Aku no Hana

Takao Kasuga is an unsociable middle school student who bears a love for books—in particular, Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. He also has a crush on his class' idol, the sweet Nanako Saeki. In stark contrast to her, Sawa Nakamura is an insolent and unpleasant girl who lacks any concern for school.

One day, Takao forgets to bring his book home with him. He returns to school to retrieve it, but is stopped in his tracks when he finds Nanako's freshly worn gym clothes lying on the floor. A strange desire consumes Takao, and like a wicked pervert, he steals them.

With the guilt of his crime weighing on him, Takao tries his best to live a normal life. Sawa, however, who witnessed Takao's thievery, has other plans in store for him...

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Aku no Hana was published in English as The Flowers of Evil by Vertical Inc. from May 8, 2012, to October 14, 2014. The publisher later rereleased the series in omnibus volumes. It was also published in Italian as I Fiori del Male - Aku no Hana by Panini Comics from November 9, 2013, to February 7, 2015; in Spanish as Las Flores del Mal by Norma Editorial from September 26, 2014, to July 22, 2016; in French as Les Fleurs Du Mal by Ki-oon from January 12, 2017, to July 5, 2018; and in Brazilian Portuguese by NewPOP Editora since March 31, 2022.

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Characters

Nakamura, Sawa

Main

Kasuga, Takao

Main

Tokiwa, Aya

Main

Saeki, Nanako

Main

Kojima, Ken

Supporting

Yamada, Masakazu

Supporting

Kinoshita, Ai

Supporting

Kasuga, Father

Supporting

Nakamura, Grandmother

Supporting

Kasuga, Mother

Supporting

Reviews

Jan 14, 2017

LLG

Recommended

I will mainly write about why I love the scenario and characters and why I preferred the second part, the one which has never been adapted into anime. For this purpose, I am going to spoil the whole story, so don't read this unless you have finished the manga.

I moderately liked the beginning of the manga because I did not really understand what the characters wanted (the MC in particular) and it seemed to me that they were acting irrationally. The escalation of catastrophic risk taking was fine but not enough to make me love the manga and I think I was right because the ... rest of the manga gives a new meaning to this part which is in fact a mere introduction.

To me, it tells the story of boy who is introvert/asocial but not deeply abnormal and who cultivates his uniqueness because he fails to fit in. He believes that if he can't be as good as a normie than the other normies, it means he has a different/superior fate and he convinces himself that his "thing" is poetry, something the others can't understand. He finds a place for the pretty girl he fancies in this thinking pattern, calling her his "muse" (which is quite ridiculous). The MC is therefore at first pretty unhappy and lonely but comfortably confined in his simplistic relation with the rest of the world and vaguely in love with some girl he doesn't really know. This distance between them, which should be a source of pain, actually comforts the idea he has made of himself and make the situation more coherent and convenient than if he tried to seduce her.

When he gets closer to her, it is in fact natural that it doesn't go too well: he is still asocial, he doesn’t know how to fit in by her side and he doesn't have much to say to her. I hadn't understood it, reading the first chapters (I couldn't tell if it is normal, if we are supposed to understand later, of if I am a bit dumb, but however I understood later). On the other side, Sawa gives him an opportunity to increase his uniqueness, to improve his pattern which keeps him away from the others. She is genuinely different, way more than him, and even offers some new categories to add to his pattern (the concept of perversion, the concept of "shit-eaters" (misanthropy in fact) and the concept of "other side") which he tries to match with his understanding of Baudelaire's poetry. When he rejects Saeki to turn to his tormentor WHOM HE DOESN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND, I thought it was dumb, but it's actually very coherent. To this selfish interest is apparently added the desire to help Sawa, to offer her the company of someone who is like her and who can understand her, in opposition to Saeki who is a normie et doesn't need him. However, we clearly feel that he never completely succeeds, that she remains more special than him, that he never understands her and can't really save her, which creates a malaise during this whole part of the story which I find retrospectively delicious.

Then comes the chapter of the summer festival: she betrays him, pushes him away and tries to die alone. He doesn't understand, neither did I at the moment, but it's actually simple: she's thanking him for all these efforts he made for her which have mitigate her misery for a little while but wishes that he keeps living because she understood that he was less abnormal than her and that he could find his place in the world with some efforts, unlike her. The MC only understands this in the end and I only completely understood it at the same time he did. But what makes her so different? Why would Sawa be so desperate while he wouldn't? Is she right to think this way? She's right, and the reason is simple: as seen in the last chapter (which, in my opinion, was not necessary to understand this, but it is an indisputable confirmation which puts an end to any hesitation), she is genuinely, clinically crazy. I don't know anything about psychiatry but it must be some form of schizophrenia. Her perception of the world is biased, everything she says or do in the whole manga is irrational. She's desperately crazy while the MC is merely a bit different from the normies.

For some years, he won't get out of the illusion that he was different like her, that he was able to do something for her, and he will live in the nostalgic remembrance of their relationship and the incomprehension of Sawa's final act. It all changes when he meets the third girl whom he will seduce without giving up his particularity but without persisting in withdrawal. He will understand that he can be normal too, even if he has a passion apparently rare in his environment (literature), and finally give up his dumb pattern which was his shell during adolescence. Then comes my favourite passage: he meets Sawa, who almost didn't evolve, unlike him, again and, after a night of horseplay, reminiscent of the horseplay of their adolescence, she tells him not to ever come again because he is not like her.

I should also write more about Saeki and her friend Kinoshita who suffer a lot because of the MC's mistakes, they are two very good characters, but the essential point is here: a MC who doesn't fins his place and cultivates his difference; he believes (wrongly) that he can help a truly different (crazy) girl and persists in this way despite his failure without ever finding any satisfaction; it takes a lot of time for him to get over it but finally becomes normal while she remains in her desperate situation from which no one can get her out, and anyway from which the MC won't ever try to get her out anymore.

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Mar 7, 2019

Obsdiangolem

Mixed Feelings

Aku no Hana was 60% of the time the worst thing I've had ever read in my life.

The central theme that Aku No Hana proposes to analyze during its first arc is the mindset of a criminal. It is, till the very end, a character study, focused on creating a situation in which our protagonist faces the consequences of a certain action that he makes at the beginning of the manga and eventually reaches the realms of insanity.

This may sound like something really interesting to you if you ever stopped and spent some time trying to understand the mindset of a random criminal you saw ...

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Dec 16, 2021

Lordsaveoursouls

Not Recommended

Funny

i really love Shuzo mangas, but this was so poor
they just look like childs, and the way they act is so dumb(?) bescouse they have so simple things that become a gigant mess
[spoiler in this part] all the PE clothes is soooooo dumb, like he could just put back, and if she say something he could say "no, she is saying that becouse was her"[end of spoiler]
and like, the story looks so poor, why he follow her, why he is so dumb, why she is so manipulative?
everything just look childish
i really think there is so much things that are missing, or are just unnecessary
they ...

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Poll: Aku no Hana Chapter 30 Discussion notsureifsrs - Jun 18, 2012	45 replies	by LAGod_2908 »» Oct 11, 7:28 AM
Any manga with similar atmosphere and feel to it? BipulGamer07 - Sep 14	22 replies	by SKILIFT26 »» Sep 18, 4:14 PM
Poll: Aku no Hana Chapter 3 Discussion -Quasar - Mar 1, 2011	28 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Sep 7, 11:34 AM
Poll: Aku no Hana Chapter 2 Discussion xXC64Xx - Mar 5, 2011	20 replies	by RGreatDanton »» Sep 7, 2:52 AM
Poll: Aku no Hana Chapter 58 Discussion ShinoAsada - May 19, 2014	36 replies	by INoLuv »» Sep 4, 9:56 AM

Aku no Hana
The Flowers of Evil
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