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Lynn Okamoto (岡本倫) is a Japanese mangaka and the author of the original Elfen Lied manga.

Biography[]

While he was a student, Okamoto worked for Arc Work Systems on a part-time job basis and participated in the development of various TV/Windows games based on the Sailor Moon series. After graduating, he joined Bandai, and while there, continued to take part in game development, but this time he helped plan puzzle games for Sailor Moon. Although it was his dream occupation since his high school days, Okamoto gave up on it when he graduated from university. He later resigned from Bandai at the age of 28 in order to become a professional manga writer, another dream of his.

He is known to be an intensely private individual. Residing in Tokyo, Japan, he is the creator, and artist for the Elfen Lied Manga series and was a consultant on its anime adaptation.

He made his debut into the manga world in January 2000 with his first short story manga titled "Elfen Lied," which bears almost no connection with his 2002-2005 work, Elfen Lied. He says that the first "Elfen Lied," a tsundere type of love story about young musicians, is the only manga he wrote before becoming professional.

His other major works include Nononono (2007-2010), a romantic drama about ski jumping, and Brynhildr in the Darkness (2012-2016), a spiritual successor to Elfen Lied that focuses on Norse Mythology. The only one of his stories not illustrated by him as well is Kimi wa Midara na Boku no Joō (2012), which was drawn by Mengo Yokoyari. Previously, all of his works have begun their serialization in Shueisha's seinen magazine Weekly Young Jump. However, his current work, Parallel Paradise, began serialization in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine starting in 2017.

He also wrote a short story called MOL which seems to have served as a prototype story to both Elfen Lied and Brynhildr in the Darkness, focusing on a boy who came across a girl who was being experimented on. It is unknown when it was exactly made but it has his really early 2000s art style before his art evolved later on and was officially published a year after Elfen Lied finished.

Lynn Okamoto 1998

Okamoto (in the gold costume), advertising a new Bandai product in 1998.

Trivia[]

  • Horror-fantasy author S. A. Swann acknowledged Lynn Okamoto and Elfen Lied as inspiration for his medieval fantasy novel called Wolfbreed.
  • Okamoto and Elfen Lied anime director Mamoru Kanbe are said to have clashed over Kanbe's decision to exclude the character of Nozomi from the anime's forcibly shortened timeline of events.
  • Okamoto voices a minor character in the anime's twelfth episode.
  • In a July 20, 2015, tweet, Okamoto expressed that he felt hopeless while struggling to become a professional manga writer at the age of 30 after resigning from Bandai. He then learned that Tetsuo Hara, the writer of the then-famous manga Hokuto no Ken / Fists of Hokuto (1983-1988) had finished the manga at the age of 27, inspiring him to continue with his own manga.
  • Okamoto's birthday is January 6th, which is known publicly but does not disclose the year of birth. Based on guesstimation after following his twitter messages for a while, he was most likely born in 1970. He said before that he made a debut at age of 30, so the likely year for this debut was 2000.
  • At the time of Elfen Lied, Lynn had a lack of confidence as a beginner artist who was making his first serialized manga, as well as how some of the earlier things he worked on didn’t gain much attention or sell well, and wasn't planning the series to last long at first. However as EL got more attention, he was glad to continue his story, even if he did say the series didn’t sell well either. At the very least it became his most popular work.
  • In the interview published on Aug. 2016 in a magazine (Febri. No. 36), Okamoto says he originally wanted to write a manga like "Love Hina", a love comedy, before starting the serialized Elfen Lied. He adds that he was not quite confident if or not he could develop a love story then.
    • The interview linked above also discusses other things about how he came up with the concepts and ideas for Elfen Lied as well as some other facts.
    • He also discussed this in some tweets in 2020 shown in this mini-article here.
  • Despite being mostly known for creating a gorey, dark, sci-fi, horror series, most of his works are that of realistic fiction and/or romance/ecchi. Ironically (as mentioned in the interview linked above), he does not care for and has no interest in splatter and edginess and favors love stories and "ero" materials over any kind of bloodshed and visceral graphicness. He actually has more of a lighthearted and cheerful personality than an "edgelord" one that many people think he has because of how his most famous work came to be. Another thing that is contrary to popular belief, is how he never intended to spread any kind of message with his story even if it appears to be that way without context on how the story came to be.
    • While Lynn has used themes of alienation, discrimination and prejudice in his other stories, he still doesn’t use them for the intent of sending a message or some kind of commentary as much as he uses them as a source for drama, emotion and conflict. This is much more descriptively explained in the linked FAQ section up above.
  • He seems to favor Yuka's hairstyle, having it or a similar haircut be seen on up to four characters. Aside from Yuka herself, the other ones are Sarah, Nono and Ryouta.
    • There has been some speculation and assumptions from people that Yuka was meant to represent his "ideal" kind of or dream idea of a woman and that he had some kind of favoritism over her. Some even going as far to say she may have been based on some (real or imaginary) crush he had, either jokingly or otherwise. This has never been confirmed or denied by Lynn Okamoto himself and he seems to have never discussed it. When it came to having a character he liked the most he said it was Nana.
      • Perhaps one thing that can add to the speculative argument of him having some sort of “favoritism”, or at least more of a liking, towards Yuka is how for some reason he had regrets about Kouta stating despite being a major character “Kouta's roles in the story were too much passive and looked like a mere onlooker.” …despite the fact Yuka has the same amount of relevancy as Kouta being just as essential as him in the early history of the story and both are the two necessary halves for setting up the Maple House while later on they arguably are equally not too important for the later parts of the story, except for Kouta’s injury triggering an intense, infamous and important power surge in Lucy that sends her vectors to go all over the world. If anything it’s Yuka’s mother who is more essential in the later parts as she is the landlady for the house and Yuka is another resident who happens to be her daughter. It is also telling how Kouta’s successor to improve him in Brynhildr in the Darkness, Ryouta, is almost nothing like Kouta aside from very few things (most likely because many of Ryouta’s traits seem to be more in response to many criticisms given to Kouta’s character, as well as how some of Ryouta’s traits seem to also be mixed in with Lucy’s) and essentially looks like a genderswap Yuka. While not the “winning” love interest in Brynhildr, there still was a sympathetic protagonist character who shares many traits with Yuka called Kazumi who oddly enough keeps many criticized traits of Yuka’s character, such as constant violent behavior towards her romantic target and a controversial sexual interest but replace “cousin” with “sexual harassment” (although strangely instead of near unanimous hatred like Yuka, Kazumi has a mere split reaction in her series’ fanbase with some even claiming her to be “best girl” and hated her tragic fate at the end of the manga). It could be possible Lynn Okamoto did not care for Kouta as much and found more interest in Yuka’s type of character more.
  • Okamoto showed his home office in picture. He currently writes Parallel Paradise here as it is shown on the monitor. He does not work together with his assistants in the same office like before.
    LO's home office 170817
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