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Brynhildr in the Darkness ( 極黒のブリュンヒルデ Gokukoku no Brynhildr, lit. "Extreme-Black Brynhildr" ) is a Weekly Young Jump series of 181 chapters, whose run officially ended as of April 2016.

Development[]

The manga is written and drawn by Lynn Okamoto and began serialization in January of 2012 and ended its run in Weekly Young Jump on March 31st, 2016. Its first bound volume was released May 18th, 2012, and all 18 volumes have been published as of May 2016.

The story marks a return to Science Fiction and Horror themes like those found in Elfen Lied and is the second of his stories to be made into an anime adaptation. On April 6th, 2014, ARMS, the same studio that animated Elfen Lied, began airing a 13-episode anime adaptation on the Tokyo MX TV station. The anime also has an OVA episode that was released on September 24th, 2014. The English dub was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 6, 2015 by Sentai Filmworks.

Plot[]

When he was a young boy, Ryouta Murakami wished more than anything to be a researcher for NASA in order to find the aliens his dear friend Kuroneko wanted to see. One day, Kuroneko admitted to meeting an alien and told him she'd take him to go meet the alien as well, but while trying to save Ryouta's life, Kuroneko perished. Though heartbroken at his friend's demise, Ryouta swore he would continue aiming for employment with NASA, not to find aliens but to honor his childhood friend.

One day, a girl named Neko Kuroha transfers to his high school, who Ryouta is shocked to see looks exactly like Kuroneko would if she were older. Shortly after her arrival, Ryouta's life is thrown into a disarray as he learns of Neko's true nature as a "Witch" who's being chased by a secretive organization. Neko is only one of countless girls kidnapped and turned into these Witches, all of whom possess supernatural powers thanks to the organization's experiments. Feeling a connection to Kuroha since she resembles his dearly departed friend, Ryouta lends his smarts to helping her and other refugee Witches avoid recapture and certain death by those who created them, knowing full well he'll be killed as well if they're caught.

A Wiki has been established for the series.

Trivia[]

Comparison of Gokurakuji Stn

Comparison of Gokurakuji Station's appearances in Brynhildr in the Darkness and Elfen Lied.

  • In addition to the above, Gokurakuji Station features some changes since it last appeared in Elfen Lied. In Brynhildr's shots, it now possesses an incline for ease of access for elderly and handicapped people, reflecting the addition of the incline in real life.
  • Mamiko Noto, Yuka's Seiyu, is the only member of Elfen Lied's Japanese cast to return to voice a character for the Brynhildr in the Darkness anime. The English cast features Kira Vincent-Davis, Nancy Novotny, and Blake Shepard returning to voice characters.
  • Kana Tachibana, one of the main characters, resembles Mariko in both hairstyle and clothing after a certain plot point in the manga. Her personality is just like that of Mariko, if it was an alternate take of her that actually made friends in experimentation and wasn't trapped and manipulated in constant darkness and got to live on into teen-hood. She is essentially a less powerful, non-murderous teen version of Mariko who is tragic but not as horribly tragic as the young Diclonius.
  • Ryouta himself resembles both Yuka and Nono from Nononono due to his hairstyle. He is meant to be an "improved version" of Kouta and is more complex and active than him, as Lynn Okamoto has stated that he himself had some issues with Kouta's character such as feeling he was "too passive and more like an onlooker." Ryouta seems to be the response to every criticism thrown at the character, such as subverting and reversing many of his traits. He also shares some traits with Lucy.
    • As mentioned above, he has a more active role and is heavily involved in the plot and a lot of the action. In the near end, there is a big reveal that his family was responsible for the main big villain organization in the first place. Finding out his dad, whom he previously thought was innocent and gone, ran the place was sort of like the reverse of Lucy finding out that Chief Kakuzawa was the father of her half-brother, whom she previously didn't know about either until it was revealed to her. He is also the protagonist like Lucy instead of the deuteragonist like Kouta.
    • He has a perfect photographic memory in contrast to Kouta's amnesia, the whole amnesia thing is thrown onto deuteragonist Neko Kuroha.
    • He has a scientific personality and mind, showing interest in many scientific things, such as astronomy, and is very observant. In his childhood, Kouta did mention wanting to become a scientist or more specifically a biologist, due to his interest in animals, but for some reason this trait/goal was never mentioned or brought up again.
    • Like Lucy, he isn't really all that human either. While Lucy is a different kind of human from Homo sapiens sapiens, Ryouta is revealed much later on to be a human-alien hybrid, something he never knew. It apparently is also the reason for his perfect memory. Lucy also thought she was a different creature as well, as after her powers awakened, she incorrectly thought she was some sort of magical being (the exact translation may vary from witch, wizard, magician .etc), only to find out what she really was after being taken to the lab.
    • Ryouta has a little brother named Makina, real name Yuuta, that was now a powerful psychic experiment and whom he didn't know was his brother at first as he thought his little brother was dead. Just like Chief Kakuzawa and Lucy's half-brother, Yuuta was one of the important beings in his and Ryouta's father's plan. Yuuta can also be seen as a darker version of Kanae, as just like how Ryouta thought his father was gone (similar to Kouta’s dad), Yuuta had the similar position to Kanae where Ryouta thought he was a lost little sibling only Kanae actually remained innocent and dead and Yuuta was alive and became powerful and evil. Whereas Lucy antagonized and killed Kanae, Yuuta antagonized Neko for refusing his advances of him forcing her to be in a relationship with him. Kanae is also speculated to have psychic powers, although it is unlikely, but Yuuta actually has them.
    • He felt very sorry for what happened to his childhood friend Kuroneko/Neko Kuroha (the two names might apply to different personalities but it isn't made all that clear), whom he felt grief for letting her fall in an accident when they were playing as children. This is similar to how Lucy felt guilt over killing Kouta's family and wanting to apologize to him.
    • Ryouta himself gains a temporary headmate in Nanami Toukou, a witch with memory based powers who at some point physically died and lives on inside of Ryouta’s brain until she finally dies for good because she has to remove herself from taking up too much storage in his brain. This causes her living memory of herself to be completely gone and gives Ryouta forgetfulness for the very first time which freaks him out. While it is unknown if this is meant to intentionally parallel Lucy and Nyu in any particular way the similarities are still there.
    • Instead of a found family dynamic he has more of a friend group, mostly composed of supernatural witches and even a human guy who was a friend of his. This is different from how Kouta's found family was completely all girls, excluding himself, and only two were Diclonii with the rest being humans.
    • Just like Lucy, he became very powerful and sacrificed himself to save the world along with his companion Neko Kuroha. They both die in the end but "live on" in a very weird and confusing way in the ending of the story that was seen as pretty confusing or mixed for many readers. Their friend Kazumi also died and sacrificed herself but is implied to "live on" with them in the form of a little girl, it is never outright stated it was her but it is clear it is meant to be Kazumi. Just like Lucy/Nyu it was similar to their reincarnation plot as both are inexplicably now little girls who maintain their memories and personalities of their previous life.
  • Like in both Elfen Lied and Nononono there is a love triangle/shape between a brown haired character (Yuka/Nono/Ryouta and later Hatsuna for Ryouta), a dark haired character (Kouta/Akira/Neko and later Masashi for Hatsuna) and a pink haired character (Lucy/Mikage/Kazumi.)
    • While in Elfen Lied, Lucy x Kouta was the “winning couple” in the anime and Yuka x Kouta in the manga, in both versions of Brynhildr in the Darkness; Ryouta x Neko is the winning couple and they are based on Lucy and Kouta sharing a mix and match of both characters traits. This is very likely prompted by how Lucy/Kaede x Kouta is/was the most popular and favored couple in the fanbase even if it was also met with some criticism. Essentially, Ryouta and Neko’s relationship is like a more “ideal” version of Lucy and Kouta’s relationship as it lacks the trauma, questionable yet ambiguous age gap (manga only) and “star-crossed” (anime) or “friends only” (manga) nature of the EL relationship.
  • The most common way for Witches to die is for their body to melt. The witches melt when they die because the parasites in them, known as Drassils, constantly secrete an enzyme every 30 hours and witches need to take a pill every time the amount of hours pass or they will die. The choice of them melting when they die is a clear reference to Lucy's infamous death in the manga.
  • Saori, one of the "Witches," possesses an ability to cut people/objects to shreds within a six-meter radius, but unlike Vectors, her power doesn't manifest as invisible hands. In the manga, objects are merely shown as being sliced up by thin air, whereas in the anime, this power manifests as a circular aura around her body. Saori is also voiced by Kira Vincent-Davis in the English dub, furthering the throwback to Lucy.
  • Before Lucy was able to know what she truly was, she told Aiko Takada (depending on the translation) that she was a magician/wizard/witch. In Brynhildr in the Darkness the characters interchange between calling the Witches either witches, magic users or magicians and it seems Lucy's misconception on her very own species inspired the Witches to actually be what Lucy once thought she was.
  • Compared the the ambiguous theme of Diclonius' violent nature or nurture narrative in the anime and their constant zig-zagging between their nature until it's decided that they are just violent and need to be extinct in the manga, when it comes to the Witches; they are instead made clear to be absolute victims of the scientists who experiment on them and the scientists and the lab responsible are clearly evil. Even the "villainous" witches are only villainous because they are forced into that position by the scientists to work for them for their goals or die. While there are those who hunt witches because they end up being transformed into mindless monsters, it is clear that the witches have no choice over this fate as they have an alien parasite in them that, when hatched, forces them into this uncontrollable feral and monstrous state against their will compared to how some Diclonius could have suppressed their instincts more than others.
    • Overall, compared to the morally grey and morally complicated characters of Elfen Lied, Brynhildr in the Darkness has a much more clear Bad vs. Good theme going on but there are still characters in the series who can be morally ambiguous.
  • Kotori Takatori resembles an early design seen for Kaede/Lucy/Nyu where she has light brown hair and green eyes. Her TV Tropes section even thinks of her character as being an "expy" (a character from one series who is unambiguously and deliberately based on a character in another) of Nozomi and Nyu but suggests she is even more of a Nyu one and physically resembles her. Given how her main characteristics are that she is ditzy and very sweet, however not to the point of being infantile, it is not impossible to see her as someone based on Nyu.
  • Neko Kuroha is meant to be the main character based on Lucy/Kaede and Nyu, narratively but her personality is much more jumbled and not as clear as the difference in Lucy and Nyu’s. It is also implied her “Neko Kuroha” and “Kuroneko” personalities may be split as two distinct identities but it is a bit confusing within the story. She also is in the deuteragonist role like Kouta and both have memory loss as a huge part of their character. Her sister Mako Fujisaki is meant to act as a fusion of character traits between Lucy, Nana and Mariko all in one. Mako has close feelings and loyalty to an antagonistic scientist named Chisato Ichijiku who is that of a more evil Kurama who doesn’t really care for Mako until one very small yet impactful instance, where he sacrifices his life for her, that drives Mako to further insanity to destroy the world.
  • Kazumi Schlierenzauer is one of the main characters, being part Japanese and inconsistently referred to as either half German or half Austrian (as it is usually done separately as either Japanese-German or Japanese-Austrian, but treating all nationalities as different from one another, but never as if she was mixed of all three), who takes her surname from Austrian ski jumper Gregor Schlierenzauer. This specific choice for a name likely came from how Lynn Okamoto previously did a ski themed manga right after he finished Elfen Lied.
    • Of course, this character’s mixed Germanic heritage is in reference to both the Germanic references of Elfen Lied and Brynhildr in the Darkness.
    • Kazumi also seems to be the “Yuka” of the group. While she is a smug computer genius/cyberpath girl half of the time in place of Yuka being a calmer motherly figure half of the time, the other time she is aggressive and hot-headed and is considered the oldest of the group, at least in the anime version. They also both display controversial sexual desires with Kazumi’s case being she often goes into sexual harassment territory with several characters even if she has one main target, ironically she has more of a divided reaction in her own fanbase in contrast to Yuka receiving much more hate and Kazumi’s perverted nature plays an even larger part in her personality. She also physically resembles the anime variant of Nana a bit down to the colors and traits of her design.
    • There is a character who later plays a role as her rival and a replacement for her friend Kotori Takatori, after her death, named Hatsuna Wakabayashi who does not seem to particularly be based on anyone in Elfen Lied. Although Hatsuna has a similar smug personality to Kazumi, being a smug healer/regenerative girl rather than a technopath, instead of being hot-headed she has a more chill and laid back personality. She also displays Kazumi’s traits of perverseness and sexual harassment but they play a much lesser part in her personality in contrast to it being one of the main traits of Kazumi.
      • When Hatsuna heals other people, her body starts melting and deteriorating because of her usage of using her healing cells on others. She does feel pain when doing this and she can only revive a person who has been very recently dead. This seems to be in reference to the one of the infamous parts of the ending of the Elfen Lied manga where Lucy starts melting more from trying to heal an injured/dying Kouta and starts melting because of trying to manipulate his cells while “pouring her power into him” and in addition to over-usage of her powers.
      • Given some characters referencing or having similarities to scrapped concepts for Elfen Lied, like Kotori Takatori, the very character Hatsuna replaces, being partially based on Nyu and re-using the look of Lucy and Nyu’s prototype design and Mako, partially being based on Mariko, having a name similar to Miko, the original planned name for Mariko with Mako sounding similar to both Miko and Mariko, it could be possible that Hatsuna herself was based on the unused character that Nana replaced the role of as the character was described as having a “Sailor Jupiter styled ponytail” and while Hatsuna has more of a side ponytail she still has a ponytail, is the only character who remains consistently on the main team to regularly sport one as both the main protagonist groups of the EL and Brynhildr have untied hair, and shares the same hair color as Sailor Jupiter. It could be a mere coincidence, but still a possibility.
  • Aside from a protagonist, Kazumi, taking a similar appearance to the character’s design, and an antagonist, Mako, having some of her traits merged with the traits of some other characters, there seems to be no one on the protagonist side taking the role or personality traits and characteristics of Nana. This is likely because Nyu is already similar to Nana but even more immature and mentally younger, since Kotori is like that of an aged up Nyu, as well as Neko having some matured Nyu traits, it’s likely there is no Nana figure on the protagonist side because two characters already bare some similar enough traits.
  • Oddly there seems to be no character based on Mayu, who is the only character of the Maple House to not have anyone based on her in any way either partially or fully. The possible closest equivalent would be Kitsuka Hatta who is a younger girl Ryouta is close to and helps tutors, she is also middle school aged, but most of the similarities end there as other than being young girls who are/get watched by an older guy with a name that ends in -outa, they don’t have too much in common. Kitsuka also had a crush on Ryouta whereas Mayu only saw Kouta as family and Kitsuka is more of a character with an on-and-off appearance rather than being part of the main group. Oddly and concerningly she also becomes sort of this story’s version of Lucy’s brother as Takachiho, Ryouta’s father, selected her for an Adam and Eve plot for Ryouta but thankfully, just like Lucy and her brother, nothing came about it and unlike how Lucy’s brother was essential for Kakuzawa’s plan, she seemed to just be a someone selected at random and anyone else could have also been selected in her place.

Gallery[]

External links[]

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