Originally Posted by Shinku no kage

You should understand that most animes completely detours from the story of the original manga after a certain point in the story. For example lets take Full Metal Alchemist (I'd use Elfen Lied but I havent read the manga so) til the point that Greed appears the main storyline is almost exact to the manga...after that its basically two seperate worlds.

As far as short series go, I believe that they have the most work put in. Its because you have to summarize the story into so many episodes while keeping it interesting. Also this helps prevent the studio from losing money if the series wasnt a success.

Also, leaving the story without a real conclusion leaves a door open to a sequel. I think that the series "Godanner" was suppose to end at 13 but since it did great they extended it to 26(?) episodes. Another note is that this also leaves a lot for fans to work off of with if they create doujinshis aka fanzines.

So as far as Elfen Lied goes it did great working off of just those number of episodes. They may never really do a sequel or anything like that but still, it was an accomplished series. I'm pretty sure that the manga's story was epic in its own way...I really gotta find the manga.

Originally Posted by Hoods

ONe of the best 11-13 ep series I've seen.I do know that it's 13 but I'm clumping them all together. It was a very different story. I'd put it up there with The Melancholy of haruhi suzumiya.

Originally Posted by Shermanator

I just recently finished Elfen Lied and i thought that Lucy was the shadow at the door when that broken clock finally chimed...but I thought the series could have been longer. It was an awesome anime but a little short for me..they left so many things unanswered.