REVIEW - Aku no Hana - Flowers of Evil (2013)

Every once in a while, you'll stumble across something that is very difficult to put into words. Anime are very good at doing this for some unexplainable reason. To attribute it to the writing, or the storyline, or the characters or animation is hard since explaining how you feel about the show is really just an amalgamation of thought. It's like trying to explain to someone how great the movie Titanic (1997) is as a testosterone filled male (not saying it's only women who enjoy Titanic I'm just following the stereotype), it's just really hard to do so. Words are hard to find in some cases. Today, I face my biggest challenge yet, in the form of an anime based off of a very dark manga series.

Aku no Hana (Flowers of Evil) by Zecxs.

Now, where do I begin with this show....may as well start with the story as I usually do. At the start of the story, and by that I mean the first half of Episode One, Aku no Hana things seem fairly standard for a drama anime set in a Japanese middle school. Our protagonist, Takao Kasuga, is someone who classifies himself as "better than everyone else" because he reads books, his favourite being the infamous (and real) book Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire. He has a crush on one Saeki Nanako, a girl who is top of their class and is, by Kasuga's standard's a "muse" and his "femme fatale". After forgetting his prized Flowers of Evil at school, he runs back to school to get it. As he leaves with his book back in his possession, a gym bag falls to the floor from the shelf - Saeki's to be exact. Because he is so infatuated with Saeki, he brings home her gym bag and does...things with it (we don't see these things but we are told he rubbed her gym uniform all over himself because he's a "twisted sicko"). Unbeknown to Kasuga, another student, Suga Nakamura sees him take the uniform. The next day, Suga informs Kasuga of his mischief and threatens to tell everyone about what he has done. Kasuga begs her not to, and return for not telling everybody, Kasuga must sign a "contract" with Suga. From here on in, the show adopts a very twisted story about how to handle sin, grief, insanity and dealing with how you have hurt others. While it does have a really tense climax, the ending teases you with scenes from the supposed second season (which I'm not sure if it's in production or not) which leaves the show on an absolutely gigantic cliffhanger which, unless you're going to read the manga, you may not get to see the end of. The show's tone is extremely dark, but I think it works perfectly. The pacing is done well and the characters are all developed very well (considering you only have to care about three of them it was a lot easier on the production team to develop them all) and the show is full of some absolutely unforgettable emotional moments. When watching keep a special eye out on Episode Ten, it's something that will make your jaw hit the floor.

I don't think that I'll go really in-depth to any characters for this review, however, I do want to talk about them in general. The three main characters that make up the Aku no Hana story - Saeki, Kasuga and Suga - all have something that make them special. Kasuga is someone who cannot accept his true self and tries to mask his life by reading books all the time to make him feel better about himself and worsen his opinion on other people to, again, make him feel better about himself. He's a very anxious character, always afraid of what twisted things Suga has in store for him when it comes to fulfilling his end of the contract. Speaking of Suga, I didn't think anybody could be more sadistic and twisted than Beatrice from Umineko no Naku Koro ni but holy mother of God, Suga takes the cake. She is a bloody sadist and wants to watch Kasuga destroy himself and unmask himself. Why? Because she wants him to be like her. She wants to make Kasuga feel like the sicko he really is under those layers that comprise his mask. She is absolutely brutal...and yet there's a weird charm about her. I like her absolute weird way of destroying Kasuga...if that makes any sense. Then we have Saeki, who has some depth but not a lot. Most of the time when she's on screen she's just wondering about what Kasuga is thinking and how it affects her. She's a decent character but she's easily the worst in the show. The cast of Aku no Hana is deep, intricate and emotionally touching but twisted, sick and absolutely evil at the same time. It's by far my favourite anime cast of all time, even if it's a small cast marred by a lacklustre Saeki.

Time to review the animation, and again, Aku no Hana employs a very different art style which uses Rotoscoping to give the show a realistic look. This results in a very beautiful looking, yet sometimes jarring show. It's beautiful because of how amazing the backgrounds look and how well proportioned the characters are. They make the show's setting seem very believable and thankfully this anime doesn't use the traditional anime art style of HUUUUGE FREAKING EYES and Moe as hell characters, it uses people who actually look like real Japanese people. It's jarring in the sense that the lip movements are off a bit and it's really distracting, but other than that movement it extremely fluid and very unique.

I won't spend too long talking about the sound since there's not a lot of songs on the soundtrack but what I will say is that the soundtrack is bloody A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. Seriously, this soundtrack is fucking unreal. While there's not a lot of tracks, the four openings and the one stunning, beautiful, amazing, tragic and twisted ending theme make up for it. 

In conclusion....this show is bloody brilliant. Classified as a "Thriller, Horror, Shonen, Drama, Slice of Life, romance" and "Tragic", Aku no Hana ticks all of those boxes and is one pf the all time greatest stories told in an anime. The journey our three characters go through, the emotional torture, the pain, the sorrow you feel it all. It's a sad story...but it's one worth experiencing. Aku no Hana gives Shingeki no Kyojin a run for it's money in terms of what was 2013's best anime...

Story: 10

Characters: 10

Animation: 10

Sound: 10

Personal Enjoyment: 10

FINAL SCORE FOR AKU NO HANA: 10/10

A Masterpiece.