A 13-episode anime television series was directed by Mamoru Kanbe, animated by Arms and produced by Genco and VAP. The series' author, Lynn Okamoto, has a brief cameo appearance as a guest in episode 12. "Elfen Lied" first aired on TV Tokyo's AT-X satellite channel from July 25 to October 17, 2004, and was broadcast again in 2005. A single twenty-four-minute original video animation (OVA) episode was released by VAP on April 21, 2005. It takes place somewhere within the timespan of episode eleven of the original TV series. The anime's opening theme song is "Lilium" performed by opera singer Kumiko Noma and is sung in Latin and Greek, with lyrics extracted from biblical passages and Christian sources, including the Book of Psalms, the Epistle of James, the Kyrie prayer, and the hymn "Ave mundi spes Maria". The ending theme song is "Be Your Girl" by Chieko Kawabe. The series was released on Blu-ray in Japan on December 19, 2012.