As you can probably assume from that brief introduction, Aku no Hana is a dark psychological story. It follows several middle school students in a backwater town in Japan as they grow closer and farther apart from each other throughout the story. Kasuga Takao is your typical middle school male protagonist. His only remarkable feature is his intense love of reading. His favorite book is "The Flowers of Evil" ("Aku no Hana" in Japanese) by Charles Baudelaire. One day, he forgets this book at school and returns to get it. After picking it up from his desk, he sees a gym bag lying on the floor in the back of the room. It happens to be the bag of the girl, Saeki, that Kasuga has a crush on. Kasuga hesitantly decides to pick it up, and, suddenly discovering his perverted nature, decides to sniff her gym clothes. Upon hearing a noise, he panics and ends up taking the gym bag home with as he runs off. He thinks everything will be fine, but soon enough he finds out that a strange girl in his class named Nakamura saw him with Saeki's bag. The situation soon escalates after the bag isn't returned and a pervert is supposedly spotted on the campus grounds. Now Kasuga has to decide whether he should return the gym bag or not as he gets caught up in a bizarre relationship with both Saeki and Nakamura.
The story of Aku no Hana is extremely character driven. It's puts the reader into the mindsets of each character and shows you the psychological stress and development they are going through. This is especially the case for Kasuga as most of the story is told from his point of view. Kasuga starts off as a very generic and annoying protagonist. He's wimpy, gets pushed around by Nakamura, has trouble speaking his mind, and ends up making his life worse with his poor and delayed decisions. I say he "starts off" that way because as the story progresses he develops tremendously. There is a distinct point in the story where everything changes in a matter of just one chapter, and Kasuga suddenly stops being annoying (at least in my opinion). Not to mention the character designs improve around that point as well. Saeki, Kasuga's love interest from the start, is a popular girl in their middle school. She's a good student, kind, and friendly. She's basically the exact opposite of Nakamura. Nakamura is antisocial, mean, and doesn't try at all in school. She sees the world in an entirely different way than everyone else, leading her to isolate herself from all of the boring "shitheads" around her. The final female protagonist is Tokiwa Aya who is introduced over halfway into the story, however she has just as large of an impact on the story as either Saeki or Nakamura.
Let me take a moment to mention this in particular for anyone who has seen anything about the anime of Aku no Hana. The art in Aku no Hana is great and is absolutely nothing like the rotoscoped animation in the show that lacks emotion as well as many other things. It also only adapts the very beginning of the story before it even gets great. The art in the manga develops over time and grows along with the characters. It's really incredible looking at the early and later chapters and seeing the leaps and bounds the art has taken throughout the manga.
One thing this manga executes especially well is it's occasional lack of talking. Some chapters have absolutely no words at all for around thirty pages. Instead, they emphasize the emotions of the characters perfectly through nothing but facial expressions, scenery, and physical character interactions (this is also one of the things that fails most in the anime adaptation). They are usually placed after important parts of the story and emphasize just how emotional and life-changing those moments were.
Aku no Hana is a thrilling psychological and romantic drama. It is enjoyable from start to finish and only increases in intensity as the story progresses. The character development, art and character design changes, and multiple climaxes throughout the story all keep the reader's attention glued to the manga. I personally enjoyed both the first and second half for different reasons. The story may have more climactic and thrilling moments in the first half, but the second half has greatly improved characters and art. I highly recommend this manga (certainly more than the anime) and especially if you enjoy psychological and/or coming of age stories.
