Kaede/Nyu (Elfen Lied)

Lucy/Nyu (real name: Kaede) is the main character, main protagonist and Anti-hero/anti-villainess of the Elfen Lied series. The so-called 'Queen' Diclonius, Lucy, was an individual difficult to pin down by any standard of "good" or "evil" societal mores. She was both ruthlessly tormented and was also a sadistic tormentor to others, driven to a mental breakdown at an early age by the cruelty that surrounded her. Though she never expected to receive any form of love and acceptance from others, occasionally she got the chance to see that such things were, indeed, possible for someone like her. Her great love was Kouta, a boy she met when they were both children and again when they were young adults.

Kaede (楓 ?) was a young Japanese woman from Kamakura responsible for the murders of several hundred people. Kaede was the first of the diclonii, a human sub-species that emerged in the late 1990s and noted by their horns and ability to kill using high-vibrating arms called "vectors", which are invisible to normal human sight.

Elfen Lied is, beyond the extreme gore, violence, and otherwise, extremely uncomfortable subject matter, a tale defined both by her love for Kouta and her desire to atone for her past sins against him. This goal, while she's dogged by corrupt humans out to either take her life or re-purpose it to suit their aims. As a Diclonius, Lucy possessed power rivaled by very few others of her kind, and her control over her vectors was virtually second to none, possessing X with a range of two metres. She was also capable of spreading the Diclonius mutation to humans via infecting their parents with her vectors, a process capable of gradually replacing regular Humans with her kind, albeit mostly of sterile, rapidly growing Silpelits that were to serve as "drones" to her role as "Queen." This infection process, which is described as a virus, is used perhaps for lack of a clearer term.

Kaede's abandonment as an infant and life in a hostile orphanage environment in Kamakura played a part in her early violence, and she was forced to flee after losing control and killing several children with her vectors. As a young child, Kaede was not a suspect in the high-profile killings of families in Kamakura after the orphanage massacre, and was believed to have been abducted by the killer. Following a traumatic incident at a festival, Kaede killed several more in what was believed to be a terrorist attack. For several more years, Kaede continued to live in the area and killed people by inducing heart attacks, with the side-effect of survivors being infected with a heritable virus which resulted in diclonius children, dubbed "Silpelits". This got the attention of the Japanese government, who funded two institutes to investigate anti-Diclonius countermeasures and provided them with defense equipment. Kaede's location was deciphered by Dr. Kurama, who compared old case reports to track down who he dubbed "Lucy", and she was captured in a botched raid that resulted in the apparent death of a human friend of her's. From this, Kaede held a lifelong obsession with killing anyone he cared about. Kaede escaped after three years of captivity and returned to Kamakura though, suffering from head trauma and the shock of meeting her childhood sweetheart, Kōuta (or Kōta), she developed an infantile personality dubbed "Nyu", and was taken in by him and his cousin, Yuka. The Japanese government, recognizing the threat Kaede posed to the world, pressed for a renewed search and her capture or death.