Let's reveal the elephant in the room, the animation. It is flawed, but not to the extent where it should be castrated out of someone’s psyche after viewing the first episode. For starters, the animation that the studio decided to use is called rotoscoping, a style of animation where people are filmed in live action and animators draw over the film frame-by-frame. Considering that this is the first anime show to do this animation style, how is the quality of the rotoscoping? Not too well, that’s for sure. The lip-syncing is atrocious, and the facial expressions are devoid of any character. They don’t fit well with the emotions that the characters are trying to convey, and given how low the budget was, the animation isn’t very fluid in most places. Though these flaws are mentioned, the show isn’t necessarily unwatchable due to the average animation, so it gets a slight pass in this department.
With this in mind, however, the art design of the background in the show’s setting is truly spectacular. The grime and rust from the buildings and the dark tone of the outside world succeed in enveloping this dark, depressing story. It fits with the style Aku no Hana is trying to capture, and its effectiveness is relatively good. Another thing that also improves Aku no Hana’s mood is the music. Its subtle ambient and minimalist influenced sound is one of the most beautifully crafted scores that I’ve enjoyed listening to.
On a technical level, the show is mixed with good music and art but average animation, but how does it compare to the narrative and writing? Not too well, that’s for sure. For one, the characters and how they are written are not well developed or fully realized with anything happening with the plot. To address this even further, the relationships between the protagonist Kasuga and our two main heroines, Nakamura and Saeki, are as well put together as one could get from a high schooler’s attempt at writing a story as this, a bad one at that. What makes these characters so bad in terms of a writing perspective is how poorly paced it gives us a clear indication that Kasuga has a bond with either Nakamura or Saeki. With Kasuga and Nakamura, there is no chemistry. They play off as a couple of degenerates who spout out vapid angsty monologues towards one another whenever they are on screen.
Kasuga himself is not an enticing protagonist to be on-screen. Just because you make him this Holden Caulfield type of character where he is obsessed with a dark poetry book doesn’t make him have any more depth than any other character in the show. Are we to sympathize with him just because he acts pessimistic about the world around him with his pseudo-intellectual jargon? Not if it’s done with careful precision in Kasuga’s archetype, which is not the case in Aku no Hana.
Nakamura and Saeki are two other characters who are unfortunately not spared in mediocre character writing. The romantic development between Kasuga and Saeki was rushed to the point where we only see very few inclinations that they are a couple. We get two awkward dates and a moment where she invites him into his room. Not only that but Saeki’s reasons for liking Kasuga are not at all convincing to the slightest degree. With all of the things Kasuga did or forced, in this case, to Saeki’s property, any ordinary girl would quickly never speak to him again. Still, just because the writers want to keep the story going, they’ll have to hope that anyone with half a brain would buy into this—no explanation for Saeki’s reasoning for liking Kasuga.
Then there’s Nakamura, Kasuga’s “sidekick” in the show. As you might predict, she is about as explained throughout the show as any other character. This is, of course, the intention because Nakamura is something that we should be wary and suspicious about whether she’s evil or not. Once she forms a contract with Kasuga, the only thing we get out of Nakamura is that she is nothing more than the show’s attempt at pouring empty melodrama into the mix to make the plot seem too deep than what it already is. Her primary goal to the plot’s theme is never given any deep context other than the fact that she thinks the whole world is bullshit and should be destroyed. If you want to provide me with an existential angst plot device, try to deliver a better explanation than just a one-dimensional written one. The character can be portrayed in a reasonably sympathetic light. Unfortunately, Nakamura just doesn’t cut out to be a deep convincing anti-hero with how poor the writing is.
While the show's tone is solid, the atmosphere tries too hard to be frightening to the point where it almost does the opposite effect of what it was initially trying to impose. Whenever there is a faint rumbling noise in the background that’s supposed to resemble a heartbeat, that is hardly effective in establishing a mood, or whenever the music starts to grow in its dynamics with a dark droning noise that is unsettling in a wrong way. What’s funny is that some of the build-ups in some of the scenes are unnecessary and fail to capture any fear. Once you do it multiple times throughout the show, it loses its momentum quickly, and all you are left with is just an empty white noise in the background.
It’s not often I talk about the actual “acting” rather than the voice acting in this show. While good in a few areas, the acting is often overly dramatized and doesn’t reach that greatness of any drama TV show you could be watching right now. Actors constantly spout out their lines and try to carry out as much emotion as possible in scenes that don’t seem as though it was needed in the first place, such as one that involves a bathroom area.
The numerous plot holes drag down the plot from making it convincing to anyone watching. Usually, plot holes can be forgiven if they are tiny to where they are not noticeable to ruin the show's flow. With Aku no Hana, many coincidences can easily be accounted for lazy writing, such as no one noticing the blackboard writing being blocked out the day after the vandalism scene. Anyone could have easily deciphered what the saying was in two seconds flat.
In the short scheme of things, Aku no Hana is just a failed experiment that probably never should have been fully realized given its source material. In all honesty, the original manga’s story is quite fascinating. If only they had hired more competent writers to fill in the wide gap that crippled Aku no Hana’s chances of becoming an intriguing psychological drama. It wouldn’t be a shock to call this a “wasted opportunity” given how the creators were ballsy in making it with the rotoscope technique; it just goes to show when you want to do something “different,” you might want to focus more on your writing structure than your artistic integrity.
Grade: D+
