My Favourites vol. 2

'Aku no Hana' - 'Flowers of Evil'

Hi there! Today I'll tell you something about one of my favourite series of all times. Having seen more than six hundred titles (not sure exactly, but getting close to thousand at the moment) makes it quite difficult to choose top animes. Let's say 5% of what I've seen made really good impression on me and changed the way I see the world today, it still gives +/- 50 series to talk about. Picking ten out of them is extremely difficult, not mentioning just one. But some are so special that makes them easy to select out of the rest and one I am going to talk about today is just like that.Let me introduce you to Aku no Hana - anime certainly not for everyone, but one that impressed me so much, that I actually had to rethink my entire worldview.



Let me clarify it first a little bit. I didn't mark 'Aku no Hana' 10/10 on my MAL. There are titles marked like that there, but not this one. It is because of how they ended the series and never released second season, kind of forcing people to reach for the manga. This process made whole series look just like a tool to increase manga's popularity. Typical marketing gimmick everyone is sick of.
But then there is episode 07 - most brilliant 20minutes of animated show I have ever seen in my lifetime. And this is a reason I value 'Flowers of Evil' so high.
Okay, let's move to concretes. I will try to avoid spoiling the story, so don't worry if you haven't seen this show yet.

'Aku no Hana' is relatively new and still fresh series based on...!!!  ~~ poetry tome!! 'Les Fleurs du mal' written by famous French poet Charles Baudelaire. Poems themselves have no particular flow of action or plot, but deliver certain feeling to the reader. Feeling of evil seed growing in him as he reads. Seed of arrogance and transcendent knowledge lifting the reader up above common, ordinary people. And this feeling is perfectly shown and delivered by animated adaptation. Not only main character is affected but also we are. Perhaps we are even stronger affected.

Story revolves around high school shy and phlegmatic boy who love books more than anything else in an outside world and despite living in a small town without perspectives, likes to dream big and dwell in the fictional worlds from the stories he reads. In first few minutes of the show we can say that he is more mature than his equals and seems to be calm and patient and responsible. Also his approach to love and affection is more mature, almost philosophical, transcendent. While his friends talk about recent soft-porn magazine they've seen or touching boobs, he is building up his platonic love towards one of the girls in his class imagining her as his muse - pure and innocent angel that will always stay this way and bring him endless inspiration.
Problem starts when he is getting caught by the other girl, while, for the first time, he discovers his slowly awaking sexuality and ugly and impure desire towards his dreamed lady. That would become a little scandal everyone would forget about sooner or later if the girl that saw him, was a typical high school student like other girls in the class, but Nakamura was not like that and this is where problem started.
She decided to keep what he did in secret as long as he will do as she says. This 'contract' they've 'signed' led to a total breakdown in the protagonist's life and throughout the series, we can observe changes in him that happened. His entire existence being torn apart, flower of evil blooming and walls created within his consciousness razed to the ground. Nakamura had no mercy and in her relentless way shown him and us how deeply in social lies we are covered and how mindless global conformism really is.

If you haven't seen it yet, go and check it yourself, perhaps your walls are still waiting to get razed to the ground. Once you finish watching, come back and comment in section below.
Thanks for reading and see ya next time!