Elfen Lied is cheap and tacky, full of fanservice show. Its so damn lame, not only it goes again into the oversused cliche of "who are the real monsters?, humans or the psycho tentacle monsters we japanese mangaka create?" which happens in every single damn manga of this style Ive read, it goes as far as to satisfy every fetish of the otaku: loli (borderline pedophilia)? checked; harem anime (looser guy surrounded by unnaturally big breasted teens)? checked; neko-mimi a.k.a girls with cat ears (again borderline zoophylia, and LOL to the lame excuse that they are "horns"), checked; over the top violence with unrealistic ammounts of blood flowing around? checked AGAIN! urgh...
I can't believe the anime community has this show in such a high regard, because its all for the wrong reasons. The story is really stupid, the characters couldn't be more predictable and stereotyped, its like the creator made ther objective to mix together every single aspect of anime and manga that sucks, and in the way remove the parts that make it good.
I recommend manga and anime like Monster, Death Note or even Narutaru a million times over this stupid crappy series, this is the kind of show that give anime enthusiasts a bad name.