What makes it different overall?
First things first, this anime is NOT for enjoying your leisure time; because they use visual imagery both as the narrator of the story and as the element that establishes the overall atmosphere, meaning you need to effectively concentrate on what the visuals tell you. For example, lighting of a room will tell about the character much more than his/her conversations. Most of the time you can see how the characters feel just by looking at their faces.
Secondly, this is NOT an anime you would want to watch in one go. Just like a good meal, you have to eat it slowly, bit by bit. Overall slow pace itself is obviously designed for this purpose.
Thirdly, what we have here belongs to the order of poetry, unlike most of the other anime which belong to the order of I would say novel, or compilation of stories. The title "Flowers of Evil" is already announcing such order, yet it is important to keep that in mind throughout the entire series.
Now let's pass on the more specific details:
Story 8/10
Well story is pretty simple actually. It takes place in a Japanese school in modern times. Broadly speaking, we see the change or the inability to change of Kasugi through his relation to Sawa and Saeki. But it is almost impossible to identify what the genre of the story is clearly; because they put so much emotion to it. It is as if looking at a simple object like a pen through a microscope. Thus seeing every coherent detail makes harder to identify clearly the genre of the story. Yet it does its job, which just like any other psychological work, is the depiction of characters. Let's say story in here is just an excuse for presenting the characters.
Art 10/10
Great. Some may like it, others may not. I loved it. Reality in drawing adds a lot to the reality of emotion. And as I said in the beginning the story and the characters are depicted with visuals not with dialogues. It is hard to describe it with words but I hope in your life, you have seen a scene, a frame in reality which is so poetic that it immediately evokes certain feelings. The art in this anime is designed for recreating that feeling. Visuals are filled with so much meaning that they are naturally poetic, which is also difficult to be in a completely fictitious environment. The art is, if I may call it justly, cathartic.
Sound 9/10
When the visuals are this much strong, the only thing left for the sound is not to kill the visuals and support it. This is exactly what sound does in this anime. It carries the visuals to the next level by creating the reality of the overall atmosphere. The credits music “Last Flower” by its form and content is a concentration of the story of the anime meaning if you compress the entire series into a song, you will probably get something like “Last Flower”. It is sadly weird.
Characters 10/10
I have never seen more real characters in anime, they are almost more real than the characters of some of the regular movies I have watched. We see three major axis on which the characters are built. One is ferocity towards the mediocrity of the town and its people. Two would be confounding lust with love, a typical trait for teens. Third is lack of courage, thus doing everything on impulse and trying not to face its consequences. Besides these foundations, we can also see the consequences of these foundations on the characters. A clear example would be the repetitions made by Sawa like “Boring boring boring”. These repetitions indicate a small autism which is a product of being shut out of the society which she lives in. Thus her ferocity towards the mediocrity of the town and its people, a trait which determines the nearly all of her actions, is based on her isolation from the society which manifest itself as a small autism indicated by such repetitions. There are other examples for other characters but I will not give them here, because I do not want ruin the fun of understanding such connections.
Enjoyment 9/10
I enjoyed the show because it has been a while since I've seen such genuine stuff. But this show is not designed for enjoyment.
Overall 10/10
As someone who did not read the manga, I feel like the show attained its purpose which was the portrayal of the characters for the 1 part. If the show ends here, I am OK with that because once you understand that the events are solely for the exposition of the characters, not much of an event is needed after you understood the characters. The possible next season will show us either how they change or how they stay the same, and the options to what they will change into are pretty limited, so in all cases what happens in the next season is not really important in terms of plot, because the general purpose of the plot is already designated, but the thing that will be important for the next season is the art for sure. Now that we can see where everything is going, what matters is how they are going to portray it. This firm establishement gained by an "ouverture" should be the purpose of every first season. That is why overall I give 10 to this anime. I recommend it not only to watchers but to the producers as well. As a first season, it has function, style, uniqueness, a key combination for establishing anything great.
