Lucy and Nyū
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| "Lucy" | |
|---|---|
| Elfen Lied character | |
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| Voiced by | Sanae Kobayashi (Japanese) Kira Vincent-Davis (English) |
| Profile | |
| Aliases | Kaede; Nyū |
| Age | 18[1] |
| Gender | Female |
| Species | Diclonius (Mutant Human) |
Lucy (ルーシー Rūshī?) is a fictional character and the main protagonist/antagonist from the anime and manga series Elfen Lied. Lucy is a "diclonius", a mutant human with telekinetic abilities that manifest themselves as various invisible "arms" (called "Vectors") and horn-like protrusions atop her skull. After being shot in the head with an anti-tank rifle (the force of which is mostly deflected due to the protective casing on her head) in an attempt to prevent her escape, Lucy develops a split personality; her alternate side is known as "Nyū", due to that initially being the only word she can say. Both sides of the character, her default murderous and sadistic side and her benign and considerate side, are treated as effectively two different characters in the series. She is voiced by Sanae Kobayashi in the Japanese version, and by Kira Vincent-Davis in the official English dub.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Lucy hates humans mainly because of how she was treated by her human peers as a child. Lucy was abandoned as an infant and placed in an orphanage, where the other children bullied her mercilessly because of the horns on her head. When she was about ten years old, Lucy found a stray puppy and began taking care of it. She then met a girl and they became friends. She told her friend about the dog and made her promise not to tell to the other kids. However, the girl told the bullies who, in turn, found and captured the puppy and brought it to Lucy. While being restrained by one of the boys, Lucy kicked their leader in the stomach, provoking them to torture the young dog. This ended in the puppy bludgeoned to death as "punishment" for Lucy's kicking the leader. In this moment of great stress, Lucy became aware of her acute abilities as a Diclonius, using her newly acquired vectors to slaughter the boys, and even the young girl that informed them of the puppy.
Later, Lucy buried her puppy where she first found it, whereupon she first met Kōta, who was in town visiting relatives. Unlike all humans Lucy had previously known, Kōta actually liked her horns, complimenting them when they first met, much to her chagrin, and insisted on them being friends, even going so far to sneak out and risk getting in trouble to meet her. Kōta was the first person to ever treat Lucy with affection (except for the girl that betrayed her). They spend the day together, and Kohta tells Lucy that he was leaving Kamakura the next day and his cousin would see him off. Lucy asked him the gender of his cousin, but Kohta lies to her, saying his cousin is a boy to save face.
Lucy looked for Kōta to tell him her feelings before he had to leave, but she discovered the truth upon seeing him with his female cousin Yuka. Lucy panicked and jumped to the conclusion that Kōta had been lying about everything, and like the children in her orphanage, was just pretending to be nice to her in order to tease her. Falling into a mental state, the stress of "losing" Kōta broke Lucy emotionally, and she came to the conclusion that the only way for her to survive would be to kill off the human race. Lucy then proceeded to start killing several people at the festival. Soon afterwards, she intercepted Kōta as he was leaving at the train station and killed his sister Kanae and his father. She planned to kill Yuka afterward; however, Kōta tackled her to the ground and demanded that she stop, and Kōta's horrified reaction made Lucy realize for the first time she had done something awful that she could never undo. The guilt over what she had done to Kōta would follow her the rest of her life.
[edit] Capture and imprisonment
Lucy proceeded to live the next five years as a runaway under the hope that she could one day apologize to Kohta, she alternatively keeps a low profile, sneaking into residential homes and killing the families inside in order to obtain a place to stay (and also partially as revenge at not being able to have a normal life herself). Three years before the series begins, in the OVA, Lucy met Aiko Takada, a girl her age who suffered atrocities similar to Mayu in the series. Aiko, her only true friend besides Kōta, had run away from her father, and Lucy and Aiko then went to find Aiko's true mother.
At the same time, Kurama began searching for Lucy and followed her to the museum where Aiko's mom worked. While inside, Aiko pushed Lucy out of the way of a bullet headed towards her. Lucy agreed to go with Kurama if he promised to save Aiko. Lucy was then captured by Kurama, and imprisoned in the diclonius research institute where she was subjected to inhumane medical experiments. Upon her imprisonment, Kurama informed Lucy that Aiko had died. Hearing this news, Lucy responds: "I won't kill you. One day, I'll have you experience the same thing I did. I will erase everything related to you. One day, for sure."
By the time Lucy escapes from the research base in the first episode of the series, three years later, what little is left of her sanity is hardened into boundless hatred against all humans.
[edit] During the series
In the first episode's infamous seven minute opening action scene, Lucy fights her way out of the diclonius research institute's island base, slaughtering two dozen guards in the process. After she has escaped the base and is about to flee into the sea, Director Kurama has a sniper try to kill her with an armor-piercing .50BMG round, which is heavy enough that her vectors cannot fully block it. However, while the sniper aims for the back of her skull, a combination of Lucy's head moving at the last moment, partial deflection with her vectors, and the metal helmet restraint she was wearing caused the bullet to not kill Lucy, but instead knock her unconscious and into the sea. She also suffered brain damage from the round, resulting in splitting her mind between her homicidal "Lucy" personality, and a new, infantile "Nyū" personality.
Lucy then washes up on a nearby beach in Kamakura, where she is found by Kōta and Yuka. It is discovered her mind is now like an infant's, and because the cousins have no memory of who she is, Kōta and Yuka take her back to the former inn where they live, the Kaede Inn (Maple Inn). Because the only word she can say is the nonsense word "Nyū", they dub her "Nyū".
When Nyū flees to the beach again after making Kōta angry, Lucy is attacked by special forces SAT soldiers including Bando, but kills them and maims Bando by cutting off his right arm, breaking his left, and destroying his eyes.
In a subsequent episode, Nyū trips and hits her head, restoring her original "Lucy" personality, but instead of hurting Kōta and Yuka she runs away. At the same time, Kurama sends the Silpelit-Diclonius Nana to find Lucy. Nana finds Lucy and tries to talk her into coming back, which she refuses. Lucy originally says that she does not want to kill Nana because she has never actually killed "a person" before, revealing that she does not consider non-diclonius to be actual people. However, they soon start fighting, and engage in a massive battle in a nearby cemetery. Just as Nana gains the upper hand, she stops when Mayu arrives, not wanting to risk injuring her; this gives Lucy an opening, and she proceeds to rip Nana's arms and legs off, and would have finished her off had not Kurama then arrived. However, Lucy then flees to the inn and reverts back to Nyū.
Fearing simply leaving Nyū unattended at home, Yuka and Kōta take her with them to their university class, where Prof. Kakuzawa finds her. Kakuzawa claims that she is his niece and that they should leave her with him, which they do despite Nyū's apparent agitation. In fact, Kakuzawa is the son of Director Kakuzawa, who runs the diclonius research base that Lucy escaped from, and it is Prof. Kakuzawa that released the locks in Lucy's prison, allowing her to escape. Prof. Kakuzawa sedates Nyū and prepares to rape her. By the time he is unbuttoning his shirt, Lucy is in control as Nyū is unconscious. Kakuzawa reveals to her that he is in fact half-diclonius (watered down through years of inbreeding with humans to the point of having no vector-powers) and wants to use her to father a new race of diclonii that will kill off the entire human race. Rather than take up his offer, Lucy simply decapitates him.
Eventually, Nana (having been freed from the research base and on the run herself) arrives at the inn, almost sparking another fight with Lucy, but Lucy reverts to Nyū and her new family grows in number by one.
However, the research base finally sends in Mariko, the strongest diclonius ever, to retrieve Lucy, and she confronts Mariko rather than try to hide and end up getting anyone else involved again. Lucy slaughters several dozen more SAT soldiers sent after her, and Kōta remembers their true past together. Lucy is beaten senseless by Mariko, and one of her horns gets knocked off. However, Mariko is self-destructed along with her father Kurama, who also dies in the blast. Lucy then saves Nana from being shot, and tells her to live a happy life in the inn that Lucy herself could not. Lucy is able to talk to Kōta again and finally tell him that she is sorry for killing his father and sister, and that the only reason she kept on living through her nightmarish life was in the hope that she could one day apologize to him. Kōta says that although he could never fully forgive her, he still loves "Nyū" and "the sad girl from his past" and they share a passionate kiss. Lucy, with her final task finished, walks off to die but ultimately decides to fight back against the remaining squads of SAT soldiers from the research base. Her other horn is chipped off in the fight, however the end result of the battle is not shown, and despite the suggestion in the last scene of the show she may have survived and returned (a figure appears at the front door, and the grandfather clock which Nyu worked on starts ticking, a metaphorical symbol of Lucy's presence), it is never confirmed.
[edit] Personality
Lucy shows various signs of jealousy throughout the series towards Kōta's cousin, Yuka. This is proven when she slaughters the people at the festival and then Kōta's sister and father after she sees Kōta and Yuka together. This occurs once again when she sees Kōta and Yuka at the shrine and shortly afterwards attacks Yuka by punching her with her vectors.
As a result of her traumatic childhood and imprisonment, Lucy discounts non-diclonius as not people. On the surface, she lacks empathy, kills without much concern, and acts somewhat sadistic. Nonetheless, her capacity for love (both romantic and for friends), as well as remorse is integrated throughout the series. Indeed, one of the major ironic elements of the anime is the interaction between the all-too-human diclonius and the savage and sadistic humans who purportedly need protection from them: Lucy is surrounded by needlessly cruel humans who want to do her harm, while she reacts the way any "normal" human child would if in the same situation and armed with the ability to lethally retaliate.
Lucy distrusts and hates normal humans, and after the death of her friend Aiko Takada when she was captured by Kurama, she will indiscriminately kill any human she comes across without hesitation even if they do not pose an immediate threat to her, such as Kurama's secretary Kisaragi. However, she will not kill Kōta and Yuka, though this is only because killing Yuka would upset Kōta. That doesn't mean she will refrain from seriously harming Yuka. Gradually over the course of the series she finds normal humans who show her genuine affection and she tries to come to terms with this- for example, her reaction to Mayu's expression of concern for her at the beginning of episode 10. Although as a "Queen Diclonius" Lucy allegedly possesses an innate drive to kill off all of humanity, she never expresses a clear plan for this beyond her general feeling that normal humans are horrible and all deserve death. Indeed, when Prof. Kakuzawa specifically offers to use her to wipe out humanity so a new race of diclonii can take over the Earth, rather than accepting his offer, she simply kills Kakuzawa herself and she states she doesn't need help.
[edit] Nyū
Nyū (にゅう?) is a split personality of Lucy, possibly created from brain damage caused by a .50 BMG round ricocheting off her head (due to a metallic helmet). Nyū has a child-like personality and infantile knowledge of the world, and lacks spoken language skills. Nyū is lovable, innocent and incapable of violent acts, a foil to the normal Lucy; she is the manifestation of her 'good side'. When Nyū is in grave danger (or hit on the head), she will regress into Lucy; likewise, when Lucy is treated with love and kindness, she will uncontrollably switch back into Nyū, showing a Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde complex though they seem. Both Lucy and Nyū are in love with Kōta.
[edit] Notes
The character is called "Nyū" because, when Kōta and Yuka first meet Lucy on the beach, this is the only word she is capable of saying. Some anime fans compare this childlike state to Chii, the female lead of Chobits, where when she is activated, the only word she can say is "chī", and her vocabulary later grows, much like Nyū's.
At the end of the Elfen Lied manga, Lucy dies at the hands of Kōta. Ten years later, twin diclonius' children appear. One of them holds all of Lucy's memories of Kōta and is named Kaede, which was Lucy's real name. The other, who was not named, contains all of Nyū's memories of Kōta. They call Kōta their "very special friend".
Nyū also becomes the name of Kōta and Yuka's child, who becomes friends with the diclonius twins. She looks like a child version of Yuka.
[edit] Manga version
In the manga version, it is never actually stated that there is an exact limit to the length of vectors diclonii have, nor is it stated that they possess a limited number of vectors. Despite that, Lucy is depicted as having over twelve vectors, Nana possessing approximately six vectors, and Mariko controlling up to fifty vectors. In the anime, however, Lucy possesses four vectors, each two meters in length; Nana also has four vectors, but they are five meters long, and Mariko has twenty-six vectors, which are eleven meters long.
Diclonius vectors are rarely shown being physically attached to the body in the manga (the anime shows them extending from the back, while in the manga they usualy appear levitating and sometimes have elbows).
The diclonii are shown to be more diverse in the manga: Lucy has pink hair in both the manga and the anime. But in the manga, Mariko is blonde, and Nana has dark purple hair. On the coloured covers of the manga the three apear to have olive coloured eyes.
Some of the other notable differences between the original manga and the anime adaptation include:
- Chronologically, in the manga, Lucy's flashback sequence where she learns more about her past happens much earlier.
- Kōta's music box that plays "Lilium" (the series' theme song), which plays a part in when Lucy first meets him, does not appear in the manga.
- In the manga, young Kōta gives a stone, which resembles jade, as a present to child Lucy as a memento of their meeting. Later, Lucy places the stone, along with a written message for Kōta, inside a bottle, and buries it at her dog's grave. When Kōta eventually reads the message, it is revealed that Lucy's real name is "Kaede".
- In the manga, Kakuzawa states that overuse of Lucy's vectors will cause her body to disintegrate. Eventually this actually happens and she asks Kōta to finish her suffering by killing her.
- In the manga, Kōta never entirely forgives Lucy, as he hates her for killing his father and sister. He does ultimately forgive her ten years after he kills her, upon reading the bottled message she had written for him.
- In the manga, Lucy is far more sadistic and psychologically disturbed than she is in the anime.
- In the manga, Lucy claims she half-made Nyū in fear of facing Kōta after what she had done to his father and sister.
- In the manga, the Kakuzawa family was introduced, including Lucy's little half-brother, whom she kills along with Chief Kakuzawa.
- In the manga, Lucy has 3 personalities: Kaede (her true self), Nyū, and Lucy (the voice in her head which influences her to kill. It is stated that the voice is like a diclonius' instinct which they all have. This side of her personality is otherwise known as 'Lucy 2').
- Near the end of the manga, Lucy tries to kill Kōta, but is stopped by an image of both Kaede and Nyū appearing and disappearing.
- Near the end of the manga, it is revealed that Nyū and Lucy were reborn as twins and became friends with Kōta and Yuka's daughter.
[edit] Character reception
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Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. |
Anime News Network comment that Lucy/Nyu is an interesting character and say "..Lucy is genuinely scary, while Nyu is the lovable simpleton – though it's her dichotomous nature which is her strongest appeal. Or perhaps it's just the large amount of fan service associated with her? Either way, she's more the centerpiece around which the story revolves than the actual lead character..."[2] They added that the voice actress Kira Vincent-Davies "..in particular is dead-on as both aspects of Lucy/Nyu, but that isn't saying much since her character doesn't vocalize much.."
[edit] References
- ^ Note: While her age is not actually specified, most agree that she is 18 as she is around the same age as Kohta during her flashback in the series.
- ^ Anime News Network - Elfen Lied DVD 1 Review
[edit] External links
- Official anime website (Japanese)
- Official ADV Web site (US Distributor)
- Official Madman Web site (Australian
- Un-Official spanish Web Site
- Lucy and Nyū (anime) at Anime News Network's Encyclopedia
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