Elfen Lied

Synopsis The Diclonius, a mutated homosapien that is said to be selected by God and will eventually become the destruction of mankind, possess two horns on their heads and have a "sixth sense" which gives them telekinetic abilities. Due to this dangerous power, they have been captured and isolated in laboratories by the government. Lucy, a young and psychotic Diclonius, manages to break free of her confines and brutally murders most of the guards in the laboratory where she is being held, only to be shot in the head as she makes her escape. She survives, falling off a cliff into the ocean and manages to drift along to a beach where two teenagers, Kouta and Yuka, discover her. Having lost her memories, she was named after the only thing that she can now say, "Nyuu," and the two allow her to stay at Kouta's home. However, it appears that the psychotic side of Lucy is not dead just yet... Main Character

Kouta (コウタ/耕太)

Kohta is one of the main characters of the series and is first introduced in Volume 1 when he arrives in Kanagawa Prefecture to attend college, having previously arranged to stay with his cousin Yuka while at school.

Kohta enters the story when Yuka's family rents him a closed down inn as long as he maintains it, and begins living there with Yuka while going to a university. Kohta has repressed traumatic memories of witnessing the deaths of his father and sister, which later in the plot is revealed to be by Lucy's hand when she believes he's in love with Yuka and feels betrayed. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder brought on by the trauma of this event, caused him to end up in a psychiatric ward for over a year following the event. Due in part to his loss, Kohta is sympathetic towards girls in trouble and is extremely generous and protective to the girls around him, because he can relate to them and they remind him of his late younger sister, Kanae.

He meets Lucy in his childhood when she is burying her dead puppy and running away from the orphanage where she killed 4 children. In the anime, he was visiting his cousin with his family and decided to go to the mountain to draw, taking with him a music box he had recently purchased which plays Lilium. He strikes up a conversation with her when she apparently likes the song from the music box. He finds her horns fascinating and gives her a hat to cover them up while in public, believing Lucy hates them. He asks her if they could be friends and spends time with her. He takes her to the zoo, telling her that he likes to look at the "strange animals." In Lucy's hallucination, she perceives this as the reason why he was so nice to her. He lies to her about the gender of his cousin by saying that Yuka is a boy so Lucy wouldn't be upset or jealous. When she finds out that he lied to her, she stows away onto his train, where Kohta is initially happy to see her. His sister, however, is terrified of Lucy, having seen her kill several dozen people at the fair. While attempting to protect her brother, Lucy rips her in half and decapitates his father. Before she goes to kill Yuka, a traumatized Kohta knocks her down and begs her to stop killing people.

In the anime version, Kohta's repressed memories are triggered when Lucy kills a whole army in front of him, afterwards singing Lilium, the song that brought them together. He is more forgiving in the anime, effectively stating that she became a monster because everyone treated her like one, even kissing Lucy and stating that he still loves her and her Nyu persona though he proclaims that he cannot bring himself to fully forgive her for the murder of his family. However, once he gets his memories back in the manga, he is truly unforgiving towards her for killing his father and sister. He, however, considers Nyu innocent of her more violent half's actions. Even though he was injured from trying to save her earlier, Kohta still decides to confront Lucy again, once again reiterating his desire for revenge. However, because both Nyu and Lucy share a body, he cannot bring himself to carry out his vengeance and instead offers her a peaceful life so long as she promises never to harm a human being again.

Although Lucy initially agrees, a chain of events lead to her instincts betraying her and Kohta once again mortally wounded. She almost destroys the world in her despair, but manages to subdue her violent instincts upon deciding to save his life in return for hers. Upon regaining consciousness, Kohta finds that Lucy is literally melting away from her last act of selflessness. Unfortunately, the violent personality once again breaks through and starts assaulting the world once more. Kohta shoots and kills her at both Lucy and Nyuu's urgings, thus stopping Lucy's violent rampage once and for all. He names his daughter Nyuu in her memory and is seen visiting Lucy's puppy's grave over the years in order to honor a promise he'd made to her in their childhood. He then discovers a note Lucy had written and signed with her real name (Kaede) with Nyuu's help, buried near the stone. Kohta finally can fully forgive Lucy for the slaughter of his family upon reading it. As he is crying, Nyuu calls to a girl named "Kaede" and two twin girls with ribbons in their hair appear, heavily implied to bear some connection to Lucy and Nyuu. One states that they've been waiting for their special friend, to which Kohta finally turns around, smiling in joy with tears in his eyes.

Lucy (ルーシー)

Lucy is a Diclonius girl around eighteen years old. She has developed strong emotions of hatred and vengeance towards regular humans mainly because of how she was treated by the majority of them as a child, making fun of her horns and giving her insulting nicknames such as freak.

As a child, she bonded with a dog which was killed right in front of her by classmates, which triggered her first killing. She seems to lack empathy, kills without much concern, and acts somewhat sadistically, often torturing victims before killing (such as Bandou and Nana, though she failed in killing them both); however, towards the end of the series, she begins to show remorse for her actions, especially towards Kohta, whose father and sister were killed by her. Kohta was Lucy's childhood friend, she didn't trust him much in the beggining but later starts to have feelings towards him. She killed his sister and dad after Kohta lie about the festival he was going, saying that he'd be there with a boy; instead, he went with Yuka, his cousin.

She is aware of her "Nyu" state as revealed in the manga by her worries just before she reverts. "Lucy" is not actually her real name, but the name of her inner Diclonius killing instinct that wants to exterminate mankind, her real name is "Kaede".

Nana

Also known as Number 7, she is a young Silpelit girl who has the physical appearance of being 12-14 years old (though because Silpelits age rapidly, she is actually only about 6 years old). Her name, 'Nana', is Japanese for the number seven, the number by which she was called at the research facility ("Nana" is also a fairly common female name in Japan). Most diclonius babies are euthanized at birth in sweeps of hospital maternity wards, but Nana was one of a handful kept alive for use as a test subjects; as a result she has spent her entire life in the diclonius research facility. Kurama sees her as his daughter and cares very much for her. In an attempt to recapture Lucy, Kurama sent out Nana to find her (diclonii can telepathically sense each other), then retreat until Kurama could arrive with soldiers, but Nana wanted to impress Kurama so she tried to capture Lucy herself. Lucy and Nana engaged in a brutal telekinetic battle that ended with Lucy tearing all of Nana's limbs off. Kurama personally came to stop Lucy and save Nana, then also disregarded Director General Kakuzawa's order to kill her by giving her new prosthetic limbs and setting her free with a lot of money. Unlike many other Diclonius, because Kurama treated her with kindness, she is not homicidal or sadistic. She has the ability to temporarily disable other Diclonius' vectors by having her vectors go through their pineal gland. Although her vector power is slightly superior to Lucy's in terms of range (3 meters to Lucy's 2)and certain abilities, she lacks Lucy's sheer strength (Lucy can lift and throw many more heavy objects than Nana can), and violent nature: Nana's empathy for others does not allow her to fight as vigorously, and she loses her arms and legs when she is viciously dismembered by Lucy. With her vector arms, she is later able to manipulate prosthetic appendages and even throw them like a rocket punch.

Nana can be seen as the exact opposite of Lucy. While Lucy's default personality is serious and cold, Nana's is friendly and kind; Lucy's split personality "Nyu" is similar to Nana's default while Nana sometimes goes into trances and acts cold like Lucy's default personality. Nana is in the middle of the spectrum of Lucy's split personalities: she's not as mature as Lucy, but more mature than Nyu.

Yuka (ユカ)

Yuka is Kouta's cousin. She is also around 19 years old and planning to attend the same university as Kouta. She moves in with him at the inn after having not seen him in many years. Having had a crush on Kouta since childhood, she is in love with him, and is therefore jealous of Kouta's attention to Nyū, to the point of being very irrational. (Source: Wikipedia)

Mayu

She is a young 13 year-old girl (14 after episode 4), abandoned by her mother and a victim of sexual abuse by her stepfather. She has run away from home and is homeless at the start of the series, subsisting on bread crusts she is given at a local bakery under the pretence that they are for the small puppy that accompanies her. She found and named the puppy "Wanta." She ends up living with Kohta and Yuka as her legal guardians. Mayu befriends Nana and tries to take her under her wing.