Talk:List of Elfen Lied characters

Lucy "partially manufactured" the Nyu personality?
What's all this then? I'm not sure of this. --Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici 02:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

While the amnesia she got from the head wound may have once been entirely legit, later chapters had Lucy realize that how she wronged Kouta meant that he could never forgive her, but she wanted desperately to be around him, and so she came to the decision (around Chapter 50) that forcibly being Nyu was the only way to do this. Near the end, as she and Kouta hashed out their past, she called Nyu her ideal self, the person she would like to have been. There are extensive main character articles and chapter/episode summaries on the series own wiki, if that helps. Gojirob (talk) 13:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Removal of some characters
I'm going to follow the lead of what we did over at List of One Piece characters and eliminate incidental and/or trivial characters, this list really only needs to mention the main characters that are seen throughout most the series. While this page isn't really the long, it's all plot and it's pretty messy. Anyone who has a problem with these removals may discuss them here. -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 07:29, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

yes, i noticed four characters were ommitted and don't have entries: 1) the guy holding the cell-phone - can't remember his name but in the anime it was a scientist and in the manga it was a guy in a suit who accompanied bandou several times. Ultimately, I'm referring to the manga version of the "cellphone" guy. He makes the grave mistake of revealing the pass code to Mariko and dies in the explosion I think.

2) Anna - the daughter of the Director; she becomes a strange, big creature but reverts back to normal in the end

3) scientist who creates the mariko clones - he gets beheaded after foolishly removing a cranial component from Barbara (mariko clone)

4) 2nd "eyeglasses" person - from the last chapter, it seems to be a woman. looks very much like shirakawa but probably isn't her. she helps the assistant escape from the island.


 * btw, who was the commander of one of the vector ships? looks almost like the director's son. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hapless researcher (talk • contribs) 08:00, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Please note that this is not a list of every character in Elfen Lied, this is a list of the notable characters in Elfen Lied. Unimportant or incidental (one-time) characters have gradually been removed as there's nothing useful to say about them.  This page should be about the characters, not an extended plot summary.  So when you go to edit this page, please don't think "Which characters are missing?" because all the important characters are here, instead look for way to improve existing text either by looking for copy errors, or adding references to the manga or anime.  I'm going to dig out my Newtype magazine interview with the anime director and see if I can't find anything about the characters there.  -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 05:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The cell phone guy is named Isobe. But in the manga all of the unlisted characters play important roles, I think if it is a character page then they should have all the characters, oh yeah, the guy who created the clones is named 'Nousou.'--PTS (talk) 16:15, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that all the characters play important roles to the story. However what we are concerned with here is not their importance to the plot, but the importance to the reader in understanding Elfen Lied.  It simply isn't necessary for the average reader to have a list of every possible character; rather, we just list the main characters and maybe the few side characters that are needed to understand the subject.  This is the approach taken in the higher-rated character list articles.  Remember, Wikipedia is written for an average reader, not just for fans.    -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 14:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I do agree with what you said about wikipedia being for the common people, and not the fans; but I believe that the Agent (androgynous Sunglasses character), Nousou (scientist of the clones), Anna (director's daughter), and possibly Isobe (cell phone guy) should be given mention. While they aren't major characters, they are major supporting characters. Professor Kakuzawa just showed up to provide exposition, and be killed off, (though he appeared in flashbacks), and he gets a post. Take a look at the sailor moon character pages, the minor villains (not the monsters of the week, but the people who summon them) get a biography (or what little information counts as one). They do important things with their appearences, and they do contribute to the plot. Characters like the baker merchant and the little girl who betrayed a younger lucy/kaede, should not be given a mention, as they only stick around for 1-2 chapters, and contribute next to nothing. In the end, I believe that the above four are important enough to be included, and should be. D.M. Psyche (talk) 04:11, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

One problem with Lynn Okamoto's art style is that minor characters can be hard to distinguish. A woman that Lucy casually kills in the street around Chapter 26 looks a lot like the woman who claimed Wanta was her dog. They also vary widely in terms of their impact. That same woman appears in two different chapters, while Saito (the scientist who thought she was a surrogate mother to Mariko and was instead killed by her) only appeared in one. Yet Wanta's supposed former owner really only served as a dramatic way to temporarily leave Mayu totally alone and further humiliate her. Saito, on the other hand, was revealed to have manipulated Mariko with partial and total lies about her birth parents, in an ultimately failed effort to seem like her only option as a parent. This made Mariko even more isolated and violent, and made Kurama's confession that he loved his daughter (and that his wife had begged for her to be spared) the basis for her deciding to fight Lucy. The Orphanage Girl cited above had a very brief existence, but her possible betrayal (she could have been just a blabbermouth, though evidence cuts towards betrayal) basically created the Lucy persona in all but name. As someone who edits the series-specific wiki, I would argue that the articles here are general ones. Anna Kakuzawa appears for one-third of the series. Isobe for 2/3rds, so they are automatic. Others, like the Unknown Man (the pedophile hunter used by Chief/Director Kakuzawa who maims a Diclonius girl to use as a Lucy-tracker and almost rapes Mayu) are almost gone as they arrive, but again their impact can be significant. A series-specific wiki has room to explore all that; a general article in a general wiki can be made unwieldly by this and probably doesn't need the lower tier. Gojirob (talk) 13:58, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Kanae's death
I might make a mistake since I didn't read the japanese version but a fan translated one, but in the manga it seems that Kouta thinks his sister died from illness not in a car accident. He thinks his dad died in a car accident. In the article it is stated that he thinks that in the manga he thinks his sister died in a car accident.

By the way, there is a "citation needed" for the fact that in the anime he believes Kanae died from illness, as far as I remember, it is in the first episode, when Kouta evokes memories from Kanae over the seashell (I clearly remember Yuka saying "Byouki ... desu", wich prooves it is illness indeed). Since I am not really familiar with Wikipedia editing and the requirements to meet I didn't do the change, but I would gladly do it !

Rosslaew (talk) 07:24, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note. I'll look into the manga references and see if you're right.  -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 10:24, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Kouta's memories on this subject vary, since they are all false ones meant to suppress the memories of Lucy murdering his family in front of him. The main seems to be that he thinks his sister died of a long illness, and that his father died in an accident not long thereafter. The manga, unlike the anime, actually shows how they died early on, but keeps their murderer out of sight till chapters 37 and 38. Gojirob (talk) 14:03, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Anime/Manga
While it's just fine to point out in the text that the character is portrayed in a certain way in the manga, and a certain way in the anime. We use prose to make this distinction, not separate subsections. -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 20:50, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * On a related note, the editing model is EDIT -> REVERT -> DISCUSS, not EDIT -> REVERT -> REVERT REVISION and demand a discussion before original state is restored. -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 20:51, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Now that I have a bit of time to work on this. Just so you know, I didn't just revert or "gut" the sections as you put it. There was a lot wrong, so a lot got chopped, but not everything. I'll detail below my specific justifications for the edits as it was too much for an edit summary. This is intended as constructive criticism, so please don't take this personally. If I didn't care, I wouldn't be taking the time here on the talkpage.

The Previous organization is non-standard and leans toward the animated adaptation which is not the original work. As I stated before, this isn't how a character summary is organized. The text itself will let the reader know which work is being referred to. Breaking it up like this (you don't use  tags on Wiki articles) gives the section a stuttered non-encyclopedic tone.

While our goal is to provide a comprehensive plot summary of the major characters in Elfen Lied, we aren't trying to do an exhaustive blow-by-blow of the character's role in the plot, so naturally only the most important parts will be included in the section, not everything. The plot should only be referenced in in-universe time if it is describing a specific scene that is important to understanding the character; the section should not be organized by the in universe chronology. -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 07:00, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

More specifically:


 * Mariko - Some of the added material does not correspond to references. The manga clearly states Vol 7, p182 that there bombs in her body, we don't need to include "probably" or bomb(s); that just looks bad.  If you don't know, look it up.  There is also a slight WP:OR problem here, for example "one of the series' most emotional scene", but also several other phrases that interpret the work rather than merely describe it.  I know it's a fine line between the two, but it is important that we only state what reliable sources have already said.  We can't publish original thought.
 * "A primary source may only be used to make descriptive statements that can be verified by any educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source."


 * Kurama - The parts removed about Mariko are already discussed under Mariko, it doesn't need to be written out twice in two different ways; the shortened version I provided was adequate. The last paragraph was removed because it makes evaluative claims and conclusions about the plot, which we can't do.  The section break issue here too.  I realize this section may look short, but the problem with this article isn't length. We don't need more plot details and blow-by-blow, we need to fix these descriptions in a real-world frame.


 * Cousin marriage note - This note was born out of a discussion four years ago, as an answer to an editors specific problems with perceived incest in the story. While the topic of cousin marriage might seem relevant here, this is original synthesis as well as off topic.  We're not here to defend the work against people's cultural biases.


 * Other characters - While important within the plot because she is the one that passes the virus to Kurama and ultimately his daughter Mariko; this can easily be explained in a sentence or two in Kurama's section. She doesn't have a name and other than the brief depiction in episode 10 of the anime, those plot details are not particularly necessary to understand the work.  (FYI, there are a lot of characters were on this list before that were removed; I don't recommend re-adding any of those characters without a good reason.
 * Tomoo may be important to Lucy in the fictional universe, but he's not really important to the plot.
 * I don't know if you added the Aiko Takada section, but the reference is broken and Geocities, when it was around, wasn't usually a reliable source. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.245.52.17 (talk • contribs) 05:15, 21 July 2010

Anyway, don't think that I'm just willy-nilly gutting sections or hitting the revert button, I put time into those edits (and these talkpage edits). So what would be best here would be to work together on this, so let's not revert back and forth. Let's assume that we both want what's best for the article. -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 08:25, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Additional comments about the cousin marriage note. I reiterate that WP:OR states: "Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about material found in a primary source".  Unless the reviews of Elfen Lied make such comments, do not include them here.  Also, we do not favor a particular cultural point of view.  English is a world-wide language and the reader will not necessarily have an American or European cultural perspective. The note is not necessary and off-topic.  -- Kraftlos  (Talk | Contrib) 09:04, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

nyuu
similar to what i was saying here [] (which is actually brings me here)(though i haven't tried to correct it yet) i believe that the official spelling of nyuu is actually nyu. can somebody look into this form me.zeroro(talk)(edits) 09:43, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about this anymore, it seems that it might go either way, because in the manga it's spelled nyuu. I'd really appreciate if some one could find out which is officialSincerely zeroro(edits) 00:56, 21 March 2013 (UTC)