(this review contains very minor plot spoilers, won't ruin your enjoyment of the story)
This manga is truly a wild ride, and I've never read anything like it. I read all of it in one 5 hour sitting and I was hooked in for all of it, even the second half which some people find to be more "boring" still kept me invested. However this series is definitely more than just "shock factor", with a lot of good human drama and backed up by great and eerie artwork. It's a short series wrapping up at 58 chapters so you don't have to commit too much time to it. Now let's delve into the review.
Plot:
The story follows our MC Kasuga Takao who is your typical animanga MC loser, slightly bullied and taken advantage which is nothing new and we have seen this type of MC countless times, and 2 other girls Saeki and Nakamura. Essentially for reasons I won't get into Kasuga ends up in a situation where he is unable to to disobey Nakamura who cruelly and relentlessly blackmails him into doing some INSANE things. Over and over the story pulls you in and makes you unable to stop turning the pages due to just how completely insane Nakamura is, she is genuinely one of the most crazy characters I've seen in animanga. Without spoiling too much the first half of the manga follows the wild exploits of Nakamura, Kasuga's attempts to cover them all up, and the short term consequences of these actions.
In the second half of the story a short time skip occurs and we cut to a couple years later where Kasuga is deeply traumatized, attempting to repair relationships he has destroyed, and trying to move on and live with himself after knowing what he has done.
Characters:
As for our MC Kasuga, he starts out as a conceited young boy who feels he is superior to his classmates due to his "deep understanding" of many complex poems and stories, which is not true he has just deluded himself into thinking so. Over the course of the first half of the series Kasuga transforms from someone who is hanging onto this idea of remaining a "normal person" and trying to conform to the society and town he has lived in all his life, into someone who yearns for more. This happens due to the many shenanigans Nakamura puts him up to which slowly force Kasuga to acknowledge and come to terms with who he really is instead of the front he puts up; or as Nakamura puts it "pulling back layers of his skin".
The main driving force of this story is Nakamura who is from an outside perspective completely batshit crazy. If you are not infatuated with her scheming and very strange nature off the start, I don't think this story is for you as it is one of the main things that is meant to hook the reader in and keep you turning those pages. Nakamura is a completely misunderstood person who feels she is alone in the world (also with a superiority complex but to much more of an extreme than Kasuga) referring to the other people in the town as "shit eaters", however she is misunderstood because she rejects everything around her. It isn't until she gets involved with Kasuga that she finally sees someone else as a person who is worth interacting with. The way that Nakamura forces wild scenarios onto Kasuga is so entertaining to watch, as well as the way that she slowly corrupts and makes Kasuga addicted to her. She does all of these things that make Kasuga want to escape from her, but at the same time he is so deeply infatuated with her that he keeps coming back for more. She is so unpredictable and I was always kept guessing what she was feeling and what she would do next since this story is told through the eys of our MC, and she is without a doubt the best part of this story.
The final main character of the story Saeki was the one that had the least impact on me and resonated the least with me. She appears to be your typical class idol at a first glance, but she also has a few screws loose. I honestly don't have much to say about her, she serves the purpose of being Kasuga's "goal" at first I suppose because he wants to be with her and be a "normal" guy and have a "normal relationship" with her which I think she does well. I found her willingness to keep involving herself with Kasuga and Nakamura time and time again strange, because she knows how fucked up they are. It's possible I just didn't understand something about her character so if anyone has any insight don't hesitate to send me a message.
And finally the side characters in this story were done well, I really liked how they kept this story grounded in reality. The way they react to Kasuga and Nakamura's insane actions is realistic and makes you think that something like this could actually happen in real life.
Art:
The artwork in this manga is simply put stunning. I think it alternates from a sort of "basic" school life style to a super creepy and eerie style, which I think resembles something out of a horror manga. The symbolism with the "flower of evil" and the character expressions as well as the backgrounds are just stunning and are for sure one of the things that kept me so interested in this story. Particularly I think some of Nakamura's most meaningful moments were accompanied by some of my favourite art I've seen in a long time. The manga was published over the course of 5 years so the art also improves over time, with the final couple of chapters being beautiful.
Spoiler, click to view
In conclusion, I think that Aku no Hana is a really great and quick read which really gets you thinking about what it means to be normal, about the consequences of your actions and about the impact that you have on other people. I'm sure I missed some things with the deep symbolism and some of the underlying themes which you can go look up on reddit or read and find out for yourself afterward, but I think even without diving too deep into this story it still has a lot of offer and can be enjoyed by fans of any genre. However the story does take the perverse acts Nakamura and Kasuga get up to to the EXTREMES so some people will find it off putting. I'm basically desensitized to that type of thing at this point so it didn't bother me at all.
Overall rating: 8.5/10