>>69362684in its day, it made sense why it was kinda popular, because a lot of people getting into anime at the kind of dawn of the internet only really knew a bit of it from TV and had assumed that anime is a very grown-up-cartoons medium and they just can't air much of it on Western TV. or at least, that is what some kids unironically would say when I was in like, elementary school. now, kids can just go look up whatever and while the internet was around back then the ability to navigate/find/translate/accurately get a bead on the anime industry was actually much much more vague.
in this time of vagueness, elfen lied featuring immediate gore and nudity you know you'd never see in a million years on your saturday morning cartoons was in of itself the "see, I told you these are mature shows for mature people such as myself" type validation. of course, this only really works on like, teenagers etc who don't yet know what actually-adult like thinking is yet. but there were quite a few kids online back then just as today.
