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Hey, let's wait there until it lightens up.

Kouta, gaining shelter for Yuka and himself from the storm, but not from fan controversy

The Sasuke Inari Shrine is the main shrine featured in the Elfen Lied series. According to tradition, the shrine was founded by Minamoto Yoritomo, who was the first Shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate that ruled Japan from 1192-1333 AD. This shrine is also famous for being the location of the Hidden Village of Kamakura, which supposedly trained ninja.

In the anime[]

The shrine is the site of an important moment in the relationship between Kouta and Yuka. With some tensions between them, they end up searching for Nyu, who has escaped from the clutches of Professor Kakuzawa after reverting to her Lucy persona and killing him. As they search, a sudden rainstorm forces them to seek shelter inside the shrine. After their heart-to-heart, they encounter Lucy, who they believe is still Nyu. Unlike the manga, however, Lucy's flashback to her childhood doesn't occur in the anime, as it is packaged together with other flashbacks in the twelfth anime episode to piece together Lucy's background and her interactions with Kouta up until the late summer festival as one long cohesive narrative instead of broken up into smaller ones as in the manga.

Kouta and Yuka Reveal Their Feelings[]

Kouta and Yuka seemingly evade the downpour before they become soaked. They kiss deeply, with Kouta stating flatly that even if his direct memories of Yuka have not returned, he recalls he had deep feelings for her that persist to the present day. Instead of Kouta viewing Yuka removing her panties, he merely catches sight of them, which still upsets Yuka enough that she punches him.

To American viewers, this sequence was something of a shock, as Kouta and Yuka's relationship as cousins gave some the idea romance between them was out of the question, and in addition to showing the two share feelings for each other, the scene possibly colored negative perceptions of Yuka (though not Kouta despite him willingly kissing Yuka back and admitting his feelings). The scene is markedly more intimate and even explicit in the manga, and involves a different location.

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