Flowers of Evil

Environment Establishment

I want to talk about the anime’s art style and particularly about the environment establishment. I know that the anime’s art style is very different from the manga but the anime’s art style actually suits the environment of the story better than the manga. Every single movement by the characters are so natural and nonchalant and even background characters are shown to be doing something instead of standing still or just walking back and forth. I think fear stems from the feeling we feel when we realize something is happening that shouldn’t be happening. The characters faces are extremely similar to real Japanese faces that it’s creepy because you know that this is just an anime and anime people must have huge eyes and pencil like body structure. And I’m sure that was intended.

The BGM is used mostly for conveying the character’s state of mind and it does that quite well. The environment is designed to represent a cage or a small space. You can feel Kasuga trying to escape this cage. You can sense the oldness that hangs in the environment. You feel as though you’ve been living there you whole life. You can relate to how the people born in that town express nostalgia for that town even though you’ve never lived there. This is mostly due to the scenic shots in anime that don’t glorify the scene it portrays and just shows the old building and walls and neighbourhoods as something normal... something lived in. The sky is almost always cloudy and gloomy further enforcing this idea that Kasuga is like a rat put in a dark maze with a very low ceiling. He does nothing but run into the maze, randomly choosing paths hoping that he will escape.

Characters

Kasuga is someone we’ve all seen and maybe interacted with in life. You know that one guy who always trash talks about book adaptations? Says that the novel was better, and thinks that reading books makes him a superior human being. Kasuga is that guy. He wants everyone to know that he reads books and therefore is someone who deserves attention. He in fact believes that if Saeki knows that he reads books she will fall for him. He also unironically shouts to his classmate “Shut up, you don’t know anything. You can’t even understand a line of the kind of literature that I consume”. He even goes into monologues in his mind reciting the lines of the book The Flowers of Evil. He is so narcissistic. He is so obsessed with The Flowers of Evil that he believes the book portrays his mind and his way of being. He even has a picture of the author in his room. If an anime fan turned pathetic is a weeaboo a bibliophile turned pathetic would be this guy. But this unkind and brutally honest portrayal of him helps us keep our objectivity and not feel anything for him when something happens. You just see characters acting out of various emotions and don’t sympathize with them.

The anime will be very relateable to those who have done something in school that you hope no one finds out. You know that feeling when something you’ve done in school is being talked about but no one knows that it was you who did it. That rush of adrenaline you feel. Your heart beats so much that you feel as though it touches your rib cage each time it beats. That feeling – that fight or flight feeling – has been conveyed very accurately.

Themes And Character Motives

The entire anime can be said to portray the relationship between Kasuga and Nakamura. Both of these characters have motives that stem from the same feeling. They both think that the town that they live in is dull and boring and have an innate feeling that they we’re born to do something great and therefore don’t belong in this town. Kasuga feels as though since he has been reading books that are considered to be from a very high level of literature he is superior and the people of the town are therefore dull compared to him. He feels caged by the mountains around the town, and feels as though he can achieve his ‘superior destiny’ if he crosses the hill and gets out of the town into the ‘interesting’ outer world where people will recognize and appreciate his true value.

Nakamura on the other hand doesn’t consider herself as superior or different from the other people of the town. In fact she believes she is just the same as those around her but she just doesn’t act like others. She believes everyone is a hentai (deviant) at heart but just act so that they can fit in with society. This is why she develops an interest in Kasuga when she sees him stealing Saeki’s gym clothes. She thinks she has now witnessed a true hentai and someone who acts out of their true will. She fetishes about Kasuga being an hentai and derives pleasure from the fact that she can make someone do all the things that they actually want to do but don’t want to do because of societal constructs like morality which she believes just prevents people from being their own self and promotes false behaviour. She sees Kasuga as someone who further cements her views of the world and therefore pushes him further to be an hentai. Because in Nakamura’s mind Kasuga being more of an hentai means her worldview is more justified. So Nakamura can be seen as someone having an ideological crisis who grasps and propagates anything that reinforces their view on life and society.

This relationship is so intense and affects everyone in their life in some way or another. They are both trying to break free from society so that they can be their true selves even though in the process they both lose their sanity and peace of mind.

This anime is the most underrated anime that I have watched. I was constantly reminded of Oyasumi Punpun watching this because both share a central theme – The Loss Of Innocence. Kasuga realizes that he is not someone who he believed he was, that reading books is not something that makes you any different from other ‘dull’ people and all humans are just – in Nakamura’s words – ‘pieces of shit hentais’.