Tbh I think Elfen Lied could've made its strange combination of a dark sci fi esque/violent mystery story and a romance story work if it wasn't just paced so atrociously and had some better character writing.
The idea of a little girl being the start of a new species perceived as being destined to be enemies with humanity being bullied and reviled by everyone except one other human child, this not being enough to stop her from being pushed to evil and growing into an unstoppable killing machine as an adult but still possessing a soft spot for that one human, is sweet and interesting to me. It only sucks because all of the romance shit drags its feet and is so uninteresting because when it's not just being shitty fanservice, it's incredibly boring and lacks chemistry because the author doesn't know how to write characters well
