List of Elfen Lied characters

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The characters in the Elfen Lied manga and anime series & movie were created by Lynn Okamoto, with character design assistance from Seiji Kishimoto for the anime adaptation. The plot and characters are described, below, using in universe tone. Elfen Lied takes place in Kamakura, Japan, where a fictional mutant human sub species, with violent telekinetic powers, has been discovered. Known as a Diclonius, any person showing signs of the mutation have either been contained in the Diclonius research facility or exterminated.

Kaede (楓), also known as Lucy (ルーシー ) and Nyu (にゅう), is a diclonius girl and the main protagonist of the series. She is assumed to be fifteen but never explicitly stated (eighteen in the anime). Lucy has vectors with a limited range of about two meters (6.56168 ft). However, she can be swift and lethal within that range, and will use any nearby objects as high velocity projectiles to kill at greater distances. She is also capable of stopping or deflecting most standard ammunition when she concentrates on the task. Lucy hates humans mainly because of how she was abused by her human peers as a child, several of whom she eventually killed after they captured a puppy which Lucy had been caring for and beat it to death in front of her; which led to her brutally murdering them out of revenge. Consequently, she discounts non diclonii, claiming they are not real people, to the point of telling Nana that she has "not killed one of her own yet". She seems to lack empathy and kills without much concern as a usual first reaction, often killing on reflex or simply because she can. She is incredibly sadistic, severing limbs and blinding foes, leaving them to bleed to death rather than killing them outright. Despite this lack of concern for human life she will not harm Kouta, and cries and apologizes for killing his family in a fit of jealousy; she loves Kouta, but due to her actions in the past, she believes he will be content without her existence. As such, she refrains from killing in his presence, except at the series' end, when she kills an entire Special Assault Team unit in front of him. However, Lucy still is not above acts of jealousy, once using her vectors to shove Yuka when she saw her holding hands with Kouta.

Nyu (にゅう) is a headmate of Lucy that developed after a .50 BMG round pierces the metallic helmet encasing her head when she escaped. Nyu has a childlike personality and infantile knowledge of the world, and lacks spoken language skills, being able to say only "nyū" and "Kouta" most of the time. As the series progresses she develops a wider vocabulary; by the halfway point she is able to speak perfectly normal. Nyu is innocent and incapable of violent acts, a foil to the normally cold and sadistic Lucy; she is the manifestation of her "good side". When Nyu is attacked violently (or hit on the head), she regresses into Lucy; likewise, when Lucy is treated with love and kindness, or wants to hide herself from Kouta, she will change back into Nyu. While Nyu exists first due to trauma, Lucy subconsciously encourages her presence due to her feelings of guilt towards Kouta and to prevent her from harming him (directly or indirectly). Nyu cuts her hair to try to be in appearance like Kouta's deceased little sister Kanae, whom he said horrible things to before she died at the hands of Lucy. When Kouta mused if Kanae would ever forgive him for what he said, Nyu copied Kanae's appearance of short hair and a bow and, on account of Kouta asking Nyu what she was up to, said, 'I'm Kanae!' and said she forgave Kouta so he would not be sad. Coincidentally, this is the same hairstyle Lucy donned when she was a child herself. Lucy is suppressed by Nyu for a large portion towards the series' end, due to one of her horns being damaged, but reemerges in her second fight with Bando. She returns again in chapter 83, when her horns return even larger than before and her vectors are much longer (long enough to reach a flying helicopter) as she slaughters soldiers in front of Kouta. This causes him to remember that she is the one who killed his family. However, her horns are damaged again and she is captured and brought back to Director Kakuzawa. He reveals his plot to terminate mankind and to fill the world with Diclonii, and brings out his son, Lucy's half brother, to try and convince her to join him. But despite not having horns, she is able to use her vectors and kills them all. She escapes the sinking island in order to face Kouta once again. The still injured Kouta is waiting for her and takes her to the top of a lighthouse that his sister liked the view from. There Lucy apologizes and Kouta has her promise to never kill again, she does and goes to get an ambulance, but Kazuma is waiting for her and shoots at her. Lucy is prepared to die but her newly (fully) manifested third personality, based entirely on Diclonius instincts (the one which in flashbacks, was what urged Lucy to start killing), cuts off his arm. Kouta appears and thinks that she has already broken the promise, Kazuma then fires again, but Kouta steps in the way to protect her. Lucy then goes on a rampage with her vectors now even longer, destroying the city and causing the military to attack her. However, her entropy reaches its limit and her body begins to deteriorate, so she uses her remaining powers to put Kouta's cells back together and save him as she sings "Elfenlied". The entire Kaede inn family arrive as do the military, and Lucy begins to attack them and then spread her vectors worldwide, threatening to blow up the entire planet and kill every living being. Fulfilling the vow he made to Lucy as children, Kouta reluctantly shoots her, and takes her life.

Kouta (コウタ/耕太) is the main male protagonist of the series and is first introduced when he arrives in Kanagawa Prefecture to attend college, having previously arranged to stay with his cousin Yuka while at school. which is later revealed to have been by Lucy's hand, who acted out of jealousy. Due in part to his loss, Kouta 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 also, for the most part, forgets how close he and Yuka were as kids, while Yuka still loves him. However, during a storm he and Yuka take shelter, with Yuka asking if he likes her. Yuka then kisses him with Kouta admitting that he hadn't forgotten he liked her before and still does now and kisses her back. He first met Lucy in his childhood while his family was visiting Yuka's for the summer. When he goes to the mountain to draw, he ran into Lucy, who ran away after she murdered the bullies who abused her and beaten her puppy to death. In the anime, he takes with him a music box he had recently purchased which played "Lilium" and 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. He asks her if they can be friends and spends time with her, taking her to the zoo, telling her that he likes to look at the "weird animals." In Lucy's hallucination, she perceives this as a reason for why he was so nice to her. He lies to her about the gender of his cousin by saying that it is a boy so she would not be upset or jealous. When she finds out that he lied to her, she stows away onto his train and kills his family. Before she goes to kill Yuka, he tackles her and yells at her to stop killing people and she flees. His repressed memories are triggered when Lucy uses her vectors to kill over a dozen soldiers in front of him. The reunion between Kouta and Lucy is vastly different, In the manga, Lucy apologizes and Kouta has her vow to never kill again, but Kazuma shoots at her and Kouta steps in the way to protect her. As Lucy's body begins to deteriorate, she uses her remaining powers to put Kouta's cells back together and save him. After soldiers tried to kill her, Lucy spread her vectors worldwide, threatening to blow up the entire planet and decimate every living being in it. Fulfilling the promise he made to Lucy as children, Kouta reluctantly kills her. Ten years later, with the Diclonius menace eradicated, Kouta and Yuka are married and subsequently name their daughter Nyu. She has had feelings for Kouta since childhood, and she reacts jealously to Kouta's attention to Nyu. However, it is later shown that she is jealous of any girl, regardless of age, who she suspects may be close to Kouta, to the point of being irrational, While holding each other in an attempt to keep warm, Kouta apologizes for not remembering anything about the time they were together as kids, but states that he remembers that he liked her then and that he always liked her. The two then kiss, with Yuka even becoming sexually aroused, and promise to always be with each other. However, when they subsequently find Nyu, Kouta and Nyu share a long hug, and Yuka immediately becomes jealous again. Mayu once described her as the "mother" at the inn, and Kouta as the "father". Yuka does possess a caring and mature side, and seems to be protective of both Nyu and Mayu, and later Nana. It is clear that Yuka cares for the girls deeply since she, like Kouta, is unable to turn away people who have been abandoned by their parents and society. However, in quite a few ways, she is a typical teenager, particularly when it comes to dealing with her feelings for Kouta and friendships with the girls who come to live with them. In the last chapter she is shown rebuilding the inn with the others. Ten years later, Kouta and Yuka are married and subsequently name their daughter Nyu. (In the manga she is introduced at age twelve and turns thirteen; but in the anime she is introduced at age 13 and turns 14.) Mayu is first introduced when she arrives at the closed down restaurant (then inhabited by Kouta, Yuka and Nyu) to return an umbrella she found at the beach. Nana sees Kurama as her father, whom she calls "Papa," because she needed something to keep her from going insane during the torturous experimentation, believing that she is making him proud. She is described as the most powerful diclonius; in the anime, it is stated that she has 26 vectors (although in the manga, she has over 50) which have a range of up to 11 metres (36 feet). Mariko's condition was the result of an escape attempt by Number 3, when Kurama was infected by her vectors, turning him into a carrier of the Diclonius virus, which ultimately caused Mariko to be born as a diclonius, much to her father's shock and horror. As an infant, Mariko was imprisoned and raised inside a massive steel container deep underground with no human contact other than with Saito, a scientist acting as a foster mother through speakers and monitors. She has been kept alive on pure nutrients that are intravenously fed into her body through large tubes. Throughout her life, her body has been completely immobilized through the use of restraints, which are deemed necessary to reduce the chance that she could try to escape. When she is released, she struggles to even stand since she has spent her entire life in restraints and being fed intravenously, her body is severely emaciated and atrophied. Although she can still propel herself through the air with her vectors, she must use a wheelchair to move around. Despite the environment she was raised in, Mariko is relatively well developed psychologically. She is extremely homicidal and sadistic, and enjoys torturing and dismembering her victims. She has no problems in torturing and murdering others, no matter what race or species they belong to, be it human or diclonius. However, her personality is not blatantly evil. She is only having fun, seeing killing as a game, and the pleasure she gets from it is equivalent to a child ripping the wings off of an insect or burning ants with a magnifying glass. She is in fact capable of caring about others and has a strong love for Kurama. In order to keep Mariko under control, the research institute implanted bombs in her body during infancy; one is used to sever her right arm to bring her under control after she attacks and mortally wounds Saito, the scientist at the institute who acted as her foster mother, as she realised she wasn't truly her mother. She is sent to kill Nana, during the confrontation with, Kurama tells both of them about the circumstances of the birth of Mariko. Feeling rejected by her father and believing that he favors Nana, Mariko attempts to kill her as an act of revenge, but is stopped by Bando, who, at the request of Kurama, escapes carrying Nana with him, although he is not able to prevent her from returning to the fight. Meanwhile, Kurama reconciles with Mariko, who immediately afterward protects him from being hit by a non explosive missile. After being hit by this missile, Mariko temporarily manifests a split personality like Lucy/Nyu that is infantile and affectionate towards her father. Nyu then appears searching for Nana, Kurama shoots her and she turns into Lucy. Lucy attempts to kill him, but Mariko sacrifices herself to save her father. She tries to kill Lucy to protect Kurama by activating the bombs that were inside of her body, while holding on to Lucy, but fails despite her efforts. While the bombs indeed go off, they do not kill Lucy. She instead only loses her horns, and becomes Nyu for the next several months, but not before tearing Mariko's head off just mere seconds from the explosion. In the final episode of the anime, this encounter is different. Mariko tells him that during her entire life at the institute's prison, she dreamed that one day he and her mother would come to take her home and live as a real family. She demands to know why he allowed her to suffer in the institute her whole life, and becomes jealous when Nana calls Kurama "papa." Mariko threatens to kill Nana, and Kurama raises his gun but is unable to shoot her. Instead, Kurama walks over to Mariko and hugs her tightly. He then picks her up in his arms, and promises they will never again be apart, while ordering an assistant to detonate the remaining bomb inside of her body. Kurama then tells Mariko he never stopped thinking about her and that her mother loved her until the moment she died. The assistant, after hesitating, activates the bombs, killing the both of them. Later in the manga, it's revealed that 1108 clones of Mariko have been created by Doctor Nousou, but only 4 are functional (Diana, Cynthia, Barbara and Alicia). A part of their frontal lobes has been removed and electrical components added so that they follow every Nousou's command. Three of them (Diana is injured and stays behind) and a group of soldiers raid the Kaede inn, but nearly all are killed by Lucy's increased powers, only a few including Barbara and Nousou survive. In the hospital, Nousou removes the component in Barbara's forehead to see if they can truly coexist with humans. However, enraged at how she and her clone sisters have been treated, she cuts off his head and goes after Nana. Just as she is about to kill her, she is shot dead by Kurama. Diana later helps Arakawa escape the island before being beheaded by another Diclonius.

Director Kakuzawa (角沢長官) is the main antagonist of the series. He is the head of the research center, at 70+ years old performing experiments on Diclonius. He is from a long line of Diclonius ancestry that has been watered down by inter breeding with humans. As a result, he has no vectors and much smaller horns on his head, which he hides under a wig. His and his son's aim are in part to replenish their bloodline by mating with the Diclonii they are experimenting on (of which Lucy is the first to be able to reproduce) and thus gain power as "kings" of the new race, which would wipe out humanity and replace it entirely. He even claims to desire the position of a god of the new, Diclonius ruled world he envisions and has rockets fired and detonated in the air to spread the Diclonius virus. He is the father of Anna Kakuzawa, professor Kakuzawa and Lucy's Diclonius half brother (the only male Diclonius). He turned his daughter Anna into a gigantic immobile creature with an extremely high intellect and the ability to predict the future. After capturing Lucy and revealing his plot to terminate mankind and to fill the world with Diclonius, Lucy's vectors turn visible and cause an explosion on the island that releases all the captured Diclonius. Lucy cuts off Anna's arms and Kakuzawa brings out his son, Lucy's half brother, born from the rape on their mother, who committed suicide after this, to try and convince her to join him. But he is beheaded by her along with his son. Lucy then says that he is not a Diclonius at all, as she does not sense him like the other Diclonii, and that his horns were just the result of an unrelated mutation. She then kills Anna, who tries to avenge her father. In the anime, he is not killed, and continues with his plans. In the last chapter, a normal Anna is seen next to the gigantic creature's body. When he and Kurama were younger, they both went to university together. It was Kakuzawa who originally got Kurama involved in research on the Diclonius. He is the lecturer for a course at the university in which Kouta and Yuka are enrolled. After tricking Kouta and Yuka into releasing Lucy/Nyu to him (under the pretense that she is his younger brother's missing daughter), he sedates and attempts to rape her. However, while Nyu falls asleep, Lucy wakes up. He then removes a wig to show her his horns and also reveals that he was the one responsible for releasing Lucy at the research center. He attempts to solicit Lucy with the promise of creating a new race of Diclonius together that will destroy the human race, but Lucy turns down his offer and instead beheads him.

Arakawa (荒川) is a young researcher in her early 20s who is also Professor Kakuzawa's partner who works alongside him to create a vaccine in order to counter the threat of the Diclonius virus. She, along with Kouta, inadvertently discovered Professor Kakuzawa's severed head and warned the boy not to disclose anything of what he saw or heard to anybody else. Afterwards, she reported her finding to Director Kakuzawa at his compound facility, but he would not let her go scot free after seeing his son's horns. She was threatened by Chief Kakuzawa to take charge of his deceased son's research on the island and spread the virus or else be killed. She eventually succeeds in creating the vaccine, just as the explosion releasing all the Diclonius on the island occurs. She is saved from a group of them by the Mariko clone Diana, and is then helped escape by a member of another government research facility, that specializes in vectors, but drops the vaccine. She is then saved again by more of that facilities members in a vector craft, a vehicle that uses artificially created vectors, using enlarged organs of Diclonius, can also cancel out other vectors and sense/show where Diclonius are. They take her deep into the island to retrieve the vaccine. In the anime, Arakawa is a minor character whose role provides little or no contribution at all for advancing the plot, as later she's often seen complaining that being so busy does not allow her to take a shower, which becomes a recurrent gag in the series. However, her character eventually plays an important, key role for humanity's salvation in the last story arc of the manga.

Kanae (カナエ) is Kouta's younger sister, already deceased by the time of the story. Kanae was protective of her brother and became jealous whenever other girls showed him attention. At the festival, Kanae watched as Lucy killed several people around her. Kanae claims that she saw Lucy killing people using her vectors, which are normally unseen to the human eye; unlike everyone else, who did not connect Lucy and the deaths, and were led to believe it was a bomb. She is later brutally murdered by Lucy before her father, on the train leaving Kamakura. He witnesses Kanae's death as well and apparently intends to avenge her by attacking Lucy, instead, he is killed. In the anime, Kouta and Kanae's father comes over to see what is happening, unaware his daughter has died, before he is also murdered by Lucy. However the trauma of witnessing their murders causes Kouta to repress his memories of the events; in the manga, he believes that Kanae was killed in a car accident, It is also revealed she has feelings for Kurama and begins to admit it, even confessing that she recommended the harsh method of controlling Mariko out of jealousy. Before she can aid Kurama in saving Mariko, she is decapitated by Lucy. In the anime she sympathizes with Kurama after the Director orders that Nana be terminated as Nana says goodbye to Kurama after he gives her a sedative, Shirakawa who is watching, is forced to leave, as she cannot keep from crying. In episode 11, Shirakawa attempts to protect Kouta from both Mariko and Lucy, but is sliced in half at the waist by Lucy; in her final moments, she hopes that Kurama will forgive her for failing to stop Lucy. This manner of execution awakens Kouta's lost memories of how Lucy killed his family.

Aiko Takada (高田愛子) is Lucy's friend three years prior to the start of the main story, though her full name is never revealed. She becomes the second human who has both given love and come to accept Lucy by who she is, regardless of her horns. She always saw Lucy on the playground and liked to sketch her, as she wanted to be an artist. She lives with her abusive father (who does not want her to be an artist) and his girlfriend. She becomes good friends with Lucy and tells her how her mother is an artist and traveled abroad. She says there is a large art exhibition in town and suspects that her mother might have returned for it, and that she wants to give her a drawing she made for her. When Lucy goes to see Aiko, she accidentally killed her father when he was about to stab the drawing with a knife, she pushed him and he cut his own throat. Knowing the police would come, she and Lucy run off to the art museum so Aiko could deliver the picture to her mother before they are caught. Unfortunately, the exhibit is closed at the time and Kurama and his group show up to catch the girls. Kurama sneaks up on the girls and fires, Aiko pushes Lucy out of the way and is shot. Kurama then promises Aiko's well being in exchange for Lucy's capture. Lucy agrees and is later shown confronted by Kurama, while held under restraints as he tells her that Aiko died at the hospital from her injuries. The death of Aiko serves as the last straw for Lucy to become resolved to kill everyone in Kurama's life. In the series' final chapter, Wanta walks past a poster of Aiko, announcing her recent art exhibit, possibly implying that Kurama may have lied about Aiko's death. It is possible that this is instead a poster for Aiko's mother, holding an exhibition again in Kamakura many years after her daughter's death. This story is told in the series' OVA, but with some changes.