I thought it was a great manga. A lot of gore and nudity (the art reminded me of a very bloody Love Hina story) and it kept twisting and turning until the very end. Average and slightly embarrassing when it came to fan service and character development (if there was any) but still a good read if you want something ecchi, shonen (maybe seinen?), and sort of sci-fi-ish.
Life goals: Immortality, to flirt with any cute thing that moves, and the permanent silence of my frequently-occurring existential crises.
Lucy's anything but flat as cardboard....
But otherwise, yes. The gorn, cliches, narm, and attempts to be dark and "mature" make this series rather unbarable at times.
I actually enjoyed it, but I hated the art because it just seemed too odd and out of place. It actually took a few tries for me to get passed the art in the manga (though it does get better, though it's still not as good as it should be.) I didn't know what the deal was with all the unnecessary fanservice myself. (Dude, she's dead, do we really need to check out her panties right now? In fact, why do all the girls have to be naked in the lab anyway? Couldn't they at least be wearing hospital gowns?)
I did like the who thing to show us what makes a monster since that kind of what draws me in. But you really had to dig into the series to get through to that and even then it's kind of ridiculous. I mean, what, does everyone in Japan abuse their family members? I get it, humans are jerks. I also found most of the characters hard to relate to and it was hard to sympathize with most characters too. (Particularly Yuka, especially since it took her until just about the end of the anime to actually, you know, CHANGE a bit?)
So in short, it just seemed like it relied too much on being dark and edgy to get some pure gold. But if you see past that...
You know, you may call the series a cliche storm, but you haven't elaborated on it. I'm confused on what you'd call a cliche in it. I'm sure there are cliches, but you don't even name any.
And I disagree on the Nightmare Fuel statement. Whatever the overall quality of the manga, some depictions are downright horrifying.
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A Potentially Good Series Overloaded With Narm and Cliches
Elfen Lied was a promising series, I must admit: people trying to speed up evolution by hunting down those... things. Or at least I think that's the plot. It got discarded in the fourth chapter for nudity and over-the-top gore.
The main character, Lucy or whatever is, like all the other characters, flat as a piece of cardboard. There's not much to her.
The art is sloppy and ugly to look at. You'd think it was that terrible fan art every series has. It could've been good, but no. It was just a bunch of pointless Gorn. It's supposed to be deep, but instead, it just seems as if all those things were tacked on in order to make it seem as if there's something other than the mindless killing.
The only thing that comes anywhere close to being just plain Nightmare Fuel? The dog scene. And even then it serves little to no purpose.
It truly is a cliche storm. Someone please tell me that there is a plot, it's just heavily veiled by all this godawful attempt at a story.