearance suggests this.
Bando
Jerkass Woobie: He's an asshole, yeah. But he still manges to come up as more decent than others assholes here.
