Like the cherry blossoms and bloody decapitations that saturate its frames director Mamoru Kanbe's grisly anime series ELFEN LIED contrasts the opposing forces of good and evil with equal parts beauty and violence. Sexy pink-haired Lucy is part of a race of genetic mutants known as Diclonius who sport horns in their heads and are able to savagely dismember their victims with the use of psychically controlled invisible arms called vectors. After Lucy makes a violent escape from the military compound that imprisons her she washes up naked and vulnerable on a beach shorefront and is taken in by two teenage cousins Kohta and Yuka. But unbeknownst to her kindly benefactors the now mute and amnesiac Lucy--redubbed Nyu for her inability to speak--still retains traces of her true killer nature which amply reveal themselves when the government sends out a team of fellow mutant assassins to find and destroy her. Bloody and violent yet beautifully animated this volume continues the anime series with three...