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.
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. The bullies from Lucy's childhood count too, and the researchers aren't exactly humane, either. Only Kurama shows some degree of humanity, and he's still VERY fucked up.
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.
Dude, Not Funny!: A good measure of the humor in the first couple episodes involves Nyu acting like a toddler, wandering around naked and acting ragingly stupid.
Ear Worm: The opening is probably one of the biggest Ear Worms in anime history.
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 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: The Diclonii are chained up and naked in the facility making some really creepy fanservice. What else is naked and locked up by humans? Animals. The Diclonus are nothing but animals in their eyes.
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.
Internet Backdraft: This seems to be one of the few series that 4chan seems to legitimately hate.
Les Yay: 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.
Nyu. She loses some of these traits in the manga when she learns to speak and behave properly.
Nana too, in her own way.
Lucy has her own version of Moe when she's in her Woobie phase.
Moral Event Horizon: Lucy's bullies when they murder her dog. Lucy when she murders Kouta's family. Mayu's stepfather and mother. Lucy again, when she dismembers Nana. Pretty much 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.
Tear Jerker: Especially the manga. Nana gets a lot of this.
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!
Woobie Species: The Diclonii. Bonus points for the bulk of them going down the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds road.
World Half Empty: After repeatedly showing that Lucy/Nyu had only acted as the humans around them acted, meaning that Diclonii raised by loving parents would be no more likely to become evil than humans, the manga kills off her entire species save a single sterile one. Were you expecting a hopeful solution when Humans Are Bastards and are the ones raising the People of Mass Destruction?
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 of course 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. Of course, Lucy is not only a Clingy Jealous Girl, but a Yandere and Cute and Psycho who slaughtered an entire carnival full of innocent people when Kouta snubbed her, as well as wanting to erradicate mankind... but don't tell that to her fans, or they'll tell you that they all deserved it.
Not only that, but they'll also say that they're happy Lucy killed them all. Especiallyhis "stupid and annoying bitch" of a little sister!
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.
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".
TheWoobie: In a series full of woobies, Nana takes the cake. Everyone loves Nana. She get's pushed around so much. Poor Nana, indeed.
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
Complete Monster: Suprisingly averted due to Character Development from a psychopathic soldier who joined his Spec Ops unit only to be able to legally kill people who'd give him a challenge to a Jerkass who considers everyone as shit but has a moral code to not be indebted to anyone, and is also obsessed with having his Revenge against Lucy, to the Jerkass Woobie and Jerk with a Heart of Gold that he is in the end who actually saves Mayu from the Unknown Man in a truely Badass manner, but is still obsessed with killing Lucy.
Jerkass Woobie: He's an asshole, yeah. But he still manges to come up as more decent than others assholes here.
