This is gonna be long and rambly and weird but that's because that's the only thing I know to do when talking about this show.
[EDIT FROM THE FUTURE!: I just finished writing this and honestly, I think I went a bit of the rails and at some point forgot how to keep going. So, yeah, this is a really weird write-up, but yeah.]
Aku no Hana is a manga by Oshimi Shūzō that was published in Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine from 2009 to 2014. It was later published, on it's own, over 11 volumes. But we're not here to talk about the manga, as great as it is. The manga was popular enough to spawn an anime adaption, in 2013, and a live action film adaption, in 2019. Our focus, today, is going to be the 2013 anime adaption, which I absolutely adore. Now, let's start with a question.
Is Aku no Hana a good anime?
The short answer? No. It isn't.
Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking, I just said I absolutely adore the anime, and now I'm saying it's not a good anime, sounds contradictory, I get it, but hear me out. To really get what I'm trying to say, here, we gotta talk a bit about anime itself, and a bit about what anime is.
If you were to go to Japan and ask someone, there, what anime is, they'd tell you it's animation. No matter what kind of animation, where it's from, the audience it's targeting, etc. In Japan, Adventure Time is anime. But elsewhere in the world, anime refers specifically to Japanese animation. Outside of Japan, Adventure Time is not anime. Now, here's another puzzle piece we'll put in place, soon; Aku no Hana is not anime. No matter where you're from, anime is tied to some sort of expectation from the viewer. In Japan, it's expected to be animated. Go outside of Japan, and expectations get a little more complicated, and also subjective. For me, to call something anime is to link it to a visual style that has evolved branched out into multiple other visual styles over the decades that anime has been produced. For example, I wouldn't call Crayon Shin-chan anime, because I personally cannot see the link to that common visual style; in my mind, it's a cartoon. In the same vein, I'd argue that Aku no Hana is not anime, because it doesn't share that link; instead, Aku no Hana is linked to live action, as the animation technique used to animate it was rotoscoping, rather than any branch of traditional Japanese animation.
There's more to these expectations than visual style, though. And Aku no Hana doesn't meet a single expectation of most traditional anime viewers. People expect anime to exist as one of a variety of styles, or to start a new branch off an already existing style of anime, but Aku no Hana decided to go with its different animation style, with it's weird soundtrack, with it's slow pacing, all to the benefit of it's story. It exists outside of the expectations of anime, which means it's not a good anime, but that doesn't mean it's bad either, it is simply different.
Much like its characters, Aku no Hana rejects conformity.
Aku no Hana's rotoscoped animation made it feel uncomfortably human, to me. The different emotions the show tries to instill in the viewer hit, and it both feels real and unreal. It's the best kind of uncanny valley. These emotions, anxiety, dread, guilt, fear, embarrassment, humiliation, anger, are then given room to settle, or fester, by the slow pace keeping the consequences at bay as we slowly watch them get closer. We watch as obsessions are formed, grow, fester, and that's all we can do. We can only watch, or turn it off. Turning it off is a valid option, but we watch, as things continue to spiral out of control, as that is our obsession.
You ever watch a show with at least 7 straight minutes only of the characters silently walking through town? No? How about this? Have you ever walked silently through town for at least 7 straight minutes? Of course you have (unless you, dear reader, are unable to do so for whatever reason, everyone has their circumstances), who hasn't? You understand the atmosphere, you can feel the silence, hear the emptiness. Only knowing your own self and the emotions within. It is sobering, and calm, but dreadful and anxious and guiltful nonetheless.
Aku no Hana is a middle school coming-of-age story.
It tells the tale of Kasuga Takao, a bookworm obsessed with Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, after a lustful impulse leads him to steal the gym clothes of his crush, Saeki Nanako. It's a story so full of angst and obsession and anxiety and dread that it creates an almost suffocating atmosphere. It touches on topics of lust, obsession, possession, rejection, self-hatred, self-harm, rape, suicidal ideation... It's a lot. The anime adaption, which should not have been marketed as anime, doesn't make it far enough to hit all those topics, but the manga and the live action film adaption do. If you can handle all those things, I highly recommend giving the show a watch, and then giving the manga a read, in that order. And now I hand the mic off to Nakamura Sawa:
