Nyu is the only resident of the Maple House to have their name written in hiragana instead of katakana. Obviously, Lucy herself is an exception to this (her names expressed in katakana and kanji), as is Kouta, whose name appears in kanji in the letter Lucy wrote to him when she was a child.
Kaede means 'Maple' in English; Note that this name goes unused except at the very end of the manga; she is known largely as Nyu to her friends, and as Lucy to her pursuers. It is also the name of the central location in the series, Maple House. However, there is also reason to believe this name isn't her birth one, given to her by her mother, as she was abandoned as an infant and was shown to be naked without any means of identification. This circumstance makes it highly likely the orphanage workers gave her the name "Kaede," but the matter is never specified in-series, and Kakuzawa makes no mention of the name her mother meant for her. When asked about the situation, Okamoto merely said the origins of her name were "a secret," leaving the matter a mystery to all but him.
Lucy is the name given to an Australopithecus afarensis skeleton of immense importance, as that Lucy is one of Humanity's earliest known ancestors. The archeological find likely played a role in Kakuzawa's renaming of Kaede, though this is never confirmed in-series.
Lucy may also be a reference to Lucifer, king of demons and popularly conflated with Satan, with some seeing the other Diclonius characters as inhuman demons.
Nyuu is similar to the word "gyuunyuu/gyunyu" meaning milk. It could be an example of a baby word since milk is a common first word-like sound for babies, but babies don't always pronounce words correctly. This reversion to infantile speech would imply that Nyuu is like a complete rebirth for Lucy.
The word Nyu/Nyuu is similar to the spelling of the word cow in Japan. Since the bullies at the orphanage called her an ox, this may be why she spoke that word. It also has an 'ecchi' connotation as slang for breasts, which as Nyu she frequently groped, even when 'mature.'
"Nyaa" or "Nya'an" is the sound a cat makes in Japan. Nyu uses “nyu” instead which is meant to be more of a cow pun as it is a reference to gyuunuu which means milk, or more specifically “cow’s milk”, and has nothing to do with the stereotype that cats like milk (which isn’t healthy for older cats anyways) as bovines are one of the animals Diclonii are meant to reference.
At the anime's end, it is left for the viewer to decide whether Lucy or Nyu is the one at the door. Many fans believe that Lucy allowed her horns' destruction so her personality would "die," allowing Nyu to live with Kouta without causing him any harm.
In an official short manga that shows events that happen after the anime, it is shown that only the personality of Nyu exists in the body and she is happily and peacefully living with her found family.
Lucy appears taller than Nyu when standing, which is probably an oversight in the animation process or a case of artistic license: an attempt to make Lucy seem more intimidating than Nyu.
While the anime left it ambiguous if Lucy and the Diclonii’s violence was a result of nature or nurture, the manga switches around on their nature until the very end that the species is violent and needs to be wiped out, along with many other reasons. Although this has some contradictions.
Lucy is possibly left-handed, although her left-handedness is assumed since she has only ever been seen using a weapon in her left hand. This usage is in contrast to Nyu, who is shown using chopsticks with her right hand. Left-handedness once had a historical association with evil or bad luck.
Until she was captured and learned she was a Diclonius, Lucy was unaware of the origin of her vectors and DNA Voice, believing perhaps they were the result of some magic. This idea is backed up by her telling Aiko that she's a "magician."
Sanae Kobayashi, Lucy's Seiyu, also lends her voice to the acclaimed anime series Baccano. In it, she plays the part of Ennis, another powerful young woman used by others, and who faces questions about her essential humanity, much like her character in Elfen Lied.
Sanae Kobayashi also voices another redhead, Gemini Sunrise who shares a few similarities with Lucy and Nyuu. Bubbly, lively Gemini has a split personality named Geminine, who is more aggressive and driven toward avenging her master, yet honors the samurai code Gemini follows.
Except for Chief and Professor Kakuzawa, Lucy is the only horned character in the series using a firearm, and certainly the only true Diclonius to do so.
There's an animation goof in Episode 13: when Lucy approaches Mariko after knocking her out of her wheelchair, her hair ribbons are missing for several frames, yet appear again when Mariko attacks her with a barrage of her vectors and are only knocked off onscreen when Mariko breaks one of her horns. Also during this scene, Mariko's prosthetic arm appears to be her left arm when it should be her right arm.
On March 4, 2021, Okamoto confirmed on Twitter that Kaede's birthday is July 2nd.
The early concept art version of Lucy/Nyu/Kaede has a similar light brown hair color to Yuka (in the manga as Yuka has darker hair in the anime). It is possible that this was changed because Lynn Okomoto might have felt that the hair colors could have been too similar in colored art.
In the series that was meant to serve as Elfen Lied's spiritual successor, Brynhildr in the Darkness, there is a character called Kotori Takatori who, according to her TVTropes section on the series' character page, is meant to serve as an expy who is a mix between Nozomi and Nyu and physically resembles the concept art for Nyu/Lucy/Kaede down to having the same hair and eye colors.
Lucy and Nyu have a few characters based on them in Brynhildr in the Darkness;
The most primary example being Neko Kuroha. However her role as a deuteragonist is like that of Kouta’s, she is narratively and inspired by Lucy/Kaede. Sometimes her personality goes from aloof and serious to happy and ditzy, but this could be from her constant amnesia or a weird confusing result of trying to have her being a character similar to Lucy but trying to avoid making her a complete copy. Even more confusingly it seems her Neko Kuroha and Kuroneko names are meant to apply to two different personalities, like Lucy and Nyu, but it’s not cut and dry or as clear. They are also both the most powerful women of their kind, Lucy as the queen and Neko Kuroha as a Valkyria which is the highest rank for a witch.
As mentioned in a previous point above, Kotori Takatori takes partial inspiration from Nyu and just like her is an innocent and dimwitted girl who is meant to be used as a very important plot device that is essential to the organization’s plot, however she originally does not know this.
A minor enemy witch sent after the protagonists, Saori, has her eyes, bangs and personality directly taken from Lucy and is meant to serve as a complete shout out. Even then, while confident and a bit sadistic, Saori is not really evil and only does what she did because she was forced to by the scientists who control her and she is later on killed by them for failing their task. Her main magic is cutting abilities just like how Vectors often cut people. She was even voiced by Kira Vincent-Davis, Lucy’s English voice actor, in the English dub of the anime.
Mako Fujisaki, originally introduced as the Valkyria until the reveal of there being more, is the sister of Neko Kuroha. Despite being the older one, she is more childish than her. She is meant to be a fusion of the traits of Lucy, Nana and Mariko and almost borders on parody of them and even has traits of stereotypes as well as common misconceptions all the three characters have. Such as how while it is tragic she was experimented on, she isn’t really all that complex and her backstory being even less complex, simply falling in love with an abusive, manipulative and mostly uncaring man named Chisato Ichijiku (who is that of an evil Kurama) just because he saved her life in an experiment once. She even becomes aware he doesn’t truly care for her but she still loves him out of psychotic obsession, and in a shocking out of character moment when he does save her again but out of (sort of) actually caring for her, he dies and it fuels her to destroy the world similar to how Lucy started her similar rampage when Kouta seemingly died. The story and characters often brush her off as being sad yet insane, especially in the manga where it is common for characters to see her do something and go “oh it’s because she is insane” and most of the things she does is just because she is insane by default. Her own TVTropes section calls her a Captain Ersatz of all three characters.
One of the creatures the Diclonius are meant to be compared to or inspired by are the oni. Creatures known as kijo are often seen as the female equivalent of the oni and one of the most famous ones is named Momiji. Momiji is the word used for the Japanese maple tree, Acer palmatum, and Kaede's name in English means Maple.
Lucy also shares similarities with the hannya, another being seen as the female equivalent of the oni or a sub classification of the kijo. Hannya are usually noblewomen, like how Lucy is a queen, and start out as humans but become turned into monsters as a result of being angry and jealous. Just like how Lucy is a species of human who often felt anger and jealousy that affected her life greatly and further her descent into madness.
In the manga when Nyu first gains her vectors, there seems to be only 4 in comparison to Lucy’s 14. This seems to be a reference to how Lucy only had 4 vectors in the anime.
The list of neurodivergencies and mental conditions Kaede/Nyu/DNA Voice has are; schizophrenia, plurality, and presumably has some sort of PSTD or something similar to it.
Many plural people (also known as those who have a plural system or “multiple personalities”) have stated that they do not want each of the identities who inhabit their mind to be seen as simply “alternate personalities of the same person” but rather “two or more people who share a body” as each consciousness is distinct and shares a mind and personality of its own. Despite sharing a body, all three personalities in the physical Diclonius queen show a distinct personality, will and actions of their own and are very much canonically plural.
It is possible for many systemmates/headmates (identities that “live with each other in the same head” so to speak) to share different ages, genders, beliefs, preferences .etc. It is known that Lucy/Kaede was mentally a teenager, with the exact age depending on the version, to the point of her death. At the end of the manga the DNA voice appears to be a child younger than a teenager. It is unknown what Nyu’s exact age was, but at the start of the series her age was likely around that of a baby or a toddler, and given the look of her mental form at the end of the manga, she grew to likely be around the same age as Lucy.
It is also possible for the systemmates to see and communicate with each other in their headspace. All of the three identities in the Diclonius queen have displayed this, mostly Lucy and the DNA Voice and to a much lesser extent Lucy and Nyu.
At the end of the manga Lucy and Nyu get reincarnated in two separate bodies as twins and at the end of the anime continuity only Nyu’s personality exists. It is seen as controversial by many plurals to portray plural characters who were once part of a system to be put in separate physical bodies or essentially making them non-plural, due to representational reasons. For some other plurals, this trope depends on how you would pull it off and how you’d carefully handle it.
It is possible for headmates to switch in the role of fronting (being the one in control of the body) by being triggered by something such as smells, music, feelings, food or many other things that may trigger another one to take over the role. So while some have stated that Lucy/Nyu/DNA’s plurality depiction isn’t the most realistic, things like certain objects or stimuli triggering their personalities to switch are realistic.
Contrary to semi-popular belief, Kaede is not a “fourth personality” as it’s just the name Lucy actually called herself and a change in demeanor does not make it an entirely new system member.
Lucy, and the story of Elfen Lied, has been compared to or called “a darker version of Matilda” (the one by Roald Dahl) as both girls had abusive upbringings in their childhood but while Matilda remained good and used her powers for good and helping others, Lucy became psychotic and used her powers for destruction before finding a loving and caring found family.
Funny enough in the original book, Matilda’s telekinesis was said to manifest as invisible hands.
In the 1996 movie, Matilda looks similar to Kanae.
Funny enough, the original scrapped idea for Matilda in the novel was that she was planned to be a more evil and malicious little kid until it was reworked to make her a tragic and mistreated little girl, who is seemingly innocent but still maintains a somewhat sadistic side.
There is a piece of artwork, specifically this, that looks like it could be official promo anime art due to it's art style. But it apparently isn't and seems to be fanart made by a currently unknown person and the image does not appear on the internet anywhere before 2009, a year when both the anime and manga have already ended.
In concept art it did seem like they were planning on anime Lucy having more vectors but less than 14 (one illustration showing 11 for example) but seemed to go with 4 as the lowest number to animate.
While not as big as many other misconceptions about the series, there is a minor but noticeable misconception that Lucy and Silpelit Number 3 were the same exact person. While certainly not something most people believe, there has been a small group of people who believed in this false information enough to the point it has been stated in a few articles, discussions and videos, as well as people giving out incorrect information on Lucy’s past history and Diclonius reproduction as a whole. Explained in further detail in the Silpelit’s linked page.
When it comes to those who criticize, dislike or hate Elfen Lied but may actually like a few characters, a common statement from these people is either "Lucy was the only good character", "Nana and Mayu were the only good characters" or even all three.
While Lucy/Kaede loved Kouta romantically and Nyu loved Kouta in a familial way, the DNA Voice hated Kouta and saw him as an obstacle and distraction against making Lucy into a completely hateful being of killing all humans. This shows quite the sliding scale of the systems personalities; Nyu is a simple innocent good girl born into a loving family born by him who just got wrapped into all this madness just by sharing a body with killers, Lucy is a very morally complicated, yet still violent and murderous, character who is dealing with contradictory feelings and duality between love and hate as she may have had more enemies than friends in her life, but still found some people she loved and cared for in her life, and the DNA Voice just wants to bring about destruction and hatred and never had loved or liked anybody.
Lucy shares some similarities with Lum from Urusei Yatsura. Both are girls in (or one that was at least originallyintendedto be) romantic comedy series with sci-fi elements applied in and take influence from oni mythology, however while Lucy and the Diclonii are creatures who take inspiration from the oni while still very much being their own creatures with several other sources of influence, Lum is an oni but an alternate take on the creature as an alien as all monsters in Urusei Yatsura are depicted as aliens.
There is also the situation of how both authors of their respective series planned the focus to be on one thing but it got switched to something else, whereas Lucy and the Diclonii were always planned as recurring entities and Lucy was the main character, the sci-fi and Diclonius focus was originally meant to be secondary with the romantic comedy elements being more primary. For Lum’s series she wasn’t even planned to be a recurring character at all but instead the human character, Ataru, was meant to be the main character with the focus being on how he always has to deal with bad luck and several annoying aliens, but because of Lum’s popularity she became the unofficial main character of the series even if the role still officially applied to Ataru.
Like Yuka, Lum can have aggressive and violent actions towards her romantic target, Ataru, and compared to the misconception that Kouta has official romantic interests in several girls (however perverted actions from him are not out of the question) and is “actively” trying to get with them, Ataru actually has being a pervert who constantly harasses women as one of the main parts of his character which tends angers Lum more often out of jealousy and annoyance than concern for the women. Lum is also much more forceful towards Ataru forcing him to be in a “marriage” with her because of a misconception that he did love her (when he was hoping to get married to his actual then girlfriend Shinobu) on her part.
There is also Ataru’s original and ex-girlfriend, Shinobu, who is the childhood friend, classmate and “normal” human girl that is much more level headed and rational and plays as the love rival to the supernatural Lum. Similar to the “normal human” Yuka and mutant Lucy’s rival dynamic.
Unlike Elfen Lied, Urusei Yatsura isn’t dark and never becomes serious as it always keeps the role of being either a romantic comedy or just a general slice of life/episodic comedy with sci-fi and supernatural elements within it. The violent and borderline criminal actions of Lum are never taken as seriously as Lucy’s and is more often viewed as slapstick or dark comedy.
Crona Gorgon and Lucy/Kaede are often heavily compared to each other by many fans, ranging from having similar backstories, personalities, vibrational/sound-related powers, story arcs and even endings and other things. They are both considered “demons” and “gods” (Lucy is falsely seen as such by the Kakuzawa cult, Crona is fused to a “demon weapon” and was raised to become a kishin) that play important roles in their stories. Crona can be seen as being a more openly “soft” and occasionally “gentle” yet still aggressive and insane, version of Lucy. In a way, Crona can be seen as someone like Lucy if she kept a more similar personality to her childhood self. They are often put in Death Battles against each other.
Despite mostly being compared to Lucy some have also pointed out Crona looks more like Nana and, like Nana, Crona will do anything for their scientist parent but the dynamic is more similar to how Nousou’s brainwashed and abused clones treat him and in the manga of Soul Eater Crona does to Medusa what one of Nousou’s clones does to him. Nousou and Medusa are also meant to serve as blonde, far more insane and evil counterparts to the main “nicer”/morally grey scientists Kurama and Dr. Stein respectively.
