Joseph Luster
June 8, 2020 
When you think about Elfen Lied, do you picture a lighthearted harem series like Love Hina or a hyperviolent saga with exploding heads and walls covered in blood? Chances are it’s more of the latter, but manga creator Lynn Okamoto recently revealed that this wasn’t always the plan for the controversial series.
Okamoto took to Twitter to tell the story of how the series came to be, and how his editor helped push it in the right direction. Amazingly enough, Okamoto originally wanted to create a manga like Love Hina, even taking the way he kicked things off in the series into account. Here’s what he had to say and the corresponding tweets.
“Before my first work was published, when I was still a rookie, I wanted to draw manga like Love Hina. So I drew a draft for a series, which was then was serialized as Elfen Lied.”
まだ連載前の新人だったころ、ラブひなみたいな漫画が描きたいと思って連載用のネームを描いたのがエルフェンリートでした。
— 岡本倫 (@okamotolynn) June 6, 2020
“After that, I was instructed by my editor to move away from the Love Hina aspect, but when I think back to the first chapter, it stayed almost the same from the beginning, so I guess I made a mistake in thinking that I could get to Love Hina from here.”
‘Here’ refers to the image from Elfen Lied Okamoto included in the tweet:
その後担当さんに色々指示されてラブひなからは遠く外れていったのですが、思い出すと1話目はほぼ最初から今の形のままだったので、ここからラブひなに行けると思っていたぼくが間違っていたんだと思います。 pic.twitter.com/rRaQIwIWdE
— 岡本倫 (@okamotolynn) June 6, 2020
It’s always interesting to see what inspires certain creators, even when they don’t necessarily end up adhering to those initial inspirations.
For more on the Elfen Lied manga, be sure to read Danica’s reviews of omnibus collections 1, 2, and 3.
Source: Twitter via Crunchyroll
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